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And that the inmates didn't have a real knife they could have really stabbed him with and not risked breaking it, and that the inmate was likely stabbing him out of anger, not fear. If you want to know the difference between what happened with him and a real stabbing, go pick up a pair of scissors. Look at the last centimetre of that, then look at a knife. There's the difference in the wound alone. Even that isn't all of it, there's a difference in the impact between a light hit on body armour being careful not to break a shiv, and a hard stab into soft, squishy flesh. The former barely hurts, the latter would crack bones and damage organs even without a knife present. And neither of them compares to the kind of force people put in when in a life or death situation. We always hold back no matter what, being careful not to cause ourselves injury and only using a little of our strength. In a life or death situation, which we have failed to handle with our brains, we stop conserving as much of our strength and stop worrying about whether we're going to break out wrist, or throw out a shoulder. We still don't hit as hard as we really can, but we put in a whole lot more force than we would normally put into anything. In that circumstance even just a punch would break ribs, rupture lungs, and possibly force the broken ends of those ribs through the lungs, quite likely leaving a fatal wound even without a weapon. With a blade, so much force is put into it that the user's hand frequently forces its way into the wound. Had the inmate stabbed him out of fear for his life, which is way more likely than you might think because no matter who your friend is normally as a person he's going to be a total bastard as a prison guard by the very nature of the job (look up the Stanford Prison Experiment, a frequently replicated and confirmed experiment on the matter), your friend would be dead no matter what weapon his attacker used. Even if the attacker didn't have a weapon he'd be dead. He would have been dead before medical attention even became a factor, or before the attack was even close to over.

As a physicist he should know better. Smaller projectiles (similar width, but shorter) with lower velocity and a less aerodynamic design shouldn't penetrate as deeply. Less momentum applied less efficiently. And besides, I'm mostly just mocking Freeman's lack of knowledge, nothing else.

No comment.

In-game you can see the rounds in the magazine are regular jacketed rounds. The shotgun, according to the game files, also fires buckshot. Balls that would put AC/DC to shame (#000, since it's a 12-gauge with six balls), but still just buckshot. 2.5" shells, if the models proportionate. The .357 is also a jacketed round, the crossbow is a tranquilizer dart. Ammo used is not really up for debate. The rocket launcher is up for the most debate, but its warhead design suggests a precision HEAT round.

Unless they know they're against unarmoured civilians and aliens. Then they'd likely use either regular rounds or hollow points. Probably regular rounds to be on the safe side.

Eh. Was pretty good aside from that. I mean, sure, there's the shooting and those were nasty. And my ex losing half her family and suffering a breakdown. Then the phony "marriage" with a real judge, but a bride and groom too young to actually marry. And moving to a bible-thumping hick town against my will. Oh, and constantly being jealous of my best friend because he has a baby and I don't. But other than that, pretty good.

So... What, are we sharing stories now? Okay. Depending on how you look at it, I was shot a couple hundred times across my arms, legs and back when I was 8. If you count every individual pellet of #9 and don't require them to penetrate, otherwise I wasn't shot at all. I got into an argumemt with an old man about walking on his decorative lawn rocks, threw one at him, he ran inside and grabbed a shotgun. Did a number on my pants and jacket. I was also shot twice in the back with a .45 when I was 10. Just sitting there flirting with a girl, guy walks up and shoots us both. My best friend was shot three times an an AR-15 when he was 12, once in the head and twice in the back. Not going into circumstances there. My ex-wife was shot three times with .44 hollow points when she was 7. A loose dog attacked her and she beat it to death, its owner shot her in the back but thankfully was a shitty shot.

Unless the armor does not use trauma plates, and you're using flechette ammo. Then we'd have to compare it to armour piercing pistol ammo.

How is a knife smaller than a shank? I could believe the shank being longer, but not bigger than the actual blade. The prison guard's Armour doesn't really help when you're being stabbed, shank or not. In regards to the deepness, you make a good point. There'd still be a fair amount of bleeding, probably enough to kill you without immediate attention, though. That all still doesn't explain what kind of lunatic wouldn't quit after being stabbed so many times. Wait, uh, disregard that question. We all know someone that's done that before. Shivs are generally a sharp, thick piece of metal on the end of a long handle, like that of a fork. The handle has extra length to increase penetration depth without needing a longer blade, and other than being fragile is just as good. It's a better weapon due to its length. Also, she was stabbed with a steak knife. Go look at your knife block. See the little ones on the bottom? Those are steak knives. No thickness, no breadth, and fairly short. And the scissors, while thick, taper too much and are too short. Neither one really works. Steak knives leave tiny wounds, and scissors don't reach vitals. A shiv is better than either. Guard armour is thick and includes one trauma plate and one layer of chain. Underneath tgis is heavy padding. It's actually fairly effective against most improvised stabbing weapons, including shivs, forks, writing utensils and similar, as such a weapon would have to pierce the plate, then break the chain *and* depress the padding for the entire width of the plate. The heart is basically unreachable through it with anything shorter than 20cm, and difficult with anything under 30cm. Shivs may be longer than scissors and thicker than steak knives, but they're still too short to get in easily, and their thin design makes them too fragile to survive a hard enough impact to reach vitals. If it was 56 without breaking the shiv, they didn't put enough force in to do a damned thing or the handle would have snapped. It's more a prod than a stab. And so what if you have other stories of similar but somewhat lesser stories? I can link to a guy who was shot 27 times with 9mm and .40 calibre bullets, and I really can, but if I said I knew somebody who was shot 32 times with a .45, that wouldn't be good evidence. But we've hijacked this thread long enough, so let's stop.

No, it's not Second source, just because Even if the numbers weren't 56 and they were stabbed all over the body, it still can and did happen. Hell, he had better odds considering there was medical attention in the building. Edit: Removed first 2 quotes and am adding this link So we've got what, a smaller number with a smaller and vastly inferior weapon twice in a row, and almost no information in a third. Great evidence. And funnily enough, the part about him being a prison guard means I kinda believe you now. But first, explain how it makes sense to be able to survive 56 of something that one of is usually fatal. You know how. Go ahead and say it. It's one word, six letters. Starts with an "a", end with an "r". Something prison guards wear, that means he really wasn't stabbed because the object didn't enter significantly into his body. Yeah, that's it. Armour. Prison guards wear armour. For this exact reason. Doesn't count.

I'm going to be the first to say I don't believe you. The impacts alone from 56 consecutive stabbings would be fatal, as each stab is basically a punch in the chest. We don't normally think about it, but the human body can put out huge amounts of force on a whim, and each of those impacts would be enough to break bones on its own. There's a reason more people die from single stab wounds than single gunshot wounds. Further, killing people is surprisingly easy, the only hard thing to do is killing somebody immediately. Even fairly small wounds frequently prove fatal through blood loss. This takes time, but so does the arrival of medics and the treatment of wounds. The only way this is possible is if the stabbings happened over multiple separate instances, and that's not what you said. Considering that he worked as a prison guard, I'd say medical attention is right there. Granted, it's rare to be stabbed THAT much and live for the exact reasons you stated, but it can happen. Good thing he had a radio, huh? Also, by chest, I mean this area right here My fault for not specifying a bit of the upper abdomen was involved, but that's the area I consider "chest" to be. I never said it was with a knife, either. Prisoners aren't allowed knives; I'm amazed he didn't get some kind of infection. Most inmates probably couldn't go tit-for-tat with Manny Pacquiao, either. I still can't fathom why he didn't quit. Still more or less impossible. Unless it was with a fork or something and you're counting individual prongs, and that's not really 56 stabbings.

Repeat to yourself: "It's just a show, I really should calm down." But seriously, most of Freeman's invulnerability is believable enough for the show. Bullets don't penetrate through his heavily padded, insulated plate mail, neither do shrapnel or animal teeth/claws. Electricity can't go through the suit because it has first a highly conductive outer layer then a highly insulative inner layer, which causes the electricity to go any way but through it. Heat has the same issue. Poison should work, except his suit has an automatic medical system that has been canonically proven to work against poison, and even without that who's to say alien poison even works on terrestrial biology? The only things in the game that really could kill Freeman are: Blunt force. Fractures, ruptured organs and internal bleeding can all be caused without penetrating his armour. Concussive pressure waves. Once again, ruptured organs and internal bleeding can result. Radiation. His suit would probably block radiation just fine, but he doesn't have a helmet. Head wounds. His head is unprotected, he could certainly be killed by physical wound to his head, although not poison. Overwhelming force. A powerful enough firearm, a big enough bomb, a strong enough claw, whatever. Anything can be destroyed if you hit it hard enough. Now tell me, on the "Freeman's Durability" end, how different is that from the show thus far? Although on the other end, where Freeman kills everything super fast, it's total hogwash. Especially the HECU marines, who should be basically immune to most in-game hazards along with Freeman, and the Black Ops, who should be rather less durable but still more or less immune to shotguns and highly resistant to 9mm rounds. (NOT the other way around. Buckshot is LESS effective against armour than pistol ammunition. Freeman, I'm looking at you.)

I think it's fun to do stuff like this, as long as it doesn't dissolve into anything. In regards to the human body being able to take a hit, a friend of mine was stabbed 56 times in the chest. He lived to tell the tale. I'm going to be the first to say I don't believe you. The impacts alone from 56 consecutive stabbings would be fatal, as each stab is basically a punch in the chest. We don't normally think about it, but the human body can put out huge amounts of force on a whim, and each of those impacts would be enough to break bones on its own. There's a reason more people die from single stab wounds than single gunshot wounds. Further, killing people is surprisingly easy, the only hard thing to do is killing somebody immediately. Even fairly small wounds frequently prove fatal through blood loss. This takes time, but so does the arrival of medics and the treatment of wounds. The only way this is possible is if the stabbings happened over multiple separate instances, and that's not what you said.

Ha. Well if that's true you should follow me around. You'll get plenty of them. Actually, I like them too... It's just pointless. If it's pointless and you like it, it's not pointless.

Ha. Well if that's true you should follow me around. You'll get plenty of them.

Funny. I used it at like two areas in the game. When I first got it, and when I ran out of 9mm bullets.

You don't. And I never used the tau cannon on them either in vanilla. Though, in my modded version, a few times. But Freeman didn't get the tau cannon either, or the hive hand (would also by useless, no way it'd get through armour) so I said nothing for them either.

Guys. I only brought it up because I figured that's what he was doing to speed up filming, not using infinite ammo. I went into detail because one guy thought it was realistic, which was utter nonsense. And that "plasma" weapon, the gluon gun? Not real, can't say for sure how it'd perform, so I said nothing.

Nonsense. The human body can take a fairly incredible amount of damage and continue functioning. Even without armour, gunshot wounds are rarely incapacitating and many times in the rush of combat people don't even notice them right away. Not even multiple gunshot wounds, head wounds, or sometimes even multiple head wounds prove immediately incapacitating. That doesn't mean they aren't fatal, mind you, but it actually takes a LOT more damage to stop somebody right away than it does to kill them down the road. A gunshot wound that will ultimately prove fatal might not have any noticeable effect on the victim until they have time to bleed out. That's why the standard protocol for self-defence is to aim for the chest and keep shooting until the target goes down or you run out of ammunition. With body armour, pistol rounds are completely and totally ineffectual. They can't penetrate, and all they can do without penetrating is leave bruises less severe than you'd normally receive playing paintball. You'd need to either shoot them where they have no armour, which is extremely difficult, or shoot them until the armour breaks down, which would take dozens of shots as kevlar is fairly durable and it's enough even after the inlaid plate breaks to stop a pistol round. Even from the long barrel of an SMG. This is made worse with the shotgun, a genuinely useless weapon against body armour, as the individual pellets are too weak to even bruise through armour from any significant distance and they can't damage it even a little bit. You could stand at ten metres and shoot a military vest hundreds of times and not penetrate it once. The magnum isn't much above the pistol, either. Sure, it'll leave a much bigger bruise and maybe crack a rib, but that's not incapacitating. The crossbow... Yeah, I don't need to say that a tranquillizer gun won't penetrate armour, do I? The only weapons freeman even has that we know could realistically stop the soldiers through their armour are: The RPG, which would shatter their entire ribcage, flatten both their lungs and send a molten jet of copper flying through their chest leaving a hole in them rather smaller than you'd think but still more than enough to do the job and then some. The 40mm grenade, although actually their armour contains a layer of chain that makes the shrapnel here completely useless and you'd need the shockwave, which isn't very big due to the small charge and has a tiny radius so this weapon is unlikely to do it unless you get a more or less direct hit or more than one attempt. The hand grenade, although it suffers the exact same issue as the 40mm if a bit less so, and would need to be fairly close or very lucky. (Lucky enough that the shrapnel hits where there isn't any armour.) The crowbar. The crowbar is a blunt weapon. Blunt weapons perform great against armour because they don't need to penetrate it. The crowbar could cave in their skulls, break their limbs, collapse their lungs and piece them with their own ribs, and many other grizzly injuries actually quite a bit worse on your immediate combat effectiveness than a gunshot wound, and best of all the armour does fuck all to prevent it. And since it's the only weapon on this list that isn't an explosive, it'd actually be the most practical... if you didn't have to run up to them to use it, which would be a problem if Gordon didn't have an impenetrable armoured hazmat suit. (Kinda the reason we don't use melee weapons anymore.) Although for many enemies you have a point. Specifically, all the ones that are small and not armoured. The headcrab and houndeye, maybe the vortigaunt and bullsquid depending on where you hit them. The alien grunt is probably about right.

Huh. I could have sworn that you used infinite ammo to make filming easier. Me too. I think that's what all the faster kills are for. I mean, they're certainly not for realism because they're not realistic at all (except for the head crabs), so it's the only other thing that makes sense.

This is nothing, dude. Get some patience and don't this shit over nothing.

Can we please not start with this?

"The aliens have these too? I HATE THESE! WHY IS EVERYONE TRYING TO MAKE ME DIZZY?" I really hope not, to be honest. I just want to get to and through Xen, finish Half-Life 1 and move on.

I seriously doubt Freeman will get a helmet. I do, however, think he's going to have a serious freakout when the Nihilanth telepathically speaks to him, is encountered in person, or both.

I voted for Freeman's Mind. I'm really eager about getting to Xen.