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this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2024
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There's a reason every science team down there has someone carrying a gun.
They know what lies in the deep.
But they dont know that guns are useless underwater.
Not yet.
The gun isn't for what's outside.
If the gun gets wet down there, it's already too late to serve its purpose. And may whatever higher being is out there have mercy on their souls.
I know the joke is that guns are pointless in the hadal zone because cthulu lives there, but...
A gun being wet or immersed in water rarely makes it totally incapable of firing at least once.
Many modern firearms will fire a projectile at lethal (to a human) velocities while underwater, though range and accuracy will be greatly reduced.
Getting a gun wet generally does not make it ineoperable.
The primer and gunpowder combust and deflagrate without the need for external atmospheric oxygen, they contain their own oxidizers.
(This also enables firearms to function in space, with no atmosphere)
The main problem is that if the gun's barrel is full of water, this provides significantly more resistance than a barrel full of only air.
The cartridge will fire, but the bullet's velocity through water will be much lower, the weapon might not cycle its action properly (meaning you may have to manually do so)...
... and the overpressure will cause significant damage to the weapon, possibly leading to it explosively dissambling itself after sustained overpressure usage.
Which is actually comparable to running a bunch of overpressure, magnum or +P rounds through a firearm above water.
There exist firearms and specialized cartidges (flechettes or otherwise) that are designed differently to operate consistently while underwater, as well as 'amphibious' firearms that work decently well submerged and not submerged, used on ambibious vehicles or by waterborne commandos like the Navy SEALs.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underwater_firearm
Probably what is more common is a speargun, which usually is not a firearm, just releases a bunch of compressed gas of some kind to fire a spear... somewhat like a paintball gun/marker.
Although if you're deep underwater and your gun gets "wet" its probably because whatever kept you from being crushed into a pulp just failed.
Also, I'm curious if there were ever diver-on-diver firefights in any war. It seems more like a James Bond or Call of Duty thing than a real event
I'm sure navy seal teams are trained for aquatic fire fights. But the chances of any of them interacting with aquatic guard units are probably slim and if any have happened, are going to be classified.
This will sound like a joke, or out of the Red Alert series, but the US does literally train dolphins and other sea mammals to patrol Naval bases, search for naval mines, attach torpedo homing beacons to enemy ships, aid in search/rescue and equipment recovery...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_marine_mammal
I do not know of a recorded instance of an actual man on man underwater fight... it would likely be absurdly classified by at least one, if not both sides.
Frogmen usually do things like sabotage of underwater assets like infrastructure (internet trunk lines, oil and gas pipelines) or plant or remove sonar beacons... or infiltrate into enemy territory to then later sabotage something just under the water line, or a bit inland.
The aggressor would not want to admit they were there, and the defender would almost certainly not want to admit their security perimeter had been breached, or would be unable to definitively assign blame unless they had very conclusive evidence, like a dead or captured frogman, or some kind of unnassailable, traceable materiel remnant.
Most aquatic guard units would be attacking an underwater commando team from the surface, using some kind of non human detection method to search for and locate underwater aggressors.
AFAIK nobody really maintains like a 24/7 underwater patrol of human divers to patrol sensitive areas. But I could be wrong.
I guess uh, email Jesse Ventura rofl, maybe he knows more?
Tbh i was mostly thinking of the limited range underwater. still remember the mythbusters episode where tried that and the bullet was fully stopped after like 2-2.5m