Wouldn't They Have Heard the First Shot?

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Wiccaness

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IN the end of s6 Tara and Willow got back together, they were in they're while Buffy and Xander where in the back yard.
When Warren shot 3 times at buffy Buffy, he also shot two stray shots in the air.

My question is, wouldn't Willow and Tara have herd the first shot. Maybe it wouldnt have saved tara from it, but i think they would have aleast turned towards the window because of the gun shot being herd.
 
Ah Ha, at last. A question I'm qualified to answer. I was driving up to an office one time. Three shots rang out in succession. All three were well over before I thought to stop the car, and look around. There's a lag between shots, recognition, shock, and reaction.
 
S
spuffy
Well said!
Cool thanks, i had been wondering this and couldnt stop thinking about it, especially since i havent really herd shots fired,so im not qualified =) but this answers my question
 
it's a bit weird when you hear gunfire. it's like 'what the hell?'

i was in my bedroom when it happened to me, doing some school work. in total, four shots where fired before i actually though 'hmm, that was weird.' and probably another ten or fifteen seconds before i realized it was gunshots and got up from my desk to look out the window.
 
Its been a while since i saw the episode but werent the windows closed? If that were the case i would assume it was like sound proof windows
 
doesn't a bullet travel pretty close in speed to the sound it makes? i've always heard by the time you hear the shot the bullet has already reached it's target. which means if someone fired a gun at you in close range.. say a yard's distance you would already be dead or wounded by the time you realized anything
 
Panda said:
doesn't a bullet travel pretty close in speed to the sound it makes? i've always heard by the time you hear the shot the bullet has already reached it's target. which means if someone fired a gun at you in close range.. say a yard's distance you would already be dead or wounded by the time you realized anything
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Bullets from a rifle (M4, AR-15, etc) travel at the speed of sound. Hence the crack before the boom. Bullets from a pistol travel close to the speed of sound, but still fast enough that you might not hear the boom before the bullet's hit its target.

Also, you have to remember that the two scenes in this case (Xander/Buffy, Tara/Willow) are most likely happening concurrently, but short of going to an incredibly cheesy split-screen (like in "Him"), they can't show us both things at once.
 
Blondie Bear said:
Bullets from a rifle (M4, AR-15, etc) travel at the speed of sound. Hence the crack before the boom. Bullets from a pistol travel close to the speed of sound, but still fast enough that you might not hear the boom before the bullet's hit its target.
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Not exactly. Those AR-15 rounds are traveling around 3200 fps - almost three times the speed of sound. Even the old .30-30 Winchester travels at close to 2400 fps, or better than Mach 2, as does the SKS.

Pistols also vary widely: a 9mm travels at 1100 - 1300+ fps, a .40 around 900, a .45 ACP 800 - 1100 fps depending on the bullet, and a .44 Magnum can go better than 1400 fps. On the other hand, the lowly little .22 Long Rifle rimfire can beat that velocity in some loads. Which means that all of those rounds have at least some loads that break the sound barrier.

Blondie Bear said:
Also, you have to remember that the two scenes in this case (Xander/Buffy, Tara/Willow) are most likely happening concurrently, but short of going to an incredibly cheesy split-screen (like in "Him"), they can't show us both things at once.
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Which is almost certainly the actual reason, since the backyard is not any significant distance away from the bedroom - certainly not enough for there to be any appreciable time lapse between the shot and the impact. Notice Tara had turned away from the window talking to Willow; Warren fired several shots in rapid succession; we see the shot he fires wildly over his shoulder; then we see the bullet go through the window. It's obvious that Tara had not had time to react to the first shots (probably had not even had time to even register them as shots,) before she was hit.
 
I've never bothered about the sound aspect, I was wondering about the angle of the bullet, my telly must have a warped screen 'cos the bullet would have had to go through the wall at floor height [ slight exaggeration ] or bounce on the walls, floor, ceiling to get anywhere near Tara.
 
ILLYRIAN said:
I've never bothered about the sound aspect, I was wondering about the angle of the bullet, my telly must have a warped screen 'cos the bullet would have had to go through the wall at floor height [ slight exaggeration ] or bounce on the walls, floor, ceiling to get anywhere near Tara.
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It's really hard to say with any certainty where a bullet fired from the backyard would have gone, because 1) we don't really have an exact layout that I know of, and 2) we know there were some trees in the backyard, so it's pretty easy to come up with a possible scenario. If there's one thing I've learned from all the shooting I've done, it's that bullets can do some really weird crap. One can hit an object solidly and penetrate in a straight line one time, then be diverted by some inconsistency and go off at a crazy angle the next. That's why I don't get too wrapped up with the "magic bullet" concept.
 
The thing is when Warren fired the first three shots they were in the direction of Buffy and Xander the fourth shot was upwards and to the right of them, ie away from the house.
Fair enough it was going towards the trees, but away from the house, so how many richocets would the bullet have had to have done for it to end up going towards the house. Presumably the window wouldn't have been made of strengthened glass so the chances are it wouldn't have alterred the bullets trajectory.
Also... Rowan Hawthorn
Given that the bullet that hit Buffy didn't go through her body and the one that hit Tara did go through her body, it gives rise to the possibility that it was as you stated a 'magic bullet'.
 
ILLYRIAN said:
The thing is when Warren fired the first three shots they were in the direction of Buffy and Xander the fourth shot was upwards and to the right of them, ie away from the house.
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I'll have to go back and check, but based on the few quick glimpses we've had of the back yard, I thought the direction he fired the last shot was consistent with being toward the house.

ILLYRIAN said:
Fair enough it was going towards the trees, but away from the house, so how many richocets would the bullet have had to have done for it to end up going towards the house.
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I've seen bullets emerge from trees at fairly steep angle to the direction they entered - even seen them barely touch the side and go off at crazy angles. So again, without an exact layout of the house and grounds, it's difficult to say what it would take.

Darnit. I just had a brilliant inspiration of the "Duh!" type, only to find that Google Earth isn't clear enough to help. Oh, well.

ILLYRIAN said:
Presumably the window wouldn't have been made of strengthened glass so the chances are it wouldn't have alterred the bullets trajectory.
Also... Rowan Hawthorn
Given that the bullet that hit Buffy didn't go through her body and the one that hit Tara did go through her body, it gives rise to the possibility that it was as you stated a 'magic bullet'.
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Or it might simply mean that Buffy's Slayer muscles made her body more dense than Tara's. There's really not enough to go on, since ME wasn't trying to be CSI-accurate (even though that's questionable at times, too.) Buffy's entry wound position suggests that the bullet likely would have hit her shoulder blade, which could have stopped it. Compare that to the location of Tara's exit wound and check the way she was standing in relation to the window (slightly turned); that bullet could easily have entered just beside her spine, missing any major bones entirely. Precise ballistic correctness wasn't the point of the scene, so it's not mapped out with enough detail to say anything other than: Plausible? Maybe...
 
I dont think that the house is lined up with the shot. At least to me, when tara looks out the window and sees xander, she sees his right side if she were facing the same way as he was. When warren fired it seems that he either fired straight ahead both at buffy and in the air, or to the other side apposite of the house.


could it have been when he was turnin a shot might have gone in that direction, im still dont think so very much, but it could be right?
 
I've just watched that whole scene frame by frame. [ silly me ] I noted a few more problems.

The back of the house is facing the garden seat, Xander walks towards Buffy and towards the end of the seat. The trees are behind the seat when viewed from the house. Warren faces Buffy [the opposite end of the seat from Xander] Warrens first three shots are straight ahead the fourth as he turns is up and to his left, towards the trees.

The problems;
Buffy pushed Xander down, would she have had time to face Warren for the third shot to hit her front ?
If she was shot while facing Warren, how did she end up lying down her body at 90 degrees to Warren, taken that Xander came to her from her right side.

To me it indicates that the continuity person for the series needed shooting, not Buffy.
 
ok so before i kinda was just saying the aligned stuff out of memory, turns out i have a bad memory lol, it looks like buffy and xander were aligned with the house, but some thing else comes up, when tara says that xander is there we get a shot looking down a him and buffy from the window, and we get a pretty good view of the backyard

and we do see the seat, except that i dont see any door where Warren could enter though right infront of them so that means one of three things, either the scene was shot kinda messed up like ILLYRIAN said, im seeing wrong or, warren entered straight ahead from the bench. to the side of the house and not infront of it. If it was this way i dont see how he could have shot tara, and the trees dont seem very big, i dont know much about guns but could a small tree really change the way of the bullet that much?


also, and once again im going from memory here so correct me if im wrong, but when dark willow is taking the bullet out of buffy in the hospital, did the bullet come out with the front facing up, wouldnt that mean that she was sot from the back too?
 
I dont know about you...but i swear i hear more than 3 shots, some coming from that knoll over there near Buffy's place. Weird..
 
I always just thought hey, the window broke...that would point you over in the direction of the window wouldn't it? I've never heard a gun go off to say what the hell, but something smashing through a window. Yeah I've had a baseball fly through my window and as soon as I heard the crash my attention is directed there 🙂
 
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