Been tinkering with some urban fantasy ideas recently, and I was thinking about gadgets a modern vampire hunter might design and use.
Putting a wooden stake through a vampire’s heart is usually quite effective at either paralyzing them or dusting them outright, depending on the author. Of course, a wooden stake is a lousy weapon in a fight, so usually it’s used after the vamp is already close to defeated.
But what if you could stake a bloodsucker at range? Crossbows could work, but they’re not the only possibility. What about a shotgun which fires wooden slugs?
I’m not a gunsmith or even a gun aficionado, so I’m not sure how feasible that is. What would be the challenges inherent in making wooden shotgun slugs? Would there be a better way to fire stakes into your supernatural enemies from range?
Dresden Files plays with this a little. Rock salt shotguns, silver bullets, and garlic/holy water paintball guns all make appearances.
I like the idea, and it is possible. There’s a couple of options for firing a wooden projectile. Guns exist that use .22LR blanks to fire an arrow from a traditional rifle. Shotgun shells seem like the next best option, however I don’t know how well they would do on penetration. Probably similar results to less-than-lethal rounds like rubber pellets or pepper balls. You could fashion a pointed slug, but in that case, you could do that for most any bullet.
I think theres a better argument to be made for silver bullets. They’re already metal, not sure if silver is harder or softer than lead though. You could also do a salt shot through a shotgun. Salt is supposedly effective against undead, and there’s that fun tidbit about vampires being hella OCD and they’d have to count all of the salt before they can do anything else.
I think the best would be a shotgun that shoots 00 buckshot made of silver, but specifically something like the smith&Wesson governor, or the Taurus judge. They’re handguns, specifically revolvers, that are capable of shooting both 45 long colt, and 410 shotgun shells without any modification needed for the gun. Fuck it, add some garlic salt to your shells as well. Garlic burns them, and it would potentially smell good too.
This has been a very fun little thought exercise. If you come up with any other sci-fi/paranormal gun related questions, I’m more than happy to participate
41o out of those guns sucks. The rifling makes the shot come out in a pinwheel. I’ve got a derringer like that. Most useless gun I own, out of many.
You could shoot birdshot at me from 15’ and not a single pellet would land.
No argument there, I have the judge and the accuracy out of the three inch barrel is less than stellar. For my purposes, I run either 410 buckshot, or 45lc. I don’t see a reason to run bird shot or slugs, but I have them just in case. For a close range vampire encounter, I don’t think it would be the worst, a derringer probably gets that title. I’ve used a few of them and they all perform about as poorly as expected, that and they’re just unpleasant to shoot, too much pain in the hands for them. I’m an ideal world for a handgun, I’m leaning towards maybe a 5-7 with silver bullets. High capacity and 5.7 rounds are designed for penetration
Fiocchi makes shotgun loads with rubber projectiles. You could do the same with wooden projectiles.
I’m not an airsoft person, but I assume wood pellets would work in those guns, too.
If you want longer range then we can start playing with the rules of your hypothetical situation. Does the wood have to physically contact the vampire? With some effort, you could make a bullet with a wood core and a lead or brass jacket.
12 ga. Saboted wooden slugs? That’d probably be my approach though I suspect you’d still struggle with getting enough penetration.
Video on wooden slugs: https://youtu.be/hVrN3f1Ce5w
You could also shoot stakes via pneumatics.
Crossbows are strictly out. A wooden bolt will explode under the pressure.
I think the critical question is how much wood is necessary? If a small amount of wood will work then you could take an existing bullet with a ballistic tip and just replace the tip with a piece of hardwood.
