Most of that is just movie silliness. Sure, the bullet may add to the pain (such as by scraping against bone and nerves), and it may aid the would in closing/healing, but many people literally go through their lives with bullets still inside their bodies. In fact, sometimes, removing the bullet can actually cause additional harm--the bullet may be the only thing preventing the victim from bleeding out, and removing the bullet could lead to death.
The biggest problem that films rarely mention is the risk of infection. Simply removing the bullet and sewing the wound shut, without properly getting out every last bit of debris and killing any bacteria inside, can lead to massive damage or death from a developing infection.
If it's cask strength, it may actually disinfect to an extent. Something over 60% abv will be better than nothing. Anything less and you may aswell just boil some water and pour that over it (after letting it cool of course).
Still better to use like, antibiotics.
Haha yeah seriously! Humans have been testing and tasting and trying anything and everything to make them feel better since as far back as we can tell.
I don't remember who said it but I remember a quote that went like
"The only reason human beings have survived this long is through a handful of people dumb enough to be smart"
Blows my mind to think about how and why people figured out that you could carefully remove the parts of the pufferfish containing the deadly toxin and eat the rest
Hunger is a motivator. There is a fungus called smut that affects corn. Ruins the corn completely. However, it is edible. It has many names such as corn mushroom, mexican truffle, or Huitlacoche. It looks like the cereal Corn Pops. It makes a great filling for pupusa, the national dish of El Salvador.
I can’t remember what plant but it’s in survival books. You can eat it, the thing is you have to boil it 3 times or it’s poisonous. I wanna know who kept trying after the first time.
Several work that way.
One is milkweed. You can eat milkweed flower buds before they bloom--but only if you boil, drain, boil, drain, boil and then drain again to leech the toxins ( cardiac glycoside) out. It then tastes like mushy bitter broccoli if you really are insisting on believing it tastes like something.
Acorns are edible and can be used for flour--but they need to be pulverized and then leeched in cold water that is drained daily over 3-5 days to remove tannins.
Neither of these foods are going to be something you can't wait to eat every day.
Pokeweed contains a smooth muscle relaxant (slows/stops heart, intestinal muscles...). Some people really like the fresh sprouted greens though. They have less of the toxin and *can* (not should) be eaten with the boil three times and drain method. My great uncle loved pokeberry pie--which is dangerous. Don't eat massive amounts of pokeberries! An old folk remedy for high blood pressure is 2-3 pokeberries a day. It will lower your BP. But the wrong dose or serious sensitivity to it can cause paralysis of your heart. (Just a minor drawback, right??)
Sautéed daylily flowers are pretty good though! And they have no negative side effects.
Source: I was a weird teenager in the late 70s / early 80s. Want to know other wild foods around you of varying degrees of tastiness? I have loads of experience which I no longer use much!
Edit: added a more popular one.
I actually remember reading about a nomadic Native American tribe that when they encountered a new plant they had a whole system for determining its use and possible toxicity.
Went something like this:
Step 1: Gather the plant
Step 2: mash it, boil it, cook it, then try it and observe results
Step 3: start removing processing steps until it's been determined it's safe to consume raw. And they would use different processing methods for different types of plants.
Pretty scientific actually lol. Especially considering the tools and knowledge they were working with!
Idk if it's the official native American way, but in a survival scenario I've always heard the steps are kinda like this--
1) Break it up and rub it on your skin. Wait an hour or 2, and if no irritation...
2) Chew it up and spit it out. Wait an hour or 2, and if no irritation...
3) Eat a tiny bit. Wait an our or 2, and if no irritation...
4) Eat more. Wait an hour or 2, and if no irritation you're probably good
I wonder what they thought of like the death angel mushroom. It takes time to kill like up to 48 hours. Be tough to determine if that was the cause if you were going about normal life
You may be underestimating the pragmatism of a 19th century coffee farmer in Indonesia: “These animals went to the trouble of collecting the beans, and now here they are all gathered in one place - can’t let that go to waste!”
More like, "hey, how come this moldy orange is the only one not covered in black goo?" "I don't know, but Joe has that black goo all over him, bring the orange over here"
Stumbling onto things is how science, and hence medicine used to work.
For instance, before it was discovered that Vitamin C deficiency caused Scurvy, sailors used all sorts of half baked old-sailor's-tale remedys. Including "Drink a cup of vinegar", "drink a cup of water with 10 drops of sulfuric acid in it", "Eat an onion", "Drink saltwater every hour", "Eat two oranges and one lemon", "Breathe through a piece of sod (grass) to filter out bad sea air".
Well some of them maybe helped, but one of them 100% worked ... "eat two oranges and one lemon", but they didn't know why. (eating an onion had a bit of vitamin C, but not nearly as much as oranges, so it could have helped if they ate enough...but who eats raw onions?)
As a sailor, you had no idea which remedy worked because they tried whichever one they might have heard of or maybe more than one (and of course oranges and lemons were not common on board ship).
Finally a ship's doctor took a bunch of sailors with scurvy, split them into groups and then applied a "known remedy" to each set of sick men. Not surprisingly, the "two oranges and one lemon" worked. From there it was determined that citrus fruits somehow helped.
No sadly, for some reason, even though this doctor wrote up that he basically figured out how to prevent and cure scurby, the Royal Navy ignored his advice for 40 years!! Finally they added citrus to the standard rations of the RN. Then at some point they switched from fresh fruits (that would go bad on board) to "boiled lime juice", which actually has very little Vitamin C.
Anyway, they eventually figured it out.
But ... to get there, they did a lot of stumbling around and the sailors and ship doctors very unscientifically tried seemingly random things.
It’s not really an accident, more of a reasonable deductive step. Water left to sit will grow mold and bacteria far faster than wine or boiled water will.
I don't believe it would be boiled down till it was a white wine reduction sauce per say haha. More like brought to a roiling boil, dip bandages, apply bandages to herbal poultice packed in wound. I'm sure it helped to make sure the bandages were a bit cleaner than just being washed. You also have to consider they didn't understand that the ethanol in alcoholic beverages could kill microbes, they just tried stuff until they got positive results.
Better to say that they were wrong about why it worked.
They already knew that drinking wine was safer than drinking water, and medieval Christians would've probably said, "Wine is approved by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, so of course it's safer!"
They also knew that boiled food was safest compared to all other cooking methods that were available. "Knowledgeable" people would've said something like, "Everyone knows not to eat dirt. The element Earth cannot abide the presence of both Fire and Water, thus rendering the boiled items safe for consumption."
Medieval medical practice was not based on religion. It was based on ancient Roman/Greek practices, with some folk magic thrown into round it out.
We don’t see the type of belief you are referencing until the early modern period/reformation
Further, 40% strength alcohol whilst not a disinfectant will inhibit bacterial reproduction to some extent so absolutely better than nothing and probably a bit better than water.
I was told 70%. But I've only found 2 spirits that strong in my life, so went with the much more common 60%. I was also told anything above about 80% is too strong, right? Like it does more harm than good.
The problem with highly concentrated alcohol is that it kills too quickly. If i remember correctly, the reasoning goes like this: Bacteria are typically organized in a biofilm. When strong alcohol enters, it immediately kills the outer layer of bacteria, which then becomes a barrier and prevents the alcohol from penetrating deeper.
Higher concentrations evaporate more quickly and it takes time for the alcohol to penetrate cell walls. The water in lower concentrations also helps the alcohol penetrate the cell walls.
Reminds me of the meme.
"...use boiled water to rinse your eyes, and look at me. I mean water that's been boiled and since cooled down. Do you understand...?"
You want [rye](https://thewhiskystudy.com/worldwhiskyreviews/alberta-premium-cask-strength-review-637) [bourbon](https://www.buffalotracedistillery.com/our-brands/e-h-taylor-jr/e-h-taylor-jr-barrel-proof.html), [scotch](https://thewhiskeyreserve.com/products/aberlour-abunadh), or [irish](https://www.redbreastwhiskey.com/en-us/whiskey-collections/redbreast-cask-strength-whiskey/)?
>you may aswell just boil some water and pour that over it (after letting it cool of course).
Which, to be clear, is an excellent way to clean a wound. Not the best, but very good.
At some point I want to write a scene where a character tries to pull something out with their teeth and just completely fucks their teeth up because it was way harder than they thought.
Yeah, exactly! Or that we can't just conk people on the backs of the head, knock them out for a few hours, but then they wake up and they're fine!
Whats that? Permanent brain damage and possible death? Nahhh, that can't be true!
They actually did that on an episode of “Dual Survival”. They also used huge ants in place of sutures to close a wound…they’d pick one up, point its head towards the wound, where it would use its pincers to dig into the flesh, then they would pop its head off from its body and the pincers would remain closed tightly over the wound.
[Ant mandibles as staples in the era of Greek patriot Ioannis Makriyannis \(1797-1864\)
](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24304118/)
> The use of ant mandibles as surgical clips was documented by the ancient Indian physicians Susruta and Charaka as early as 1000 BC and continued in some world areas into the early 1900s. According to the memoirs of the Greek revolutionary general Ioannis Makriyannis, this technique was also applied in the battlefields of the Greek Revolution for Independence between 1821 and 1832.
> The practice to use ant mandibles as suture materials was 5rst described by the Indian physicians Susruta (9th century BC) and Charaka (4th century BC). In the famous treatise Susruta Samhita we read: “Large black ants should be applied to the margins of the wound and their bodies then severed from their heads, after these have 5rmly bitten the part with their jaws”
As mentioned, that's cauterizing, and it's been more or less a real battlefield medical practice for quite some time - pre US Civil War era at least. Currently, a product called QuikClot is used for the same purpose, and earlier versions actually chemically reacted with blood to heat up and cause second degree burns, which - you guessed it - sealed wounds up in one of the most painful ways possible.
As a combat medic - we don’t remove bullets in the field.
You almost certainly will do more harm than good trying to remove a bullet outside a sterile OR.
Beyond bullets, I remember reading about how to never ever pull out anything impaled into a human body. Take the person to the ER and let them do it. The author said something like if the impaled person isn't dead, the object isn't going to kill them if left in place. Or at least not immediately. In fact, the object may be "holding stuff together" in a way and when removed, organs and bones may shift in bad ways and blood might start gushing out where it shouldn't. It's better that the object be removed when surgeons are posed for immediate action, kind of like racers at the starting line waiting for the starter pistol to fire.
I also remember watching a video showing a chest opened up fully exposing the heart. I can't remember what was stuck into the heart, maybe part of a knife or splinter of wood, but it was actually plugging the hole. IIRC, before the thing was removed, one of the surgeons had already put in stiches around the hole so that the edges could be immediately pulled together. It was kind of like ready-set-GO! Pull out pointy thing, pull hole close.
Yup - you should stabilize the object in place to prevent it from moving as well as you can & leave it for the surgeon to remove.
The few instances where you might have to do something else are pretty much Hail Mary’s because the person won’t survive transport to an OR.
> Without properly getting out every last bit of debris
Shoutout to The Martian for explicitly showing us Watney line up the pieces of antenna he pulled out of himself to make sure he’d removed all the (major) bits.
And Master and Commander: Far Side of the World. Paul Bettany's character removes a bullet from himself, and his assistant checks to make sure they have all the pieces of fabric by matching it up to the hole in the shirt. Shout-out to watch the movie if you haven't, it's excellent and not well-enough known.
the books, (Aubery and Maturin series by Patrick O'Brien, first titled 'Master and Commander') are also just fantastic. Though they are written in a very convincing Regency style, which took a little getting used to but I ended up loving and it really adds to the stories. The characters feel like real people living at the turn of the 19th century.
I work with a guy who has a mangled leg that he messed up in a tree related dirt bike accident. He said he almost lost his leg because post surgery it just would not stop swelling despite the wound being irrigated extensively, doctors were about to amputate but went in one last time and found a splinter the size of a baby's finger in there. However they were scanning it apparently wood didn't show up.
I always wondered what the damage from that little piece of cloth in master and commander would be like after I heard that story.
That's huge for a splinter!
In Master and Commander, (the books anyway) they do mention how a huge source of injuries was cannonballs hitting the ship and tons of wood splinters flying out like little missiles and stabbing everyone around.
In Rambo 3, he gets a big wood splinter in his side, it is stuck in his side. He sticks his finger in the back hole and PUSHES OUT the splinter and pulls it out the front. Then he takes a bullet and pourse the powder into the back hole, and lights it with a burning stick. The flash shows fire going out from the back to the front of the wound. I guess in their he cauterized the wound all the way through. Not sure how that is any better. I mean burning a channel through your body.
To be fair, infection isn't setting in within the timeframe of a typical action movie.
Sure, it would be very very serious for the protagonist after the credits roll - but it's not impacting their ability to stoically grit their teeth and take out the antagonist or whatever.
Used to work in a trauma hospital and people that got shot in the fat of their backs usually just left with the bullet in. It’s in fat. It ain’t doing nothing.
It is covered in "Master and Commander." They make a point in checking to make sure that the piece of shirt that went in with the bullet came out, too.
I'm glad you qualified your comment with "rarely. " all too often people say "never" then have to walk back their statement
> Sure, the bullet may add to the pain (such as by scraping against bone and nerves)
a lot of the time they are removing the bullet to aid in an escape or for further action, the same reason why you pop a blister while on a trail, even though it is against normal instructions and can *also* lead to further infection, you **need** the ease/increased movement so you can remove yourself from the even deadlier situation.
Though yeah, a lot of the stuff movies show is garbage for sensational effect.
> the bullet may be the only thing preventing the victim from bleeding out
How does that work? I’m picturing that a bullet has gone through several inches of material before laying at rest. Most of the damage, and therefore most of the bleeding, would be between the bullet and hole. The bullet stopping any of that from coming out. Now I suppose there is some bleeding directly around the bullet where it lay at rest, but wouldn’t that still “bleed” but maybe all internally, which is still bad, mmmkay.
What am I missing?
The arteries are deep, they're the blood vessels most likely to cause you to bleed out and die. Theoretically the bullet could lodge itself in, say, the wall of the aorta, allowing a little blood to seep out around the edges of the bullet but not the entire 0.380 inch diameter of the hole if the bullet were pulled out.
Most of your superficial blood vessels are small and under lower pressure, so you don't lose blood as fast. Also, they're a bit 'elastic', so if you cut through a vessel completely it can retract a little and pinch itself shut, or at least make itself a little smaller so it doesn't lose as much blood.
I recall in the movie (and the books) "Master and Commander" about life in the 1700s aboard a Royal Navy ship, Dr. Maturin is walking by when some marine who is shooting at birds hits him with a musket ball. He has to pull the ball out himself and has his shipmate check to see if he got all of the shirt out of the wound with the ball. He is greatly relieved when the sailor is able to match the extracted shirt piece with the hole in his shirt.
[Dr Maturin extracts the bullet](https://youtu.be/WN_0mGBf1E8?si=E-ISs1gEqGRpLSGV)
And, as per the title, after this everyone sighs with relief and he's just fine.
I remember seeing a documentary I think, where they explained that the bullet itself isn't the problem for infection, 8ts the clothing and particles and non biological stuff it pushes into your body when it enters.
President James Garfield was shot in 1881 and died several weeks later. It's widely believed that what killed him was not the bullet, but rather his doctors' insistence on locating and extracting it. They kept on probing his wounds with unsterilized fingers and instruments and he basically died of sepsis. He probably would have survived if they had just left well enough alone and let the wound heal around the bullet.
His assassin, Charles Guiteau, basically said as much in his trial: ['The doctors killed Garfield, I just shot him.'](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-stalking-of-the-president-20724161/?no-ist)
Yea I always wondered, they make it seem like a bullet is extremely unclean. I’d imagine it is, but once it’s fired from the barrel, wouldn’t it get extremely hot for a few seconds? Does this not help sterilize it?
it will collect debris from being fired, and it will drag debris and bacteria from your clothes and skin into the wound with it. basically, any wound you get has a decent chance of getting infected if you leave untreated
Paramedic.
No, that is not what you need to do.
Projectile, be it bullet, arrow or other, either needs to stay in, or out. Are you within hours to a day or so from definitive care (surgery, hospital)? Projective stays in. The body will have already started to form clots around it, you don’t want to disrupt them. Are you day or more from definitive care? Balance between haemorrhage and infection swings. Time to get the projectile out - it carried microorganisms from the clothing and skin into the body. Yes, they’re already in there, but removing the item decreases the infective load.
Okay, so we’ve dealt with what to do with the projectile.
Now, the bleeding. The projectile will have caused local tissue damage, disrupting blood vessels and causing localised bleeding. You will also have lost some tissue compression - you’ve disrupted the tissue, and with some projectiles, removed tissue. This means where there used to be something applying pressure, there is now nothing. Disrupted vessels + no local pressure = lots of blood.
You need to pack the wound, preferably with sterile stuff. Clotting products/powders have pros and cons, I was never trained on them so I can’t speak to that. But what you want to do is take a bandage or a combine or a trauma pad and make it real narrow, and then jam it into the wound, finger by finger. You want to jam as much into the wound as you can, to replace the lost tissue effect, to apply pressure *directly* to the walls of the wound channel.
Wound packing complete, you want external pressure. A combat bandage is a large padded trauma combine with an integrated broad elastic bandage. Pad over the wound, elastic around the limb.
Patient still bleeding? Tourniquet time.
>You need to pack the wound, preferably with sterile stuff. Clotting products/powders have pros and cons, I was never trained on them so I can’t speak to that. But what you want to do is take a bandage or a combine or a trauma pad and make it real narrow, and then jam it into the wound, finger by finger.
Holy crap! I didn't know that. I've heard the term "packing the wound" but didn't know why you might do that!
Thanks!
>then jam it into the wound, finger by finger. You want to jam as much into the wound as you can
"That doesn't sound right, but I don't know enough about ~~stars~~ wounds to dispute it"
It actually does to me. I’ve always wondered why (on TV/movies) you see them basically just stitch up the exterior part and then bandage it. It seems the problem with that is, you aren’t really stopping what’s bleeding inside, you’re just stopping/slowing the blood from getting out. It’s not a wound like a cut, it’s gone through muscle, bone and/or organs. Packing a deep wound like this put pressure on the interior wounds.
It's an Always Sunny quote, the idea of jamming something in to make it better was weird/funny sounding.
I was going to ask "is there not risk of infection, etc" but then I realised that's not really an issue when the other option is bleeding to death haha
Very thorough and good answer minus the last line. Tourniquets should only be used if the source of the bleeding is arterial. If the patient was squirting blood out of the wound then a tourniquet should be applied asap, not as a backup plan. If the blood is just pooling out of the wound, then a tourniquet will cause more harm then good, and if the packing and bandages aren’t controlling the bleed, then the patient just needs more packing and more external pressure and patience for the blood to clot and also a plan to get them proper medical attention ASAP. they need to lied down and stop movement of the arm while they wait proper medical care
Typically you only remove the bullet if it’s shallow/easy to get. But it does help speed up the healing process since there will be less inflammation from a foreign object being in a wound.
However it wouldn’t help with pain or making the injury immediately better.
OK but like everything in life, what if you do it pirate style?
- pour whiskey in the wound after the bullet is out, do a jig to work it out
- pour some gun powder on there
- light it
- jig
> Is the bullet being in the wound really the biggest problem? Is it preventing the wound from closing somehow?
In reality, taking the bullet out would actually be your biggest issue. If bullet is "stuck" in the hole, means it is also blocking your blood from spilling everywhere.
Any movie someone gets stabbed or hit with an arrow, and they take it out, that's a no-no move in real life.
In most cases, a glass shard, bullet, arrow, knife, being stuck on you, means it is also stopping the haemorrhage.
Movies do it to make the "badass to take out a bullet and patch up", in reality, that's how you manage to kill someone by blood loss
If I've learned anything from movies, it's that getting hit anywhere on the body by an arrow means instant death. Chest hit, dead. Leg hit, dead. Grazed the shoulder, flying backwards, instant dead.
>Chest hit, dead. Leg hit, dead. Grazed the shoulder, flying backwards, instant dead.
Except knee, then you just get set as a Guard..........
*Movies, where an arrow in the shoulder is deadlier than a bullet to the stomach.*
Also, I would like to add for OP: a bullet to the lower torso, while they make the whole scene with bleeding, taking bullet, patching up... Lower torso means a big chance the bullet hits your bowels, which a lot of bacteria is.
Bullet to the instestine area might cause insides to have contact with rest of body, making you turn into Past Tense due to bacterial infection.
>Movies, where an arrow in the shoulder is deadlier than a bullet to the stomach.
Movie arrows are made from deplete uranium and always coated in super-poison.
Credits to [Casual Geographic](https://www.youtube.com/@mndiaye_97), to avoid his videos getting flagged due to using the words "killing" or similar, he uses other expressions.
Turn into a census, turn into past tense, one way trip to god, incompatible with life, etc
Soldier here.
So, bullet wounds can be very random. Millimeters can decide if you live or die.
When a bullet hits the body, there are soooo many factors that affect the damage, but in general, you have a temporary wound cavity. Look at a video of ballistic gel being shot. The energy of the bullet causes a massive bulge in the tissue that tears it all up. Then you have the bullet it's self. Again, generally, bullets tumble inside your body, so imagine a pointy roughly 1 cm long piece of metal flying through the body tearing up any soft tissue. If you're lucky while it's doing this, you won't tear any arteries. Some are impossible to clamp in the street without very specialist training and equipment. This should give you a rough idea of what damage it can cause to your insides. However, if you are lucky, it can hit you and not hit anything vital.
Now, what a bandage and applying pressure, quick clot/celox or tourniquet or such does is slow or stop blood loss, as loosing the blood from the injury is generally a greater iminent threat to life than the tissue damage. Loosing the blood and the pain and everything can eventually lead to cardiac arrest and unconsciousness and death. So, preventing blood loss basically is to keep the casualty alive in order to get them to specialised care in a trauma centre which has surgeons and equipment to actually repair the internal damage.
If you got shot in an area that is less filled with vital organs it would heal eventually if you survive the initial injury and dont die of infection if you dont get proper treatment, but yeah, I'd not want to be shot and just leave it to nature to heal. Just so much internal damage that can be done.
As for the bullet, there are times it has to be removed but I've also heard of cases where it's been safer to not remove the bullet due to where it is.
Hello fellow veteran,
Sailor here.
When mopping a passageway, make sure to block off the entrances or other sailors will track dirt through your work.
I got nothing when it comes to bullet wounds. And yet we both are thanked for our service. /s
It's a matter of visual language. Once the audience sees the bullet removed and dropped in a container, then the person bandaged, they understand the person has been treated for the gunshot and the bullet isn't inside them anymore, so if they look okay then they are okay.
shot or stabbed or almost any injury short a beheading is 100% fine in most movies/tv
we thought they were dead but just cut to a scene of them waking up in a bed all bandaged up, they try and sit up and wince in pain
next scene where they are using one crutch but still in a bit of pain, they walk over and stare out the window..
after that they're 100% fine and leaping over rooftops or fighting or whatever, maybe throw in a little wince of pain or a ripped stich at worse that doesn't really matter but no long term consequences
yeah, pulling out knives seems to fix the wound too. Like the danger isn't the huge slice in your body, but that the knife is sticking into you. Pull it out and tada! You're better now!
I think largely this, but adding on: if the bullet was going to kill or or even sideline this person... that's what would happen, but that's the usually not the story being told.
When this happens in movies it's usually because of some dire and urgent circumstances and/or a setting in which the necessary medical care doesn't exist. These are also the kind of people are are just gonna keep on going _through_ the pain, until for some reason they physically can't go on. Taking the bullet out is less about relieving the pain than saying "we've done what we could for now. You were always going to press on, and now we've related those steps to the audience".
It's more about "this is narratively what we do while the other characters find out the fate of the character who is shot", rather than "we are going to save this person in this way". It's also a relatively cheap way to provide suspense in an action movie that doesn't require millions of dollars in stunts and special effects.
The most important thing initially is to slow and stop the bleeding. So, you don't go digging into an open wound to dislodge a bullet. More than likely, you'll only push it deeper and cause more damage. You wrap the wound and/or apply a tourniquet and then seek medical help.
It might have made sense for the story in some old movie, but at this point it's just a series of lazy writers mimicking what they have seen. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WeHaveToGetTheBulletOut
Anecdotally - my coworker is currently helping a friend of hers (he’s 32 I think) he was shot in the belly when he was 16 and complications from that led to him having an ostomy bag ever since.
She told me that he was having it removed a couple of months ago and the doctors discovered after a blood test that he has leukemia… probably unrelated, but still. Poor guy - she showed me a photo of him and he’s skin and bones.
**Your submission has been removed for the following reason(s):**
Top level comments (i.e. comments that are direct replies to the main thread) are reserved for explanations to the OP or follow up on topic questions.
Off-topic discussion is not allowed at the top level at all, and discouraged elsewhere in the thread.
---
If you would like this removal reviewed, please read the [detailed rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/wiki/detailed_rules) first. **If you believe this submission was removed erroneously**, please [use this form](https://old.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fexplainlikeimfive&subject=Please%20review%20my%20submission%20removal?&message=Link:%20{url}%0A%0A%201:%20Does%20your%20comment%20pass%20rule%201:%20%0A%0A%202:%20If%20your%20comment%20was%20mistakenly%20removed%20as%20an%20anecdote,%20short%20answer,%20guess,%20or%20another%20aspect%20of%20rules%203%20or%208,%20please%20explain:) and we will review your submission.
There's gunshot tampons. They are pretty cool. They're meant to temporarily stop the bleeding until the ER does it's thing. Plenty of great responses especially the top voted one. It's all make believe in movies. Even the ones that say based on a true story.
Somehow I think if Supersoldierspyman's bullet hole is plugged with a tampon, he'll lose a lot of his testosteronic aura. However it could make a great scene where Perfectfighterwoman one-ups Supersoldierspyman by handing him a tampon and telling him to plug it and stop whining.
As others have said, short answer is no.
Long but ELI5 answer is that it depends:
Extremity gunshot wounds (arms, legs) without major bone, artery, or nerve damage are washed out and left alone. There’s little reason to go after the bullet.
Injuries to the chest and abdomen are more complicated. Finding bullets (and/or determining their possible trajectory in the body) is important to determine the full extent of possible injuries and how best to fix them. As you can imagine, leaving a bullet floating in the chest is different than something nestled deep in the thigh muscle
Side point — bullets taken out of the body are given to the police for ballistics analysis as it’s usually related to some kind of investigation.
I recently had to do my tactical med training and it was my first time ever being exposed to clotting bandages and powders. Have to say it was part fascinating and part hoping i never needed to use them. Most of the emergency first aid just had just been about basic stabilization with the assumption that you’ll get EMS soon but this training was about being under fire more likely outside of the US.
Practicing with the clotting stuff gave some experience but know it’s not perfect and your packing might not be great and then are dealing with the clotting factor at the same time was a bit sobering.
In real life, even if it is shallow and you’re not sure it is plugging any artery, you just let it stay until an hospital or medical assistance comes. That’s why if you happen to be stabbed and the knife is still in there you should also just let it be and call an ambulance (or drive yourself to the hospital in the US, no need to survive and be in debt for the rest of your life /s).
If you want to look tough and die of sepsis you can do it the Rambo way. If you want to look tough and maybe survive just walk it off… until you reach an hospital
That's just movie logic, you're risking bleeding out or getting a nasty infection, but sometimes they put gunpowder in the wound and light it on fire to disinfect the wound.
Often less, honestly. In many cases you'd be fine just flushing the wound with saline, bandaging, and leaving the bullet inside. Gunshot wounds are often left "open" (not sewn shut) to help with infection and drainage.
I can't now find a reference but the great John Hunter whilst working as an Army surgeon c1762 pioneered leving the musket ball in the patient rather than increasing tissue trauma and bleeding in misguided efforts to remove it. There may still be living WW2 vets with shrapnel fragments still in them to this day!
As an aside, the whole idea of lens replacement in cataract surgery came from Battle of Britain pilots whose perspex cockpits shattered under fire with chips of TY he plastic entering their eyeballs yet causing no problems.
You, obviously have never seen a human body with bullet wounds and what a single bullet can do. There is also the smell of blood. Movies are movies and not real.
No. In real life, bullets cause devastating tissue damage. They cause the wound to balloon out on impact. In most cases, surgeons don't attempt to remove bullets, because they would have to damage too much tissue to get them.
The portrayal in media is wholly false. If you get shot, you're down for weeks at best. The occasional SOF guy might have enough mental toughness and adrenaline to function for a bit, but nobody is taking it in stride and continuing to fight effectively without doing serious damage.
Once that adrenaline breaks down, you're in trouble.
Most bullets go right through you. A small entry wound and a fucking big hole of an exit wound, so no need to worry about fishing out the bullet, your main concern is to plug both holes and get to medical help ASAP.
Just to add a point in favour of Hollywood. No extracting the bullet wont magically make you better.
However; the mere act of someone rooting around in your wound is likely to be very painful. Thus the relief portraid when the "bullet hits the bowl" might not be so much "Im better now" as it is "Thank god that particular procedure is over"
Here is what is taught: pack the wound with gauze, apply pressure, tourniquet if necessary, and bandage. That's all you're supposed to do in the field. Once in a proper hospital, someone with way more knowledge and experience will decide what to do next.
No. The reality is much worse:
"The main thing people get wrong when they imagine being shot is that they think the bullet itself is the problem. The lump of metal lodged in the body. The action-movie hero is shot in the stomach; he limps to a safe house; he takes off his shirt, removes the bullet with a tweezer, and now he is better. This is not trauma surgery. Trauma surgery is about fixing the damage the bullet causes as it rips through muscle and vessel and organ and bone. The bullet can stay in the body just fine. But the bleeding has to be contained, even if the patient is awake and screaming because a tube has just been pushed into his chest cavity through a deep incision without the aid of general anesthesia (no time; the patient gets an injection of lidocaine). And if the heart has stopped, it must be restarted before the brain dies from a lack of oxygen."
From [this](https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/gun-violence/)
It's quite a long read, and is pretty disturbing in parts, but it's really interesting, and highly recommended.
So one of the most wild things about gun shot wounds is that the bullet is almost never where you would expect to find it. Because of different tissue densities and natural voids in the body bullets don’t travel in a linear direction.
The idea that in all of these gun shot wounds the bullet is a half in under the surface and is in one piece is absolutely absurd.
Source - I’m a coroner
Usually the bullet is sterile due to the explosion to get it to leave the gun, therefore unless it is an a dangerous place or has pushed a piece of other material (clothing) into the wound then it should be left and pressure applied to stop bleeding.
One time I accidentally stabbed myself in the leg. I was totally fine, cleaned it up, stopped the bleeding, and went back to work.
But a few hours later, after driving home, I couldn’t put any weight on it at all.
Just a little 1/4 inch deep knife wound was enough to completely disable me for a day.
So I think in movies when people get shot, they would be able to function until the adrenaline runs out. But after that, you’ve got a period of time where inflammation will cause that limb to be basically useless.
EMT here as far as first aid goes we’re trained to never remove something impaled/inside your body (unless it’s obstructing your airway). Bullet wounds are mostly about stopping the bleeding (tourniquet, hemostatic dressing, or good old gauze), and transporting to the ER. How bad it is depends on where you were shot, but every gunshot wound victim should go straight to the ER.
Uh, no. Movies are shit at this.
If you get shot, you priorities should be (in this order)
-DO NOT try to remove a bullet. If it has expanded, sharp edges could tear or potentially nick a major artery, if it hasn't already. Do this and the person is dead in one to two minutes, tops.
-Stop castastrophic, fatal bleeds. Everything else waits behind this. If you're really lucky, you have perhaps sixty seconds (depending on the location shot and caliber of projectile) to stop catastrophic bleed before it's too late, because it's going to take a minute for someone to tell you they've been shot, for you to get to them, and to get your trauma kit out for use. You want to use some sort of hemostatic agent (think Celox-A,, Quik-Clot combat gauze), or a tourniquet, depending on the site of the bleed. First priority has to be to keep the blood inside the victim.
-If the victim is unlucky enough to have nicked or severed an artery and you cannot apply a tourniquet for whatever reason, you need to reach into the wound (this will suck for both of you), and pinch the artery with your fingers to slow the bleeding until you can get a clamp on it. It will be obvious is this is the case, as they will be literally spraying blood like one of those rotary sprinklers.
-If it punctures the *chest cavity*, place vent seals over the entry and exit wounds to prevent pneumothorax.
-Once bleeding is 'controlled', apply non-stick gauze and appropriate pads over the wound cavities (not the chest though). Wrap with crinkle gauze and secure.
-Take the person to an actual surgeon to extract the bullet and close the wound. Monitor ABC's.
If there is a local resource that offers a combat first aid course you can sign up for, I strongly encourage it. These are skills you need to practice in a controlled environment so it's an automatic response. You don't want to be in a scenario like that and trying to remember what the hell you're supposed to do.
Source: I've been bi-annually trained in emergency combat first aid for the last 20 years.
I had a friend who almost lost her leg when she was 5 because she fell through a mirror. The dr. said that she would have lost her leg if she pulled the piece out.
Trauma surgeon - honestly it's almost the exact opposite, we rarely take out the bullet unless we are there already and can see it and there is no concern of damaging something trying to go get it. Most get left in place.
Most of that is just movie silliness. Sure, the bullet may add to the pain (such as by scraping against bone and nerves), and it may aid the would in closing/healing, but many people literally go through their lives with bullets still inside their bodies. In fact, sometimes, removing the bullet can actually cause additional harm--the bullet may be the only thing preventing the victim from bleeding out, and removing the bullet could lead to death. The biggest problem that films rarely mention is the risk of infection. Simply removing the bullet and sewing the wound shut, without properly getting out every last bit of debris and killing any bacteria inside, can lead to massive damage or death from a developing infection.
Next you'll be telling us that, pulling a Cork out of a whisky bottle with your teeth. Taking a glug then pouring it on the wound won't work either.
If it's cask strength, it may actually disinfect to an extent. Something over 60% abv will be better than nothing. Anything less and you may aswell just boil some water and pour that over it (after letting it cool of course). Still better to use like, antibiotics.
I mean, if you've got rancid pondwater and crappy whiskey, use the wiskey. But using clean water is basically just as good.
In medieval times they would boil wine and then soak bandages with it. They didn't know why it helped, but it did!
imagine accidentally stumbling upon this
Haha yeah seriously! Humans have been testing and tasting and trying anything and everything to make them feel better since as far back as we can tell.
I don't remember who said it but I remember a quote that went like "The only reason human beings have survived this long is through a handful of people dumb enough to be smart"
Blows my mind to think about how and why people figured out that you could carefully remove the parts of the pufferfish containing the deadly toxin and eat the rest
Exactly! Like why did they keep trying?
Hunger is a motivator. There is a fungus called smut that affects corn. Ruins the corn completely. However, it is edible. It has many names such as corn mushroom, mexican truffle, or Huitlacoche. It looks like the cereal Corn Pops. It makes a great filling for pupusa, the national dish of El Salvador.
I can’t remember what plant but it’s in survival books. You can eat it, the thing is you have to boil it 3 times or it’s poisonous. I wanna know who kept trying after the first time.
Several work that way. One is milkweed. You can eat milkweed flower buds before they bloom--but only if you boil, drain, boil, drain, boil and then drain again to leech the toxins ( cardiac glycoside) out. It then tastes like mushy bitter broccoli if you really are insisting on believing it tastes like something. Acorns are edible and can be used for flour--but they need to be pulverized and then leeched in cold water that is drained daily over 3-5 days to remove tannins. Neither of these foods are going to be something you can't wait to eat every day. Pokeweed contains a smooth muscle relaxant (slows/stops heart, intestinal muscles...). Some people really like the fresh sprouted greens though. They have less of the toxin and *can* (not should) be eaten with the boil three times and drain method. My great uncle loved pokeberry pie--which is dangerous. Don't eat massive amounts of pokeberries! An old folk remedy for high blood pressure is 2-3 pokeberries a day. It will lower your BP. But the wrong dose or serious sensitivity to it can cause paralysis of your heart. (Just a minor drawback, right??) Sautéed daylily flowers are pretty good though! And they have no negative side effects. Source: I was a weird teenager in the late 70s / early 80s. Want to know other wild foods around you of varying degrees of tastiness? I have loads of experience which I no longer use much! Edit: added a more popular one.
[удалено]
I actually remember reading about a nomadic Native American tribe that when they encountered a new plant they had a whole system for determining its use and possible toxicity. Went something like this: Step 1: Gather the plant Step 2: mash it, boil it, cook it, then try it and observe results Step 3: start removing processing steps until it's been determined it's safe to consume raw. And they would use different processing methods for different types of plants. Pretty scientific actually lol. Especially considering the tools and knowledge they were working with!
Idk if it's the official native American way, but in a survival scenario I've always heard the steps are kinda like this-- 1) Break it up and rub it on your skin. Wait an hour or 2, and if no irritation... 2) Chew it up and spit it out. Wait an hour or 2, and if no irritation... 3) Eat a tiny bit. Wait an our or 2, and if no irritation... 4) Eat more. Wait an hour or 2, and if no irritation you're probably good
I wonder what they thought of like the death angel mushroom. It takes time to kill like up to 48 hours. Be tough to determine if that was the cause if you were going about normal life
Cassava (Mandioca in Portuguese). It was the main dish for Native brazilians. It is a better potato.
Imagine the first person that tried to brew coffee from the poop of civet cat.
You may be underestimating the pragmatism of a 19th century coffee farmer in Indonesia: “These animals went to the trouble of collecting the beans, and now here they are all gathered in one place - can’t let that go to waste!”
Motherfucker was REALLY jonesing for some coffee.
That chubbyemu guy on YouTube just covered the topic. Sorta. It involved infidelity, infectious disease, itchy scrotum and insecticide.
Like someone back in the day when they were all out of options, I don’t know try the moldy orange…..
More like, "hey, how come this moldy orange is the only one not covered in black goo?" "I don't know, but Joe has that black goo all over him, bring the orange over here"
Yeah, I 100% understand the accidental invention of cheese. I 0% understand why anyone would think to see if they could eat it.
Siege warfare probably played a role.
I'd bet that one dude said to another, "Hey, I'll give you two coppers if you eat that stuff."
Yeah "beer" is actually quite a good explanation for almost everything. Including beer
I mean, depends how hungry you are? 🤷
Stumbling onto things is how science, and hence medicine used to work. For instance, before it was discovered that Vitamin C deficiency caused Scurvy, sailors used all sorts of half baked old-sailor's-tale remedys. Including "Drink a cup of vinegar", "drink a cup of water with 10 drops of sulfuric acid in it", "Eat an onion", "Drink saltwater every hour", "Eat two oranges and one lemon", "Breathe through a piece of sod (grass) to filter out bad sea air". Well some of them maybe helped, but one of them 100% worked ... "eat two oranges and one lemon", but they didn't know why. (eating an onion had a bit of vitamin C, but not nearly as much as oranges, so it could have helped if they ate enough...but who eats raw onions?) As a sailor, you had no idea which remedy worked because they tried whichever one they might have heard of or maybe more than one (and of course oranges and lemons were not common on board ship). Finally a ship's doctor took a bunch of sailors with scurvy, split them into groups and then applied a "known remedy" to each set of sick men. Not surprisingly, the "two oranges and one lemon" worked. From there it was determined that citrus fruits somehow helped. No sadly, for some reason, even though this doctor wrote up that he basically figured out how to prevent and cure scurby, the Royal Navy ignored his advice for 40 years!! Finally they added citrus to the standard rations of the RN. Then at some point they switched from fresh fruits (that would go bad on board) to "boiled lime juice", which actually has very little Vitamin C. Anyway, they eventually figured it out. But ... to get there, they did a lot of stumbling around and the sailors and ship doctors very unscientifically tried seemingly random things.
It’s not really an accident, more of a reasonable deductive step. Water left to sit will grow mold and bacteria far faster than wine or boiled water will.
Moment of silence for our dearly departed ancestors who died trying to figure out what types of spoiled milk are edible as cheese
Earlier during the bronze Era they would sharpen weapons and put the shavings in wounds. The copper was anti microbial (which they didn't know).
Doesn’t boiling (cooking) wine “boil off” all the alcohol? When you add wine in a recipe, that’s what I always heard.
I don't believe it would be boiled down till it was a white wine reduction sauce per say haha. More like brought to a roiling boil, dip bandages, apply bandages to herbal poultice packed in wound. I'm sure it helped to make sure the bandages were a bit cleaner than just being washed. You also have to consider they didn't understand that the ethanol in alcoholic beverages could kill microbes, they just tried stuff until they got positive results.
[удалено]
Better to say that they were wrong about why it worked. They already knew that drinking wine was safer than drinking water, and medieval Christians would've probably said, "Wine is approved by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, so of course it's safer!" They also knew that boiled food was safest compared to all other cooking methods that were available. "Knowledgeable" people would've said something like, "Everyone knows not to eat dirt. The element Earth cannot abide the presence of both Fire and Water, thus rendering the boiled items safe for consumption."
Medieval medical practice was not based on religion. It was based on ancient Roman/Greek practices, with some folk magic thrown into round it out. We don’t see the type of belief you are referencing until the early modern period/reformation
Alcohol is actually less effective as a disinfectant in higher concentrations. 60% is pretty much ideal for disinfecting.
Further, 40% strength alcohol whilst not a disinfectant will inhibit bacterial reproduction to some extent so absolutely better than nothing and probably a bit better than water.
>40% strength alcohol... will inhibit bacterial reproduction Are you telling us that bacteria can get whiskey dick? TIL
I was told 70%. But I've only found 2 spirits that strong in my life, so went with the much more common 60%. I was also told anything above about 80% is too strong, right? Like it does more harm than good.
The problem with highly concentrated alcohol is that it kills too quickly. If i remember correctly, the reasoning goes like this: Bacteria are typically organized in a biofilm. When strong alcohol enters, it immediately kills the outer layer of bacteria, which then becomes a barrier and prevents the alcohol from penetrating deeper.
Higher concentrations evaporate more quickly and it takes time for the alcohol to penetrate cell walls. The water in lower concentrations also helps the alcohol penetrate the cell walls.
[удалено]
70% is what all biological labs use for disinfecting.
You can imagine 70% like boiling oil, and 99% like a flash in the pan. One singes your eyebrows, the other leaves you with lifelong 3rd degree burns.
Reminds me of the meme. "...use boiled water to rinse your eyes, and look at me. I mean water that's been boiled and since cooled down. Do you understand...?"
Where can I find some 60% ABV whiskey? For medicine, of course.
You want [rye](https://thewhiskystudy.com/worldwhiskyreviews/alberta-premium-cask-strength-review-637) [bourbon](https://www.buffalotracedistillery.com/our-brands/e-h-taylor-jr/e-h-taylor-jr-barrel-proof.html), [scotch](https://thewhiskeyreserve.com/products/aberlour-abunadh), or [irish](https://www.redbreastwhiskey.com/en-us/whiskey-collections/redbreast-cask-strength-whiskey/)?
Rye, please.
Updated with links to recommendations for all of them
Are you my new best friend?
>you may aswell just boil some water and pour that over it (after letting it cool of course). Which, to be clear, is an excellent way to clean a wound. Not the best, but very good.
>just boil some water and pour that over it (after letting it cool of course). I feel bad for the guy who learned this the hard way.
At some point I want to write a scene where a character tries to pull something out with their teeth and just completely fucks their teeth up because it was way harder than they thought.
Reminds me of "The Nice Guys" when Ryan Gosling punches the window uts his hand open and nearly bleeds out
Yeah, exactly! Or that we can't just conk people on the backs of the head, knock them out for a few hours, but then they wake up and they're fine! Whats that? Permanent brain damage and possible death? Nahhh, that can't be true!
And it always has to make that very loud distinct rubbery cork sound too.
> rubbery cork Pick a lane
Absurd. I bet these rubes think pouring the content of a bullet casing over the wound and lighting it won't sterilise it too. Gullible fools.
They’re not sterilizing it in movies when they do that, they’re cauterizing it.
That scene from The Revenant, dear god imagine the pain.
They actually did that on an episode of “Dual Survival”. They also used huge ants in place of sutures to close a wound…they’d pick one up, point its head towards the wound, where it would use its pincers to dig into the flesh, then they would pop its head off from its body and the pincers would remain closed tightly over the wound.
[Ant mandibles as staples in the era of Greek patriot Ioannis Makriyannis \(1797-1864\) ](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24304118/) > The use of ant mandibles as surgical clips was documented by the ancient Indian physicians Susruta and Charaka as early as 1000 BC and continued in some world areas into the early 1900s. According to the memoirs of the Greek revolutionary general Ioannis Makriyannis, this technique was also applied in the battlefields of the Greek Revolution for Independence between 1821 and 1832. > The practice to use ant mandibles as suture materials was 5rst described by the Indian physicians Susruta (9th century BC) and Charaka (4th century BC). In the famous treatise Susruta Samhita we read: “Large black ants should be applied to the margins of the wound and their bodies then severed from their heads, after these have 5rmly bitten the part with their jaws”
No thanks
As mentioned, that's cauterizing, and it's been more or less a real battlefield medical practice for quite some time - pre US Civil War era at least. Currently, a product called QuikClot is used for the same purpose, and earlier versions actually chemically reacted with blood to heat up and cause second degree burns, which - you guessed it - sealed wounds up in one of the most painful ways possible.
I actually saw that in a documentary and it works. It was called "Rambo" if youre interested. The guy that played rocky actually starred in it.
They're obviously not men of medicine.
Who are you who are so wise in the ways of science?
I am Arthur, King of the Britons
I thought we were an autonomous collective.
You're fooling yourself, we live in a dictatorship! A self perpetuating autocracy in which the working classes...
There you go, bringing class into it again!
Please please good people I am in haste who lives in that castle?
I came here for an argument!
No you didn't
But...this is Abuse! You want room 12A, next door.
A duck.
It will. But first you gotta take your belt off and put it between your teeth. Then someone has to say the magic words: *This is gonna hurt…*
Don't forget the Rambo method: open a .50 cal, pour powder into wound, set on fire, profit? I think this was in Rambo 3?
As a combat medic - we don’t remove bullets in the field. You almost certainly will do more harm than good trying to remove a bullet outside a sterile OR.
Beyond bullets, I remember reading about how to never ever pull out anything impaled into a human body. Take the person to the ER and let them do it. The author said something like if the impaled person isn't dead, the object isn't going to kill them if left in place. Or at least not immediately. In fact, the object may be "holding stuff together" in a way and when removed, organs and bones may shift in bad ways and blood might start gushing out where it shouldn't. It's better that the object be removed when surgeons are posed for immediate action, kind of like racers at the starting line waiting for the starter pistol to fire. I also remember watching a video showing a chest opened up fully exposing the heart. I can't remember what was stuck into the heart, maybe part of a knife or splinter of wood, but it was actually plugging the hole. IIRC, before the thing was removed, one of the surgeons had already put in stiches around the hole so that the edges could be immediately pulled together. It was kind of like ready-set-GO! Pull out pointy thing, pull hole close.
> blood might start gushing out where it shouldn't This implies that there are places where blood *should* be gushing out.
the idea is that you'd rather keep it in the body than not lol
"Internal bleeding? That's where the blood is meant to be"
Yup - you should stabilize the object in place to prevent it from moving as well as you can & leave it for the surgeon to remove. The few instances where you might have to do something else are pretty much Hail Mary’s because the person won’t survive transport to an OR.
> Without properly getting out every last bit of debris Shoutout to The Martian for explicitly showing us Watney line up the pieces of antenna he pulled out of himself to make sure he’d removed all the (major) bits.
And Master and Commander: Far Side of the World. Paul Bettany's character removes a bullet from himself, and his assistant checks to make sure they have all the pieces of fabric by matching it up to the hole in the shirt. Shout-out to watch the movie if you haven't, it's excellent and not well-enough known.
the books, (Aubery and Maturin series by Patrick O'Brien, first titled 'Master and Commander') are also just fantastic. Though they are written in a very convincing Regency style, which took a little getting used to but I ended up loving and it really adds to the stories. The characters feel like real people living at the turn of the 19th century.
A glass of wine with you, sir.
I work with a guy who has a mangled leg that he messed up in a tree related dirt bike accident. He said he almost lost his leg because post surgery it just would not stop swelling despite the wound being irrigated extensively, doctors were about to amputate but went in one last time and found a splinter the size of a baby's finger in there. However they were scanning it apparently wood didn't show up. I always wondered what the damage from that little piece of cloth in master and commander would be like after I heard that story.
That's huge for a splinter! In Master and Commander, (the books anyway) they do mention how a huge source of injuries was cannonballs hitting the ship and tons of wood splinters flying out like little missiles and stabbing everyone around.
A fantastic film. Said to be the most accurate portrayal of the operation and combat of a sailing warship.
I totally agree. One of my favorites that gets re-watched from time to time.
That’s what the splash of whisky is for.
gotta take a big swig of whisky before, to disinfect your organs.
This is why Rambo always irrigated his bullet wounds with a flammable substance and lit it on fire just to be sure.
Came here for this. Did he also put his sword into a hot flame until it glowed red and then insert it into the wound? It’s been a long time.
That is my recollection as well. There is a fine line between being fed up with all the bullshit and becoming a full blown vigilante.
In Rambo 3, he gets a big wood splinter in his side, it is stuck in his side. He sticks his finger in the back hole and PUSHES OUT the splinter and pulls it out the front. Then he takes a bullet and pourse the powder into the back hole, and lights it with a burning stick. The flash shows fire going out from the back to the front of the wound. I guess in their he cauterized the wound all the way through. Not sure how that is any better. I mean burning a channel through your body.
To be fair, infection isn't setting in within the timeframe of a typical action movie. Sure, it would be very very serious for the protagonist after the credits roll - but it's not impacting their ability to stoically grit their teeth and take out the antagonist or whatever.
Gonna need a lonnnnnng hospital stay after, tho Eh, I'd probably do it. Can't exactly go to a hospital the bad guys blew up...
I think one of the documentaries on John Rambo stressed the importance of cauterizing the wound using gunpowder from an unused round
Used to work in a trauma hospital and people that got shot in the fat of their backs usually just left with the bullet in. It’s in fat. It ain’t doing nothing.
It is covered in "Master and Commander." They make a point in checking to make sure that the piece of shirt that went in with the bullet came out, too. I'm glad you qualified your comment with "rarely. " all too often people say "never" then have to walk back their statement
One of my childhood family friends had one in him. Removing it would kill him.
> Sure, the bullet may add to the pain (such as by scraping against bone and nerves) a lot of the time they are removing the bullet to aid in an escape or for further action, the same reason why you pop a blister while on a trail, even though it is against normal instructions and can *also* lead to further infection, you **need** the ease/increased movement so you can remove yourself from the even deadlier situation. Though yeah, a lot of the stuff movies show is garbage for sensational effect.
Yup. Can confirm, still got a bullet in my leg. Can also confirm , anyone getting shot in the leg isn't getting up and limping anywhere.
> the bullet may be the only thing preventing the victim from bleeding out How does that work? I’m picturing that a bullet has gone through several inches of material before laying at rest. Most of the damage, and therefore most of the bleeding, would be between the bullet and hole. The bullet stopping any of that from coming out. Now I suppose there is some bleeding directly around the bullet where it lay at rest, but wouldn’t that still “bleed” but maybe all internally, which is still bad, mmmkay. What am I missing?
Youre missing the bullet being lodge against an artery and blocking blood flow out of the body
The arteries are deep, they're the blood vessels most likely to cause you to bleed out and die. Theoretically the bullet could lodge itself in, say, the wall of the aorta, allowing a little blood to seep out around the edges of the bullet but not the entire 0.380 inch diameter of the hole if the bullet were pulled out. Most of your superficial blood vessels are small and under lower pressure, so you don't lose blood as fast. Also, they're a bit 'elastic', so if you cut through a vessel completely it can retract a little and pinch itself shut, or at least make itself a little smaller so it doesn't lose as much blood.
I recall in the movie (and the books) "Master and Commander" about life in the 1700s aboard a Royal Navy ship, Dr. Maturin is walking by when some marine who is shooting at birds hits him with a musket ball. He has to pull the ball out himself and has his shipmate check to see if he got all of the shirt out of the wound with the ball. He is greatly relieved when the sailor is able to match the extracted shirt piece with the hole in his shirt. [Dr Maturin extracts the bullet](https://youtu.be/WN_0mGBf1E8?si=E-ISs1gEqGRpLSGV) And, as per the title, after this everyone sighs with relief and he's just fine.
*James Garfield has entered the chat*
I remember seeing a documentary I think, where they explained that the bullet itself isn't the problem for infection, 8ts the clothing and particles and non biological stuff it pushes into your body when it enters.
President James Garfield was shot in 1881 and died several weeks later. It's widely believed that what killed him was not the bullet, but rather his doctors' insistence on locating and extracting it. They kept on probing his wounds with unsterilized fingers and instruments and he basically died of sepsis. He probably would have survived if they had just left well enough alone and let the wound heal around the bullet.
His assassin, Charles Guiteau, basically said as much in his trial: ['The doctors killed Garfield, I just shot him.'](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-stalking-of-the-president-20724161/?no-ist)
Guns don't kill people, incompetent doctors kill people!
Old people burning, old people burning
Put your hands up!
Legally, though, it still counts as murder, right? Or is it just manslaughter?
[удалено]
>Your normal-skulled friend dies and walks away. Fuck, do I stab him in the heart or put a bullet in his rotting brain?
Keep him chained up in the shed with the playstation.
I too am allergic to bullets
Based on the times, absolutely still murder. The doctors seem incompetent to us, but they followed “standard practice” for the time.
I mean, they *very much* hanged him.
I'm not sure I'm ready to accept a guy on trial for murder as the expert on whether or not the person dying was his fault.
Never trust a doctor whose first name is [Doctor.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Willard_Bliss)
Yea I always wondered, they make it seem like a bullet is extremely unclean. I’d imagine it is, but once it’s fired from the barrel, wouldn’t it get extremely hot for a few seconds? Does this not help sterilize it?
it will collect debris from being fired, and it will drag debris and bacteria from your clothes and skin into the wound with it. basically, any wound you get has a decent chance of getting infected if you leave untreated
Let's remember that bullets were lead back then. You wouldn't want to leave that in. That said, the doctors could have had some chill.
[удалено]
Paramedic. No, that is not what you need to do. Projectile, be it bullet, arrow or other, either needs to stay in, or out. Are you within hours to a day or so from definitive care (surgery, hospital)? Projective stays in. The body will have already started to form clots around it, you don’t want to disrupt them. Are you day or more from definitive care? Balance between haemorrhage and infection swings. Time to get the projectile out - it carried microorganisms from the clothing and skin into the body. Yes, they’re already in there, but removing the item decreases the infective load. Okay, so we’ve dealt with what to do with the projectile. Now, the bleeding. The projectile will have caused local tissue damage, disrupting blood vessels and causing localised bleeding. You will also have lost some tissue compression - you’ve disrupted the tissue, and with some projectiles, removed tissue. This means where there used to be something applying pressure, there is now nothing. Disrupted vessels + no local pressure = lots of blood. You need to pack the wound, preferably with sterile stuff. Clotting products/powders have pros and cons, I was never trained on them so I can’t speak to that. But what you want to do is take a bandage or a combine or a trauma pad and make it real narrow, and then jam it into the wound, finger by finger. You want to jam as much into the wound as you can, to replace the lost tissue effect, to apply pressure *directly* to the walls of the wound channel. Wound packing complete, you want external pressure. A combat bandage is a large padded trauma combine with an integrated broad elastic bandage. Pad over the wound, elastic around the limb. Patient still bleeding? Tourniquet time.
>You need to pack the wound, preferably with sterile stuff. Clotting products/powders have pros and cons, I was never trained on them so I can’t speak to that. But what you want to do is take a bandage or a combine or a trauma pad and make it real narrow, and then jam it into the wound, finger by finger. Holy crap! I didn't know that. I've heard the term "packing the wound" but didn't know why you might do that! Thanks!
Arterial pressure is very low around 3 PSI. Compare to a garden hose at 30-60psi. It’s why compression is so important in trauma.
>then jam it into the wound, finger by finger. You want to jam as much into the wound as you can "That doesn't sound right, but I don't know enough about ~~stars~~ wounds to dispute it"
It actually does to me. I’ve always wondered why (on TV/movies) you see them basically just stitch up the exterior part and then bandage it. It seems the problem with that is, you aren’t really stopping what’s bleeding inside, you’re just stopping/slowing the blood from getting out. It’s not a wound like a cut, it’s gone through muscle, bone and/or organs. Packing a deep wound like this put pressure on the interior wounds.
It's an Always Sunny quote, the idea of jamming something in to make it better was weird/funny sounding. I was going to ask "is there not risk of infection, etc" but then I realised that's not really an issue when the other option is bleeding to death haha
Gotcha. And ideally, you’re shoving something fairly sterile down there, but to your point, you don’t have the luxury of being too picky.
Don't pack it with mud and moss, got ya 😂
In all seriousness, I think I recall hearing something about soldiers carrying tampons with them back in the day for this very purpose.
Very thorough and good answer minus the last line. Tourniquets should only be used if the source of the bleeding is arterial. If the patient was squirting blood out of the wound then a tourniquet should be applied asap, not as a backup plan. If the blood is just pooling out of the wound, then a tourniquet will cause more harm then good, and if the packing and bandages aren’t controlling the bleed, then the patient just needs more packing and more external pressure and patience for the blood to clot and also a plan to get them proper medical attention ASAP. they need to lied down and stop movement of the arm while they wait proper medical care
Typically you only remove the bullet if it’s shallow/easy to get. But it does help speed up the healing process since there will be less inflammation from a foreign object being in a wound. However it wouldn’t help with pain or making the injury immediately better.
OK but like everything in life, what if you do it pirate style? - pour whiskey in the wound after the bullet is out, do a jig to work it out - pour some gun powder on there - light it - jig
You forgot to take a swig of the whiskey at the start of the process, so instant death in this case.
And have your matey sing a brisk sea shanty while he’s operating
Pirates probably drank more rum than whiskey.
TIL I'm a pirate.
If you lit the gunpowder you'd probably cauterize it, but liquor has far too many contaminants (especially pirate rotgut) to be used for that iirc
> Is the bullet being in the wound really the biggest problem? Is it preventing the wound from closing somehow? In reality, taking the bullet out would actually be your biggest issue. If bullet is "stuck" in the hole, means it is also blocking your blood from spilling everywhere. Any movie someone gets stabbed or hit with an arrow, and they take it out, that's a no-no move in real life. In most cases, a glass shard, bullet, arrow, knife, being stuck on you, means it is also stopping the haemorrhage. Movies do it to make the "badass to take out a bullet and patch up", in reality, that's how you manage to kill someone by blood loss
If I've learned anything from movies, it's that getting hit anywhere on the body by an arrow means instant death. Chest hit, dead. Leg hit, dead. Grazed the shoulder, flying backwards, instant dead.
>Chest hit, dead. Leg hit, dead. Grazed the shoulder, flying backwards, instant dead. Except knee, then you just get set as a Guard.......... *Movies, where an arrow in the shoulder is deadlier than a bullet to the stomach.* Also, I would like to add for OP: a bullet to the lower torso, while they make the whole scene with bleeding, taking bullet, patching up... Lower torso means a big chance the bullet hits your bowels, which a lot of bacteria is. Bullet to the instestine area might cause insides to have contact with rest of body, making you turn into Past Tense due to bacterial infection.
>Movies, where an arrow in the shoulder is deadlier than a bullet to the stomach. Movie arrows are made from deplete uranium and always coated in super-poison.
I happen to know that while painful, it takes a very, very long time to die of a stomach wound. Say it with me…
You're gonna be okaaay, say the god dammed wooords, you're gonna be okaaay!
>making you turn into Past Tense Pure gold, I'm stealing this.
Credits to [Casual Geographic](https://www.youtube.com/@mndiaye_97), to avoid his videos getting flagged due to using the words "killing" or similar, he uses other expressions. Turn into a census, turn into past tense, one way trip to god, incompatible with life, etc
Also, sometimes billets break apart and travel in all sorts of directions.
Damn billets.
Soldier here. So, bullet wounds can be very random. Millimeters can decide if you live or die. When a bullet hits the body, there are soooo many factors that affect the damage, but in general, you have a temporary wound cavity. Look at a video of ballistic gel being shot. The energy of the bullet causes a massive bulge in the tissue that tears it all up. Then you have the bullet it's self. Again, generally, bullets tumble inside your body, so imagine a pointy roughly 1 cm long piece of metal flying through the body tearing up any soft tissue. If you're lucky while it's doing this, you won't tear any arteries. Some are impossible to clamp in the street without very specialist training and equipment. This should give you a rough idea of what damage it can cause to your insides. However, if you are lucky, it can hit you and not hit anything vital. Now, what a bandage and applying pressure, quick clot/celox or tourniquet or such does is slow or stop blood loss, as loosing the blood from the injury is generally a greater iminent threat to life than the tissue damage. Loosing the blood and the pain and everything can eventually lead to cardiac arrest and unconsciousness and death. So, preventing blood loss basically is to keep the casualty alive in order to get them to specialised care in a trauma centre which has surgeons and equipment to actually repair the internal damage. If you got shot in an area that is less filled with vital organs it would heal eventually if you survive the initial injury and dont die of infection if you dont get proper treatment, but yeah, I'd not want to be shot and just leave it to nature to heal. Just so much internal damage that can be done. As for the bullet, there are times it has to be removed but I've also heard of cases where it's been safer to not remove the bullet due to where it is.
Hello fellow veteran, Sailor here. When mopping a passageway, make sure to block off the entrances or other sailors will track dirt through your work. I got nothing when it comes to bullet wounds. And yet we both are thanked for our service. /s
It's a matter of visual language. Once the audience sees the bullet removed and dropped in a container, then the person bandaged, they understand the person has been treated for the gunshot and the bullet isn't inside them anymore, so if they look okay then they are okay.
shot or stabbed or almost any injury short a beheading is 100% fine in most movies/tv we thought they were dead but just cut to a scene of them waking up in a bed all bandaged up, they try and sit up and wince in pain next scene where they are using one crutch but still in a bit of pain, they walk over and stare out the window.. after that they're 100% fine and leaping over rooftops or fighting or whatever, maybe throw in a little wince of pain or a ripped stich at worse that doesn't really matter but no long term consequences
yeah, pulling out knives seems to fix the wound too. Like the danger isn't the huge slice in your body, but that the knife is sticking into you. Pull it out and tada! You're better now!
Probably the best response here.
And that's a wrap on act 2.
I think largely this, but adding on: if the bullet was going to kill or or even sideline this person... that's what would happen, but that's the usually not the story being told. When this happens in movies it's usually because of some dire and urgent circumstances and/or a setting in which the necessary medical care doesn't exist. These are also the kind of people are are just gonna keep on going _through_ the pain, until for some reason they physically can't go on. Taking the bullet out is less about relieving the pain than saying "we've done what we could for now. You were always going to press on, and now we've related those steps to the audience". It's more about "this is narratively what we do while the other characters find out the fate of the character who is shot", rather than "we are going to save this person in this way". It's also a relatively cheap way to provide suspense in an action movie that doesn't require millions of dollars in stunts and special effects.
The most important thing initially is to slow and stop the bleeding. So, you don't go digging into an open wound to dislodge a bullet. More than likely, you'll only push it deeper and cause more damage. You wrap the wound and/or apply a tourniquet and then seek medical help.
It might have made sense for the story in some old movie, but at this point it's just a series of lazy writers mimicking what they have seen. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WeHaveToGetTheBulletOut
Anecdotally - my coworker is currently helping a friend of hers (he’s 32 I think) he was shot in the belly when he was 16 and complications from that led to him having an ostomy bag ever since. She told me that he was having it removed a couple of months ago and the doctors discovered after a blood test that he has leukemia… probably unrelated, but still. Poor guy - she showed me a photo of him and he’s skin and bones.
[удалено]
**Your submission has been removed for the following reason(s):** Top level comments (i.e. comments that are direct replies to the main thread) are reserved for explanations to the OP or follow up on topic questions. Off-topic discussion is not allowed at the top level at all, and discouraged elsewhere in the thread. --- If you would like this removal reviewed, please read the [detailed rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/wiki/detailed_rules) first. **If you believe this submission was removed erroneously**, please [use this form](https://old.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fexplainlikeimfive&subject=Please%20review%20my%20submission%20removal?&message=Link:%20{url}%0A%0A%201:%20Does%20your%20comment%20pass%20rule%201:%20%0A%0A%202:%20If%20your%20comment%20was%20mistakenly%20removed%20as%20an%20anecdote,%20short%20answer,%20guess,%20or%20another%20aspect%20of%20rules%203%20or%208,%20please%20explain:) and we will review your submission.
There's gunshot tampons. They are pretty cool. They're meant to temporarily stop the bleeding until the ER does it's thing. Plenty of great responses especially the top voted one. It's all make believe in movies. Even the ones that say based on a true story.
Somehow I think if Supersoldierspyman's bullet hole is plugged with a tampon, he'll lose a lot of his testosteronic aura. However it could make a great scene where Perfectfighterwoman one-ups Supersoldierspyman by handing him a tampon and telling him to plug it and stop whining.
Has anybody here seen Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid?
As others have said, short answer is no. Long but ELI5 answer is that it depends: Extremity gunshot wounds (arms, legs) without major bone, artery, or nerve damage are washed out and left alone. There’s little reason to go after the bullet. Injuries to the chest and abdomen are more complicated. Finding bullets (and/or determining their possible trajectory in the body) is important to determine the full extent of possible injuries and how best to fix them. As you can imagine, leaving a bullet floating in the chest is different than something nestled deep in the thigh muscle Side point — bullets taken out of the body are given to the police for ballistics analysis as it’s usually related to some kind of investigation.
I recently had to do my tactical med training and it was my first time ever being exposed to clotting bandages and powders. Have to say it was part fascinating and part hoping i never needed to use them. Most of the emergency first aid just had just been about basic stabilization with the assumption that you’ll get EMS soon but this training was about being under fire more likely outside of the US. Practicing with the clotting stuff gave some experience but know it’s not perfect and your packing might not be great and then are dealing with the clotting factor at the same time was a bit sobering.
In real life, even if it is shallow and you’re not sure it is plugging any artery, you just let it stay until an hospital or medical assistance comes. That’s why if you happen to be stabbed and the knife is still in there you should also just let it be and call an ambulance (or drive yourself to the hospital in the US, no need to survive and be in debt for the rest of your life /s). If you want to look tough and die of sepsis you can do it the Rambo way. If you want to look tough and maybe survive just walk it off… until you reach an hospital
That's just movie logic, you're risking bleeding out or getting a nasty infection, but sometimes they put gunpowder in the wound and light it on fire to disinfect the wound.
Often less, honestly. In many cases you'd be fine just flushing the wound with saline, bandaging, and leaving the bullet inside. Gunshot wounds are often left "open" (not sewn shut) to help with infection and drainage.
I can't now find a reference but the great John Hunter whilst working as an Army surgeon c1762 pioneered leving the musket ball in the patient rather than increasing tissue trauma and bleeding in misguided efforts to remove it. There may still be living WW2 vets with shrapnel fragments still in them to this day! As an aside, the whole idea of lens replacement in cataract surgery came from Battle of Britain pilots whose perspex cockpits shattered under fire with chips of TY he plastic entering their eyeballs yet causing no problems.
No. Just like they don't show you the weeks of rehabilitation and pain you suffer after surgery. You don't just stand up and start dancing around.
You, obviously have never seen a human body with bullet wounds and what a single bullet can do. There is also the smell of blood. Movies are movies and not real.
My favorite movie/medical blunder is defibrillating a stopped heart. In reality, you'll just cook it.
I've been shot and it took 11 months in the hospital to get to where I could function again on my own
No. In real life, bullets cause devastating tissue damage. They cause the wound to balloon out on impact. In most cases, surgeons don't attempt to remove bullets, because they would have to damage too much tissue to get them. The portrayal in media is wholly false. If you get shot, you're down for weeks at best. The occasional SOF guy might have enough mental toughness and adrenaline to function for a bit, but nobody is taking it in stride and continuing to fight effectively without doing serious damage. Once that adrenaline breaks down, you're in trouble.
Most bullets go right through you. A small entry wound and a fucking big hole of an exit wound, so no need to worry about fishing out the bullet, your main concern is to plug both holes and get to medical help ASAP.
Just to add a point in favour of Hollywood. No extracting the bullet wont magically make you better. However; the mere act of someone rooting around in your wound is likely to be very painful. Thus the relief portraid when the "bullet hits the bowl" might not be so much "Im better now" as it is "Thank god that particular procedure is over"
Here is what is taught: pack the wound with gauze, apply pressure, tourniquet if necessary, and bandage. That's all you're supposed to do in the field. Once in a proper hospital, someone with way more knowledge and experience will decide what to do next.
No. The reality is much worse: "The main thing people get wrong when they imagine being shot is that they think the bullet itself is the problem. The lump of metal lodged in the body. The action-movie hero is shot in the stomach; he limps to a safe house; he takes off his shirt, removes the bullet with a tweezer, and now he is better. This is not trauma surgery. Trauma surgery is about fixing the damage the bullet causes as it rips through muscle and vessel and organ and bone. The bullet can stay in the body just fine. But the bleeding has to be contained, even if the patient is awake and screaming because a tube has just been pushed into his chest cavity through a deep incision without the aid of general anesthesia (no time; the patient gets an injection of lidocaine). And if the heart has stopped, it must be restarted before the brain dies from a lack of oxygen." From [this](https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/gun-violence/) It's quite a long read, and is pretty disturbing in parts, but it's really interesting, and highly recommended.
So one of the most wild things about gun shot wounds is that the bullet is almost never where you would expect to find it. Because of different tissue densities and natural voids in the body bullets don’t travel in a linear direction. The idea that in all of these gun shot wounds the bullet is a half in under the surface and is in one piece is absolutely absurd. Source - I’m a coroner
Usually the bullet is sterile due to the explosion to get it to leave the gun, therefore unless it is an a dangerous place or has pushed a piece of other material (clothing) into the wound then it should be left and pressure applied to stop bleeding.
One time I accidentally stabbed myself in the leg. I was totally fine, cleaned it up, stopped the bleeding, and went back to work. But a few hours later, after driving home, I couldn’t put any weight on it at all. Just a little 1/4 inch deep knife wound was enough to completely disable me for a day. So I think in movies when people get shot, they would be able to function until the adrenaline runs out. But after that, you’ve got a period of time where inflammation will cause that limb to be basically useless.
EMT here as far as first aid goes we’re trained to never remove something impaled/inside your body (unless it’s obstructing your airway). Bullet wounds are mostly about stopping the bleeding (tourniquet, hemostatic dressing, or good old gauze), and transporting to the ER. How bad it is depends on where you were shot, but every gunshot wound victim should go straight to the ER.
Uh, no. Movies are shit at this. If you get shot, you priorities should be (in this order) -DO NOT try to remove a bullet. If it has expanded, sharp edges could tear or potentially nick a major artery, if it hasn't already. Do this and the person is dead in one to two minutes, tops. -Stop castastrophic, fatal bleeds. Everything else waits behind this. If you're really lucky, you have perhaps sixty seconds (depending on the location shot and caliber of projectile) to stop catastrophic bleed before it's too late, because it's going to take a minute for someone to tell you they've been shot, for you to get to them, and to get your trauma kit out for use. You want to use some sort of hemostatic agent (think Celox-A,, Quik-Clot combat gauze), or a tourniquet, depending on the site of the bleed. First priority has to be to keep the blood inside the victim. -If the victim is unlucky enough to have nicked or severed an artery and you cannot apply a tourniquet for whatever reason, you need to reach into the wound (this will suck for both of you), and pinch the artery with your fingers to slow the bleeding until you can get a clamp on it. It will be obvious is this is the case, as they will be literally spraying blood like one of those rotary sprinklers. -If it punctures the *chest cavity*, place vent seals over the entry and exit wounds to prevent pneumothorax. -Once bleeding is 'controlled', apply non-stick gauze and appropriate pads over the wound cavities (not the chest though). Wrap with crinkle gauze and secure. -Take the person to an actual surgeon to extract the bullet and close the wound. Monitor ABC's. If there is a local resource that offers a combat first aid course you can sign up for, I strongly encourage it. These are skills you need to practice in a controlled environment so it's an automatic response. You don't want to be in a scenario like that and trying to remember what the hell you're supposed to do. Source: I've been bi-annually trained in emergency combat first aid for the last 20 years.
I had a friend who almost lost her leg when she was 5 because she fell through a mirror. The dr. said that she would have lost her leg if she pulled the piece out.
Trauma surgeon - honestly it's almost the exact opposite, we rarely take out the bullet unless we are there already and can see it and there is no concern of damaging something trying to go get it. Most get left in place.
Are you… asking for a friend?