Apr 25, 2011

The silver bullet

I need a few silver bullets for my 1911s,  a noble material for a noble caliber. So off to the counting house.

(Punch calculator. Mumble.)

I can't afford it.

This morning's market for an ounce of Ag is a bit more than $49.  An ounce yields  2.18 projectiles @200 grains. That geeks to $22.47 per round.

It is cheaper to feed the werewolves.

Which, come to think of it, would make as good a personal slogan as any for Bernanke and Geithner.
.

14 comments:

SpeakerTweaker said...

It is cheaper to feed the werewolves.

That may be one of the funniest things I have ever read.



tweaker

Jim said...

Thank you, Pardner.

What the Hell would we do for comedy if it weren't for the rulers who look out for our own good?

Sean D Sorrentino said...

Unless the werewolves were planning on eating a protected class of citizen, the Obama Justice Department will probably prosecute you for hate crimes against Were-Americans.

Fodder4Thought said...

Just a thought - maybe you could just plate the bullets with silver.

Or make a smaller bullet and use a sabot.

Tasso said...

480 grains per troy ounce.

staghounds said...

Might have some OAL problems in .45 ACP, what with the lesser density.

Crotalus (Dont Tread on Me) said...

I guess you'd better be able to discern what is a real werewolf that needs a silver bullet, and what is a common varmint that lead can kill.

Anonymous said...

Crotalus, that's easy you shoot them a few times with the lead ones, and if they stop you don't need the silver.


-Joat

Old NFO said...

Well damn... And I just saw some REALLY neat silver bullets at the NRA museum :-( And that IS a great line!!!

Came over from Tam's blog.

Anonymous said...

The nasty little secret there: It always was.

In Pride and Prejudice (1811, 200 years ago), Jane Austen describes a widow who lives in a cottage with only one servant, because she only gets fifty pounds a year. A British pound, then, was a troy pound of silver. A shilling was an ounce; so was a dollar.

If you work it out through living standard parity, that 50 pounds or 600 shillings/dollars makes it about $60K today, within Kentucky windage, so an ounce of silver then is roughly $100 now. You've got another factor of two to wait for.

And that was the whole point. You couldn't defend yourself against werewolves, because you couldn't afford the necessary, which made the stories scarier -- and the necessity to depend on the Nobility, who could afford such extravagance, more apparent.

Regards,
Ric

Mikael said...

You could always do it the MHI way and mimic a Corbon powerball. You'd need less silver per bullet. Also my understanding is that it's very hard to cast silver bullets that fit right anyway.

Kevin said...

"Urban fantasy" author Patricia Briggs writes about werewolves, vampires, skinwalkers and other fae in her Mercy Thompson books. She's actually made silver bullets to see if it was possible and if they worked worth a damn. The answers were "Yes," and "Not Really." Silver bullets don't take rifling well, for one thing.

I think Larry Correia has the solution: Silver buckshot shells.

That doesn't address the cost issue, but you know they'll be effective at close range, at least.

Jim said...

TMR readers -- including especially the ones Tam sends over -- are among the greatest.

However, the comments on silver's questionable ballistic coefficient miss the point. It is magic, just like the snickety-snick of chambering a round in a Mossy 500 which reliably sends zombies for miles around scurrying back to their tombs.

Tasso: Yes. I know about Troy, but you were correct to hector me. Blame haste and weak coffee, please.

Old NFO: Think we've had a contact or two over the years. Anyway, always nice to hear from a fellow sailor.

Joat wins the annual Practicality Award for his suggestion on telling werewolves from mere wolves.

Comrade Misfit said...

The DRT ammunition people make frangible bullets with some sort of compressed powder as the projectile's payload.

So make that of silver. The copper jacket gets the bullet into the werewolf and the silver powder blows out its innards.