A while ago, Mythbusters discovered that shooting a bullet into solid ice can create spinning bullets. But what happens if you leave your gun or your ammo out in the middle of a blizzard before pulling the trigger? Will a frozen gun perform the way it’s supposed to? Will it even shoot?
Dark Arts set out to answer those questions. They doused dry ice in pure grain alcohol to bring the liquid down to a frigid -110° F. Just to put that into perspective, the lowest natural temperature ever recorded on Earth was -128.6 degrees Fahrenheit in Antarctica. So theoretically, you could actually have a firearm get this cold.
Before we get too much farther, we should point that this is a dangerous experiment and you shouldn’t try it out at home. There weren’t any terrible accidents in the video, but a different gun model or a different ammo type could have disastrous results.
Dark Arts tested out a number of different ammo types, including a 12 gauge shell and a few .45 ACP balls. How do the bullets hold up to icy temperatures? See for yourself.
(The first shots are fired at around 4:30. They shoot a frozen gun near the 11:50 mark.)
Huh. Who would have guessed? Somehow, we expected something more dramatic or… explosive. When you think about it, though, it shouldn’t be all that surprising of the bullets functioned normally. After all, they run on explosions and explosions still work at low temperatures.
Dark Arts claims that some of the bullets fired at lower power and at reduced recoil, but it’s hard to say for sure without any concrete evidence. It’s just anecdotal evidence, but at this point we’re just going to have to take their word for it.
Things got a little bit tense when they froze the Hi-Point pistol. Surprisingly, everything went better than expected. It shot off all of its rounds and only jammed once, despite the mist billowing off it.
Our only gripes about the experiment is that it wasn’t quite as extensive as we would have liked. The video is already a tad long at 15 minutes, sure, but we would have liked to see a number of different pistols, and maybe a revolver or two.
So, there you have it. The next time you’re trudging through the frigid wastes of the North Pole and a polar bear charges at you, there’s fairly good evidence to suggest that your gun will function normally. We can’t say based off of this clip that frozen guns work just as well as room-temperature guns. What we can say for certain, however, is that a frozen gun will work at least part of the time. At least you’ll have a chance of avoiding your fate as polar bear chow.
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