.30-06 round weighing 180 grains leaves a 24" barrel at about 2,700 feet per second, which gives it a kinetic energy of around 2,900 ft-lbf. With this much energy, that round, if full metal jacketed, will reliably penatrate 20+ inches of ballistic gelatin, a common substitute for animal muscle tissue, and if that round is a hollow point it will reliably penatrate 16+ inches of ballistic gelatin. My neck is about 7 inches thick as an average size person. Unless a person has a cervical spine made of titanium and Kevlar, and/or are just about 4 times as dense as your average Joe, an impact by a typical hollow point .30-06 round with that speed and energy in the human neck region would most often decapitate, or nearly so, and a full metal jacketed round would easily pass clean through. In contrast, the handguns carried by many police officers, the Glock .40 S&W, firing a 180 grain round out of a 4" barrel scoots along at about 1,000 feet per second, having a muzzle energy of about 400 ft-lbf, this being the defacto gold standard for killing human beings. .30-06 is quite literally a round made for war, and is typically used to hunt large game, as it has a tendency to completely and thoroughly rapidly disassemble smaller game into unusable sized chunks.
Nothing is impossible, but not all things are likely.
a full metal jacketed round would easily pass clean through
“Clean through” is not as clean as it might sound. It would probably pass through and out the back without leaving a gaping hole, but the damage it would do to tissues as it went through would be devastating. Take a look at a FMJ handgun bullet going through ballistics gel:
If that hit someone’s neck, it might do huge amounts of damage to all the tissues there, and even though they’d snap back to roughly the same place, there would be a lot of damage. If that went through some arteries, there would be a lot of new routes for that blood to flow, and the blood is under a lot of pressure so…
No doubt about that. A hollow or soft point deposits more energy and creates a much larger temporary cavity, but a FMJ can certainly do plenty of damage. The FMJ would be much more likely to be intact, and not fragment, so “clean” is certainly a relative term in this context. Any gunshot wound is gonna be a mess, regardless of caliber or bullet type, some moreso than others.
.30-06 round weighing 180 grains leaves a 24" barrel at about 2,700 feet per second, which gives it a kinetic energy of around 2,900 ft-lbf. With this much energy, that round, if full metal jacketed, will reliably penatrate 20+ inches of ballistic gelatin, a common substitute for animal muscle tissue, and if that round is a hollow point it will reliably penatrate 16+ inches of ballistic gelatin. My neck is about 7 inches thick as an average size person. Unless a person has a cervical spine made of titanium and Kevlar, and/or are just about 4 times as dense as your average Joe, an impact by a typical hollow point .30-06 round with that speed and energy in the human neck region would most often decapitate, or nearly so, and a full metal jacketed round would easily pass clean through. In contrast, the handguns carried by many police officers, the Glock .40 S&W, firing a 180 grain round out of a 4" barrel scoots along at about 1,000 feet per second, having a muzzle energy of about 400 ft-lbf, this being the defacto gold standard for killing human beings. .30-06 is quite literally a round made for war, and is typically used to hunt large game, as it has a tendency to completely and thoroughly rapidly disassemble smaller game into unusable sized chunks.
Nothing is impossible, but not all things are likely.
“Clean through” is not as clean as it might sound. It would probably pass through and out the back without leaving a gaping hole, but the damage it would do to tissues as it went through would be devastating. Take a look at a FMJ handgun bullet going through ballistics gel:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/hlXg_H5Jr4g
If that hit someone’s neck, it might do huge amounts of damage to all the tissues there, and even though they’d snap back to roughly the same place, there would be a lot of damage. If that went through some arteries, there would be a lot of new routes for that blood to flow, and the blood is under a lot of pressure so…
No doubt about that. A hollow or soft point deposits more energy and creates a much larger temporary cavity, but a FMJ can certainly do plenty of damage. The FMJ would be much more likely to be intact, and not fragment, so “clean” is certainly a relative term in this context. Any gunshot wound is gonna be a mess, regardless of caliber or bullet type, some moreso than others.
Yeah, we all seen it pass easily through his saint neck.