Re: [HoE] head shots?!?

[Darrin Bright <darrin@neobright.net>]

Ronnie Gustaveson wrote:

> Nice try, but I'm not sure if I buy it.  I don't know about Hickock, but
> I've read a thing or two about Lincoln's assassination.  While the gun that
> Booth used was small, it fired a ball "about the size of your thumb."  At
> point blank range, it would have blown the back of his head clean off.

But it didn't. The head was entirely intact.  Actually, although the shot may
have been fairly large, there wasn't a lot of powder behind it and it wasn't
moving nearly fast enough to cause that much damage. I've seen tests where
they've shown comparisons to the hydrostatic shock caused by a similar bullet.
Y'see, the size of the bullet doesn't do the damage, its the shockwave caused by
slowing the bullet down and the transfer of kinetic energy.  Lincoln wasn't
killed outright.

The first doctor to get to Lincoln (I forget his name) was able to stop the
bleeding, stabilized him, and damn near got him conscious again.  They then sent
for some fancy-shmancy doctor who introduced a metal probe into Lincoln's noggin
in a rather idiotic attempt to remove the bullet (which also started the
bleeding again), and it was most likely this probing that finally killed him,
although it was still pretty damned unlikely they would have been able to save
him.

So I figure it was a serious/critical wound, but the actual death was caused by
bloodloss.  In Deadlands terms, they kept losing blood until the guts were
maimed.

As for others... I dunno. There's JFK. He had enough of a brain left that it was
removed and sent off to the secret cloning chambers.  Robert Kennedy, too.  I
don't remember any other famous headshots.