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" It&amp;#039;s a standard Hollywood clich\u00E9: In the heat of a gunfight, one guy grabs another and uses him as a shield from the hail of bullets. And in last night&amp;#039;s episode of Lost, &amp;quot;Sundown,&amp;quot; flash-sideways Sayid did just that: When confronted with two thugs and boss Martin Keamy\u2014Widmore&amp;#039;s right-hand man in the universe we know, who is still demanding interest on a fully repaid loan from Sayid&amp;#039;s brother in the alternate universe\u2014Sayid punches a thug in the gut, grabs his gun, then uses him as a shield when Keamy&amp;#039;s other thug takes a shot with a handgun. Thug One gets hit squarely in the chest just as Sayid handily dispatches Thug Two with a single shot. The former Republican Guard is completely unharmed. Is such a scenario plausible? It depends on a number of factors, among them the caliber of the weapon, how far away the person firing was, and whether or not the bullet hits a bone and gets deflected, according to Robert Shaler, a professor of Forensic Science at Penn State University who also worked on the aftermath of 9/11 and Katrina. &amp;quot;Bullets certainly go in the body and stay there,&amp;quot; Shaler says. &amp;quot;The scenario is not far-fetched, but it&amp;#039;s not going to happen in every situation.&amp;quot; In Shaler&amp;#039;s Crime Scene Investigation classes, for example, police officers fire a gun at a car with a 9-mm Glock. The slugs &amp;quot;go through the metal door and will go into the car if they don&amp;#039;t hit anything in between,&amp;quot; Shaler says.  When a bullet enters a body, it becomes deformed and begins to wobble; there are a number of things it could hit, including the backbones and ribs, that could slow it down or stop it. &amp;quot;Then there are times when it goes into the body and doesn&amp;#039;t hit anything but flesh,&amp;quot; Shaler says. &amp;quot;If he&amp;#039;s using a .357 Magnum, or a high-powered pistol or a semiautomatic, and the bullet doesn&amp;#039;t hit any bone, it might go straight through. There&amp;#039;s no guarantee.&amp;quot; Of course, if you&amp;#039;re faced with a barrage of gunfire, some kind of shield is better than no shield at all. If Shaler were fighting the bad guys in Lost and all he had was another person in front of him, he says, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;d try it.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/tv/a4980/4347785/>