If movies and TV shows are to be believed, you’d think that all
it takes to protect you from a deadly bullet to the chest is whatever random
yet profoundly sentimental item you happen to have tucked away in your breast pocket.
An old watch,
a mobile phone…
very often a Bible… doesn’t matter.
Whatever small object happens to be the
most emotionally significant or narratively expedient will do.
Thinking about it though… is this merely a ludicrous movie trope we
tolerate in service of satisfying storytelling,
or does this actually happen?
I’m Stu, this is Debunked, and we’re here to sort the truths from the myths,
and the facts from the misconceptions.
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whether you think an everyday object that you carry could stop a bullet!
The idea of bullets being fortuitously stopped by pocketed items
has a long tradition in popular culture.
Sometimes referred to as the ‘pocket protector’ trope,
it has been appearing in cinema since at least as early as 1935 in Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps,
when the protagonist is saved from a gunshot to the chest by a conveniently-positioned hymnbook.
More contemporary examples can be found in movies such as The Legend of Zorro,
Sleepy Hollow, Whitehouse Down, and Glass Onion - A Knives Out Mystery.
Indeed, it has become such a cliche
that it has been parodied multiple times.
“LUCKY I ALWAYS KEEP A BIBLE CLOSE TO MY HEART, AYE?
As for real life, one need only take the briefest of glances at the good ol’ world wide web to find
headline after headline describing hyper-lucky or seemingly miraculous bullet stoppage.
These myriad stories come from a range of wars and conflicts throughout history,
as well as from shootings involving the police and just regular people.
The prototypical example of bullet-blocking
Bibles is particularly popular, afterall it makes a good headline.
Stories of the Good Book literally saving lives have been talked about
for pretty much as long as the history of firearms themselves.
Possibly the earliest reference comes from the 17th century.
Theologian Richard Baxter, states that there were multiple accounts during the English Civil War of
“THE MARVELLOUS PRESERVATION OF SOULDIERS BY
BIBLES IN THEIR POCKETS WHICH HAVE RECEIVED THE BULLETS”.
If stopping one bullet isn’t impressive enough,
there’s an account of Union Soldier Walter G Jones, recorded in the Library Of Congress,
whose life was saved by one bible from two separate bullets during
two separate battles in 1864 and 1865!
There are countless examples recorded through history, and the more conflicts there are,
the more remarkable the stories become. During World War One,
a bullet was even stopped by a bible on a relevant passage:
'I WILL PRESERVE THEE.'
Skipping forward to 2022, a Ukrainian soldier claimed his bible stopped a bullet on the passage:
“I PRESS ON TOWARD THE GOAL TO WIN THE PRIZE OF GOD’S HEAVENLY CALLING IN CHRIST JESUS.”
However sceptical you may be of such bold claims, clearly there are enough stories,
tales and rumours about this happening that some investigation is warranted.
So what does science say about everyday objects, particularly Bibles, blocking bullets?
Perhaps unsurprisingly, there have been a number of experiments and investigations
into this very topic, pretty much all of which involve shooting a whole bunch of
things a whole bunch of times. And the results are very interesting indeed.
One of the most thorough investigations into this
phenomenon actually comes from those wacky TV scientists, the Mythbusters.
In an episode from 2004, their team popped a cap into a range of commonly-held items, including
lighters and a deck of playing cards, both of which failed miserably at stopping bullets.
When books were put to the test, they found that while a hardcover book of at
least 400 pages might provide some protection against a relatively puny 0.22 rifle shot,
it would stand no chance against anything more powerful. Not exactly encouraging.
More recently in 2018, a police department in the American state of Oklahoma shot school
textbooks to see how much protection they could provide in an active shooter situation.
They found that two textbooks could provide protection against a handgun,
while three textbooks were needed to stop a round fired from an AR-15 rifle,
a gun infamous for its frequent use in American mass shootings.
If it isn’t obvious by now, a small pocket bible is not particularly protective against
gunfire. While a whole pile of books and large stacks of paper can eventually halt a bullet,
every investigation has found that a single book can only only stop the wimpiest of gunfire,
and even then it has to be far larger than
your average pocket Bible to even stand a fighting chance.
So what’s going on here? Why are there so many accounts of this happening if experiments into
this phenomenon routinely show that small, single books are generally pretty useless
at stopping standard gunfire? Are they all fake? Or is something else at play?
There are lots of things to consider here. First of all, a lot of these
stories originate from time periods when guns were generally far less powerful,
which makes the possibility of small objects blocking bullets considerably more plausible.
It’s also impossible to know the exact circumstances of any given shooting incident.
The aforementioned investigations pretty much all involved using modern guns firing modern
bullets directly at the objects, but in the real world, not everything is as exact and precise.
Bullets fired in the heat or war or the chaos of a shooting
very well may not follow a perfect A to B path from gun to target or
make impact at a perfectly straight angle.
Bullets often ricochet off of things like trees, walls,
and the ground, which slows them down and causes them to tumble in the air,
reducing their speed and lethality.
Bits of shrapnel that have broken off from larger projectiles, while still incredibly
dangerous, are often not moving as fast or travelling as directly as a normal bullet.
Indeed, a bible from World War II is notable for the large hole in
its centre and the handwritten note by its owner Lieutenant Jenkins.
“Shrapnel bullet from shell of 75 mm field gun. About May 6 or 7, 1915.”
The key word here is ‘Shrapnel’ -
a direct hit from the shell of a large mounted gun
like this would not have been stopped by any amount of paper.
An object also doesn’t necessarily have to fully block a bullet to have provided protection.
In 2009,
an Argentine pastor, who was shot at close range during an attempted
robbery in Buenos Aires. escaped with only superficial injuries
as the bullet was deflected by a psalm-book he was carrying.
So, as with many things, the reality of this common movie cliché is that it’s complicated.
While testing proves that small everyday items provide little to no protection against bullets,
it’s clear from history that this is a real phenomenon that does occasionally occur.
This is simply because if something happens enough - i.e. people shooting guns at each other - things
that would, on an individual basis, be considered highly unlikely - i.e. those people being saved
by carried items - do begin to occur from time to time. That’s just the nature of probability.
The extent to which these genuine occurrences can
be considered ‘miraculous’ is another question altogether.
First of all, Bibles are by no means the only item to block bullets.
Canadian actor James Doohan, famous for his role as Scotty in the original Star Trek series,
survived being shot several times during the Second World War,
with one bullet destined for his chest
being deflected by a silver cigarette case
And on the 14th of October, 1912, former American president Theodore Roosevelt
famously survived an assassination attempt after being shot in the chest
The bullet first passed through Roosevelt’s glasses case, which also contained a rolled
up copy of the speech he planned to deliver, before lodging itself in his chest muscle.
Roosevelt immediately asked that no harm come to his assailant,
then delivered his full 90 minute speech as planned before accepting medical help.
He lived with the bullet in his chest for the remainder of his life.
But for every life saving account,
we must also consider the stories of people like William Preston Mangum,
another Confederate soldier from the American Civil War who was hit
by a Union bullet. While the Bibles of other soldiers served as holy shields,
Magnum “was only saved from instant death by a bible in his pocket,
which broke the force of the ball”. He died a week later from the resulting chest wound.
So, to conclude - is it possible that a bullet could be stopped, slowed or deflected by an object
held on one’s person, such that it may prevent or lessen a possibly fatal gunshot injury? Yes.
Is it… likely? No. Not at all.
The reasons why we can find so many examples of this ‘cliché’ actually
happening are because the sensationalised accounts of bullet-proof Bibles are far
more notable than the stories of people who weren’t saved by their everyday carry. And
because humans are constantly shooting at each other all the chuffing time,
it means that once in a gazillion times the perfect conditions occur in the exact right way,
which result in a seemingly miraculous escape from death.