5 Movie Combat Tactics

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StarlessSoldier
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5 Movie Combat Tactics

Post by StarlessSoldier » Sun Aug 22, 2010 5:45 am

We all love to see our action movie heroes do some amazing combat stunts. Even more so we love to do it ourself in our favorite video games. When movies feature over the top gun play as a way of making fun of the genre itself (see Wanted and Shoot 'em Up) it can be kind of fun, but when they try to imply that these things actually work... well, they can get you in serious trouble.


5: Concealable body armor FTW!

As seen in: Lucky Number Slevin - Kick Ass - The Punisher - Back To The Future (no, really)
Whether you want to fake your death, become a vigilante crime fighter, or escape lebanese terrorists concealable body armor is like a having the green mushroom from Mario. If you decide to try that in real life you may want to update your will first. Concealable body armor is concealable because it is extremely thin by body armor standards. Military grade body armor has a base layer of kevlar about twice as thick as concealable body armor, topped with a set of inch thick composite plates. Want to know the kicker? It's rated to stop the AK's weak 7.62x39 round "under ideal conditions". The larger 7.62x51 (NATO) and 7.62x54R (Soviet) will pass right through it. It also weighs 30 pounds and if you hid it under your clothes you would look like a suicide bomber. So that rules out terrorists, but you didn't steal anyone's plutonium, right? You just want to stand up for what is right and in your career as pseudo-batman you'll only encounter thugs with handguns. Well you might want to reconsider that one too. Kevlar works by having extremely strong fibers act as a net to "catch" a bullet before it penetrates your not as strong skin. The problem is that the fibers constrict where the bullet hits, and are pulled thin everywhere else. For those of you keeping track this means that every successive shot has a much higher risk of breaking through. In real life it would happen much more like in Training Day. But no worries, your cat like reflexes ensure that they won't hit you a second time as you beat them to a pulp, right? Well not so much... A gunshot stopped by body armor is highly likely to knock you unconcious, break your ribs, or even stop your heart. Happy hunting batman!

4: Anything can be used as a silencer!

As seen in: Shooter - The Departed - The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
We've all seen it: our hero (or villain) has to do some quiet dirty work but all he has is that .357 magnum that everyone in a 2 mile radius will hear. What to do? Oh wait, there's a feather pillow on the couch that will cut that muzzle blast down to a subtle "thump". ???, Profit! Try this in real life and you may be a little alarmed by the result. Suppressors work by sequentially trapping small portions of the expanding gas inside the barrel and allowing them to cool and expand before escaping behind the bullet. Remember that pillow? The one the bullet just ripped out of the way before releasing all of those expanding gasses at once? Yeah it didn't do shit. In The Departed he even uses a revolver, which can't be silenced even with a real suppressor. It gets even more extreme in Shooter, when Marky Mark uses a soda bottle filled with... what is that anyway? Socks? Anyhow our hero was using a .22LR rifle, which is about the weakest rifle available. Ever noticed that soda bottles are considerably thicker on the bottom than everywhere else? That reenforced plastic combined with soft packing material is actually more than enough to stop a .22 and if it didn't you'd be lucky to hit anyone at 5 feet much less the 150 yards that Bob Lee Swagger accomplished.

3: Fire on full auto... All the time!

As seen in: Everything on this list.
This one doesn't even require examples, so I'll just jump right into why it's wrong. First of all, you usually see this happening with assault rifles and submachineguns. While the UZI and MP5 have fully automatic capability, they are meant to be fired in very short bursts. As for the assault rifles, most of them (with the exception of the AK-47) are built on semi-automatic platforms with full auto tacked on as an afterthought. The main reason is that all of these weapons feed from magazines that contain 20-30 rounds. The M4 fires 700 rounds per minute in full auto mode, and the MP5 and UZI are even faster. You do the math. Most of these weapons empty their magazines in 2-4 seconds, yet in movies magazine changes are only required for dramatic effect. Next we have the issue of accuracy. Even the tiny 5.56 fired by the M4 kicks like a mule when the weapon is spitting 10 of them out every second. For the military this is an issue because ammo is heavy and a soldier can only carry so much; every round has to count. When firing on full auto you'll be lucky to hit something with the first shot alone. The U.S., British, and Israeli military (pretty much the top 3 in the world) don't even include full auto firing in their marksmanship training. With police it becomes an even bigger issue, because every round that doesn't hit a bad guy potentially hits a civilian. The police versions of the AR15 usually don't even come standard with auto or burst fire capability. Lastly, the weapons themselves aren't capable of that kind of firing. After only 2 magazines fired on burst the M4 becomes a cook-off hazard. This means that the barrel is so hot it can detonate rounds in the magazine, basicly turning your rifle into a hand grenade. Automatic fire also increases the risk of malfunctions, which are another thing hollywood only sees as a plot device. So at this point you may ask why does automatic fire exist in the first place? Well in the military we use it for suppressive fire, to keep the enemy occupied while those guys with assault rifles flank them. This is accomplished using machine-guns: Specialized weapons with 200 round drums, more efficient feeding and cooling systems, bipods for stability, and interchangeable spare barrels. Guess which one of the three weapon types discussed in this article is seen the least in movies?

2: Anything can be used as cover!

As seen in: 88 Minutes - Die Hard series - Bad Boys - Lord of War
The bad guys are shooting at you and you have two options: Stand there and try to stop hundreds of bullets using only your face, or jump behind the nearest car door or upturned wooden table and be completely safe! Try this in real life and you'll find yourself bleeding out in about 5 seconds. If you've ever seen a picture of coalition bases in Iraq and Afghanistan you might notice that everything is surrounded by walls of sandbags, railroad ties, and hescos (an 8 foot thick cubical steel basket filled with dirt). "Why?" you ask, when 1/2 inch ply wood is clearly more economical. Well after a few centuries of firearm developement, they've gotten pretty damn good at penetrating just about everything. That steel car door by the way is actually less effective than the plywood. Even if you get lucky and the bad guy shooting at you is legally blind, pray he isn't using hollow points. These bullets fragment when they pass through a barrier, increasing the chance of being hit even if they aren't coming straight at you.

1: Dual-wield for twice the firepower!

As seen in: Boondock Saints - Hitman - Tomb Raider - Bad Boys 2
As every shooter game in the last 4 years has proven, two weapons are better than one. If you come bursting into a room with your twin 1911's in hand and open up on two bad guys at one time, they'll never know what hit them. But wait, what's that stinging sensation and warm wet feeling? Well if you're right handed it's probably all of the gunshot wounds from the guy on your left shooting you as you fire wildly into the ceiling. Have you ever tried to do two different things at one time with your hands? Then you might have noticed that you are genetically designed to fail. Your brain is hard wired to your dominant hand, making it extremely coordinated at the expense of even basic motor skills with the other one. You might also note that you have a dominant eye. Go ahead and try this: Stretch out your non-dominant hand and close your dominant eye. Now point at an object across the room and open your dominant eye. Are you still pointing at the same place? You can imagine how badly this would turn out in a gun fight. So what if you point both guns at the same place? Well once again your poorly coordinated left hand is still going to be firing wildly, but your right will get worse as you continue to fire. Because you are trying to focus on two different things, your ability to compensate for recoil is horribly diminished. So you continue firing due to your lack of accuracy and now you have to reload... Oh. Oh shit.

NWOWWE
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5 Movie Combat Tactics

Post by NWOWWE » Sun Aug 22, 2010 8:52 am

LOL! Oh man that list was epic.
Area51Escapee,Jan 30 2011 wrote:
Spatula,Jan 29 2011 wrote: I should go 3-1 this week but it'll probably be something like 0-4 or 0-5.
It sucks going 0-5. You lose all 4 of your bot fights for the week and you also lose at life.

Area51Escapee
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5 Movie Combat Tactics

Post by Area51Escapee » Mon Aug 23, 2010 7:09 am

The example of concealable body armor in Kickass was pretty messed up. But hilarious lol.

Great list.

NWOWWE
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5 Movie Combat Tactics

Post by NWOWWE » Mon Aug 23, 2010 9:54 pm

Should I even ask how many times you've seen people using these fail-tatics firsthand?
Area51Escapee,Jan 30 2011 wrote:
Spatula,Jan 29 2011 wrote: I should go 3-1 this week but it'll probably be something like 0-4 or 0-5.
It sucks going 0-5. You lose all 4 of your bot fights for the week and you also lose at life.

StarlessSoldier
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5 Movie Combat Tactics

Post by StarlessSoldier » Tue Aug 24, 2010 3:07 am

Luckily most soldiers get over these misconceptions in basic training. I do however see the Afghan soldiers that we train doing alot of incredibly dumb things. My favorite is "spray and pray". If you play Call of Duty you know this as taking an educated guess at an enemy position and firing a few rounds in to check. Afghans on the other hand take it a little more literally. Their lives are so ruled by religion that they believe every thing that happens, no matter how small is god's will. So when shooting they close their eyes or look away from the target and mutter prayers to Allah believing that if God wants them to hit the target, he'll guide the bullets there. This makes training them in marksmanship next to impossible because teaching them the right way is viewed as blasphemy. Our one saving grace is that the ones on the other side believe the same thing.

Meganew
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5 Movie Combat Tactics

Post by Meganew » Tue Aug 24, 2010 10:06 am

Heh... Well that was pretty interesting...

succotash_54
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5 Movie Combat Tactics

Post by succotash_54 » Tue Aug 24, 2010 8:20 pm

Awesome and tragic at the same time.

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