How many times has a Hollywood protagonist screwed a silencer onto his pistol, cocked the hammer a few times, and delivered a perfectly silent shot or ten into the bad guy, causing him to fall backward and knock over a storage unit full of lead weights? There is so much wrong with that premise, and yet we see it all the time. It’s given many people a poor perspective on firearms, how they really work, and their capabilities. I’m here to help dispel these myths and improve the realism in your writing!
1. Guns are loud!
Crazy loud. Without any ear protection, a gun battle is louder than a rock concert. The cartoonish image of somebody’s ears bleeding after a loud sound is almost accurate if a gun battle were to erupt inside a building. Decibel levels of a gunshot can be 140dB, which is more than four times as loud as a common rock concert (115dB). (See this breakdown for more info.) It is worth adding, though, that when adrenaline (and even morphine) levels are running high during a fight-for-your-life scenario, strange things have happened where (in addition to expected things like tunnel vision) gunshots feel much, much softer, so it’s conceivable for a conversation to take place right after a gun shot. However, this is incredibly unlikely.
2. “Silencers” aren’t.
They’re also more formally (and accurately) referred to as suppressors. Technically speaking, they suppress the concussive shock waves that are released from the barrel in front of the exiting bullet. Suppressors tend to greatly reduce the “boom” associated with gunfire, but the sounds of the actual explosion of gunpowder and all the metal moving parts on the gun are not really decreased at all. Either way, it’ll be very loud. For example, most suppressors on the market will bring a .22lr round from 160 dB (loud enough to rupture an eardrum) to about 120 db (a rock concert or jet engine).
The students’ lounge had It Must Have Been The Mistletoe on infinite repeat. Always the editor, I was thinking about some simple ways to fix this song. It was surprisingly easy: It Must Have Been the Missile TOW.
Defense Tech has an article on military exoskeletons. We haven’t reached the level of killer androids (yet), but strength-enhancement is interesting, too. (Also, if killer androids are in the works, exoskeletons will help programmers teach the androids how to move naturally, says one commenter).
This isn’t government-sponsored national service, but I think that twelve stitches and a hell of a lot of ass-kicking earn the tag.
A Tulsa newspaper reports that a Batman imposter walked into a grocery store and unsuccessfully tried to open fire. Then an airline mechanic tackled him from behind. Several minutes of unrelenting pounding ensued.
Cleaning Stations: Hour-long field day evolution where everyone drops what they’re doing and cleans their spaces. See “XO’s Happy Hour.”
Corpsman Candy: Sore-throat lozenges handed out at sick bay in lieu of any substantive treatment. Sometimes accompanied by two aspirin. Continue Reading »
“Ulysses is a totally incomprehensible book. Understanding it is like machine-gunning a pack of unicorns.Anyone that claims to have done either is lying, but should be institutionalized anyway.”
Agent Orange, paraphrasing Groucho Marx: “Outside of an alligator, a rocket launcher is certainly your best friend. Inside of an alligator, I’d recommend a gun.”
Web Gumbo provides a great picture of his unit mascot. You might wonder what a Marine mascot does. Deliver pep talks? Rally the fans? Please.
Agent Orange, our mutated alligator, says that “it’s not surprising that they turned to an alligator when they needed someone to scare and bond with Marines. Here you can see the gator playing Marco Polo with a Marine that is obviously enjoying the gator’s friendly and sociable company.”
Lash retorts retorts that “if the guy’s actually enjoying anything, it’s probably the thought that he will soon not be dangling over a watery grave.”
Sigh. Apparently the Office of Special Investigation’s Agent Orange is not the only federally employed Agent Orange. It appears the FBI also has one. The OSI’s Agent Orange, the free-wheeling reptile, has more.
Dr. Darpa: Virtually every Office of Special Investigations agent uses a firearm as his primary weapon, but the vast majority of our kills are executed with non-gun weapons.
Captain Carnage: Every one of the criminals we deal with has steel-like skin, dodges bullets like they’ve gone out of style, or both.
Dr. Darpa: Over the past twelve years, I’ve been modifying tank-mounted machine guns to compensate for those unusual characteristics. I have created a handgun so horrifically lethal that Congress has limited its sale to NATO countries.
Captain Carnage: You mean…
Dr. Darpa: The Western Cannon.
Captain Carnage: I thought it was a myth!
Dr. Darpa: Mythically deadly, perhaps. With a full mound of ammo, it weighs roughly half a ton. It has three rates of fire: “full automatic,” “wall of lead,” and “dodge this.”
We’re up to 72 superhero movies since 2000 (current as of November 2017). You can download the full data here. Some observations: R movies are making up the quality gap with PG-13 movies. Superhero movies are improving. Over the last 5 years (2013-2017), the average superhero movie is averaging 70% on Rotten Tomatoes, up […]
Hey DeadPool, You are a funny guy. How did you become a super hero? What do you do when you’re not doing anything? Do you like being a superhero? Why do you wear a mask? Why do you wear red and white? Are you Canadian? Getting superpowers is sort of a long story. Some people […]
I feel like a marketing executive put a gun to the screenwriter’s head and said “I don’t CARE what the movie is about, put New York City, London, and Hong Kong in it. Just do that thing where the villain is trying to collect plot coupons around the world in places that happen to be […]
Den Warren, (K-Tron, Metahuman Wars) is issuing a call for 3k-5k word submissions for a superhero prose fiction anthology titled, The Supreme Archvillain Election. Each submission will be a supervillain sitting at a huge table explaining why they should be voted as the Supreme Archvillain, then they go into a story, etc. Reprint excerpts and […]
1. This movie is about as bad as Catwoman but, in Catwoman’s defense, it had okay action scenes. 2. Man of Steel particularly struggled with family dialogue. E.g. Clark’s Kryptonian parents take 3 minutes to describe their plan to send him to Earth and say their goodbyes. It’s pretty bland stuff, e.g. melodramatic intonations like […]
I spent 5 hours this week watching Man of Steel and taking 5,000 words of notes. It was like being trapped on an alien planet where the atmosphere consists 80% of characters telling Clark what incredible, grandiose things he symbolizes, 20% of daringly bad action scenes, 15% of grimly constipated expressions, and 15% of acting […]
Out of the Past is a 1947 noir thriller so brilliant I cannot do it justice. I would definitely recommend it, particularly if you’re working with… Characters Plots Accidental deaths falsely claimed as murder-suicides Double-crosses, triple-crosses, and maybe a quadruple-cross depending on how you interpret a self-defense kill with a fishing reel. A complex plot […]
