My 50 Cal Exploded...AGAIN !!! (Recreating My Accident)

so today we are going to be trying to recreate my accident it's not as tough as i thought it was this round should produce a 190 000 psi we ain't playing around now maybe this will do it [Music] [Applause] what's up everybody my name is scott and you're watching kentucky ballistics and today is going to be a very interesting video let me go show you what i got set up and we're going to get started so today we are going to be trying to recreate my accident from april 9 2021. if you're new to the channel let me get you caught up if you want you can go back and watch the original video but a quick recap would be on april 9 2021 a 50 caliber rifle this exact model exploded and almost killed me this is a surbu rn50 single shot 50 caliber rifle it has a heavy barrel and the breach has been chambered to accept slap rounds on april 9th we were shooting this fire hydrant back here that's right behind this still target we shot it several times with other ammunition and i had some slop rounds that i had been using for quite some time that day i used some new slap rounds from a new batch that i had purchased the first round i shot out of the new batch actually hit about two foot to the right of what i was aiming at i'm not perfect i assume that maybe i just flinched really bad on that shot i don't normally flinch when i shoot but that's the only thing i could chalk it up to at the end of the video we decided to shoot the fire hydrant one more time with the slap round so i grabbed another round from the new batch that i had acquired loaded it into the rn50 took aim at the fire hydrant pulled the trigger and when i did the entire breach detonated i brought some goodies today the original rifle is at cerberu firearm so i do not have it with me but i do have a piece of it so when the gun went off this heavy cap was sheared off at the threads i was wearing these safety glasses yeah so that cap hit me about right there when this hit me in the face i went blind instantly in my right eye i have regained my eyesight but i was blind for about 24 hours it also broke my cheekbone broke my eye socket and broke my nose you'll notice here on the gun there's these ears right here the reason they are there is so if you don't have this cap screwed on all the way you can't shut the gun it also works as some sort of a safety once the gun is closed those ears are lined up perfectly with the back of that cap when that cap blew off the gun it sheared both of those ears off of the gun here's one of them this jagged piece of metal hit me right here in the throat the other one zipped by my head blew a hole in this hat and blew it right off my head this piece of metal is the exact piece of metal that was inside me you're shooting in this position it came down lacerated my jugular and then continued down into my rib cage puncturing my right lung and it would later collapse i'm sure you notice i said lacerated jugular so i was losing a lot of fluid and the only thing that saved me that day was my dad and my left thumb among other things i had a broken finger my lip was completely opened up i was cut above my eyebrow and had other cuts on my face took my left thumb wrapped it my shirt crammed it my throat and got in the truck and then we proceeded to drive really fast the doctors say that if we wouldn't have shoved my thumb into my neck that i would not have made it to the hospital i've had some new viewers ask what this shirt means so now you know fast forwarding i'm going to try to keep this a little shorter if you want the extended version you should go check out the original video but long story short i went to vanderbilt hospital in nashville tennessee they cut me open from here all the way up to here repaired my lung removed all the shrapnel from inside me repaired my jugular operated on my face had to reconstruct these bones operated on my hand sewed me all back up there's lots of other unpleasant things that happened to i recommend that you watch the original video because i go into more detail there i went home about a week later beating bruce starred up and really low on fluid and i was very happy to be alive and very blessed to be alive the doctors at vanderbilt hospital told me that most people would have died from those injuries now back to the gun what caused it to blow up well we know the barrel wasn't obstructed because the last round we shot at the fire hydrant before shooting the last slap round we could see stuck out of the back of the fire hydrant there was no other damage to the barrel the only thing that happened was the breach detonated for that to happen you have to have an overcharged round we believe that this ammunition was old or something like that but now we believe that this ammunition is most likely counterfeit normal operating pressures for a 50 bmg is 55 000 psi from what i've learned for this 50 cal to fail like it failed we're looking at pressures of 180 000 psi the only thing we can think of is this ammunition has been tampered with or is counterfeit in some way i still have 12 more of these things and i want to know are they going to cause the gun to fail again and if it does fail is it gonna fail in the exact same way well we're gonna find out mark cerbus sent me another rn50 that is the exact model that i had that day props to him for sending it because he knew exactly what i was going to be doing with it now that i've shown you the gun let me show you how we're going to be doing this today so i built a testing area the rifle is going to be in here about right here so we have an idea of how this gun is going to blow up if it blows up we've built a cinder block wall so if that cap blows it's going to hit the cinder blocks i have a piece of light sand protective glass over the top and a piece of lake sand protective glass on the side there's gonna be a slow-mo camera sitting right next to the rifle so if it does blow up we can catch everything in slow-mo and then i have a ballistic dummy labs head with an under armour gray hat and safety glasses we've drilled a hole through the cinder block so that we can run the string through it that way we can pull straight back it's going to be attached to the trigger the string goes about 150 feet that way and then we're going to be hiding behind a truck if anything does go wrong with the rifle we're going to be 100 protected all right so it's time to get started and we're going to start out with a test shot this is a standard 660 grain 50 bmg full metal jacket hold our round in and today every time we close this we're going to be extra safe keep our thumb on the hammer as the gun shuts we're going to keep our thumb on the hammer while we take the safety off now we're going to get back and pull the string and make sure it functions properly before we start loading it up with slop rounds all right first shot let's see if it works gun test fired effectively looks like our little system works good open this up good to go and we blasted our sandbag all right well i guess we start putting slap rounds in it slap round number one of 12. i have to be honest i'm really excited right now i'm really curious to see what happens with this i've been wondering this since the accident are all of them bad or was it just that one round we're about to find out okay safety is on loading slap round putting the cap back on ever so gently it's tight i keep a thumb on the hammer as we close it scott is down okay safety's off here we go that shot sounded at least from back there a lot louder than the full metal jacket the gun looks solid let's open this thing up that is oh that's on there tight holy smokes okay i can't even pry this out of here okay we're gonna have to do something else well if you couldn't already tell from the slo-mo shot that was a spicy round let me show you how i can tell without the slow-mo camera for one um it took vice grips in about 10 minutes to finally get that shell casing out of there look at our cap it's stamped the back of this shell casing stamped that cap that's not supposed to happen i'm going to go ahead and place my prediction now i don't think we're gonna make it through all 12 rounds either one the gun's going to blow or two we're not going to be able to get a shell casing out of there or something something's going to malfunction i just so happen to have another one in my pocket so uh we're going to get loaded up and do it again slot round number two put scott over here safety's coming off okay stop round number two here we go so that time we had a big enough uh muzzle flash and explosion to blow over our leg sand all right let's have a look at this thing [Music] man did the same thing that primer is pushing back out you're really curious to see this one pops out so we had to vice grip it last time okay so we had to use vise grips again we're both having to hold onto this rifle and twist and twist and twist and finally get it out of there it is stuck in there good you can see that primer again these rounds these are bad um our bore is clear because we're gonna keep going now because these rounds are seasoned up every time and we're having such a hard time we put just a little bit of motor oil around the edge in here so that maybe we can get this thing out a little easier next time scott is down again all right safety's off round number three still looking okay oh that one's on there good that's on there real good we got it loose um it's taking a while it's taken some some ingenuity but now we can open it and if i had to guess the reason this is so hard to open right now is because these threads are getting a lot of pressure on them if you look right here that primer is almost coming out of the shell casing nope you see folks it's not supposed to be this hard to uh get your shell kissing out there we go now it's moving well that was round number three um our bore is clear slot round number four slap round number four here we go let's see if the cap opens a little easier this time hey all right if i come from both sides came out a little easier this time this one actually the primer doesn't look blown out looks fairly normal more is clear slap round number four seemed to function kind of normally but what about slap round number five slop round number five okey-dokey stop round number five that was louder than last time let's have a look-see okay so the last shot came off nice and normal this time again bro that is a that's on there real good we're gonna have to took us about another 10 minutes to get this off again what we're having to do i just haven't been recording all of it is we are literally having to wrap this strap around the cap get it real nice and tight and then two people are having to push to get this off of the gun i highly doubt this shell comes out as easy as the last one if it does nope i'm gonna put these back on i ain't losing another eye today okay i'm telling you let's see here oh that moved a little bit ah that primer's about falling out again bore is clear stop round number six all right number six here we go [Music] okay so i thought something happened because i heard a bunch of noise but um are like saying well it's not as tough as i thought it was oh it opens but that was a felt a little a little rough oh that primer looks different take a look at that it's pushed in i figure at some point this breach would loosen up a little bit after all this let's see hey there we go all right get that one out that primer is all beat up boar is clear i don't have to duck now stop round number seven okay slap round number seven [Music] see how she opens this time hey let's open it up or if we can get this out for easy the primer looks fairly normal yep that doesn't look bad slop round number eight put my safety glasses on whoops there we go was louder okey dokey [Laughter] it's stuck on there pretty good again and i can tell too like when that boom is super loud like you can tell that the round is way hotter this ain't gonna come off ah hey whoa lost the whole primer that time whole thing popped out flop round number nine all righty number nine dang man i mean like that hurt my ears back here that was loud okay it's all there good again oh come on they're just show muscles you know ain't good for nothing oh gosh i can't believe that opened it's still in there good okay man look at that that primer looks like it just wants to pop out again yeah it is look at that that just comes right out of there [Music] slap round number ten number ten shoe all right let's see if i can just open it right here oh hey i forgot to hit record removing that last shell it came out real good barrel is clear down to the last two slap rounds this is number 11. number 11. that sounded pretty normal all right gun's still looking good yeah i expected that to just unscrew pretty easily this will probably pop out super easy too yep all right this is the last slap round number 12. last one here we go that was good and loud okay well that last slop round did not do it we shot all 12 rounds i had left from that day and they have not blown the gun which is just showing me how much of a freak accident that really was that day it's pretty obvious that some of these rounds are definitely super hot whatever i had loaded that day was super hot because this thing is shot the last 12 rounds and the gun has not blown but i really want to know if this gun will fail the same way it failed that day so i come prepared this round should mimic the pressures that it took to blow this gun on april 9. i said that it took about 180 000 psi to blow the gun like it did this round should produce a hundred and ninety thousand psi safety's on alrighty we ain't playing around now we know for a fact that this should blow the gun closing the gun we removed some of the bricks so we can try to get a little bit better white slo-mo camera because it's getting dark scott you're gonna want to put your hat right there okay safety off thumb coming off the hammer all right maybe this will do it here we go okay so uh that did it that blew the gun uh here's the bill of the hat oh let's go check this out yeah look at that look that's the same thing that happened to my gun threads are sheared off this broke the same way how's scott over here i think he took something to the face there's oh it blew the back all the pieces where's the cap that's what i want to know here's a piece right here we blew that receiver to pieces there's my cap here nope all right let's move this so barrel's clear oh deer something shot through our plexiglass blew right through it all right we've been looking for the cap for probably 45 minutes and we cannot find it the slo-mo shows it shooting off to the right so i knew there was a chance that we may not be able to recreate what happened on april 9th because april 9th was an absolute freak accident and this proves it we shot the other 12 rounds that i have and it didn't blow the gun but we can tell they're a little off they're creating a huge muzzle flash and they're really loud they were causing the cap to be on there super tight we were having to really work to get it off and the rounds were lodged inside the chamber and i came prepared today with a round that i knew would blow the gun and i wanted to blow the gun so we could find out if it would fail the same way that it failed on me on april 9 2021. and sure enough it did pretty wild look at this we can't find the cap but this is literally exactly i'll put some pictures on the screen of what mine looked like when it blew but it sheared the threads right off this broke the exact same way uh now my lower receiver didn't come apart like this but something interesting this time check this out these ears they almost snapped but they did not shear off this time but they are bent all the heck also when that round blew on april 9th it blew the end of the case off leaving the brass inside the gun guess what happened again what we did learn today is if you have an overcharged round in an rn50 this is how it's going to fail that cap is coming off and it's coming right back at you i mean i already learned that kind of learned it the hard way what do i think about the rn50 do i think it's the rn50s fault no it's not the gun's fault it is the ammunition's fault it was an overcharged round on april 9th and it was an overcharged round today that blew it also i was really excited about today i was really excited to see what would happen when we did this again was i i was a little nervous today not gonna lie but the cinder block wall and being 150 feet back with a string made me feel pretty good i'm actually really pleased with the results we had today today's video meant a lot to me this brings me closure because now i know that's going to be it for today's video i hope you enjoyed it let me know what you thought about it in the comment section down below if you did enjoy it do me a favor and hit that like button and if you're not subscribed to kentucky ballistics do yourself a favor and hit that subscribe button also be sure and check me out on kentucky customs kentucky ballistic shorts patreon facebook instagram and twitter links to all those can be found in the description down below along with a link to kentuckyballistics.com just in case you want to pick up a shirt and as always my name is scott thank you so much for watching kentucky ballistics and i'll see you next time [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Kentucky Ballistics

Views: 7,909,917

Keywords: 50 cal explodes, 50 cal blows up, kentucky ballistics 50 cal exploded, 50 bmg explodes, kentucky ballistics 50 bmg explodes, 50 bmg blows up, kentucky ballistics accident, 50 cal accident, 50 cal explodes kentucky ballistics, 50 bmg accident, 50 bmg explodes kentucky ballistics, serbu 50 exploded, kentucky ballistics accident cause, 50 cal fail, 50 bmg fail, 50 cal slap, 50 bmg slap, 50 cal explodes in face, 50 cal explodes at range, kentucky ballistics accident full video

Id: hsw70VfSFFw

Length: 29min 28sec (1768 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 16 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/captain_borgue]

WTF is SLAP ammo...?

[u/udmh-nto]

The fact that the rifle failed in the same way suggests a design flaw, most likely that there are not enough threads. Kabooms happen with many guns, but few direct fast projectiles straight back into shooter's eye.

[u/Ok-Republic-3210]

Forgotten Weapons also has a great video on this specific incident, and explains in-depth how an over charged round may have cause the breech cap threads to fail on the rifle.

[u/HeloRising]

After watching the video I feel like I'd be confident in using the RN-50.

He ran 12 of the sus rounds through the rifle and despite there being a number of failures that would probably have caused any shooter to stop immediately, the rifle held.

This was, at the same time, phenomenally bad and good luck. Bad luck in the sense that he selected one of the extra hot SLAP rounds by chance, good luck that he wasn't killed outright.

Like, if you were shooting this rifle and you ignored the fact that the rounds were generating enough force to literally stamp the headstamp of the casing onto the back of the receiver cap, you kinda earned whatever that ends up giving you. It's just not rational to expect someone to design a firearm around this potential.

[u/Worth_Cake_9471]

Poor rifle design.

Overpressure round turns the receiver into a pipe bomb

[u/WpNsXpRt87]

This was a combination of poor rifle design (lesser contributor) and likely bad ammunition (major contributor) with a much hotter charge. This ammo batch would have likely exploded any 50bmg rifle, but due to poor design, this rifle blew in a catastrophic fashion. Combination of multiple factors here. Buy a better designed 50, and stop shooting old SLAP rounds, or y'all are gonna keep seeing vids like this. There is a reason the military phased these out...lot of engineers that poured a lot of sweat and energy into studying the safety and performance with these rounds. They were really only designed for M2HB with special liner, cuz of how the round tears up barrels. This guy should have known better, especially if it happened twice.