just figured i should point out in your discription you're describing two different things.

1: Stop the bullet on it's own.

2: Keep you from being killed.

they could both be right. The cash didn't stop the bullet, but did slow it down enough.

Once my great grandfather accidentally fired his .357 magnum at the wall of his house. The bullet penetrated the brick exterior, the plaster wall inside, the tile backsplash in the kitchen, a toaster, and one side of a brown paper grocery bag my great grandmother had just placed on the counter. The bullet bounced off the other wall of the bag just inches from her chest. My great grandmother then remarked "Good thing that bag was there!"

So it's all in how you look at it. If this Brazilian bullet passed through a window, some curtains, a puffy winter coat, a thick sweater, a sturdy bra, and then a wad of cash, then I guess it WAS the cash did stop the bullet... in the end.

What kind of gun was it? I am reminded of the novel From Russia With Love and the near assasination of James Bond.

At one time we tested the Zippo lighter theory. Although the lighter was a bit worse for wear, it stopped a .380 from 30 feet. Would leave one hell of a bruise though...

A lot of it depends on how far the bullet has traveled. It will have its greatest force as it leaves the muzzle of the gun; it will constantly lose force from that instant on. If the bullet has traveled far enough, it will lose enough force that even just your skin will stop it.

The bullet will also lose force every time it bounces off of something or passes through something.

Then you have other matters, such as different types of bullets having different amounts of force, or bullets not firing properly, or bullets that are made with too little propellant, and all that sort of thing.

It's quite easy to imagine a scenario in which a low-powered handgun fired in an enclosed space could have had the bullet ricochet off something and hit this woman, whereupon the wad of money (I wonder what Brazilian money is made of?) slowed it enough that she was merely badly injured rather than potentially killed.

Accipiter sez:
"I wonder what Brazilian money is made of?"

Paper. Although printing money on kevlar or sheets of tank armor would be interesting.

I was thinking about how in Australia they now use polypropylene to make their banknotes. Those would probably be even tougher than paper notes, and so provide more resistance (and thus more protection).

She did have to have the bullet removed in surgery, so it defiantly didn't stop the bullet completely.

Accipter,

I'm happy to do a comparison of your paper notes and our plastic ones. So if you send a thickish wad of $10 notes over I promise I'll give then a good test...

Teddy Roosevelt was saved from a bullet by the speech in his pocket:
http://www.historybuff.com/library/refteddy.html

I'm happy to do a comparison of your paper notes and our plastic ones. So if you send a thickish wad of $10 notes over I promise I'll give then a good test...

This is America, where 1/4 of the population owns guns. I think that if the testing is done anywhere, this is the place to do it. All manner of firearms will be readily available.

I will gladly accept large wads of money from any and all countries, so as to test their bullet-resisting abilities.

The stories of people being saved by an item in their pocket - be it a Bible, a pack of playing cards, a gold coin, or the like - are too numerous to be convincingly contradicted by one episode of Mythbusters. True, most of these items would not stop a bullet from a modern high-powered rifle fired at a right angle from the target at close range, but as others have noted there are many factors: mass of the bullet, velocity of the bullet, angle of deflection, previous objects encountered, and so forth. I have personally seen where a rifle bullet bounced off a piece of wood at a distance of about 40 feet from where the rifle was fired.

Execllent post.Thanks for sharing with us.

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