DVD blocks bullet
A DVD that fire chief Barry McCroy of Walterboro, South Carolina, was carrying protected him from a stray bullet on Saturday. He was in a local Waffle House when a fight between two men led to gunfire. The DVD stopped a bullet from entering his stomach. From the Charleston Post and Courier:
Maj. Ken Dasen of the Walterboro Police Department said the bullet grazed the suspect's head, shattered the glass window and then ricocheted into McRoy's abdomen...Link
McRoy didn't know he had been shot until he was telling a police officer what happened.
"I felt something like being hit in the stomach and assumed it was the percussion from the discharged firearm," he said.
Then he saw a hole in his jacket. He put his hand into his pocket and pulled out a handful of shattered plastic. The disc was nicked.
He then found a piece of the bullet.
the latest
latest episodes
How much you wanna bet that it was blu-ray? XD
Must have been HD, not Blu-ray, if stopped a bullet. Very HD.
uhh yeah, only eat at waffle house for mullet watching
Why was he in a restaurant with a DVD in his pocket?
The headline should be:
Pirated DVD Saves Man's Life
Heard this on NPR. What was the DVD title, anyway?
Usually it's a Bible what stops bullets...
Actually, it's usually a bible of some sort that puts guns in people's hands. :-(
Perhaps it was an e-text pirated copy of the KJV on the disc? :-)
Nah, probably just a pirate of 'Unbreakable'. :-D
#4
Because he was hungry?
I guess it makes sense. DVD's are made of polycarbonate , which is a
bullet-resistant material
#7, sadly true.
#8, you beat me to it d@mmit!
to #10:
I shot DVDs with a BB-gun and they shattered. I doubt that a real bullet would even slow down.
Waffle House .. nothing better for hangover prevention. Mmmm.
@Trent: Shattering is a method of absorbing energy. Given that it was a ricochet of a fragment, it would've been low energy to begin with, so the disc shattering could easily absorb enough energy to keep it from breaking his skin. But then, IANABE. (I am not a ballistics expert!)
That's the true power of DRM!!! IT CAN BLOCK BULLET!!!
I don't think shattering material absorbs much energy and I don't think it will cause the object striking it to re-bound.
If the bullet was traveling at a dangerous speed it would not have been stopped by the DVD disc, I doubt even a spindle of DVDs would stop a bullet, so the bullet was either already moving too slow to cause any damage, or it was moving at a trajectory that would have missed the person but hit the DVD.
All in all it would make a short Myth Busters episode.
Well, we can look forward to the next round of Darwin awards when someone makes a "bulletproof" vest out of DVDs and asks his buddy to shoot him because "It has to work! I saw it on the news!"
According to the article the DVD was:
"The DVD, a gift from an employee who had recorded a TV show about fire extinguishers, didn't fare so well and neither did its case."
So it was a pirated copy of a tv show - according to DMCA rules. So now I wonder if the person who had his life saved by a home burned tv show is gonna get sued by one of the members of the Anti-Pirate League?
#7, would the bible thing really be a problem?
One of the commandments specicifically forbids murder, so if a person REALLY followed the bible, then everybody around them is safe.
One more thing: As somebody else mentioned, if this bullet fragment really was dangerous, a DVD would barely slow it down. Here is some fun reading about how many books it would take to stop a bullet:
http://www.theboxotruth.com/docs/bot31.htm
The sad truth is that, unless you were carrying at least a dozen translations of the bible stacked together in your pocket, they are unlikely to do much.
Let's make AOL armor!
actually, I do have a stack of AOL coasters I was going to turn into ornamental scale mail... who knows,maybe it'll be functional too.
it's a sad day when you first read a news story from your hometown on boing boing...
Kudos to #19,15 & 13 for not being retards about ballistics.
Box O' Truth will forever change the way you look at bullet penetration.
I used to participate in a local gun club where we held "pin matches" - shooting five bowling pins off a table as fast as possible.
In one match, the bullet ricocheted off the bowling pin, then off the ceiling, and struck the shooter in the forehead. Of course at that point the bullet had lost most of its energy (and at a maximum would have the force of being struck by the weight of the bowling pin).
It didn't break the skin, but the shooter got a lump on his noggin, and a bullet for a souvenir.