Can a Human Dodge a Bullet?

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Rascal made it look easy. Heroes effortlessly pull it off in the movies. But is it really possible?

Smithsonian Magazine has this to say: "Regardless of your speed and finesse, no human can dodge a bullet at close range. The bullet is simply traveling too fast. Even the slowest handguns shoot a bullet at 760 miles per hour, SciAm explains. Humans can react to something in about 0.2 seconds on the fast end depending on the task and if they know something is coming. But in everyday circumstances the average reaction is more like 1.5 seconds. 

With this in mind, MythBusters performed an experiment to find out how far away an average person would have to stand away from a speeding bullet in order dodge it, SciAm says. The answer, it turns out, is about three football fields—hardly the stuff of Hollywood. The news for would-be heroes gets even worse, too. Unless you were peering through binoculars, you probably wouldn’t be able to see the bullet getting fired from that distance, meaning you wouldn’t know to dodge it in the first place."

The bottom line? Unless you’re Neo from the Matrix (or Rascal Holliday), don’t count on being able to dodge a bullet!

(If your interest is piqued, you can check out this site where MythBusters gets into some details about their bullet-dodging experiment.)

Source credit: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/to-dodge-a-bullet-youd-have-to-see-it-from-three-football-fields-away-180947799/