Cool Guides

Tracing a call is instant. It took longer back in the days when there were physical switches, but that's been a long, long time ago.

Yup. Back in the days of analog phone exchanges, you literally had to send a guy to check electrical connections between lines. Which is why it took time and which is why they encouraged the people to keep on the line as long as possible.

Digital exchanges added call tracing as a design requirement. Everything gets logged. Even if you spoofed or blocked your number, the phone company knows what you did. They are the Phone Company.

To add to this a bit more:

Generally, if you want to shoot a lock (or door frame hinges) off, you use a shotgun with special breaching rounds.

Various forms of these have been and still are used by various Militaries, but more often SWAT or equivalent type units.

The general video gamey / movie portrayal of how this works is usually wildly exaggerated / inaccurate though, usually with pistols at moderate ranges.

Conceivably you might also be able take a door lock/hinges apart with an anti materiel rifle, but this would be wildly impractical.

It's gonna depend on the lock, too. Most locks most people buy are gonna have shit build quality. Some literally so bad that you could just shoot straight through it and not just disrupting the locking mechanism (in the way that some quite a bit stronger locks can be disrupted with, for example, a rubber mallet) but literally destroying it. Others (a minority) might be so strong that a typical gun has no effect at all and the infographic actually gets it right.

Pretty sure chloroform is wrong too.

Chem teacher had some and one kid stupidly took a whiff. She dropped like a sack of potatoes. She woke up in a few seconds but yeah - that shit was instant.

I guess it might take 5 minutes to get enough to be out for a few hours.

If you're trying to lay down suppressing fire, it'll work, though.

Also, in most media I've seen, people with two guns still primarily shoot at single targets

This one seems the least believable to me, but I admit I have almost no experience shooting guns. Maybe you won't be super accurate, but it would work if you were going for suppressing fire against multiple bad guys while trying to get to cover or something.

I would like to add that a suppressor can render certain specialized firearms nearly silent if they are used in conjunction with subsonic ammunition. A suppressor can deaden the sound of the initial explosion, but a supersonic bullet will continue to create a sonic boom as it flies through the air. A subsonic round doesn't create a sonic boom and as a result nearly all of the sound of firing comes from the initial explosion. If that explosion is well sealed and is funneled through the right supressor, nearly silent operation can be achieved. A good example of this is the Welrod used during World War Two, which was quiter than an airsoft gun and was only really audible at point blank range.

TLDR, how quiet a gun gets with a suppressor is determined by the ammunition, the type of firearm, and type of suppressor. Suppressed gunfire can range from as loud or louder than a nail gun to as quiet as a sneeze.

Also, phone companies and phones keep records of what device pinged what tower and when, people have been convicted off of that data.

To me this is why that point is especially misleading, the movie trope is that as long as you hang up the phone soon enough they can't find you, but that's obviously not how it works at all.

My issue with the two guns thing is that the “myth” they present is that it looks cool. Which is subjective, and for many people it does look cool. You’re unlikely to hit with any accuracy, but you’ll look cool missing.

Dude I was about to say, there's no way they don't have a quicker way to track calls. They just wouldn't tell us for obvious reasons.

The lock: There are rounds made specifically for this https://clucas.com/ammunition/hatton-round/

Aiming at two targets: Only if you're Jerry Miculek ...

https://youtu.be/b7G-sOC3-sQ?si=S_jhyo46hAO_ejgP

https://youtu.be/UgOnKxBKnAs?si=qa_8E3GLN30vql36

I'll say for your comment on slugs, we used 10 gauge Magnum slugs and had no issue on reinforced doors or padlocks. A bit scary, but fun and informative.

A stopped heart can actually be started with bullets fired from two guns with silencers.

They also claim that the myth is "it looks cool".

That's not a myth - it does look cool. It just so happens to be horrible inaccurate as well. (Without powers)

Precordial thumps getting dropped from the EMS scope made me sad (paramedic here). They have a lot of utility, especially for us because we're pretty much on top of the patient the whole ride, so we're generally going to notice when they code. The problem is that it's a lack of training. Most people weren't even asked to practice the technique, you just read about it and got a slap on the ass on the way out the door. I mean, can you imagine teaching CPR or intubation that way? It'd be a fucking disaster. Little wonder people were doing it wrong and causing harm.

Imo, too often the medical field's answer to "people are doing this wrong" is "fuck it, we're taking it away", when it should be "do more (effective) training".

For some reason it never occurred to me that chest compressions were actually to help pump blood. I guess I assumed it was just some magic that might start a heart up again.

Yup. One that got me was the one about shooting two guns.

"Aiming at two targets is hardly possible".... It's absolutely possible. You can aim at two things all day long. If you're firing two guns at two targets, having to aim at them isn't really the issue.

The issue is that any aim you have one either target is going to suck. Combined with the difficulty of simply holding a several pound hunk of metal at arm's length, and having it violently shake around every time a round is discharged because you don't have adequate control over it to keep it from shaking every which way.

No sir. Aiming is not the problem. Actually hitting the target is the problem.

Presumably would actually just reform back into a planet since if you blow up a planet the mass is still there, it has just being fractured. If you leave it a couple of years it'll form back into a planet again.

This is probably what happened with the ice moon of Europa.

Saturn's rings aren't an asteroid belt. Just replace the word "asteroid belt" with "ring system" in Star Wars and it make sense again.

Mythbusters were able to easily break all but the largest padlocks with a hammer so you could probably pistol whip a lot of them too.

At first I thought you were talking about the physiologist and not the game.