How do you stop a T-rex?

[Rathark]

I'll avoid obvious options such as rocket launchers, and focus on weapons that require a bit more effort (not to mention nerve).

A T-rex is charging at you at maximum possible speed (whatever that is), starting from 30 m away. If you were to use any of the following weapons to defend yourself, how would you do it? Would all require perfect timing and precision? Are some just plain unusable?

Elephant rifle (any)
M-16 (ordinary bullets)
2 Uzis with amour-piercing rounds
12-gauge shotgun
Traditional whale harpoon
Medieval broadsword
Samurai sword


Just for the record, I know nothing about hunting, and I have never handled a firearm in my life.

[CJvR]

Samurai sword
Medieval broadsword
Umm no thanks, even if by some miracle you won the carcas would squash you when it fell.

Traditional whale harpoon
Great for throwing down at whales but not for stabbing up at T-Rexes.

12-gauge shotgun
Not enough penetaring power.

2 Uzis with amour-piercing rounds
Not enough penetrating power.

M-16 (ordinary bullets)
Might do some good but you need to hit vitals and that would be hard to do on automatic, and without automatic fire you might as well pick...

Elephant rifle (any)
You have only one or two shots but if they are well aimed you will have one spectacular trophy to hang on the wall!

[PeZook]

I'd take the 12-gauge shotgun (semiautomatic, like the Benelli M1 or SPAS-12) with sabot slugs or an M16, and go for the legs. Even if you seriously hurt one leg, the T-Rex will eventually fall down and you will have all the time you need to pump it full of lead.
Also, the UZIs with AP round wouldn't be a bad idea at all - albeit I'd se somewhat more inclined to used traditional 9mm bullets - they expand and make a heck of a mess with bones, that act as shrapnel when the bullet fragments them. Nasty. A single shot in the arm (the kind action heroes regurally survive) can be lethal with that thing. I dare not think what a hail of 9mm parabellum could do to T-Rex's legs
As for the elephant rifle - well, an elephant can survive a shot at the head with a .454 Nitro round (I might have gotten the caliber wrong though, correct me if I did) under the right circumstances. And the ER doesn't have a very high rate of fire.
Swords - duh

Phosphorous rounds might work, but the T-Rex will probably just stomp you before it dies. Phosphorous 40mm grenades are another thing

[Mr Bean]

If I got special Ninja powers to go along with the Swords Maybe

Otherwise the only weapon I'd want at my side was an AWP(Artic Warfare Magnum Police Edition .50 cal Anti-Material Rifle)
Its basicly the worlds largest non-recoless rifle and is speced to be able to shoot through APC Armor, Both sides

Ever see Tremors 2? The Giant Rifle he has? Thats the little Brother of the AWP

[Rathark]

Also, the UZIs with AP round wouldn't be a bad idea at all - albeit I'd se somewhat more inclined to used traditional 9mm bullets - they expand and make a heck of a mess with bones, that act as shrapnel when the bullet fragments them. Nasty. A single shot in the arm (the kind action heroes regurally survive) can be lethal with that thing. I dare not think what a hail of 9mm parabellum could do to T-Rex's legs

But first they'd have to penetrate to that depth ... are ordinary bullets up to it?

[PeZook]

But first they'd have to penetrate to that depth ... are ordinary bullets up to it?

Hey, it's not like the T-Rex's skin is bulletproof. And since it's charging at you, all you need is to fire low, at the part where there aren't enough muscles to stop the bullets (most of the muscles are usually BEHIND the lower part of the leg - take a look at your own one, the bones are right behing the skin in the front, and it's the same with big animals like horses, too). I'm only wondering if they'd be able to fragment the bones as easily as they can with "normal" animals (including humans). After all, the Rex is one big son of a bitch, and it's bones will probably be much stronger than anything organic we can see/do ballististic tests on in these days.

[Graeme Dice]

Medieval broadsword
Samurai sword

Why would you put two essentially identical weapons here? Neither is going to be of any real use when dealing with large animals, and the people wielding them would know that.

They would be using boar spears for the people on foot (long spear with tines that prevent the animal from running down the spear impaling themselves and killing you.), lances for the guys on horseback, who would then change to their swords only once the lance broke, and hopefully some crossbows with a draw of over 100 lbs. They will have much the same penetrating power as some guns so they will do some damage.

[consequences]

Going by the canon evidece presented in Jurassic Park 3, we know that the rifle fire by the armed mercenaries didn't even cause signifigant bleeding to any of the dinos chasing them. If we go by the original Jurassic Park novel, then you would want rocket launchers against a velociraptor. Yeah, I know this means nothing against a real life dinosaur, but at least I am pulling the info out of MIchael Crichton's ass, not mine.

[Omega-13]

I'd take the Uzi's with armour piercing, and shoot at the knees

[Manji]

Barret .50 cal

or

General Electric M134 Minigun (7.62)

[Raxmei]

Barret .50 cal

or

General Electric M134 Minigun (7.62)

I want an A-10 with its tank-killing gun.

[Renewed_Valour1]

Elephant rifle (any)

You better be a very good shot.

M-16 (ordinary bullets)

Not enough penetrating power in my opinion to stop it. Maybe if you had the M203 slung on those rounds might stop the Rex with a solid hit.

2 Uzis with amour-piercing rounds

Might as well use spit wads.

Traditional whale harpoon

You better have one strong arm… Those things are supposed to be tossed downward not up. Now if you had the nice cannon to fire them like modern whalers….

Medieval broadsword
Samurai sword

For my next trick I'll down an A-10 with a .22.

My personal picks would be the
Ma Deuce
MAAWS
SMAW
Javelin
MK19

If I'm going up against a T-Rex; I don't care what condition the carcass is in as long as it fall into the category of dead.

[Sea Skimmer]

I'll avoid obvious options such as rocket launchers, and focus on weapons that require a bit more effort (not to mention nerve).

A T-rex is charging at you at maximum possible speed (whatever that is), starting from 30 m away. If you were to use any of the following weapons to defend yourself, how would you do it? Would all require perfect timing and precision? Are some just plain unusable?

Elephant rifle (any)
M-16 (ordinary bullets)
2 Uzis with amour-piercing rounds
12-gauge shotgun
Traditional whale harpoon
Medieval broadsword
Samurai sword


Just for the record, I know nothing about hunting, and I have never handled a firearm in my life.

None of those would be effective. Most so called Elephant rifles are single shot, and are not actualy that powerful, and Reptiles dont bleed out very fast.

The minimal I'd face a T-Rex at that range with is an M82 12.7mm sniper rifle, and I dont think it would stop it in time. Idealy I want a KPV, hopefuly in a quad mounting.

[Sea Skimmer]

If I got special Ninja powers to go along with the Swords Maybe

Otherwise the only weapon I'd want at my side was an AWP(Artic Warfare Magnum Police Edition .50 cal Anti-Material Rifle)
Its basicly the worlds largest non-recoless rifle and is speced to be able to shoot through APC Armor, Both sides

Ever see Tremors 2? The Giant Rifle he has? Thats the little Brother of the AWP

The Artic warfare is no were near the biggest or most powerful rifle in the world. Steyr has its IWS 2000, which is a 15.2mm firing discarding sabot round. There are also about a half different .50 rifle designs around, plus several 20mm designs. Then there's all those WW2 anti tank rifles, some of which can be used to fire quite large shaped charge rifle grenades.

However why both with a mere rifle? The KPV fires Russian 14.5mm anti tank rounds with twice the punch of any 12.7mm round, at 550 RPM. It also comes in double and quad mounts.

The main drawback is the 355-pound weight.

[Mr Bean]

Hey once a Rifle gets over 78 Pounds(AWP weight will tripod and full ten shot extended clip, and scope of course) its not a rifle anymore its a cannon!

[RedImperator]

Just so you guys know what you're up against (I don't know guns too well, but I do know my dinosaurs), here's some of Rex's stats:

Rex averaged about 39 feet long and 20 feet tall, and had a projected weight of about 8 tons (heavier than an African bull elephant), though they may have maxed out at nearly fifty feet long. He (or more likely she, since the females were bigger and probably more aggressive) probably wasn't as fast as Jurassic Park depicted--new studies, based on the size of the leg bones, have placed Rex's top speed anywhere between 10 and 25 km/hr. Rex's head was more than four feet long and lined with fangs up to six inches long. The fangs were serrated and could trap meat, giving Rex awful breath and possibly a septic bite like a Komodo Dragon. Rex probably killed in one bite, practically ramming his victims with his jaws open, driving his teeth deep into flesh and oftentimes several inches into bone (Triceratops hip bones have been discovered with Rex toothmarks gouged two inches deep), shaking his head violently to cause massive internal injuries, and then pulling out with an enormous chunk of raw meat in his mouth. This attack would likely be almost instantly fatal. If the victim somehow survived, he'd still be bleeding profusely and his wounds would shortly become infected. Against a smaller target, T-Rex may have been somewhat clumsier, much like a lion is good at killing gazelles but not so good at killing mice. But a 6 foot man standing out in the open would probably be a decent target, and a hungry T-Rex isn't going to pass up anything the looks like food.

T-Rex's likely prey were the hadrosaurs (duckbills) and ceratopsians (horned dinosaurs), including the famous Triceratops. Parasaurolophus, a typical hadrosaur, was 33 feet long and weighed 2 tons fully grown. Triceratops, the most common ceratopsian during T-Rex's time, grew to 30 feet long and weighed up to 11 tons. Triceratops wore two enormous horns above his eyes, each nearly the length of a man. It should be noted that Rex probably didn't go after fully grown adults in the same way that modern lions don't attack fully grown elephants. Both of these herbivorous dinosaurs are suspected to have traveled in herds, so Rex would have had to have used some cunning to separate weak and young animals from the main group before killing them. This information may seem superfluous, but remember: Rex was built to do battle with these giants, and had a skeleton built accordingly. Also, it should be noted, that T-Rexes were built to survive combat with other T-Rexes--"Sue", the most complete Tyrannosaurus skeleton ever found, had healed Tyrannosaur bite marks on her ribs, as well as some unhealed ones--the latter were probably what killed her.

Bullets are faster than a T-Rex tooth, but bullets don't come with 8 tons of momentum behind them and bullets aren't the size of banannas. Keep that in mind when you're trying to figure out what size slug you'd need to shatter a Rex tibia. Also, the brain was relatively small in the skull and shielded behind lots of bone and muscle. The best shot at the brain would probably be up into the roof of his mouth. A shot at the heart is iffy: Rex's rib cage was deep and sturdy, and a row of smaller bones ran between the ribs to support Rex's weight while he was laying down. A shot to the lung would be easier, but that won't be instantly fatal, and a hurt, angry, alive T-Rex is hardly an improvement over a hungry one. Just the opposite, I'd imagine. Rex's physiology was probably somewhere between avian and reptillian. He probably bled faster than a lizard, but slower than a mammal the same size would. At any rate, bleeding him out isn't an option unless by bleeding him out you mean blowing him completely apart. They WERE built to survive serious wounds in the wild, and they won't bleed to death in the few seconds it takes for him to reach you. A Rex won't be scared of guns: he's too stupid to figure out they can hurt him. This means that if you hit him non-fatally, he won't connect the gun (or you) to the pain, and he won't back off. A sword might actually impress him more, but a sword will do jack and squat to Rex unless you can cut his throat, and the throat is twenty feet in the air when he's running and behind more than a yard of muscle, bad breath, and teeth when he's moving in to bite you. A bite to you will be instantly fatal--either he's going to grab you around the middle and cut you in half, or he's going to catch a limb and shake you around like the proverbial rag doll (at the very least, your arm or leg will be ripped out of their socket and you'll fall 20 feet with a limb missing and Rex pissed off that he lost you, temporarily). We won't discuss what a bite to the head would accomplish.

Your best bet, I think, is to try for a head shot with a powerful enough round to blast through bone and hit brain. The leg bones are very heavy and will need almost a direct hit to shatter, not an easy shot to make against a moving animal. Remember, too, that no matter where he starts from, Rex's teeth are 15 feet closer to you than his legs are.

Hope this all helps. Happy hunting.

[Raxmei]

That A-10 sounds better and better all the time.

[Howedar]

I'd still be happy with a M2 (although I'd still prefer one of those Russian heavy machine guns or even better, a GAU-8).

[Sea Skimmer]

That A-10 sounds better and better all the time.

A Frogfoot with rocket and gun pods would be better for this task. Better still would be an Attack helicopter with transport capacity, a HIND-F or A-60. That way you can bring along some friends so once you done blasting it, you can land and have them take you picture while standing in the middle of a blackened blood splattered field on top of the mangled chunks of flesh that are the T-Rex corpse.

Hey once a Rifle gets over 78 Pounds(AWP weight will tripod and full ten shot extended clip, and scope of course) its not a rifle anymore its a cannon!

A 78-pound cannon? That is not a cannon. This is a cannon, the worlds largest in fact, though a pair of mortars have it beat for caliber, 914mm vs. 890mm.

[img]http://www.moscow-hotels-russia.com/pfo ... ar_gun.jpg
[/img]

[starfury]

That A-10 sounds better and better all the time.

that or a MBT like the M1A2 or the Leopard2A6.

[Darth Wong]

Flamethrower. Fear of fire is instinctive and universal to virtually all animals.

[RedImperator]

Flamethrower. Fear of fire is instinctive and universal to virtually all animals.

And you don't even have to bother throwing the meat on the grill when you take it home.

Seriously, you've probably come up with the only weapon I'd want against a Rex short of an anti-tank weapon. Hell, I'll take the flamethrower over the anti-tank guns and rockets. You can miss with a rocket. How in the world do you miss with a jet of flame?

[Mr Bean]

If that Flame-Thrower was mounted on a Tank even Better

Hmm Prehaps Sheppered will run across this, What was the name of the Dededcated Flame Tank the Germans had during WWII?

[Darth Garden Gnome]

I'lltake a WESTAR-34 blaster pistol (ie-Jango's gun). That thing killed the Reek in a single shot to the face (although the book depicts a much tougher struggle), now the Reek is no T-Rex, but I'd love to see any gun its size take out something so big.

Although, sci-fi guns aside, I'd take the flamethrower, hands down.

[Sea Skimmer]

Flamethrower. Fear of fire is instinctive and universal to virtually all animals.

Not a bad idea, but I'd personally rather not let the thing get close enough for me to use a thrower. Luckily the worlds Infantry weapons arsenals can do better then that in the form of the Russian RPO napalm rocket launcher.

Information on RPO & RPO-A Recoilless Flame-throwers

The RPO flame-thrower is a shoulder fired weapon. It fires a rocket-propelled napalm round. The RPO is reusable and can be fired at a rate of one shot per minute. It weighs 3.5 kilograms and is 1.44 meters long. The RPO-A is 0.92 meters long and contains only one half as much incendiary mixture as the RPO. This improved version is a disposable weapon. It can be fired by one operator at an estimated two shots per minute. The RPO is capable of firing 4 liters of incendiary mixture to a maximum effective range of 180 to 200 meters. The range and accuracy of the RPO-A are two to three times higher than that of the RPO. Both flame-throwers are effective as antitank weapons, "bunker-busters," and against troop formations. Both models may be present in some former Soviet airborne and first-line ground forces units.

http://www.galope.com/mike/sa_info.htm#rpo