What do mercury tipped bullets do

At the time it was not known that this noxious substance could travel through latex. Nothing could be done, she died less than a year later.

While the answer to the question is not a hard no, there are way better options for the same effect. If your goal is death by "heavy metal poisoning", then I'd suggest depleted uranium rounds instead. Uranium is far more toxic than mercury, plus comes with some impressive armor penetrating properties as an added bonus. Either way, heavy metal poisoning is a slow death which is probably not what an assassin wants on a near miss.

A better approach would probably be a low-caliber explosive round. While they violate all sorts of international laws and treaties, an explosive rifle round to the arm, leg, or gut would still cause enough mutilation that your target is likely to quickly bleed out and die.

If the blast does not kill you, the DU shrapnel will, and if that fails, the blast will still vaporize a lethal dose of uranium into your bloodstream overcoming the issue of getting it to vaporize when your target is not armored.

Assuming you use the most soluble form of mercury, you would still want to up the dose significantly to overcome elements such as splatter, bullet passing through entirely or just not absorbed by the body. This would add significantly to the weight of the bullet and may mess with its ballistics. If you choose another element, such as polonium or plutonium, you may have better success. Both are highly toxic due to chemical toxicity and radiological toxicity.

I'm not entirely sure of the chemical properties of polonium, but plutonium is a dense metal, similar to uranium. It can easily be made into a bullet that shoots properly, similar to depleted uranium.

You would only need 5mg to be chemically toxic. If you have a 7. However, that death by heavy metal poisoning would take a long while to occur, depending on the amount of metal the body absorbed prior to the bullets removal. No, because you need more Mercury than the fatal dose that can be delivered in a bullet. Adding the Mercury sure will make your victim uncomfortable until the body sheds the excess amount down to acceptable levels.

Mercury when ingested targets blood, kidneys, central nervous system, liver and the brain. Large doses of Mercury will lead to easily identifiable health symptoms Administration of a chelating agent can help reduce the effects on the body. Acute Mercury poisoning will lead to death, but generally that death will be due to an already existing kidney or liver damage. There is always the possibility that exposure will cause a failure of the central nervous system, which could lead to death.

In essence, that big new hole in the body from he gunshot wound will be far more fatal either from tissue damage or a secondary infection. Lead is already poisonous, the addition of mercury might be unnecessary if looking to increase the poisoning potential of a bullet. Instead, I would consider using toxin from poison dart frogs in the bullets.

This toxin is highly lethal to most creatures, including humans, and was used by aboriginal tribes in the rain forest. They coated darts with this poison likely where the frogs got their name from and used a blowgun to inject a person with it.

You could employ a similar mechanism with your bullets, either coating them in poison or putting the poison into a specialised bullet meant for storing the liquid and releasing it upon impact. If you really wanted to use mercury though, you could fill the bullet with that instead.

As others have said mercury as a poison is just not practical. What might be possible is to use mercury embrittlement to damage vehicles. Very thankful for your business.

The internet is rife with myth, heresies, and conspiracy theories born out of fiction, but mercury tipped bullets do not exist. Not commercially and not legally either. I highly doubt there are ballistic advantages if any, that mercury tipped bullets may have over their standard counterparts. In the instance that a mercury-tipped round is successfully fired, it would be for but one deadly purpose.

Liquid mercury targets the liver, heart, kidneys, and the central nervous system. If a victim gets doses of a chelating agent, the effects of identifiable symptoms may be reduced. Another possibility is that the mercury will attack the central nervous system and the brain. All I am saying is, the mercury tipped bullets gunshot wound could prove more fatal than a secondary poisoning by the heavy metal.

However, some of its compounds, like mercury fulminate are highly toxic and sensitive to friction or heat. A bullet tipped with mercury fulminate will explode, not in a dramatic Day of the Jackal style, but fragment further nonetheless.

Unlike liquid mercury where the victim is slowly poisoned to death, mercury fulminate acts soon after the gunshot. He describes a process where bullets are filled with mercury, enabling them to explode on impact. The bullet tip was drilled, and a drop of mercury poured into the hole, which was then sealed. This concept, designed for maximum knockdown power, was one envisioned sorely in a work of fiction, though a few individuals claim to have tried it.

There are many holes that I can punch into a theory involving topping off bullets with mercury, or any other ballistic substance for that matter. Hunting is also out of the question, and shooting such a bullet in self-defense will amount to murder. Mercury is a toxic metal and reacts in peculiar ways that might catch you off-guard, with dire consequences. Like I stated earlier, making mercury tipped bullets has been attempted, albeit in controlled environments.

Carbon compounds like graphite would be as effective if not more so especially if the aircraft were exposed to electrolytes such as acid rain or sea water. Combat aircraft would be inspected for battle damage far too frequently for this to be of significance I feel.

Mercury expands an incredible amount for each degree celsius it is exposed to. Providing a small hot detonator to a mercury bullet core would vaporise the mercury. The main problems are… Not handle safe, not bore safe, not storage safe. And that is before any of the after firing environmental issues. Inaccuracy would be a large problem too.

A LARGE expansion space would have to be left for the mercury to expand in ambiant temperatures and in riding the bore at ignition of the propellant charge. Sloshing around though slowly during high speed rotation does not lend to accuracy.

When touching exposed lead, the mercury would try to form an amalgam too. An internal sleeve of brass or steel for example would be required also. I remember years ago reading something about a WWII British idea to load anti-aircraft shells with radium paint to spray Nazi bombers, making them easier targets to see at night. Makes about as much sense as shooting them with mercury bullets. I guess every war produces a crop of such ideas. I have read some works of fiction wherein the bad guys were using mercury-filled bullets to make them deadlier.

I think also I saw some references to cyanide-filled bullets. And of course silver bullets for werewolves maybe they would work on vampires too if you rubbed some garlic on them. And if they mean hard ceramic plates in body armor or something like that, then no such metal tip or mercury core would help penetrate that.

The bullets were chemically dysfunctional and degraded not long after being loaded. I had also heard that Strommen-Trickel was making a similar bullet and might have supplied a small quantity to National Cartridge who wanted to load them. But what was the supposed advantage to the Mercor bullets? I would think that if mercury was used, it would have to first be encapsulated in a material such as plastic that would not be subject to amalgamation.

Mercury exposure at high levels can harm the brain, heart, kidneys, lungs, and immune system. High levels of methylmercury in the bloodstream of unborn babies and young children may harm the developing nervous system, making the child less able to think and learn.

King mackerel, marlin, orange roughy, shark, swordfish, tilefish, ahi tuna, and bigeye tuna all contain high levels of mercury.