Crepitus
Diamond Member
- Mar 28, 2018
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Unsurvivable and instantly fatal are two different things.Instantly fatal is actually a misnomer. If your Medulla Oblongata is taken out. You are dead. Yes, you might be “alive” if you get CPR and put on a ventilator and pacemaker fast enough. But you are dead. Your body just doesn’t know it yet.
If you are hit in the heart. Your body may survive a few minutes. But again, it isn’t a question if you will die, but when the Doctor will call it. The only way you could survive is if you were shot in the treatment room of a world class Trauma Care facility.
As you must know, if you have seen it. Unlike Hollywood the heart doesn’t go flat line no motion when it stops. There is minor electrical twitching. But that doesn’t make the person alive. Random electrical impulses in the nerves continues for a while. Hell hair and fingernails continue growing for a long time after death.
As Gabby Giffords showed, a head shot is not a guaranteed death. But those cases are the exception, not the rule. If you were shooting to save your life you would be well advised to put your shot in the head or heart.
My personal carry weapon is the .357 Magnum. A small revolver with a mere five shots. The rounds are very effective. They have an excellent reputation backed up by statistical data. But that weapon isn’t a magic wand. And when I pull the trigger it doesn’t send out the killing curse from Harry Potter. So bullet placement is vital.
That was the point of my post. Sometimes the person is conscious and coherent. Sometimes conscious and incoherent. Sometimes unconscious and stable. And sometimes they are dead before the medics can open the bag to begin the assessment.
If the victim manages to survive the first hour, their odds of overall survival go up. But medicine like everything else in life, nothing is guaranteed. So you strive to increase your chances, to give yourself the highest probability possible.