wheelsonthebus
vroom vroom
- Apr 1, 2022
- 32
Warning: this thread may psych you out a little. Warning for icky body science.
I keep psyching myself out reading case reports of people surviving GSW to the head. This post discusses the use of handgun positioning to CTB while also minimizing suffering in the event that brain activity does not lower across the board at the same time.
The goal is to cease life functions immediately/before one hits the ground. However, a few things to note (scroll down past the pictures for the conundrum):
- The way we define "dead" is actually not straightforward. If you're familiar with the trope "you are already dead," where the finishing move has sliced the doomed character in half with such speed and precision that they retain awareness before their demise, it's honestly a more accurate depiction than the instadeath often portrayed in live action movies, etc. That isn't to say you can be cleaved in two vertically by a katana and then live long enough for your opponent to get the last word in, but it does mean that a lot of the time, death is more like a Wile E. Coyote cartoon: he's run off the cliff and stares at the viewer for a second before inevitably plunging down. Unlike Wile E, though, the person isn't going to walk out off this unscathed. The person is "dead" because there is nothing that can be done for them. The brain is shutting down, the heart has or is going to stop, they are a fully lost cause.
- "Death" is sometimes defined as "brain death:" the cessation of activity in the brain itself. However, you may recall that there are sometimes cases where a person is declared braindead, but the body is kept alive through life support. Therefore, they are both "dead" and "alive," depending on the context under which the patient is being evaluated.
- There is no binary on/off switch. Even if you were decapitated, unless you lost consciousness from the sudden drop in blood pressure after the neck was cut (recall that when someone has a limb suddenly whacked off, they don't always immediately bleed out. This is a bodily shock response.), there is no reason to assume that the person immediately loses awareness. When decapitation (or medical decapitation, which is defined as any severing of the brainstem: fig 1) occurs, they have lost connection to their body, yes, and therefore to nature's life support, but they may have up to ~30 seconds to experience the world as a disembodied head. While I'm sure the shock overwrites most of the would-be suffering, it's not how I'd like to go out. Imagine heart failure. What about the heart not beating actually kills the person? If we considered this instadeath, there would be a lot more people shooting or stabbing themselves in the heart. Instead, the heart not beating means that blood is no longer pumping. For the same reason that CPR and defibrillation sometimes bring a person back from flatlining (at which point they may have been declared "dead," already), blood not pumping is only a cause of death - and not an especially quick one. It means that the cells in the brain (and everywhere else, but that's not important) are being starved of oxygen. The person will experience suffocation, in a way.
- We don't know precisely where and how consciousness/awareness is created. We do know that people appear to go nightnight when the pons (fig 2a) is destroyed. But the likelihood is that conciousness is not just one stream, but is instead comprised of a number of different inputs and processes all seperate from each other, and that the illusion itself of them all being experienced as one thing is not contained in any one part of the brain. This means that you can "delete" the brainstem and turn off body input and output, or remove the pons and turn off the "world," but what about fear? Well that is mostly in the amygdala (fig2b). Will all pain cease without connection to the spinal cord, or will the bullet hole still hurt if the other processing areas of the brain are not sufficiently damaged (fig 3)? The brain cannot feel pain, but the areas around it absolutely can. Pain itself also is not just one thing, even though, much like awareness, it often feels like it is. There are thought experiments around whether or not a person is immediately unaware even in the event of being destroyed by an explosion - is there not residual awareness, of some sort, in the non-burnt pieces for a few seconds, at least?
- People have had their entire left and right cerebral hemispheres detached at the corpus callosum (fig 4) surgically and there is evidence to suggest that each "brain" can retain independent impulses - two in one body. This phenomenon inspired the show "Severence" in part, although it's not a realistic portrayl of what goes down in these medical cases. It's called callosal syndrome and is a fun read if you don't like to sleep: Wikipedia article
What this suggests, to me, is that the mind can remain to a degree in whatever area of brain remains, until tissue death or something else causes lack of action potential and the electrical impulses between neurons cease.
- The "brain" is not confined to the head. While the HQ for the nervous systems (plural, yep) are contained in the cranium, the brainstem extends down into the spine as the spinal cord, as we know. The thing is that it doesn't end there, either. The nerves themselves are all connected back to that central area (fig 5), similar to blood vessels in how capillaries branch out from arterioles which branch out from arteries (but without coming back together to form venules and veins) (fig 6). Now, I'm not claiming that conciousness is storedin the balls in the fingertips or the toes; you aren't an octopus whose limbs have their own minds, but it does help serve to reinforce that the brain is not just an easy to destroy node. There are neurons, brain cells, in your entire body. You have tastebuds in your stomach (and... a few other places). Chickens can run around with their head cut off for a while, man, and we are really not that different from chickens.
Okay, pretty picture time!
fig 1a: brainstem; fig 1b: brainstem having a bad day, viewed from behind
fig 2a: the pons, labeled; fig 2b: the amygdala and cerebellum
(Note that the pons is not the spongy looking thing at the back. That is the cerebellum/hindbrain. If you destroy that, and that only, you simply become very disabled very fast.)
←
fig 3: pain processing in the brain
fig 4a: cerebral hemispheres; fig 4b: corpus callosum
fig 5: nervous system (or as I call him, Steve)
fig 6a: Steve again, in a cool, new outfit; fig 6b: veins and arteries
In summary: death isn't a binary. Death isn't even a spectrum. Death is a blanket statement for an ineffable, context-dependant, and often subjective concept, and getting there is sometimes more of a slow meander than a simple hop over.
Now, I'm sure there are theoretical ways of killing someone that meet my standards of instadeath, and real ones, too, but unless someone intends to nuke me, my best bet is going to be a Star Trek transporter malfunction.
Because of my suspicion that there may remain an exquisite suffering after a fatal headshot that would make even theologians cringe, I have been interested in the trajectory (the path an object takes through space, determined by the object's velocity, which is a combination of its speed and direction) of a bullet in order to minimize any. semblance. of. awareness. in the event of a headshot. You see, I am what the kids call "a pussy."
One thing that you don't want to have running in the background while your system is shutting down is the limbic system.
The limbic system is the beansprout looking thing in the middle of the brain, when you view a cross section (see figures 2 and 3). This bad boy controls instinctual functions, including (and especially) survival mode. That's your SI, your 3 (or 4 or more) Fs: Fight Flight Freeze (etc). Notice that it tickles the amygdala (fear center). In an ideal brain-busting scenario, we eliminate this dude, too, so that there's none of that pesky OH MY GOD AAAA in case of residual awareness.
Now, I am unlucky enough to own an MRI of my brain, so I can map out ideal pathways for a bullet for my own purposes, but to ensure transfer of the hot gasses from the muzzle into the skull (for maximum brain obliteration), it needs to be pressed up against the head, which rules out any aiming into the mouth. Preferably, to ensure lights out for both the body and the mind immediately (minimizing life, awareness, and fear), the bullet needs to pass through the brain stem and pons, as well as ideally up near the amygdala.... hmm. Luckily they are all stacked up nicely on each other.
I WAS thinking about maybe going through the mouth anyways but essentially... deepthroating the gun by using some numbing spray, which can be bought at most adult novelty stores, and shooting up through the nasopharynx (that's the area behind the soft part you feel if you move your tongue down the hard palate towards your throat). The pons is right behind that, plus you'd probably delete your amygdala and midbrain in the process, meaning no fear and no awareness, I figure. The issue then is getting the aim right. Conversely, to go behind the head, executioner style, seems impossible.
Then I did a little art project and discovered the math ain't mathing.
I won't show you a picture of my own brain (take me out to dinner first * ), but I did steal this image of a total stranger off the 'net and overlayed a firearm using Microsoft Paint. Science!
* or bill my insurance. I don't date doctors anymore.
Hmm...
Upon further reflection.... this would require Larry to unhinge his jaw like a snake.
Any leveling of the gun to be more realistically in the mouth just shifts the trajectory further down to only destroying the brainstem and hindbrain, meaning that for his last act on this earth, Larry is a vegetable in suffering. Not ideal for Larry!
You may be thinking, "duh bitch, that's not how you do it, you just put it in at an angle and push." Well, that's what she said. The traditional method, of shooting behind the teeth at an angle into the hard palate, wastes all that explosive power into the sinus and nasal area. You might blow your eyes out, and brain will come out of your nose, but since the goal of this thought experiment isn't just to maximize lethality, but also to ensure no suffering as the grim reaper drags you by your ass, the lion is not concerned with destroying the sinuses.
Short of blowing one's jaw off and then taking the final shot, this is clearly going need a more lateral approach, a go in from the side or behind.
Luckily, I have been training for this all of my life through the practice of making finger guns at my head any time I am mildly inconvenienced.
The good news is, if restricted to a handgun (even if shotguns are available to you, they can be a little difficult to transport without arising suspicion), it is unlikely the only caliber available to you is full metal jacket .22. This means we are NOT likely looking at the round going straight through and only destroying what lies in a direct, straight path. With hollow point rounds, the damage "explodes" or expands outward. This, coupled with the gasses from the muzzle, makes for a very destructive meeting between metal and grey matter.
Here's a caliber gel comparison. "JHP" means jacketed hollow point. gr is just grain.
For the purposes discussed on this post, I am less concerned about how far a round is projected, and more about explosive impact and initial damage. Elsewhere on this forum, you can find calibers discussed in more depth. I will leave it at: to very sure with a handgun, one should get a larger caliber (9 mm or above), not allow space between the muzzle and the head to allow the gases at discharge to enter the cranium, and ensure that the ammunition is hollow point. If you already have hollow point purchased in the past, double check to make sure no recalls apply to your batch for not-exploding-good.
Not included here is 10 mm, which is also hella good.
Okay, let's talk aim.
Also discussed here on SaSu is the side positioning of going a bit behind the ear to try and knock out this area. It doesn't allow for the higher order areas of the brain to be targeted, but the hope is that with enough *bang* the area is obliterated well enough to cease function. The same goes for shooting in the "T-zone" which exists from either eye and from top to tip of the nose.
I argue that if you are limited to a lower caliber or no shotgun, and don't want to risk anything less than perfection, then the front facing method (aka shooting yourself in the face) isn't ideal for the same reasons I moved past shooting yourself at an angle through the mouth, if the goal is to maximize initial explosive power into the small anatomy targets discussed.
A.
This is recommended a lot, and it does satisfy my requirement of putting blast directly into brain. Unfortunately, much of that blast is to the hindbrain, but there won't be any chance of recovery to be vegetized. The amygdala is screwed, which is nice, but unless the bullet decides to curve up, we're not destroying a lot of upper awareness potential. It's not an especially easy grip, though.
B.
Ultimately, I would argue that #1 in terms of hitting all of the things is right here. Unfortunately, if you are not hypermobile and also an experienced shooter (no flinching allowed), then this isn't going to work for you any better than Larry unhinging his jaw was going to work for him. This is less feasible than A, but hits more targets.
C.
Old reliable. It's just like A except easier on the arms and easy to get right in the mirror. I would rank it above A, certainly. This will destroy the pons and stem and amygdala but again leaves out the other functions, which isn't ideal if you're paranoid like me that the brain is happy to function independently of its parts. You will indirectly mess up the limbic system, which is good, and I would personally alter this to be directly above the ear, instead of the traditional "a little bit behind," since we're getting the pons either way and I'd rather prioritize destruction of the limbic system and the amygdala than the hindbrain. This is my #1 overall in terms of goals achieved and realistic ability to carry out.
Okay folks, I think that's all from me! Again, none of this is a concern if you're more confident than I am that "lights out" is across the board an off switch for the brain. All I know is that I learned the lyrics to the playlist my surgeon was playing the last time I was under anaesthetia, so I don't trust this old noodle to shut off properly if it isn't forced to.
Good luck with all your endeavors, and don't use this information for murder please. There's way better guides for that on the internet, anyways.
please laugh.
Lighter reading overview
Trajectory and outcomes
How the bullet actually causes massive damage
"Previous studies have discussed factors that make survival of an SIGSW more or less likely. Selden et al noted that 98% of patients with a score of 8 or less on the Glasgow Coma Scale did not survive. The orientation of the gun also appears to play a role in that missiles traveling in the sagittal direction are less lethal than ones traveling in the coronal direction. The importance of missile trajectory may be secondary to the different intracranial injuries, as injuries to the brain ventricular system or to both cerebral hemispheres were also associated with increased mortality. The positioning and type of firearm used may also impact lethality. Some researchers postulate that the use of long-barreled firearms placed underneath the chin causes the neck to be hyperextended, resulting in a missile trajectory that avoids intracranial structures. The use of handguns may lead to a reflex jerk that also extends the neck, causing a similar pathway, missing the brain."
JAMA Ophthalmol
Published Online: June 2014
2014;132;(6):730-736. doi:10.1001/jamaophthalmol.2013.8201
Relevant literature review
GSW to the head: what impacts survival?
Ability to act + literature review (warning for medical gore a bit/blood)
I keep psyching myself out reading case reports of people surviving GSW to the head. This post discusses the use of handgun positioning to CTB while also minimizing suffering in the event that brain activity does not lower across the board at the same time.
The goal is to cease life functions immediately/before one hits the ground. However, a few things to note (scroll down past the pictures for the conundrum):
- The way we define "dead" is actually not straightforward. If you're familiar with the trope "you are already dead," where the finishing move has sliced the doomed character in half with such speed and precision that they retain awareness before their demise, it's honestly a more accurate depiction than the instadeath often portrayed in live action movies, etc. That isn't to say you can be cleaved in two vertically by a katana and then live long enough for your opponent to get the last word in, but it does mean that a lot of the time, death is more like a Wile E. Coyote cartoon: he's run off the cliff and stares at the viewer for a second before inevitably plunging down. Unlike Wile E, though, the person isn't going to walk out off this unscathed. The person is "dead" because there is nothing that can be done for them. The brain is shutting down, the heart has or is going to stop, they are a fully lost cause.
- "Death" is sometimes defined as "brain death:" the cessation of activity in the brain itself. However, you may recall that there are sometimes cases where a person is declared braindead, but the body is kept alive through life support. Therefore, they are both "dead" and "alive," depending on the context under which the patient is being evaluated.
- There is no binary on/off switch. Even if you were decapitated, unless you lost consciousness from the sudden drop in blood pressure after the neck was cut (recall that when someone has a limb suddenly whacked off, they don't always immediately bleed out. This is a bodily shock response.), there is no reason to assume that the person immediately loses awareness. When decapitation (or medical decapitation, which is defined as any severing of the brainstem: fig 1) occurs, they have lost connection to their body, yes, and therefore to nature's life support, but they may have up to ~30 seconds to experience the world as a disembodied head. While I'm sure the shock overwrites most of the would-be suffering, it's not how I'd like to go out. Imagine heart failure. What about the heart not beating actually kills the person? If we considered this instadeath, there would be a lot more people shooting or stabbing themselves in the heart. Instead, the heart not beating means that blood is no longer pumping. For the same reason that CPR and defibrillation sometimes bring a person back from flatlining (at which point they may have been declared "dead," already), blood not pumping is only a cause of death - and not an especially quick one. It means that the cells in the brain (and everywhere else, but that's not important) are being starved of oxygen. The person will experience suffocation, in a way.
- We don't know precisely where and how consciousness/awareness is created. We do know that people appear to go nightnight when the pons (fig 2a) is destroyed. But the likelihood is that conciousness is not just one stream, but is instead comprised of a number of different inputs and processes all seperate from each other, and that the illusion itself of them all being experienced as one thing is not contained in any one part of the brain. This means that you can "delete" the brainstem and turn off body input and output, or remove the pons and turn off the "world," but what about fear? Well that is mostly in the amygdala (fig2b). Will all pain cease without connection to the spinal cord, or will the bullet hole still hurt if the other processing areas of the brain are not sufficiently damaged (fig 3)? The brain cannot feel pain, but the areas around it absolutely can. Pain itself also is not just one thing, even though, much like awareness, it often feels like it is. There are thought experiments around whether or not a person is immediately unaware even in the event of being destroyed by an explosion - is there not residual awareness, of some sort, in the non-burnt pieces for a few seconds, at least?
What this suggests, to me, is that the mind can remain to a degree in whatever area of brain remains, until tissue death or something else causes lack of action potential and the electrical impulses between neurons cease.
- The "brain" is not confined to the head. While the HQ for the nervous systems (plural, yep) are contained in the cranium, the brainstem extends down into the spine as the spinal cord, as we know. The thing is that it doesn't end there, either. The nerves themselves are all connected back to that central area (fig 5), similar to blood vessels in how capillaries branch out from arterioles which branch out from arteries (but without coming back together to form venules and veins) (fig 6). Now, I'm not claiming that conciousness is stored
Okay, pretty picture time!
fig 1a: brainstem; fig 1b: brainstem having a bad day, viewed from behind
fig 2a: the pons, labeled; fig 2b: the amygdala and cerebellum
(Note that the pons is not the spongy looking thing at the back. That is the cerebellum/hindbrain. If you destroy that, and that only, you simply become very disabled very fast.)
←
fig 3: pain processing in the brain
fig 4a: cerebral hemispheres; fig 4b: corpus callosum
fig 5: nervous system (or as I call him, Steve)
fig 6a: Steve again, in a cool, new outfit; fig 6b: veins and arteries
In summary: death isn't a binary. Death isn't even a spectrum. Death is a blanket statement for an ineffable, context-dependant, and often subjective concept, and getting there is sometimes more of a slow meander than a simple hop over.
Now, I'm sure there are theoretical ways of killing someone that meet my standards of instadeath, and real ones, too, but unless someone intends to nuke me, my best bet is going to be a Star Trek transporter malfunction.
Because of my suspicion that there may remain an exquisite suffering after a fatal headshot that would make even theologians cringe, I have been interested in the trajectory (the path an object takes through space, determined by the object's velocity, which is a combination of its speed and direction) of a bullet in order to minimize any. semblance. of. awareness. in the event of a headshot. You see, I am what the kids call "a pussy."
One thing that you don't want to have running in the background while your system is shutting down is the limbic system.
The limbic system is the beansprout looking thing in the middle of the brain, when you view a cross section (see figures 2 and 3). This bad boy controls instinctual functions, including (and especially) survival mode. That's your SI, your 3 (or 4 or more) Fs: Fight Flight Freeze (etc). Notice that it tickles the amygdala (fear center). In an ideal brain-busting scenario, we eliminate this dude, too, so that there's none of that pesky OH MY GOD AAAA in case of residual awareness.
Now, I am unlucky enough to own an MRI of my brain, so I can map out ideal pathways for a bullet for my own purposes, but to ensure transfer of the hot gasses from the muzzle into the skull (for maximum brain obliteration), it needs to be pressed up against the head, which rules out any aiming into the mouth. Preferably, to ensure lights out for both the body and the mind immediately (minimizing life, awareness, and fear), the bullet needs to pass through the brain stem and pons, as well as ideally up near the amygdala.... hmm. Luckily they are all stacked up nicely on each other.
I WAS thinking about maybe going through the mouth anyways but essentially... deepthroating the gun by using some numbing spray, which can be bought at most adult novelty stores, and shooting up through the nasopharynx (that's the area behind the soft part you feel if you move your tongue down the hard palate towards your throat). The pons is right behind that, plus you'd probably delete your amygdala and midbrain in the process, meaning no fear and no awareness, I figure. The issue then is getting the aim right. Conversely, to go behind the head, executioner style, seems impossible.
Then I did a little art project and discovered the math ain't mathing.
I won't show you a picture of my own brain (take me out to dinner first * ), but I did steal this image of a total stranger off the 'net and overlayed a firearm using Microsoft Paint. Science!
* or bill my insurance. I don't date doctors anymore.
We'll call him Larry.
Hmm...
Upon further reflection.... this would require Larry to unhinge his jaw like a snake.
Any leveling of the gun to be more realistically in the mouth just shifts the trajectory further down to only destroying the brainstem and hindbrain, meaning that for his last act on this earth, Larry is a vegetable in suffering. Not ideal for Larry!
You may be thinking, "duh bitch, that's not how you do it, you just put it in at an angle and push." Well, that's what she said. The traditional method, of shooting behind the teeth at an angle into the hard palate, wastes all that explosive power into the sinus and nasal area. You might blow your eyes out, and brain will come out of your nose, but since the goal of this thought experiment isn't just to maximize lethality, but also to ensure no suffering as the grim reaper drags you by your ass, the lion is not concerned with destroying the sinuses.
Short of blowing one's jaw off and then taking the final shot, this is clearly going need a more lateral approach, a go in from the side or behind.
Luckily, I have been training for this all of my life through the practice of making finger guns at my head any time I am mildly inconvenienced.
The good news is, if restricted to a handgun (even if shotguns are available to you, they can be a little difficult to transport without arising suspicion), it is unlikely the only caliber available to you is full metal jacket .22. This means we are NOT likely looking at the round going straight through and only destroying what lies in a direct, straight path. With hollow point rounds, the damage "explodes" or expands outward. This, coupled with the gasses from the muzzle, makes for a very destructive meeting between metal and grey matter.
Here's a caliber gel comparison. "JHP" means jacketed hollow point. gr is just grain.
For the purposes discussed on this post, I am less concerned about how far a round is projected, and more about explosive impact and initial damage. Elsewhere on this forum, you can find calibers discussed in more depth. I will leave it at: to very sure with a handgun, one should get a larger caliber (9 mm or above), not allow space between the muzzle and the head to allow the gases at discharge to enter the cranium, and ensure that the ammunition is hollow point. If you already have hollow point purchased in the past, double check to make sure no recalls apply to your batch for not-exploding-good.
Not included here is 10 mm, which is also hella good.
Okay, let's talk aim.
Also discussed here on SaSu is the side positioning of going a bit behind the ear to try and knock out this area. It doesn't allow for the higher order areas of the brain to be targeted, but the hope is that with enough *bang* the area is obliterated well enough to cease function. The same goes for shooting in the "T-zone" which exists from either eye and from top to tip of the nose.
I argue that if you are limited to a lower caliber or no shotgun, and don't want to risk anything less than perfection, then the front facing method (aka shooting yourself in the face) isn't ideal for the same reasons I moved past shooting yourself at an angle through the mouth, if the goal is to maximize initial explosive power into the small anatomy targets discussed.
A.
This is recommended a lot, and it does satisfy my requirement of putting blast directly into brain. Unfortunately, much of that blast is to the hindbrain, but there won't be any chance of recovery to be vegetized. The amygdala is screwed, which is nice, but unless the bullet decides to curve up, we're not destroying a lot of upper awareness potential. It's not an especially easy grip, though.
B.
Ultimately, I would argue that #1 in terms of hitting all of the things is right here. Unfortunately, if you are not hypermobile and also an experienced shooter (no flinching allowed), then this isn't going to work for you any better than Larry unhinging his jaw was going to work for him. This is less feasible than A, but hits more targets.
C.
Old reliable. It's just like A except easier on the arms and easy to get right in the mirror. I would rank it above A, certainly. This will destroy the pons and stem and amygdala but again leaves out the other functions, which isn't ideal if you're paranoid like me that the brain is happy to function independently of its parts. You will indirectly mess up the limbic system, which is good, and I would personally alter this to be directly above the ear, instead of the traditional "a little bit behind," since we're getting the pons either way and I'd rather prioritize destruction of the limbic system and the amygdala than the hindbrain. This is my #1 overall in terms of goals achieved and realistic ability to carry out.
Okay folks, I think that's all from me! Again, none of this is a concern if you're more confident than I am that "lights out" is across the board an off switch for the brain. All I know is that I learned the lyrics to the playlist my surgeon was playing the last time I was under anaesthetia, so I don't trust this old noodle to shut off properly if it isn't forced to.
Good luck with all your endeavors, and don't use this information for murder please. There's way better guides for that on the internet, anyways.
Lighter reading overview
Trajectory and outcomes
How the bullet actually causes massive damage
"Previous studies have discussed factors that make survival of an SIGSW more or less likely. Selden et al noted that 98% of patients with a score of 8 or less on the Glasgow Coma Scale did not survive. The orientation of the gun also appears to play a role in that missiles traveling in the sagittal direction are less lethal than ones traveling in the coronal direction. The importance of missile trajectory may be secondary to the different intracranial injuries, as injuries to the brain ventricular system or to both cerebral hemispheres were also associated with increased mortality. The positioning and type of firearm used may also impact lethality. Some researchers postulate that the use of long-barreled firearms placed underneath the chin causes the neck to be hyperextended, resulting in a missile trajectory that avoids intracranial structures. The use of handguns may lead to a reflex jerk that also extends the neck, causing a similar pathway, missing the brain."
JAMA Ophthalmol
Published Online: June 2014
2014;132;(6):730-736. doi:10.1001/jamaophthalmol.2013.8201
Relevant literature review
GSW to the head: what impacts survival?
Ability to act + literature review (warning for medical gore a bit/blood)
