Re: a really stupid question ...

[Gurth <gurth@xxxxxxxxx>]

According to Arclight, on Wed, 10 Jan 2001 the word on the street was...

> I saw "Predator" on christmas eve and I wonder if those scenes with the 
> modifidied Minigun are stupid fake or (with someone as strong as "Blaine") 
> if it's possible for a human to fire such a gun from the hip.

No. As Rob H. said, both the torque and recoil would be too strong for a
person to hold it.

BTW, the weapon used is not an M134 but (X)M214 (I don't actually know if
it ever got standardized or not). The difference is that the former is
7.62x51 mm, while the latter fires 5.56x45 mm and is correspondingly
smaller and lighter. The gun, with 1,000 rounds, weighs 38.6 kg (I suspect
that's with a tripod; empty the gun alone weighs 12.2 kg) so the weight
isn't _too_ much of a problem. The 4,000 rpm rate of fire would be, though,
and I think I read somewhere that the recoil force is in the order of 500 N
for as long as you keep the trigger pressed...

-- 
Gurth@xs4all.nl        -        http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
  My ocular organs!
->       NAGEE Editor * ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso        <-
->     The Plastic Warriors Page: http://plastic.dumpshock.com      <-

GC3.1: GAT/! d-(dpu) s:- !a>? C+@ UL P L+ E? W(++) N o? K- w+ O V? PS+
PE Y PGP- t(+) 5++ X+ R+++>$ tv+(++) b++@ DI? D+ G(++) e h! !r(---) y?
Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998