HOT MESS Shotgun Slug - Deploys ROCKET on impact!

Hello slug friends, this is Jeff of Tal Flatermouse. Today we'll be testing out one of the wildest shotgun slugs ever imagined. In fact, you'd think these came straight out of a video game, but they are real and we're going to see how they perform. This prototype slug is called Hot Mess and it was designed by Diceman, also known as Ronnie. Fortunately, he included some designer notes which helps clarify what this very complex slug is supposed to do. The Hot Mess is a very large 68 caliber projectile. Here we see it next to a 22, a 9 millimeter, a 45, and a gyrojet round for comparison. And the Hot Mess is about three times the length of a normal foster slug. Since these have never been tested before, Diceman was not sure what the ideal metal for the aerodynamic body should be, so he made some out of brass, copper, and steel. Now what makes these slugs unique is this titanium, or titanium if you're British, secondary projectile that launches out of the front of the body. Shortly after impact, there's a slight time delay feature built into it. Now the body itself is an elongated Diablo design, but he added some straight knurling to the body which function as micro fins to aid in stability. Now you may have already noticed the four very large pedals on the front of the slug here. Those are designed to break away shortly after impact and become their own little projectiles. So yeah, there is a whole lot going on with these slugs and it'll be very interesting to see if all these features actually work. Now we do have slight weight variations between the different metals. The steel coming in at about 40 grams. The brass weighs in at 43 grams, 43.4 if you want to be precise. And the densest of all is the copper coming in at a massive 44.3 grams or 683 grades. Now these are a Sabo round and use very thin Sabos. These are about as thick as a potato chip, not to be confused with a British chip. That's something completely different. The Sabos allow us to get the proper fit in the barrel without destroying the barrel, especially using steel rounds through a steel barrel. We don't want to destroy our barrel. Now, as you can see, we barely managed to fit this monster slug inside this three-inch shell. I present to you, ladies and gentlemen, the Hot Mess. Let's head out and see how these things perform. Good afternoon. My name is Mike and I am back to do another video with Jeff here out at Flater Mouse. Today we're going to be shooting the Hot Mess and these came from a guy named Diceman out of Texas. So today one of them is a steel, copper, and brass, and we're going to go ahead and we're going to start shooting them at different mediums, starting off with this here flak jacket. But before we do shoot this flak jacket with one of these, we're going to go ahead and take a couple of rounds of nine millimeter at it and see what happens. They think a flak jacket is a lot weaker than it actually is, that it won't stop pistol rounds. It has stopped every slug that we have shot at. High velocity, low velocity, heavy, hard metals, brass, steel. It has stopped everything and I'm certain it's going to stop a nine millimeter, but today I want to prove it'll stop a nine millimeter. Let's just start out doing that. Just take a shot at it with a nine millimeter, get that out of the way, then we can start shooting the slugs. How's that sound? That sounds great and today we're going to do that with a Glock 17. And they're 115 grain, nine millimeter rounds, and we're going to see what they can do. Excellent. No hole though, so it doesn't count. Yeah, it would have slowed it down. It would have thrown off the test if you hit the sticker, right? Yeah, oh yeah. Okay, so you think it went through? You know, only one way to find out. One way to find out, let's unbox it and see. Nope, did not go through, no penetration. Yeah, that vest is better than people give it credit for, that black vest. There's the bullet right there. I don't know if you'll be able to get it out, but no, it's probably embedded in there. And that was just a round nose bullet that most gangbangers would be shooting at you if you're, you know, working at a gas station or something like that. With the side shot. Yeah, they don't use the high dollar, you know, defense ammo or nothing like that. They use the garbage stuff. Okay, so now we're going to shoot it with the slug now. At that tough leader, most hot slug sticker there. For the hot mess. All right, so we went ahead and shot it with the nine millimeter, 115 grain, traveling at 1,100 feet per second. It did not pass through that first panel whatsoever. It actually stopped about midway through our prediction with these running at around 1,200 feet per second. I believe that they're going to go through the first panel. Absolutely. And potentially be stopped by the second panel behind it. But yeah, and it's a steel, it's a steel shot. So we're going to see what happens right now. Today we are using a rifled shotgun to spin stabilize these slugs. Now, because these slugs are so long, the recoil from the gun can actually kick the tail of the slug over, causing it to fly left, right, up or down. In this case, you probably noticed the slug was wanting to veer to the left, causing it to hit slightly to the left. For safety, we decided to take a couple shots using the remote test stand. And then later on, Michael actually be shouldering the gun and shooting it that way. Again, these slugs have never been tested before, and we don't like to take any chances. And considering we were using a safety device to make sure that these things were going to fly safely for us. You're right. I think the sled moved a little to the left when it went off. It could have. It hit here. Okay. And like I said in the beginning, I thought it was going to pass through the first layer and went through the dummy. Look, let's look at the back of the, where it went through the back of the, where it exited out. There you go. That is what we want to see. So we had a good solid piece, you know, to show that we had a good solid piece of Kevlar there that it penetrated. So as it went through, of course, it traveled through Mr. Bob there. Holy crap. And then it lodged in the back. So the back did catch it. And we got all kinds of fun stuff. What is that? Looks like, Oh, that is from a different round. Oh yeah. That is from the Canadian wire rope. Oh, that's the one I scratched my hand on. Do it. I did not find that last time. That's interesting. I looked. What is that? That looks like the tungsten rod that's in there. I didn't realize it was that big. I thought it was just a little cap on the end. So that little ding in there must've hit. That piece there. Do you think these would make a good shotgun round for that video game of your time? Call of Duty. Call of Duty Warzone, eat your heart out. These things would definitely be fun for that video game. Right. If you guys haven't played, jump on. We are not sponsored by it, by the way. Next up, the world famous lead plate. Mike is adjusting the aim on the Brian from Cincinnati automatic trigger device. I think we're good. You want to verify? Yeah. Okay. I'm ready. Holy crap. What came flying back? I don't know. Do I have any holes in it? I'm ready. Now this is another steel slug. And again, it got a little bit kicked over, shot a little bit high and to the left. You will notice there is a slight delay from the time it impacts until it fully activates. And you will notice that the pedals are spread open as it flies uncomfortably back at us. Unfortunately, it was up in the trees there. It bounced off the ground and hit the tree is above us, startling us a little bit. What happened, Mike? All right. So we were aiming here, shot high and to the left at that point, but this thing left one hell of a crater. There's that big old titanium tube. Well, it's kind of mangled up a little bit. That thing was in there pretty good. Nice and solid. And it made a big smoke cloud, which kind of surprised us. Let me zoom in. Okay. And the backside, the big reveal. Oh, almost made it through. Almost went through. Yeah, it came close to missing. I'm going to hold the gun this time. Okay. That's a good idea. Let's try the wet magazine. It's a nice big target. We won't miss it, but it'll show us if these things favor going to the left for some reason. Here, we're going to go ahead and shoot copper. That's the catalog. How many of them are there? I don't know, but it's about almost 10 inches thick and we have a steel plate behind it to catch anything that might go through. And I suspect these might go through. I think these are going to go through. Yeah. But I thought either copper or brass, if it fragments, we want to see if these things fragment like they're supposed to. And copper and brass may give us the best chance of that happening. Okay. Copper. I'm ready. Wow. In this test, we got a slightly higher velocity than the steel slug, even though it was a heavier slug. Once again, we see the delayed action. The delayed action occurred as it was about halfway into the target. We can see a lot of ripped up wet paper just blowing out of the back. I don't think we've seen anything this nasty before. Now we do see a glimpse of the slug. It is expanded like a big old claw. Oh my gosh, let's take a look at this. But definitely better accuracy than our first two shots. So what'd it do? Man, it made a nice hole here. Had a lot of blowout. He's got some stuff on the ground here. You guys ready to see this? Yeah. Oh my goodness. Look at that. And I could kind of see a cross mark from the, maybe the pedals. See, look, can you see that? Yeah. Yeah. See that? So I think that probably opened up. Look at that exit hole though. That is, I don't think we've seen anything that grizzly. That's pretty gnarly. Yeah, that's pretty good. So, so far Kevlar, you're done. Yeah. Wet foam books and stuff that thick, you're done. So this is the backstop. Made a nice dent in it. Still had a lot of energy. I'm glad I remembered to put that plate there so maybe we could possibly catch it. I did see a little bit of smoke on that one. Not much happening at first. So it's going in really deep before it activates and turn around. Yeah. Not much going on yet. A little bit, a millisecond of time delay. Still a little hole. Oh, look at it. You can see it opening up. So it activated about right there. So, yeah, that's where it's really going. You can see the, the four pedals opening up and it's just, it's just normally they don't do that. A slug won't do that. You know, it's like everything happens right at first. It expands and this one had a little time delay. So what did you, did you find something there? Yeah, I found a few of the components that went through and caused that devastation. And here's your titanium rod that's all bent to hell and back. And then the copper jacket. That's the whole body. And we're missing, I think we're missing one pedal maybe. Yeah, we're missing a quarter of it. That look at how it opened up there. That's amazing. I think I might want some of these for home defense, but yeah. Or video game. Video game. Yeah. That would just wreck a wild boar or something like that. Oh yeah. Oh my gosh. It'll cook your bacon for you. All right. Let's play another target. Next. We're going to go ahead and shoot another steel round right down range at this a helium tank full of water that you're that we can't see because you're standing in the way. There you go. Still 20 yards away. All right. Let's see what happens. It went right through it. Now this shot, we obviously couldn't see what was happening inside that steel cylinder, but what we do know is we had a full pass through. Something came out the backside of the steel cylinder, which is actually quite impressive. Holding the gun by hand, we're getting better accuracy with these things. So I'm going to blame the rest for the... There's so much recoil on these things. How bad is it? I mean, is it pretty stiff? It's pretty punchy. Okay. Moving that solid piece of material, it kicks pretty damn good. It feels good. Yeah. So we got a hole. Okay. Completely through all the way to the back. This thing was full of water. Now we got a maraca. Cha-cha-cha. I don't know if we're going to get out anything. We're that lucky. We need a grinder or something to cut that thing open, but... Well, this is what I recovered out of the cylinder the next day. We now know that the slug functioned perfectly well. It launched the titanium rocket out and through the back of that cylinder. Quite impressive. Okay. Next one is a brass one, right? Yep. Okay. We're shooting at the tailflater head. See what kind of damage it does. Hopefully it activates and does... Have we shot any brass ones yet? I don't think we have. No, no, no. This is our first brass one and we only have two of them. So let's see how it does. Okay. I'm ready when you are. You're ready, huh? Okay. You hit it, but... On this shot, the brass slug shot a little bit high, hit him in the forehead. There just was not enough dense material there to cause any kind of activation. It exited the head in one piece. Okay. Steel at the head again. I want to see some splashing though. Are you ready? I'm ready. Okay. Let's hit it. Let's hit it. That's a little better. On the second attempt, we had better shot placement, but once again, the slug did not activate. It hardly even slowed down. It just kept on booking. It's probably still flying downrange somewhere. So this particular target made out of ballistic gel just is not dense enough to cause the activation, but we got some pretty good water spewage out of the head anyway. But you know what? It would not be a Tal Flatermouse test video without a couple failures. Okay. We got a target out at 41 yards. 41 yards. I'm not going to try to make a meme today. I think you did it. What kind of speed do we get? 1,235.5. Not much difference there with two extra grains. Now this test is actually a wonderful example of how this slug works. Once again, we have the time delay. The entire slug became lodged in the five millimeter mild steel plate, and then it launched the titanium rocket right through the mannequin. How exactly Diceman was able to do this? I have no idea. Some things might be better off left a secret. Okay. Problem back up there. See what happened there. That was actually really cool. That was good engineering on Diceman's part. A delayed reaction. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That was pretty good. Okay. Put the plate back up there. Trying to get this thing to stand upright. He's lazy. He's like seven feet tall. All right. Try to recreate. Okay. So it hit the plate, and we saw a little flash when it initially hit. And then a big flash moment. Look at that hole. That was 41 yards. And look at all the burnt stuff on the body. So that thing went off inside the torso. There was a millisecond time delay. That's amazing. Would this be good for your video game there, Mike? I think that would be perfect for the video game. Yeah. Call of Duty. Warzone. Warzone. Gosh, I need to try that out. I'm too busy playing War Thunder. Oh, man. Warzone. You got to do it every night. Every night. Hours. Yeah. A little tiny hole. So that's where that rod came through. That titanium rod. I think you're right. But the rest of it is probably inside. Oh, I hear some rattling. I don't think there's any way to get inside there. But that's pretty cool. That was a great shot. Good placement. Almost directly in the center of that steel plate. And that was by aiming at the bottom edge of it. So my calculation there was right, fortunately. If you had aimed point blank at it, it probably would have went high and missed the plate. So I'm really glad we did that. At 100 yards, maybe aim point blank at it. I'm not sure. OK. How many more of these do we have? I think we got two more. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. OK. Let's get this over with. On this shot, we'll be using the brass slug. Now, this is sort of a recreation of the shot we did on the steel helium tank. Only this is transparent. So hopefully this time, we'll be able to see what's going on. Wow. I saw a little bit of smoke. Wow. We got another very good example of the time delay action. This time, we could see what's happening, though, inside. The projectile fully penetrated the tough polycarbonate water container here before it activated. And that thing really put a hurt on that table there. Look how much it bent it. Now, so far, we haven't seen that impressive of performance with the steel slugs. We just happen to have a lot more of those in the brass and copper one. But I think this test really shows what the brass actually does. And it's quite gruesome. It went into the jug and then activated after it was inside the jug, creating even more hydrostatic damage. So let's take a look at the jug. Went in. Definitely had a very bad day. Came out the back. Hit our plate here. Went back in. But also... Yeah, you didn't have to pull those all out and show them. There's a lot of pieces to it. That one worked beautifully. Look at that. All those pieces inside the jug. Yeah, that's amazing. So I think the core made it back, made it all the way through and maybe bounced back in. That's exactly what happened. Yeah. Man, that's devastating. Yeah, that's cool. That'd be some pretty cool stuff to have. And I'm glad you brought that jug out because you could actually see it happening. You know, you couldn't see what was going on in the wet catalogs or anything like that, or even the silver surfer, dude. But that was what was going on. That's cool. One more. We got the ballistic jelly. Now, personally, I thought the copper slug has performed the best so far. So we saved the copper for the ballistic gel, but we have a very unusual setup here. Now, because we didn't get any kind of activation on the ballistic gel head in two shots, we thought let's put one of the wet catalogs in front of the gel, give it a little more resistance and see if that helps. So the slug has to pass through that about two inches of wet paper first, and then hopefully it will activate. Let's see how it does. This may be my new favorite ballistic gel shot that we've ever done. The slug had no problem passing through the wet paper and 16 inches of gel. And you saw the mayhem going on inside there. Let's watch it one more time. What's really cool is we did get the time delay action going on with this shot. Absolutely impressive. It didn't go off until it was halfway through the block. Here we see the initial impact on the paper and there it's starting to enter the block. It's tracking really well. It's still going. And boom, that's where it activates right there. The titanium rocket is lit. The candle is burning. And look at that. That's just absolutely insane. We see even fragments of the copper coming out of the side of the block there. Very good placement of the slug, Mike, even though he could not see it because the wet catalog catalog was in the way. And we put the wet catalog there because when we shot the head, it wasn't the gel wasn't enough. It didn't have enough density to do anything to set it off. So we put the catalog there. That gave us the like a simulated bear hide or a rhino hide, whatever thick skin. And then it did its thing. And that is the nastiest gel block we've ever shot. That is just going to be a nightmare to chop up, clean up and recast. That's the way I look at things. But congratulations. What did you think of these slugs, Mike? I really want some for myself. They're really nice, man. Out of everything that we shot through the Kevlar, first layer caught by the second, I think they would be great for a home defense. I really do. You know, but also, you know, when I seen this thing in slow mo, how it lit up, you guys are going to love it. Yeah, that was impressive. The time delay action on the water jug on the on the steel plate on the mannequin, that time delay action, not instantaneous, it's just a millisecond. And what it did, it allowed it to wait until it was in the center of the block before it activated. And that just was absolutely impressive. So what, you know, if obviously the thing went all the way through the gel block, just left a nasty skid mark through there. That's your words. So what do we end up finding in the Kevlar? Oh, man, we catch anything. We happen to find the titanium, the rod. And when you guys see this in slow mo, you're going to see this thing going through like a rocket. It's Yeah, it almost becomes a little rocket. A little gyro. Yeah, no. So that was inside the Kevlar. And man, this mangled piece of copper. So I'm glad we used the copper. The steel may not have opened up, the brass may have, but I wanted to use the copper on the gel block. And I think all the little micro decisions we had to make today, that was the right one. That thing just turned into just a hunk of shrapnel, still had enough energy to go through 16 inches of gel. And we have fragments escaping the sides of this thing too. Yeah, yeah. Let me see if I can get a shot from the top. Absolutely brutal slug. Huge, huge slug. But it sure functioned well. And I think Ronnie's going to be really proud of his work there. Is it focusing? This little screen, piece of copper in there. But yeah, that is just, it looked like maybe that tube went sideways and just slashed a gash through there. Oh, just nasty, nasty. Very impressive engineering to cause it to have that time delay action. I'd say these things were a winner, man. Absolutely. And they need to make it for that Call of Duty Warzone. Yep. Call of Duty Warzone. I want to see something like this in that video game ASAP, you guys. Wouldn't that be cool to see some of the slugs they shot? Oh, yeah. In the video games like that? Yeah. You go up and get into a cash loot and different types of ammo. Yeah. You got the rods from God or the hot mess. Anyway, that's it. Let's get the heck out of here and go home because I'm tired. Have a good day. All right. Thanks for watching. And if you liked it, give it a thumbs up. We'll see you again.