Where Do Bullets Go When Fired Into The Air?

When people fire guns into the air in a celebratory manner, those bullets have to go somewhere. Find out how high fired bullets can go -- and why they can be dangerous -- in this episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to brain Stuff from how Stuff Works. Hey, brain stuff,
it's Christian Seger. What if I take this imaginary gun
that's in my hand and I fired it straight up
into the air? Bang bang bang? Wow? What is going
to happen to all these imaginary bullets? Well, the old
saying what goes up must come down is an appropriate
way to start off this conversation, because that's exactly what

(00:25):
happens to straight bullets when they're fired up in the air.
You know how crazy guns can be. If you shoot
a gun up in the air, bullets are going to
travel up to a mile high to bring on the
angle of the shot and the power of the gun.
And once it reaches a climax in the air, that
bullet it's gonna fall. Now, air resistance limits its speed,
but bullets are designed to be fairly aerodynamic, so the

(00:49):
speed is still quite lethal if the bullet happens to
hit someone. Now, if you're in rural areas and you're
shooting guns out in the field, the chances of hitting
someone they're pretty low because the number of people are
also pretty low. But if you go to a crowded
city someplace like I don't know, times square and you
start shooting off a gun, well, hey, you're gonna get

(01:09):
in a lot of trouble and your chances of hitting
someone is going to go up dramatically because well, the
number of people around you have gone up as well.
And the fact of the matter is that people do
get killed quite often by stray bullets. Therefore, most major
cities have laws in place to try to keep people
from shooting guns in the air in celebration. So if

(01:31):
you want to celebrate, I don't know, think of an
alternative like high fiving or eating ice cream that's a
safe thing to do. You can throw your spoon up
in the air and it might hit someone in the head,
but you know what, it won't kill them. Check out
the brain stuff channel on YouTube, and for more on

(01:52):
this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works
dot com.