Remarkably Good

GURPS is not a simulator.

It's a tabletop role playing game.

A game.

Yet, it's been remarkably accurate about the effects of firearms.

I've been doing "Will it GURPS?" for longer than I've had a blog because the first two editions explicitly called out a "reality check" and if what you were doing was impossible in the rules, but worked in real life:  Reality trumps the rules!

That, alone, might be why I like GURPS so much to keep dabbling with it despite not playing more than a handful of sessions in 30 years.

My recent dive into .30 Carbine underscored it a bit.

A typical person has 10 hit points.  After taking 10 points of damage, they have to start checking to see if they pass out from the wounds.  After taking 20 points of damage, they have to start checking to see if their wounds killed them.

We have anecdotes of people hitting Chinese soldiers and getting no results from those hits.

I think I've managed to recreate the scenario with the rules.

The cold and underpowered ammo at longer ranges needs many hits to disable a 10 HP person inside the rules and seems to match reports from the battle.

The numbers I have for the underpowered ammo drop .30 Carbine down into pistol cartridge power levels and we have ample examples from police shootings that it can take many hits to stop someone.

The real problem will be breaking it to the players that their ammo is compromised and nobody has any extreme cold experience to tell them they're taking a penalty to their Guns/TL (Rifle) skill.

"Bloody murder!" they will cry!