Is it true that if someone shoots a bullet at you , you get killed before you hear the gunshot?

Question

Okay so say a gunman is shooting at you from say 600 yards
and it was a headshot , obvisoly you would be killed , BUT would you hear the gunshot before you were killed ?? as i know bullets can travel up to 4000 fps which is much faster than sound at 1080 fps , But i also know that they slow down rapidly .

so can anyone please answer my question thanks.. ;)

Answer 1

YES
The speed of sound is 770 mph, so a bullet traveling at 3000 foot per s second would move at 2045 mph reaching you well before the sound of the shot (YOUR DEAD)

Answer 2

If you're hit with a supersonic bullet before it has a chance to slow down to subsonic, the bullet will get to you before the sound does, but not by much. Part of the sound is the sonic shock wave ("sonic boom") a supersonic bullet drags along with it and you'll hear that within a small fraction of a second of being hit. It sounds like a whip crack (not that you'll be paying much attention to sounds at that point). Most rifle rounds have supersonic muzzle velocities. Most handgun rounds don't, so, if you're shot with a handgun, you'll probably hear the sound first. The speed of sound is 1130 fps under standard conditions and varies with ambient temperature.

Answer 3

A typical 308 caliber 168 grain bullet launched at 2800 fps is still moving at somewhere around 1600 fps (depending on the ballistic coefficient of the particular bullet) at 600 yards. It'd be a heck of a shot, though.

Answer 4

Well that depends on the gun. Some bullets aren't faster then the speed of sound (e.g a shotgun). But a shotgun won't be shooting six hundred yards anyways, so yes you would not hear the shot before it hit you. And anyways, any payed assasin that wants to shoot you at six hundred yards would not go for a head shot. The head move side to side to much and its to risky, theres always a chance that it will zoom right past your head. They would go for a heart shot probably. The only way you would hear the shot after that was if you didnt die the second the bullet impacted your heart....and you had probably half a second till u died.

So yes

Answer 5

All I know is that I hear the bullets whip overhead and hear the sound of the leaves ripping as the bullet goes by. Only then do I hear the report of the rifle that it was fired from. So if it was a head shot then, you wouldn't hear it at all. It would be something like the ending of the Soprano's. Fade to black.

Answer 6

.It all depends on the fatal bullet fired. If one is fatally injured by a bullet to the heart, then yes one would hear the shot. The hearing is the last to go. In nursing homes and hospitals they aren't allowed to talk about anything pertaining to the patients death for at least 5 minutes after they are thought to be deceased, because they can still hear for several minutes after they are gone. Not that they are going to get up and whoop your butt for saying something, but because it is rude to talk about that person when they are dieing

Answer 7

The bullet will reach you before the sound because it is trveling faster than the speed of sound. Unless it kills you instantly as it might if it hit you in the head, you will hear the sound after the bullet hits you because you will not be dead yet.

Answer 8

Yes. The bullet moves quicker that the speed of sound. If the bullet slowed do too terribly the trajectory would be such that it would not hit the target. So, the fps would still be substantially faster than the speed of sound if it was still on target.

Answer 9

Yes, theoretically this is true. It happened quite a bit in WWI. When American Snipers armed with the Springfield M1903 shot at Prussian soldiers, many others claimed to see the bodies fall before the shot was even heard. Which is why the Springfield '03 was quickly dubbed "Silent Death".

Answer 10

Yes, the bullet would reach you before the sound of the gunshot, no matter what the range. The speed of sound is surprisingly slow through air.

However, I spoke with a few military snipers when I lived in San Diego, and they told me that yes, the bullet leaves the barrel at a faster velocity than the speed of sound. But air resistance slows the bullet down to sub-sonic speeds at around 600 yards, so there is no "crack" when the bullet passes by, which is actually a miniature sonic boom.

Essentially, they told me that beyond 600 yards, you could shoot at a target all day long and they wouldn't know.

Kinda scary.