How Military Rifle Bullets Destroy Tissues

I read the news about the attempt on Khun Sondhi Limthongkul's life and the police said that there were several assault rifles (such as AK-47, M-16, and HK) used, so I went to do a bit of research on what the bullets fired from these rifles would do to a human being. I stumbled on the "Military rifle bullet wound patterns" article by the battlefield surgeon Martin L. Fackler.

You might also be interested in how fast these bullets move (at a few times the speed of sound.)

I also don't know why the assassins used many kinds of rifles.

"A Colder War" And Its Real-Life Weapon

One of my favorite short stories is Charles Stross' "A Colder War", an alternate history science fiction where Cthulu in H.P. Lovecraft's stories is real and the Cold War is much, much worse than what actually happened in our timeline.

I just found out that XK-PLUTO, the missile in the story described as:

Travelling at Mach 3 the XK-PLUTO will overfly enemy territory, dropping megaton-range bombs until, its payload exhausted, it seeks out and circles a final enemy. Once over the target it will eject its reactor core and rain molten plutonium on the heads of the enemy. XK-PLUTO is a total weapon: every aspect of its design, from the shockwave it creates as it hurtles along at treetop height to the structure of its atomic reactor, is designed to inflict damage...,

is actually a real US military project!

The full text of the short story is here.

If you read the story and is confused, you might find the footnotes in this Wikipedia entry useful.  I read the story approximately once a year for a few years now and it's always chilling.

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P.S. Yes, you can buy Plush Cthulu from here and here.   Also, I'm not sure if he's running for President against Obama or not.

Steel Poetry*: One Pilot's Description of His Plane

I found this essay about the SR-71 Blackbird very poetic.

The SR-71 Blackbird is one of my all-time favorite airplanes. (Others are A-10 Warthog (look at it's 30mm Gatling gun!), Messerschmitt Bf 109, P-51 Mustang, and F-4 Phantom. I spent a lot of time when I was between 10 to 16 poring over various weapon systems.)

Note that in the article, the plane flew at more than Mach 3 (or three times the speed of sound.) For comparison, handgun bullets travel around Mach 1. Rifle bullets travel around Mach 2. The SR-71 plane is literally faster than the speeding bullets!

More info about the plane at the Wikipedia article. A lot of interesting info. For example, do you know that when the plane is not flying, the fuel would leak from its body since it was designed to fly at high speed so the friction would heat up, expand, and seal the joints in the plane?

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*Actually, the title should be Titanium Poetry since the the plane is mostly titanium.