A cool guide to Myths and Misinformation created by Movies
A cool guide to Myths and Misinformation created by Movies
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Defibrillator:
Weeeell, not exactly. A defibrillator is essential to restarting a heart under specific conditions, and greatly improves the odds of survival to discharge. If your patient is already wired up and you see them go into a shockable rhythm, you can go ahead and shock them immediately. Otherwise, you're going to need to do some CPR to prime the heart before you deliver the shock. At that, it's worth noting that not all rhythms are considered shockable (that is, experience a clinical benefit from being shocked), and asystole (flatline) is not among them. Source: am paramedic.
The lock: depends. Notice they said a small bullet. A 12 gauge slug can change a lot of facts about a lock in a hurry. I can't say it would blow a lock clean out, I think the mythbusters tried it with mixed results, but it's sure as shit take care of a padlock.
Aiming at two targets: more of a shitty technicality, but if you're using a shot load in a shotgun, it's perfectly viable to aim at multiple targets (in a target dense environment) at once. Your aim just has to be generally correct.
Tracing a call: bullshit, especially with cell phones. Modern dispatching centers can generally triangulate a 911 caller's position (if they're in range of multiple towers) in under a few minutes, it's a thing. If 911 can do it, you just know the feds can. Also, phone companies and phones keep records of what device pinged what tower and when, people have been convicted off of that data.
I would like to add that a suppressor can render certain specialized firearms nearly silent if they are used in conjunction with subsonic ammunition. A suppressor can deaden the sound of the initial explosion, but a supersonic bullet will continue to create a sonic boom as it flies through the air. A subsonic round doesn't create a sonic boom and as a result nearly all of the sound of firing comes from the initial explosion. If that explosion is well sealed and is funneled through the right supressor, nearly silent operation can be achieved. A good example of this is the Welrod used during World War Two, which was quiter than an airsoft gun and was only really audible at point blank range.
TLDR, how quiet a gun gets with a suppressor is determined by the ammunition, the type of firearm, and type of suppressor. Suppressed gunfire can range from as loud or louder than a nail gun to as quiet as a sneeze.
Worth noting that while a nail gun is pretty loud (if you've ever been around them without hearing protection), it's still nothing on being near an unsuppressed gunshot. If you've never been up close when even a pistol is shot, it's much louder then you're imagining, and louder still than you've just adjusted your imagination to. Rifles are louder again.
I know someone who has a suppressed, large caliber rifle which makes less noise firing than most rifles do racking. It's really impressive what a well -designed suppression system can do with heavy subsonic ammo.
It's worth noting that nearly none of the people you see testing suppressors online use a pistol with a slide that is locked so it doesn't cycle, shooting through a suppressor that has the right type of "lube" applied, with rubber wipes at the very end to let the bullet through then reseal the suppressor for a few shots, before they're completely shot out.
You don't get a lot of silent shots, and you've got to rack the slide yourself for each of them, but they do get quite a bit quieter than the suppressor mythbusters think they do, running their dry, open suppressors in semi auto.
Also, phone companies and phones keep records of what device pinged what tower and when, people have been convicted off of that data.
To me this is why that point is especially misleading, the movie trope is that as long as you hang up the phone soon enough they can't find you, but that's obviously not how it works at all.
It is how it used to work back when these tropes came about.
Here’s an interesting video on the topic
My issue with the two guns thing is that the “myth” they present is that it looks cool. Which is subjective, and for many people it does look cool. You’re unlikely to hit with any accuracy, but you’ll look cool missing.
My issue with the two-guns one is that they use stormtroopers as shorthand for being a bad shot. The only time they were "bad shots" was in A New Hope where they were under orders to be bad shots. They were supposed to let the rebels escape on the Falcon, there was a tracking device on it.
Pretty sure that’s mostly a retcon and it’s actually just plot armor preventing the stormtroopers from aiming.
It was explained in the scene immediately after the Falcon departed the Death Star. Tarkin and Vader discussed the tracking device explicitly, and the fact that their escape was deliberate. Leia also speculated about it right after their escape, saying that their escape had been "too easy" and that she thought they'd let them go. This is in the same movie. How can that possibly be a "retcon"? Retcon is short for retroactive continuity, as in something that's made up after the book or movie came out to explain things that happened in previous books and movies. You can't retcon within the very same script.
To me, “letting them go” applies to things like leaving escape routes open, posting minimal guards, leaving the tractor beam unguarded and off, not “shooting to miss”. What, did they put out an announcement at the morning briefing, ‘hey everyone if you see a stranger on our secret base make sure to shoot at them but not too accurately, even if this leads to your death’. I don’t buy it.
What, did they put out an announcement at the morning briefing, ‘hey everyone if you see a stranger on our secret base make sure to shoot at them but not too accurately, even if this leads to your death’.
Yes. Exactly that. These are soldiers, they follow the orders they're given. Indeed, they're elite soldiers. The Emperor fully expects that if he orders them to their deaths they will follow those orders to the letter and die for him.
They were ordered to let the Rebels go, while also trying to make it look like they were trying to capture them. That means shooting at them and missing, but only just missing. It means letting yourself get shot if that's the only plausible way for those Rebels to escape. That takes incredible marksmanship and incredible discipline.
Remember Obi-wan himself stated earlier in that same movie that "only Imperial Stormtroopers are so precise" when admiring the evidence of their assault on the Jawa sandcrawler. Obi-Wan knows what he's talking about. And that happened first, so you can't even call it a "retcon" by any standard.
Again, this is all stuff that was explicitly explained in the movie itself.
Dude I was about to say, there's no way they don't have a quicker way to track calls. They just wouldn't tell us for obvious reasons.
The lock: There are rounds made specifically for this https://clucas.com/ammunition/hatton-round/
Aiming at two targets: Only if you're Jerry Miculek ...
I'll say for your comment on slugs, we used 10 gauge Magnum slugs and had no issue on reinforced doors or padlocks. A bit scary, but fun and informative.
A defibrillator is for a heart that is in fibrillation, which is a jumbled, ineffective vibration, NOT a flat line.
Not sure if you're trying to disagree with me, but yeah, I said that asystole isn't among the shockable rhythms.