Originally published at: It takes a very steady hand: unexploded grenade removed from Ukrainian soldier's chest | Boing Boing
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This was the story of an old MASH episode…
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is the x-ray upside down? story states the grenade as “inches from his heart”. looks way closer to his gallbladder.
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Maybe, but I consider a live grenade with 1000 feet of me too close to my heart
ETA: Also, inches = less than a foot!
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Worst take on the game Operation ever!
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Can we also just take a moment to appreciate the reality of this? Is this really a “grenade” or a very large explosive round? I mean, the issue here (from the grenade users perspective) is not that the munition penetrated someone’s fucking body it’s that it did not then fucking explode inside of them as intended
This is repulsive (as real war and violence are)
(although, maybe I am wrong since they say they don’t know how it became lodged in him…I am assuming it was not swallowed)
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I was going to say the same thing!
They aren’t hand grenades. They are 40mm grenades launched from a tube either under the barrel of an AK, or from a stand alone launcher. They have a metal “case” like a bullet, but launch a very large exploding projectile. So think of it is a very slow moving (relatively) exploding bullet, that is how it ended up inside of him.
Dude was unlucky to be hit, but very very lucky it didn’t go off.
FYI, The US has a similar system, as well as the Ukrainians using their own version of the Russian stuff.
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I know that it is not a hand grenade (also an appalling weapon). At this caliber though I would expect it to be capable of penetrating someone (it’s just supposed to explode the moment the nose touches something…I guess this guys skin was not thick enough to detonate it?)
Regardless, my point was this is all gross, war is bad, and maybe we don’t need any of this shit
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The ones fired from the rifle attachment or stand alone unit move really slow compared to a bullet, <250-300fps which is how fast a paintball moves. So depending how far away the poor guy was, it isn’t surprising it didn’t penetrate him all the way. I suspect the reason it didn’t go off is because Russia has poor quality control and their shit doesn’t work half the time. They have a timer to go off regardless of what they hit. (Oh and I found out I was wrong above. The Russian VOG doesn’t use a case, but other wise work the same way.)
They do make vehicle and tripod mounted versions of these grenade launchers that are belt fed and use a high velocity round that move at much faster 800fps, but that wasn’t used here. (I am not 100% sure Russia has that version.)
War is bad. Let’s get the Russians out of Ukraine as soon as possible.
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Technically, anything over an inch away from something is “inches away”. It could be 3in or 3,000,000 in!
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If it was more than a foot away I’d probably use some other unit of measurement but “inches away” seems perfectly appropriate here.
That’s not really the most critical organ for surgeons to worry about. There are millions of people who live out pretty normal lives without their gall bladders.
Anyway this is just another example of how heroic wartime doctors are. Few people will ever have to combine the skills of a surgeon with the nerve of a bomb squad technician.
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yeah, i did think that too.
the author may be embellishing the story…
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And far less well protected than I would have thought! 
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Yeah, my ex-wife had hers removed several years ago.
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I expect the grenade had not travelled far enough to arm itself. I’m not familiar with the VOG series, but those fired by the MK19 have a minimum distance they have to travel before they will arm.
So if the victim was shot point-blank I expect the grenade didn’t arm and penetrated the victim instead.
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No, but it is zoomed in a bit. The balloon-shaped sillhouette in the middle? That’s the heart.
The crop at the bottom of the image is at the level of the diaphragm.
If anything, they could have reasonably used “centimeters. Depending on it’s depth relative to the right ventricle, the nearest edge of the projectile might be less than an inch from the heart.
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“Inches from his heart? I would have said it was inches from his gall bladder.”
“Hmm. You have a point, although in either case I would say that the danger to his pericardial membra—”
“Who cares whether it’s a millimeter closer to my heart or my spleen, GET IT OUT OF MY CHEST!”
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