"Blow up your dome-piece..."

Unc links to a tale of an elderly couple who botched a suicide pact that involved shooting themselves in the grape. Apparently whatever they used caused little enough damage that they drove themselves to the hospital.

Regardless of what the caliber actually was (my guess would be a .32 of some sort), allow me to expand on the whole "shot in the grape" thing.

A generation of people raised on the TeeVee and vidjo games hears "headshot" and thinks "FATALITY!" with some kind of special animation as your score rolls up. In reality:

1. The brain only takes up about half of your head. The rest of it can make for messy-but-not-particularly-incapacitating wounds.
2. The skull is shaped to protect the brain.
3. Pistol bullets are weak. Even the strong ones.
4. Most inexpensive pistol bullets have a round nose. The part of the skull that is full of brain is also round. Anybody who has spent thirty seconds at a billiards table knows what most often happens when two rounded surfaces come into contact.
5. Even if a shot hits right in the face, which is not notably round, there is so much spongy bone before you get to the part where the important stuff is that even major-caliber pistol bullets probably won't reach it.
6. And if the hit is too high above the eyebrows, that pistol bullet will likely make like the aforementioned billiard balls.

Ergo, "shot in the head" doesn't necessarily mean what the general public thinks it means. There is at least one Vietnam-era helicopter pilot who has a hole from a DShK bullet in either side of his flight helmet. (Which must make for the mother of all souvenirs...)