[MUD-Dev] Re: Bad Game Designer, No Twinkie! -- By Ernest Adams

[John Bertoglio]

From: J C Lawrence <claw at under.engr.sgi.com>
Date: Wednesday, May 20, 1998 11:31 PM


>On Mon, 18 May 1998 23:06:55 -0700
>John Bertoglio<alexb at internetcds.com> wrote:
>
>> How about single shot kills? People have been known to absorb
>> appalling amount of lead before expiring. I recall a case where a
>> man took the full magazine of 18 round 22 cal rifle and went on to
>> kill both people. Now, he died later. That many holes will usually
>> kill you.
>
>One of the primary reasons the US military moved to .45 calibre
>handguns was that while fighting in the Phillipines they found that
>lighter rounds would not physically stop an attacker.  There were too
>many reports of a local rising out of the bushes waving a machete,
>charging all the way down the beach and having to be physically
>clubbed to the ground before his bullet-ridden body would stop
>attacking.  The marines in particular wanted a handgun that would
>physically throw the target to the ground if he was hit.
>
>.45's do that.  Look up things like hydrostatic shock as well.


The impact of the round does not throw a person to the ground. No man
portable weapon (with the expection of a rocket launcher because most its
kinetic energy is created after leaving the barrel) can really knock a
person to the ground. If it could, the shooter would have to absorb the
same energy in recoil. It is the involuntary contractions caused by the
hydrostatic shock that actually do the deed. A person may be thrown back
but this is likely caused by nerve overload, not the actual forward motion
of the round.

The Second Chance people (makers of body armor) routinely have
demonstrations where they are shot at close range by hand guns. It hurts,
but they barely budge when hit. The same amount of energy is being expended
in the target as in a non-penetrating hit without the armor. Not OT but
kind of interesting.

John Bertoglio


>>> Ernest Adams is an audio/video producer for Electronic Arts,
>>> currently working on the Madden NFL Football product line. Once
>>> upon a time, he was a software engineer. He has developed on-line
>>> games, computer games, and console games for everything from the
>>> IBM 360 mainframe to the Nintendo Ultra 64. He was a founder of the
>>> Computer Game Developers' Association, and is a frequent lecturer
>>> at the Computer Game Developers' Conference and anyplace else that
>>> people will listen to him.  Ernest would be happy to receive E-mail
>>> about his columns at eadams at ea.com. The views in this column are
>>> not necessarily those of Electronic Arts.
>
>I didn't bother posting his later piece on the non-existence of
>virtual communities and how to handle PK via divine intervention -- it
>was too stale even for me.
>
>--
>J C Lawrence                               Internet: claw at null.net
>(Contractor)                               Internet: coder at ibm.net
>---------(*)                     Internet: claw at under.engr.sgi.com
>...Honourary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...
>
>--
>MUD-Dev: Advancing an unrealised future.
>



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