We’re back. Sorry about last week – whatever I had, man, it was really vicious. And of course, I ended up being Patient Zero for my whole office, and before you know it everyone was running a fever. Good Lord. But it seems to have run its course now, and so here’s the next page! Back on schedule.
Poor Haulley. But that’s warfare, for you. Not much more to say about this. One of the most succinct but busiest battle scenes I’ve done so far, but I think it gets the message across.
Anyway, I won’t muck things up by pontificating. We’re back on track, and my apologies for last week’s delay. Until NEXT week, all the best, folks!
“Sergeant’s down! Medic!”
Okaaay….Either Haulley dreamt this part up or it actually happened.
Think back to earlier. I’m no doc, but man with a neck usually can’t scream very well afterwards…
Depends on whether it hit his vocal folds or voice box. It’s possible for a bullet fired from a high descending angle to miss both and emerge behind the trachea, or to pass through the posterior laryngeal muscle column. The bigger problem is arterial damage – he could bleed to death inside of five minutes without immediate medical attention.
Depends on if one or both arteries were hit too as to how fast he could bleed out.
CRAP!
Haulley is lucky that wasn’t the same caliber that hit the LT or he would be looking like a Pezz Dispenser right now.
Yikes. 😐
Now this is odd indeed – had I seen this a week ago, I would have said that there’s no way Haulley survived this and would be so “vocal” afterwards, but a few days ago I read on one of the military sites I frequent about Lance Corporal Simon Moloney, a British soldier who, last year, got shot in the neck while fighting insurgents in Yakshal, Helman Province, Afghanistan, and then kept fighting for almost 90 minutes afterwards, covering his troop in the face of superior enemy forces before he was forcefully evacuated. He survived without complications from his injury got the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross for his bravery under fire, and so did the medic that treated his injury.
Coming back to Haulley though – the fact that the bullet that hit him passed through the neckguard, through the neck and out the other side tells me this is not a “normal’ round.
Modern lead core FMJ bullets are “tail heavy” and are designed to start tumbling once their velocity drops far enough – Moloney survived because he was hit higher up and the bullet hit him above the vest and punched straight through between his trachea and the carotid without damaging either of them and didn’t have enough time to slow down and start tumbling. If the bullet had hit the edge of the neckguard if would have punched through regardless, but it would have been tumbling as it hit flesh and ripped out a large chunk of the neck. That means, if not death from exsanguination of asphyxia from a crushed larynx, at least the need for immediate intubation, a lengthy recovery period and a fair chance he’d never be able to talk again, let alone yell.
On the other hand, there is a bullet capable of doing just what we see in the panel – the 7,62X54R soft steel core light ball- it’s designed to be shot against softskin vehicles, so it doesn’t tumble and doesn’t expand too much when it hits flesh. It wouldn’t have gone through a ballistic steel plate, but it can punch through ballistic nylon and kevlar with ease and without being deflected too much, keep it’s flat trajectory missing all of Haulley’s vitals and come out the other side. And this isn’t even going into the specialist 7N14 sniper round which features a hardened steel penetrator designed to punch through a ballistic vest, witch would also have been able to do what we see in the comic.
Considering the fact we’ve already established there is at least one PKM firing at Haulley and his men, I’d call this effective storytelling even for the nitpick inclined. Good job!
I knew this would come up! However, you made my whole defense for me! I was originally going to have him shot in the gut, but when I read about LCpl Maloney’s injury and did some research on both high velocity bullets and traumatic neck injury, I went this direction. It’s much more symbolic, and as you say, it IS, in fact possible to survive a great many traumatic neck injuries. But don’t let’s diminish the seriousness of it. In Haulley’s case, the real problem is whether his carotid arteries have been cut – also survivable, but the medic needs to have pretty quick footwork.
Yeah, I thought wherever the fact you chose a neck injury for Haulley had anything to do with Moloney, especially since the angle of the injury is pretty much the same and Maloney’s story is quite a recent one.
Oddly enough, after I looked at ballistic penetration tables to double check I got my facts right in Hauley’s case, I ended up watching a few documentaries about the ballistics of the 6.5×52mm Mannlicher-Carcano used in the Kennedy assassination, and they ended up concluding something I already sort of knew, that the Warren Commision, although sloppy in it’s methodology, was correct in it’s findings and the “magic bullet” is not only possible, but repeatable experimentally.
That is because the 6.5×52mm has a very high muzzle velocity, which equates in high penetration, has a cylindrical round nosed bullet rather than a “spitzer” bullet so it grips more of the rifling in the barrel giving it a very stable flight and, lastly, because it consistently starts yawing and tumbling as it exits the body, so anybody standing behind the original target will be penetrated because the bullet is still travelling fast enough, but said bullet will be travelling sideways, which accounts for the injuries Governor Connally sustained and the fact the “magic bullet” has an intact nose but it’s tail is deformed, with lead being squeezed out the back of the copper jacket.
The most amazing things about this is the fact that I already knew that deformation pattern, because I have in my possession a few bullets which were recovered from Romanian WW1 battlefields by archaeologists from the Military museum or the National Office for Heroes’ Memory, which search the old battlefields for human remains which they inter in military cemeteries, but also routinely find large amounts of ammunition, either spent or live, that has no discernible “story” beyond it being from a battlefield. The live ammunition is properly disposed of by the bomb squad, but they are left with the spent one, which just accumulates in their archives, so they are happy to give some of it away, because it’s either that or just throwing it out…
But coming back to the subject at hand, some of the bullets I have are Romanian 6.5x53mmR from the Romanian M.93 Mannlicher, which is almost identical to the Italian 6.5×52mm Carcano except for the fact it has a rim and the Italian one is rimless. The muzzle velocities would have been similar and the bullet itself is virtually identical, both in basic dimensions, shape as well as construction, and of those I have in my collection all show exactly the same type of deformation that the “magic bullet” has – intact nose, but “squeezed out” back.
As so very often I am impressed with both the research and though given before starting drawing, as well as the quality of the comments around here.
I also fully appreciate that, when things get “graphical”, they is not that just for the effect, but as a necessity in bringing the story further.
The canadians needs to think about replacing their military vests.
With powered armor, perhaps? They’re on it. 😀
Heh. I don’t think there is a single vest out there with a design similar to what Haulley is wearing whose neck protector can stop a high powered rifle bullet – the ballistic collar is there to save you from slow moving shrapnel and the metal or ceramic ballistic plates are the ones that protect you from bullets. And since those plates only cover the chest and back…
Of course, we’re talking about vests in common deployment right now, not specialist or next gen body armour, some of which do come with ballistic collars that can stop bullets… and also look nothing like the one Haulley is wearing.
Yikes. So it’s established that he could indeed survive such an insult to the flesh… with a lot of Luck.
And no wonder he freaked out when he realized this was coming in the flashback simulation. Talk about Traumatic experiences.
But, those experiences are often the ones which burn themselves into the mind most deeply, so I’m not surprised this is what the M1E came up with when fishing around in Haulley’s mind, as he’s probably been Haunted by it since it happened.
That experience probably takes up a big enough chunk of memory space, (or number of neural connections) to look like a Monolith on a meta view of Haulley’s mental landscape.
This is high quality stuff, man.
😀
Thanks, man. Very kind of you to say so!
And the next traumatic scene will be Mike’s… when he encountered his first Blue Screen Of Death after being beated by Dr Gemmil while playing chess.
No one knows if he will ever recover from this event.
Vests with Dr. Gemmill! The only winning move is not to play.
Wait, wrong game…
How about a nice game of chess? 😀
gee, is amazing to see the amount of analysis put into the scene, this shows once again the dedication you put, and boy, do people know their facts on the comments. is just a great thing.
At least Hauley didn’t die, right?
He couldn’t, unless he did and didn’t realize… Ok I’ll leave now…
Ooh, I just spotted something else about this scene.
Just before he got sniped, Haulley’s body language pretty dramatically says he’s taken command here. In fact, he makes the same mistake as his CO, and Points.
The same sniper had to be watching to see who took command when his first target went down.
Oops.
I… It makes so much sence, I just got a quote playing on my head.
“Do not salute me. There are goddamn snipers all around this area who’d love to grease an officer…”
Now with my Internet back online I can finally comment again and all I can think of is:
Two more noise holes for enhanced volume.
xp
Actually, all of the WWII-era 6.5mm rounds- 6.5 Carcano and 6.5 Arisaka in particular- were known for -not- upsetting in soft tissue. They had ungodly penetration thanks to their very high sectional density, but lack of terminal effect was a major complaint against them by both Italian and Japanese forces, resulting in the Japanese adoption of the 7.7mm Arisaka and the Italians adopting the 7.35mm Carcano for rifles and 8mm Breda as a machinegun round. The Italians also experimented with converting the Carcano to 8×57 Mauser, but these converted rifles quickly acquired a reputation for blowing the unsupported firing-pin back through the shooter’s face. The only reason that the “magic bullet” scenario works is that there was no magic to it- Connoly’s position in the car relative to Kennedy (offset inboard and slightly lower in the car, instead of dead-ahead and on the same level- he was on a folding jumpseat) means that it was a straight shot through-and-through both men: exactly what you’d expect from an extremely stable, high-velocity round like the 6.5 Carcano. M855 5.56mm NATO has similar performance and has garnered similar complaints.
Haulley looks to have taken a standard ComBloc 5.45×39- the visible projectile is the right length and diameter, assuming this very talented artist has maintained his usual level of detail and scale. The 5.45 is an ugly, UGLY thing to be hit with- probably the nastiest of all the small-calibre, high-velocity carbine rounds. It’s tendency to upset with very little decelleration in soft tissue, plus a pronounced habit of making sharp turns inside the body and ending up in strange places- earned it the nickname “the poison bullet” during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Having seen first-hand what it will do to a whitetail deer…ugh. Haulley’s neck might be just slim enough that it hadn’t -quite- had time to upset yet, but only just: he’s one lucky ossifer in any case. If it’s intended to be a 7.62x54R projo, he’s even luckier: 7N1 sniper ammo is even more upset-happy than 5.45×39, and even bog-standard Ball rounds will still cause a large enough temporary cavity in soft tissue to make a neck wound like this fatal in very short order without a damned skilled Corpsman and a heapin’ helpin’ of Luck.
Great page, fantastic colors. Ugly wound, like Vrsovice Rebel said with extreme knowledge, some calibers are worst than others. Being shot through the neck usually a fatal wound. I can’t wait to see where this goes. (I sometimes hate killing off characters I created. It feels weird)