What’s Inside Ammo? A Cross-Section of Bullets

National Geographic ^ | 7-13-2013 | Sabine Pearlman and Melody Kramer

[Renfield]

Artist Sabine Pearlman headed to Switzerland in 2012 on a unique mission. She was there to photograph 900 cross-sections of ammunition in order to expose the "otherwise invisible architecture" of some of the most destructive weaponry ever created.

But in doing so, Pearlman made a conscious choice to not provide her audience with details about specifics: things like the names or purposes of the bullets themselves.

"I wanted to keep them out of context, in order to make it possible for people who look at the images to appreciate them for many different reasons," she said....

[Renfield]

Really interesting. I had no idea that there were flechette-containing bullets, and other advances shown here....

[Renfield]

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

Reminds me of a reloader who loaded his shotgun shells with short nails with flattened heads.

You should have seen what it did to a ham! Waste of a good ham too!

[knarf]

Remember .. these are specialty rounds.

[DirtyPigpen]

Gives me ideas for stuff to do at the reloading bench...maybe.

[mountainlion]

I think some of the art were bullets that never made through testing like the three stacked in one shell. I saw that somewhere but I don’t think anything became of. Looks like scare tactics form national pornographic to me.

[Kommodor]

Fascinating. I wonder what the one in the middle is for.

[knarf]

I was not thinking the same thing .. I think.

[DirtyPigpen]

I’m lazy. Still haven’t got around to messing with sabot.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

Years ago (1960s) I read how some troops in Korea were given these new flechette rounds to test. When some NK troops infiltrated the DMZ, these rounds were used and found to kill the invaders dead, double dead and dead,dead,dead! All from one round each.

Knowing our wimpy proclivity for making nice clean kills, these rounds were probably banned, or put on the back burner to allow the .223 1/14 rifling to progress.

[TexasRepublic]

“Fascinating. I wonder what the one in the middle is for.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flechette

[Bob]

Hyperbole alert -- "most destructive weaponry ever created". Offhand, I'd say that there are many, many forms of weaponry that are far more destructive than rifle rounds.

And just to be picky, the cross-sections shown are those of cartridges, not bullets.

[Disambiguator]

Bullets? Those look like cartridges to me. The bullet is only one of four main components.

Journalists...sheesh.

[Robert A Cook PE]

Cool!

[Voice of Reason1]

Hmmm if you shot the middle one into some machinery, wouldn’t that be sabotage?

Pun Ping!

[Flatus I. Maximus]

"the most destructive weaponry ever created"

[Flatus I. Maximus]

(Actually, I don't know why Persepolis is in there. I just grabbed the image from the Ms Magazine website.)

[Disambiguator]

GMTA

[Uncle Miltie]

"Fascinating. I wonder what the one in the middle is for."

A really long game of Jarts.

[Renfield]

It’s for penetrating body armor. (I don’t have any inside information, but the intent is obvious....)