SILENT DEATH How not to wake up the corp guard three doors down... BULLET NOISE A supersonic bullet sounds like a cracking whip. One which cracks from leaving the muzzle until it goes subsonic, which might not be until it is inside the target. Subsonic bullets make a sound like a whip that is NOT cracking. You can hear them both. The sound is NOT deafening. We are talking about shooting without anybody knowing. MUZZLE NOISE Gasses expanding at Supersonic velocity sound roughly like a gunshot. Funny thing, that. Most of the sound is from the muzzle gasses expanding. The point of using subsonic ammunition (or faking it with a drilled barrel) is that if you want to be silent, do it right. Not too much benefit in quieting the muzzle noise in the quiet of the night just to follow it with the cracking of 30 whips from 30 shots... Either somebody really kinky is having lots of fun, or a firefight is going on. BULLET TUMBLE Stand a top up and let go. It falls over. Take a top. Stand it up and spin it and let go. It stays up for a while. Then it falls over. Spin a top real fast and it stays up longer. Slap a spinning top and it bounces around more than a slapped non-spinning top. A slapped fast-spinning top dances more wildly than a slow spinning top. Take a spinning bullet and fire it through air and its accuracy improves over a non-spinning bullet. This is akin to a spinning top standing up longer than a non-spinning top. Take a spinning bullet and fire it through a target of varying densities and toughness (like a human body) and like a slapped top it will bounce around. Try the trick with the top. Spin the bullet real fast and fire it through a target of varying densities and toughness and it will bounce around wildly and tumble and dance. This is why rapidly spinning bullets tumble more wildly than slow spinning bullets. It is the energy expressed in rotation around one axis being changed into energy expressed in spinning around more than one axis... if a bullet spins around more than one axis it is tumbling. Lighter bullets will tumble more easily than heavy spinning bullets because... angular momentum... the top "resists" having it's axes of rotation changed. This is "gyroscopic force". Take a heavy top and spin it slowly. Take a light top and spin it much faster so it has the same rotation energy. Slap them both the same. The lighter, faster rotating top bounces and dances more, in response to the same slap, than the heavy top. This is why the 7 mm magnum is the spear and the 5.56 (M-16) tumbles like the blade of a rototiller, as I said in the previous post. In these examples, the slap to the bullet is hitting skin and organ and fibrous connective tissue and muscle and bone in the target body. Somebody posted that some Doctor had proved that all bullets tumble the same amount, leaving the average mind to conclude that this is without regard to the bullet velocity, rate of spin, bullet weight or shape, or the target type. Either the quote was careless or the Doctor got his degree from a Crackerjacks box. I prefer to presume the latter. A cannon shell won't tumble from hitting me. An M-16 bullet will tumble more times going crotch-to-shoulder (which may occasion it exiting my body through the left knee) than going through my arm. Some slugs on some trajectories will make the one tumble the Doctor said they would, but for every slug, for every hit, to make one tumble, requires more smarts than a bullet has. (Unless it is a Cyberslug, which sounds like something that, when stepped on, will slime you right quick.) SILENCERS AND BULLET SPEED We have concluded that the "washer" type silencer does not slow the bullet down. Hooray for consensus. We have had it explained that the drilled barrel type DOES slow it down. Truth is, all barrels exert friction on the passing bullet, whether drilled or not, because the bullet is squeezed in the barrel... if it were not so the gas would escape past the bullet which would damage the gun badly and ruin accuracy besides. While the number and size and placement of holes can be done so that the highest velocity is not at the muzzle, the only object of drilling the barrel is to prevent supersonic muzzle gas... the bullet is supposed to be accelerating positive (getting faster) all the way to the end of the barrel. Drilling so many, or so big, or placed so that the bullet is slowed down by friction while inside the barrel sounds like some designer didn't do his math right, or was being really cautious about preventing supersonic gas at the muzzle. Combining the drilled barrel and the washer- type (which can sustain continuous fire if built right) sounds like a much more deadly combo. WASHER SILENCERS This is a can full of washers & springs. The end of the barrel is threaded on the inside. The silencer screws into the end of the barrel. The washers are spaced apart with springs. The springs and washers may be coated to reduce rattling noise from the gas slamming them around. The outer casing of the silencer is perforated. It may also be multiple layers. The washers may also be perforated. The machining does not need to be super-critical... the 9 mm bullet passes through a 10 mm hole in the center of a 20 mm washer. Most gas immediately hits the washer and diffuses through the perforations on the side of the can. What gas passes with the bullet through the 10 mm hole repeats this at the next washer. It all gas goes subsonic before exiting the can (either at the perforations on the side or at the muzzle perforation) the muzzle noise has been suppressed. Gas quantity and pressure at the muzzle are the determining factors of how many washers of what size are required and what precision is required in the machining to achieve noise suppression. Note my choice of 9 mm, 10 mm, and 20 mm are arbitrary ones. Exact models will vary and you can (illegally in US) make your own. >>>[The author asked me to append the following notes as well:]<<< -- Silver Cianide (01:02:17/5-8-52) Attribution not required, either... which is partly because I'm humble, partly because these books are read by the FBI and other unpleasant people, and partly (please note this to the readers) because the only silenced weapon I've handled is one silenced by the removal of the firing pin. The rest of the information is second hand, and some of it may be reliable. >>>[Boy, it sure sounds like you've handled more...]<<< -- Silver Cianide (01:02:37/5-8-52) Remember the allegation recently on the net... that the Anarchists' Handbook had deliberate disinformation that could truly hurt the trusting reader. I don't know a specific point to tell. >>>[It's a problem. We can't always verify the information we get. Here's a warning to everybody reading this: don't trust it unless you can verify it. Anyone can take an electronic copy of this and insert different information. Neo-Anarchists do not believe in Public Key Cryptography. Openness is the key to the future.]<<< -- Silver Cianide (01-01-56/05-08-52) You might also point out that the best political affiliation that the budding or hardcore anarchist might acquire is a membership in the NRA. Being an anarchist without an effective right to keep and bear arms reduces the status of the anarchist to that of a school grader who won't play the regulated games... impotent.