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[Sharlin]

Having shot both pistols and rifles for many years i know that the cause of death in most gun shot cases is blood loss, particularly in handguns.

The problem with star wars blasters is that you are shooting a beam of energy that is very very hot effectively burning its way though a target.
As a result this beam imparts virtually no stopping power on your target it also burn the inside of the wound preventing any blood loss thus a person shot with one of these weapons could not bleed to death.
 
This would make killing someone with one of these weapons very hard, in fact the only way to effectively kill someone with a blaster would be to hit a vital organ like the brain or heart etc.

[Klick]

Keep in mind that this heating occurs very rapidly, so a lot of the damage would actually be from the explosive expansion of bodily fluids. This damage would not necessarily be cauterized, and the shockwave propagating through the tissue could cause additional damage elsewhere. Also, a hit to a large artery or vein would simply be too big and have too much bloodflow to be cauterized.

In any event, your analysis falls apart simply by virtue of the fact that we canonically see blaster weapons dropping people with one or two hits, the same sort of effect we might expect with a real firearm.

[Sharlin]

In any event, your analysis falls apart simply by virtue of the fact that we canonically see blaster weapons dropping people with one or two hits, the same sort of effect we might expect with a real firearm.

That is exactly my point, the fact that they do die so easily must mean that there is something else going on, maybe some kind of disruption of a persons cells where radiation from the shot destroys a much bigger area than the wound its self causing terrible internal bleeding.
This would also explain why we see people hit in the shoulder and die immediately, because a large area around the wound would also have been distroyed.

[Phoenix]

Think less about the penetrating damage of bullets and more about the shock-wave/concussion damage of explosives.  With physical shock damage there's very little visible external damage, internally on the other hand tissue get messed up to a point of uselessness.  Blasters have thermal properties that instantly vaporize small portions of stone and metal (evident by the marks left after said material is shot at) now think about what that sudden heating would do to tissue and the water contained within.

[Sharlin]

Thats a good point but do blasters shots give out radiation as well???

[Klick]

As in ionizing radiation? Maybe not. I don't see that as necessary to achieve the effects we see in the films, and it would bring with it a number of other issues about residual radiation injuries for people who take non-lethal hits (like Princess Leia in ROTJ).

[Sharlin]

As in ionizing radiation? Maybe not. I don't see that as necessary to achieve the effects we see in the films, and it would bring with it a number of other issues about residual radiation injuries for people who take non-lethal hits (like Princess Leia in ROTJ).

Thats a very good point, i forgot about people who have been wounded.

I'm just trying to explain the lethality of the star wars blaster, because even when you consider rapid heating of tissue though the wound tracked it doesn't explain how utterly lethal they seem to be.

[Coolhand77]

Just a suggestion, everyone assumes that the mechanism of damage from blasters is "energy" or laser based.  There is every possibilty that the "energy bullets" do the same thing seen in weapons like common slug throwers.  As to their lethality, we see people go down, we don't know if they died outright
in fact the lack of damage seen in Princess Leia's arm wound suggests a potential for similar wounding to a high speed rifle bullet.  Assuming a similar wounding mechanic to, say a 5.56 military round, it should penetrate a short distance and then explosively fragement.  that would explain why the same blaster bolts that could kill instantly, only produced easily treatable wounds when they hit a limb or such, and pass through and out before they "decay" and "explode".  This would also be an explanation of why someone like Han Solo would use his blaster pistol instead of picking up a dropped rifle.  Same wounding potential, and since he was expecting close quarters shooting, the extra range of a rifle wasn't needed.  Another way to look at it is, that military type weapons have this wounding/killing potential, while civilian weapons do not, providing a "laser" like through and through hit without the "explosive decay"

just my suggestion

[Sharlin]

I like that theory, thats the type of thing i had in mind, these type of bolts would expanded or explode inside the body,
that would also explain why their is so much smoke generated from a single hit.

[Sharlin]

This is just a simple view, to show how a explosive blaster bolt may actually work.
As the bolt passes though a target ( be it a Human a Ewok or a brick wall ) the out energy layer bleeds away exposing the explosive core which then detonates.

This would explain the big holes left in concrete that has been hit by one of these bolts, it would also explain how people shot in the arm are relatively uninjured because the bolt passed though before it could explode.

[Coolhand77]

The damage shown, would not need to be due something like antimatter.  They have already given us a potential mechanism/matieral to use.  Spin stabilized Tibanna Gas based "plasma". 

[LBraden]

True, canon states its "Tibanna Gas" and the anti-matter in that bolt (assuming that its 1/1 scale) would be enough to create an explosion big enough to disintegrate most of a human, and if hit a standard brick wall would make a nice hole.

[Sharlin]

I forgot about Tibanna gas, which is a surprise considering the amount of computer games i have played where you have too blow the stuff up.
As too the scale it wasn't supposed accurate it was just a rough drawing.

[50Stone]

I forget, is Tibanna gas used in the bolt?

I always assumed that the tibanna is used to make the plasma at a blaster bolts core, while the powercell is drained creating the encasing shell around the plasma core that prevents it dissapating before hitting it's target.

This is why they reload powercells rather than tanks of tibanna gas, very little gas is needed etc, and is replaced on a longer cycle than power.

Also in some of the EU they have commented that blasters stored too long has had gas reserves that have "decayed" causing the bolt they fire to be weak, sometimes to the point of being non-lethal.

[Coolhand77]

I honestly am not sure what the mechanism is.  It could be Tibanna gas based plasma, charged projected using the power from the blaster pack, while on the other hand it could be like a gas fired laser [I know, they arn't lasers]

I prefer the former example.