Could Someone Survive A Shot Through The Eye/Back of Head In An Apocalyptic Setting?

Say that there are medics or former doctors in this apocalypse, and maybe they do some sort of makeshift surgery after finding a man who was shot through the eye and it travelling all the way through the back of his head. Any chance he survives?

Additionally, any chance a bullet that travels through an eye and through the back of a head could have enough velocity to then hit and kill someone behind them?

Basically, there's two guys fighting over a gun, and I want the gun to accidentally go off, through one man's eye and back of head, and have it hit and kill someone else in the room behind him. I want the guy shot in the eye to be left for dead, but found and saved.

 

Carl Grimes, anyone?

 

I'm going to say it's not possible.

There was a police officer in the city near me who was shot in the face and lost an eye a few years ago. He lived -- but the bullet didn't pass through his brain and out the back of his head.

When I was in college, I had a professor who had a steel plate on one side of his skull where it had been destroyed by a bullet during a war (don't remember if it was WW2 or the Korean war -- yeah, I'm old enough that it could have been either). Again, the bullet didn't bass through the head and out the back.

In the eye, through the brain, and out the back? I'm about 98.73 percent certain that's not survivable.

 

It didn't come out the back but when directly in his forehead...pretty gnarly...
https://www.wearethemighty.com/articles/this-civil-war-vet-walked-around-with-a-bullet-in-his-face-for-31-years/

 

It's fiction, the bullet can do anything you want it to do.

First pick the scenario you want then go about finding the anatomy and physiology you need to get there.

Bullets do weird things in one's body depending on caliper, velocity, how far from the victim the gun is shot, and what bones do to the trajectory. They can go right through, a bullet to the chest can come out the side and pass through the victim's arm, sometimes it ends up in the brain and it isn't removed. A shotgun blast close to the victim can shatter the head like a smashed watermelon.

Keep in mind with an effort to make it plausible, readers are for the most part forgiving. If you want it to pass the forensics, look for forensics resources.

Here's an example:

https://www.pathologyoutlines.com/topic/forensicsgunshotwounds.html

 

I'll see if I can find it, but there's a real-life story of a guy who had a crowbar or something jammed all the way through is head and out the other side and he was practically unaffected by it except for some weird side effects. I've probably got some details wrong.

Here we go: Phineas Gage

Looks like it went through an eye even.

 

Short answer would be as an author you have some flexibility but I'd do a little research and try to write it as believably as you can tolerate.

As has been mentioned, if you want a definitive answer to whether this would work in a real life scenario, you may want to post this on a site with ballistic experts (assuming you don't get a suitable answer here). My guess, for what it's worth, is that this would be very unlikely even with modern medicine, but in an Apocalyptic setting, in order for the bullet to take out a person's eye, travel through their skull, exit, and then penetrate another person's body or skull to kill them is unlikely to not also claim the life of the first person at some point. I just don't see the character's having the necessary resources to tend to the wound even if the person survived the bullet through the skull.

There may be certain calibers where this might be possible, and people have in fact survived gunshots through the skull, but I don't know about a shot THROUGH the eye. Maybe if it went through the eye socket and came out the temple it might be survivable, and as the author you have a lot of 'poetic license'.

Bullets traveling at typical velocities can do a lot of damage to tissues depending on how it travels through the body through 'cavitation'. I just can't imagine the effects of a bullet traveling through the skull and exiting if it went straight through the eye socket. My guess is the person, even if they did survive, would not be same unless the bullet somehow angled and missed the brain.

To give you an idea of the power of a bullet, this actor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon-Erik_Hexum was messing around with a prop (he shouldn't have even been handling it when not actually filming, he was not a stagehand) that had a live blank and shot himself at point blank range in his head. What he didn't realize was that live blanks still have gunpowder, and even though their was no projectile (bullet), when the powder ignited with the barrel so close to his temple, the gas had no where to go but through his brain (I'm assuming that normally a live blank would not be fired so close to ANYTHING and the blunt force would dissipate safely through the air). Basically, a quarter sized section of his skull BECAME the bullet and was forced through his brain. This wouldn't apply to your scenario, but just gives you an idea of the power of modern ammunition.

Edit: The actor above technical survived, but was brain dead and was therefore taken off life supported and had his organs donated.

Another interesting case, which once again doesn't apply, because it's not even a human, is the case of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_McCandless. During his ill fated excursion to Alaska, he killed a moose with a .22 rifle. This is obviously a very weak round and it's surprising he was able to drop a moose with it, but it's speculated he was successful BECAUSE he shot it through the eye. But I don't know if this is just from his diary or photos since he never lived to tell anyone and the moose would have been scavenged by then.

 

I wonder if it would be more plausible if it went through the eye at an angle, and went out through the side of the head

 

I added the Wiki article to my post above if you missed it, it took me a while to find it.

What I find hard to believe though is a bullet going through someone's head and still having enough power to kill another person. The Mythbusters tested this kind of thing, and when a bullet has gone through something it loses most of its momentum. Often in fact it's flipping end over end and going about as fast and hard as if you tossed it gently.

But of course, much of what the Mythbusters did was to disprove the myths about bullets that we've all seen a million times in movies and TV shows, that most of us still believe are true. So most readers would doubtless accept it.

 

I just have to leave this here, sorry.

I believe your issue here is that if it'd kill the guy behind, it would likely kill the guy as well.

 

Is that New Vegas? Never got a chance to play it!

And maybe, I dunno. I guess I'm overthinking this. A lot of the specifics are something that will remain in my head, since there's no time to explain every little detail in a screenplay.

Still, knowing information like this, even if it just remains exclusive to my mind/notes, allows me to create a more genuine character whose decisions are more highly informed by their background.

 

Sure. My schoolfriend had an incredibly dashing and badass father who was a WW2 hero (bear with me, I'm old, and he was old when my friend was born). He wore an eyepatch just like Carl's because he was shot in the eye, and the bullet came out just missing his spine. He couldn't get immediate medical attention either. He stayed in the British army before retiring with the rank of major general.

 

Losing a lot of brain is survivable. There's even a medical procedure to remove half the brain: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemispherectomy. I think more serious issues would be haemorrhaging and the like, though as the Phineas Gage example above showed, severe brain injuries can be survived even away from hospitals and with rudimentary medical technology.

So maybe the second person ends up choking to death on it. That would make the scene even more memorable.

 

Now, for WAY more unrealistic stuff, any way a makeshift glass eye could be made during the apocalypse, or maybe stolen from a dead guy and popped right in (after cleaning, of course)?

 

The guy could have his head turned so the bullet doesn't need to go all the way through the brain, just in through the eye and out through the temple, and maybe grazes or grooves the surface of the brain a little.

How about he picks up a dirty marble off the street and pops it in as an eye? Or takes a well-made glass eye from a taxidermied animal in some office building? They make them really realistic (the expensive ones), but animal eyes do look different from human ones. There's a lot less sclera (the white of the eye)—the iris is much bigger and usually dark like brown.


here's a page showing some horse eyes (which would be too big I think): Dreamstime. Maybe a deer's eye would be about right.

 

How about a goat's eye? They are unusual in that they have rectangular pupils, which is going to give the wearer a unique look.

 

A lot of animals do have very strange pupil shapes. If you look a that horse picture above the pupil is a horizontal oval.

 

Not necessarily. It depends on the trajectory through the brain and what vital parts are hit on the second guy.

Also, consider the guy with the exit wound might decrease their intracranial pressure and the guy behind might die from the swelling brain.

 

Quick answer: no.
Quick review of the OP's idea: Goddam awesome!
Free bonus info: all this talk of eye shots... I feel ill now.