Believable Ways for Monsters to Be Immune to Bullets

[cojo965]

So I've noticed some people here (not naming anyone) have scoffed at the whole monsters are immune to bullets angle of the upcoming Godzilla film (most recent example I can come up with okay?). Lets see then, if you guys can come up with ways to make the immune to bullets trope easier to swallow.

I think that two Ray Harryhausen films handled the trope best. Rhedosaurus (The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms) was a disease carrier so shooting it was dangerous. The Ymir (20 Million Miles to Earth) had a physiology that made it difficult to cause vital damage with small arms.

 

[tippy2k2]

I always liked "Monster Hunter International" [http://monsterhunternation.com/mhi-sample/]'s (A book series about...well...monster hunting. Great and easy read) way that it handles monsters and gunfire. It's got three primary reasons pending monster:

A. It's big. Basically the creature is too big for small arms to hurt the creature. The bullets slam into the monsters hide and because it's so big, they can't get deep enough to do any serious damage. See Dragon.

B. It's too stupid to get hurt. Bullets wound the monster but the creature is either too stupid to realize it or it doesn't care. See Ghouls and Zombies.

C. It regenerates too quickly. This is my favorite one but it does kind of feel like cheating but a lot of the creatures basically regenerate. Like a troll, you have to do enough damage in a long enough period so they run out of energy to heal or hit them hard and fast enough that it doesn't have time to heal them. See Vampires and Werewolves.

For me, as long as the movie/book/game/erotic novel in question is consistent with how it works, I don't mind.

 

[Asita]

Amorphous physiology. Basically think the Morpha's water body, a glob of goo like a Gelatinous Cube or the T-1000 from Terminator 2. Shooting it does very little because it has no way of bleeding and very little in the way of important, damageable parts.

 

[Saint of M]

For a creature of Godzilla's size it would need to be built indestructible to hold its weight. Its muscle must be stronger then steel, and its bones stronger then reinforced concrete.

But part of godzilla's indestructibility comes form how much he can take a hit. Chucks of him come off, and in a few of the classic era (especially against Gigan or Mecha Godzilla) he does bleed alot.

The same theory works with bears or someone hiped up into a berserk furry like a someone hipped up on meth. It's not so much the how many bullets they can take as weather the bullets have any stopping power.

A healing factor might also come into play. Say like Wolverine, or werewolves and vampires to some extent.There are a few things they don't like and can slow or stop their healing (and a lucky shot can outright kill them), but otherwise can heal obnoxiously fast compared to normal humans.

The big bad in Jeeper's Creeper, werewolves in Skyrim, and many a vampire in many a video game heal when they feed.

 

[Queen Michael]

You know, I'd say that being Godzilla is, in itself, the best way for a monster to be immune to bullets.

 

[HardkorSB]

With Godzilla (and other possible monsters in the movie), it's skin is too thick for the bullets to penetrate it.
Seems logical.

I like the idea of the creature in The Thing, where every body cell was basically a separate organism so shooting it didn't do much.
You can also have a monster that's more liquid than solid. The bullets would go right through it.

 

[M0rp43vs]

"EAT LEAD, ALIEN SCUM! *BANG BANG* ...evidently, they eat lead"

I also like @tippy2k2 's idea of being too stupid to notice being shot. I mean it can happen to humans too hyped up drugs or adrenaline so its no small feat to transfer that to a more powerful monster.

I think it's believable (in the universe) for Godzilla to be so big and have skin so thick that it stops most bullets. Have we nerds really lost our Suspension of belief so much?

...You know, off topic but now that I think about it, why do I get the feeling that this movie might end with them dropping the nuke on old zilla and completely missing the message of the series?

 

[cojo965]

"EAT LEAD, ALIEN SCUM! *BANG BANG* ...evidently, they eat lead"

I also like @tippy2k2 's idea of being too stupid to notice being shot. I mean it can happen to humans too hyped up drugs or adrenaline so its no small feat to transfer that to a more powerful monster.

I think it's believable (in the universe) for Godzilla to be so big and have skin so thick that it stops most bullets. Have we nerds really lost our Suspension of belief so much?

...You know, off topic but now that I think about it, why do I get the feeling that this movie might end with them dropping the nuke on old zilla and completely missing the message of the series?

The movie's plot starts with that, with its failure in 1954 leading governments opting to, instead of continuing to attempt to kill him with any significant effort, largely just put more effort into plug their ears and hope the problem sorts itself out. We've seen this mentality a few times in history and things never ended well when news got out for the parties involved, like Watergate. Indeed the upcoming Godzilla eventually resolves in a monster battle in San Francisco that levels the city because the government opted to largely ignore it as opposed to deal with it. I got that summary by looking at the movie's OST track list that was released on Amazon for pre-order.

 

[Ikasury]

does a misquetto bite stop us? (ignoring the deadly pathogens they carry of course) but the bug-bite itself? a bullet to Godzilla would be THOUSANDS of times smaller then a measly bug-bite to use... it is rediculous to think guns, as in the kind we carry, would have any affect...

an anti-tank rifle with uranium rounds? pfft... bug-bite, if that... you'd probably just make him notice you're there to be squashed...

like another person said, for Godzilla's relative size, his bones, muscle, let alone skin, has to be THOUSANDS of times stronger then anything we can conceive of, just by his size alone, i mean this guy makes dinosaurs look like toys and most of their bones, while degraded by time, are bigger then most people, let alone thicker, denser, etc. etc. a diamond tipped ultra piercing bullet 'may' go through several layers of skin, but to 'Zilla that's still only the exoderm, wouldn't much feel it or care... to we care or notice the billions of microbes chipping away at our skin cells everyday? no...

drop a nuke on 'Zilla? he'd probably just eat it, munch it up and spit up a bigger belch of blue plasma fire then before... seem like a kinda stupid thing to do when the guy was created by nuclear radiation _._

also, at that size, his regenerative factor must be off the scale, with the amount gravity is pulling down on him by sheer size alone, there's got to be a constant state of damage/fixing going on resulting in harder scales, muscle, bones, etc. as well as an amped up healing system that is both aggressive and constant... if a bullet put a dink in his scally butt the evidence would be gone as quickly as the thing went in _._

"bullets don't work on Godzilla" yea, not seeing why they would honestly XD

 

[Thaluikhain]

Well, the Mortal Instruments series had monsters around which gunpowder wouldn't ignite[footnote]Which might have been handy back when people used gunpowder instead of more modern propellants[/footnote]. Never specified how far away this starts to happen, if it's less than the range of a rifle, or if you can make some kind of monster detector based on this. Doctor Who had war machines that did much the same thing (for various different explosives), though they were designed with this in mind, and were fighting in urban terrain anyway.

The first monster that the Brigadie fought (when he was a colonel) were robotic abominable snowmen that shoot poison cobwebs out of their guns, that had taken over London's subway.[footnote]It makes somewhat more sense in context[/footnote] Notably, these were bullet resistant, not bullet proof. You had soldiers standing firing their rifles at the advancing enemy, without any seeming effect...but every so often, they'd hit a weak spot and the monster would stagger or fall down. So, you've got a reason to stand there shooting at them.

Also, something I've noticed, it seems to be "bullets don't work" as a flat statement. If your 9mm pistol doesn't affect the monsters, there's no point trying your .50BMG machine gun.

In real life, hippos are big scary beasts, very difficult to kill with a lot of commonly used rifle rounds. But people still hunt them with firearms.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Blood: The Last Vampire (while a rather mediocre anime) had a pretty decent explaination as to why monsters were impervious to bullets, but not swords. It had to do with the creature not dying unless it lost enough blood in one strike.

 

[Nickolai77]

I think the basic idea that a monster can be immune to small arms fire is fine by virtue of it's sheer size and the density of it's muscle and bone. What annoys me a bit more though is if that same logic is applied to weapons of much greater fire-power like tank shells or bombs. You're really stretching the limits of my suspended belief if Godzilla can survive the kind of firepower of an AC 130 gunship for any length of time.

 

[GreyNicor]

Monsters usually cant be realistically immune, although I can think of some exceptions:
Spectral body (ghost and such)
Bullets are like water and air to us (Alien with a different body structure)

Practically harmless can be realistic pretty easily though:
Tough skin making penetration too hard to achieve practical results.
Monster is so big bullets have the same impact as a leaf or pebble to us.
Pain sensibility is so low monsters do not feel it and thus do not flinch.

 

[gargantual]

Yeah posters are right. Density leads to bullet absorption. Its just that larger rounds have to have impact. Imagine firing 9mm rounds at Final Fantasy's Bahamut as opposed to a Resident Evil Bioweapon. The former would withstand far more than the 30-60 rounds needed to put the latter down. Unless those rounds had something

Parasite Eve had a nice foundation for the concept. Because Eve's cellular mitochondia was raging the energy her and affected creatures were putting out might've dulled the impact of small arms to varying degrees.

But use bullets with the main character Aya's cells cultured in them ( due to the fact she's immune ) and they all go down normally.

I wonder why films don't try this slow bullet, 'infects and weakens or poisons the enemy over time, while you try to survive' technique.

 

[dantoddd]

Elephants in real life are pretty much immune to small calibre ammo. they get hit, but for the most part would ignore the damage and either squish or impale u.

 

[JoshGod]

Given how hard hippopotamus's are to kill with bullets that aren't either of a very high calibre or aimed at the eyes/underbelly I think GODZILLA can get away with it.

 

[Jacco]

Vampires tend to be immune to standard weapons. I always assumed they were like zombies in that they simply don't need most of the organs and systems we do to function. So you can disembowel them or perforate a lung and they don't care because they neither eat, nor breathe, nor need a blood supply to their brain.

 

[Talshere]

Ibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva

AKA, Stone Man Syndrome.

You muscles literally start to turn to bone. Thicker more widely distributed bone leads to more bullet resistance generally. Sadly, suffers slowly turn to bone and become trapped in a virtually immobile prison of themselves.

Osteopetrosis

AKA, Marble Bone Disease

Causes the bone density to increase drastically. Denser bones are more resistant fracturing.


Either or a combination of both of these would cause a normal human to become resistant (though far from immune) to bullets.


From a monster point of view scales are a more than appropriate reason to be immune to bullets. A Bears skull can deflect bullets. A denser, 50 times thicker bone plating covering 95% of a body would result in effectively bullet immunity. In practice each bullet would probably damage the plate slightly. Reptiles however can often regrow scales so......

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

If kevlar can stop bullets, why not a monsters scales? Bullets specifically cause injury not because of "sheer power" but because of the amount of power relative to the size and weight of the projectile. At the point of impact, the small bullet has a given amount of force vs. a small surface area and on soft targets, like squishy meat-bag humans the skin isn't hard enough to absorb the amount of force. A dinosaur scale is hard enough

The undead don't have a pumping heart so puncturing the skin to make them bleed out serves little purpose since they don't bleed.

Gigantic monsters are too big for something as puny as a bullet to harm. It's like less than a gnat bite to a human.

Robots are made of metal and thus deflect small arms fire.

Some monsters can turn incorporeal, others regenerate too fast for a bullet to cause lasting harm, many move faster than bullets and so avoid being hit entirely, some might absorb the bullet and "digest" them, turning them into energy and thus making them stronger...there's plenty of reasons for non-humans to be immune to given forms of attack.