You hear the echoing of a gunshot.
People all around you begin to scream in panic.
You run and dive for cover.
As you breath heavily trying to get your bearings you look down; you’ve been hit.
A pool of blood begins to soak through your shirt.
How does getting shot feel?
Let’s find out.
We’ve all seen someone get shot in movies or television shows, but do these depictions
have it right?
According to the CDC in 2017 around 40,000 people died from gun related deaths in the
United States alone.
However, many people also survive being shot, and when they tell their story and what it
feels like, there are several commonalities.
That being said, everyone is different.
Some people have really high tolerances for pain, while others not so much.
The sensations felt from being shot are most certainly connected to the location of the
bullet wound, the size of the bullet, and the person themselves.
But let’s look at different accounts and see what most have in common.
Many gunshot survivors remember the initial penetration of the bullet.
The strange thing is that they don’t remember feeling any pain at first.
This is surprising since you’d think a searing hot chunk of metal ripping through your skin,
muscle, and nerves would be excruciating.
However, for the most part, survivors of gun wounds tend not to notice they have been shot
until they see blood.
One gunshot survivor remembers the impact of the bullet feeling like someone had thrown
a small pebble at her.
The bullet hit her in the side, and all she remembers was being in shock, but not feeling
any initial pain.
This may be surprising at first, but this is not uncommon with people who have been
shot.
Many people recount that within the first few moments of being hit by a bullet, they
didn’t feel anything at all.
Once the brain realizes that the body has been injured, and it could be life threatening,
it goes into survival mode.
The brain dumps adrenaline into the bloodstream, which causes the body to increase blood pressure
and heart rate, expand air passages to the lungs, and maximize energy output.
This allows the body to reach superhuman levels and to maintain homeostasis even under intense
circumstances.
The body obviously can’t keep this heightened energy level up forever, but it does allow
the body to continue functioning even if it has been mortally wounded.
The lack of pain is also connected to the size of the bullet.
Larger bullets create larger holes, and tend to inflict more pain.
However, you’d think a smaller caliber should still cause severe pain, but the body is able
to do amazing things under life or death circumstances.
A smaller bullet such as a 9mm that doesn’t break apart on entry will cause a lot less
pain than a large bullet that tears apart into shrapnel.
Bullets that break apart within the body can rip through surrounding tissue and muscle
around the initial entry point.
This causes widespread damage and pain in the affected area.
The more damage caused, the more pain signals will be sent to the brain, the more excruciating
the injury will be.
Once the initial shock starts to wear off, and the body begins damage control, many gunshot
victims remember feeling a burning sensation.
This is pretty universal among survivors.
Some people describe the burning sensation as feeling sort of like an intense bee-sting.
However, the initial burning does not decrease, it just intensifies.
So, it feels like being stung by a bee with a never ending stinger, like a needle just
continuously being pushed into your body.
The burning sensation seems to start the same.
When the bullet penetrates the skin the person feels an impact, but the burn doesn’t start
immediately.
In fact, many gunshot survivors remember feeling numb.
As the bullet enters their body they can feel pressure, but it doesn’t hurt.
Then a numbness sweeps across their body, radiating from the point that the bullet entered
from.
As the numbness and shock begin to fade, it is replaced by the burning sensation.
Other than feeling like a never ending bee sting some people have described the burning
as being incredibly hot.
Like someone was sticking an iron poker that had just come out of a fire into their body.
Other gunshot survivors explain that the burning sensation feels like someone is jamming their
finger into a raw blister.
The burning has also been described as an incredibly intense sunburn that is concentrated
on a single point of the body.
Or like someone is taking a bunch of needles and sticking them into them, except it’s
as if each time the needle enters the body, it is just continuously being pushed further
and further in with no end to the sensation.
The burning seems to begin at the point of entry, but then radiates outward.
This may be a small piece of shrapnel ripping through the nerves.
But one thing is clear: for most people who have been shot, the burning sensation is what
is felt after the brain becomes aware that the bullet has entered the body.
Again every person’s body is different, and therefore, will react in different ways
to intense trauma like being shot.
Soldiers that have been shot have recounted that they had a very different experience
from a bullet ripping through them.
Most agree that when the bullet enters the body there is an initial period of no pain
at all, but that doesn’t last long.
Instead of a slow burning, the bullet wound goes from a slight pressure to excruciating
pain.
The reason that soldiers may experience a more intense pain is because they most likely
have been shot by a higher caliber bullet from a rifle.
The ammunition and guns used in military warfare are probably not the same weapons that civilians
are shot by during senseless acts of gun violence.
This is not always true, but it would seem that being shot by an assault rifle versus
a pistol with a smaller caliber bullet, would correlate to a more intense pain.
One soldier who was shot says that the initial shock wore off after a few seconds of a bullet
entering his stomach.
Then the pain immediately began.
He remembers it feeling like being hit by a sledgehammer in the stomach over and over,
resulting in the worst incontinence possible.
However, with this intense pain, he said that a warm numbness flowed through the rest of
his body, and eventually he blacked out.
On the other end of the spectrum some people who have been shot say there was no pain at
all.
They didn’t feel a burning sensation, they didn’t feel like they had been ripped open,
they felt nothing.
This could just be based on the person, but there are actually a few accounts of people
being shot and saying that they didn’t feel much pain.
One man who was shot in the calf by a .22 caliber bullet said that it didn’t hurt.
He chalks this up to the bullet being small.
It also probably had to do with where he got shot, as there are no vital organs in the
calf.
Being shot in different areas of the body seem to account for different sensations.
But what about being shot in the head?
You may be surprised to find that surviving a gunshot wound to the head is not as uncommon
as you might think.
You might also expect that being shot in the head would be excruciating, but this isn’t
necessarily the case either.
One man was accidentally shot in the head by his wife while he slept.
Now accidentally shooting someone in the head seems unlikely, but that is the story the
wife stuck too.
Either way, while her husband slept the gun went off, and the bullet ripped through his
skull.
When the man awoke he didn’t even know he had been shot.
Instead he complained to his wife of a massive headache.
The headache was so bad the man asked his wife to drive him to the hospital, which she
did.
According to the victim it wasn’t until the nurse at the hospital informed him that
he had been shot in the head that he realized what had happened.
At this point the wife ran out of the hospital to avoid being charged with attempted murder.
However, this is not the only account of someone being shot in the head and surviving.
There are a few commonalities between survivors of gunshot wounds to the head.
The first is the intense headache that accompanies the bullet penetrating the skull.
This is not surprising as they now have a piece of metal lodged in their brain.
The other commonality is a ringing sound.
Most people who have been shot in the head and survive say that they hear a constant
ringing in their ears.
Some describe the ringing as a unique sound unlike anything they’ve ever heard before.
It is so intense and loud that it drowns out almost all other noise.
Other survivors describe it as a really loud buzzing like having bees inside your ears.
And yet others describe it like the ringing of a bell in your head.
Regardless of the description of the ringing, everyone agrees that it is incredibly loud
and persistent.
There also seems to be an initial “ping” sound from being shot in the head.
The ping then starts to intensify into the ringing, which lasts anywhere from hours,
to days or weeks later.
The ringing isn’t painful per se, it is just really loud and annoying.
Most gunshot survivors say that the most painful part of being shot is the recovery process.
The initial gunshot wound for many seems to be a burning sensation, but that is nothing
compared to what happens if they survive the gunshot.
They are rushed to surgery, and depending on where the bullet entered, the operation
to remove the bullet and mend the wound is excruciating.
Many gunshot survivors say that the recovery and rehab process after being shot is much
worse than getting shot itself.
One survivor even described how when she was operated on, the doctors couldn’t find the
bullet initially.
They didn’t want to go digging around in her body looking for it, so they decided to
leave the bullet in.
The survivor had to have multiple surgeries in order to recover from the gunshot, and
during one of them, the bullet had actually been pushed close to the surface of the skin.
She said the bullet was practically poking out of her body until she convinced one of
her surgeons to remove it.
Many gunshot wounds take months to heal.
This means that for a long period of time survivors are in constant pain from their
body healing.
And yet, the pain of recovery isn’t even the worst part for many gunshot survivors.
It’s the psychological trauma that haunts them for the rest of their lives that causes
the most pain.
Most people who are shot end up with PTSD.
They are typically sent to counselors and therapists to help them work through the traumatic
experience, but this does not always help.
Being shot does not just mean they are afraid of being around guns or loud noises, but even
things that are unrelated to being shot may set off a sense of fear and terror.
For many, with the help of medical professionals and counselors, the PTSD can go away.
But for some it doesn’t, and they have to live the rest of their lives with the disorder.
Getting shot is never pleasant.
Whether it is a burning sensation, intense pain, or psychological trauma it is something
that stays with you for the rest of your life.
The sensations associated with being shot depends on the person, the type of bullet,
and where the bullet entered.
Many people who survive being shot never fully recover.
Now watch “How To Actually Survive Getting Shot.”
Or check out “How To Stop Any Pain In Minutes.”