I agree that Ethan didn't care if he were dead or alive- but his method was specific in order to take the most possible time- of course Jack would get him down, which would take time, and to revive him.

Exactly. That's part of what I meant about not caring whether he lived or died. Had he broken Charlie's neck, Jack wouldn't have tried, and Ethen would still be pursued.

ETA: And Charlie did die, it's just that Jack revived him.

And, since Charlie hadn't seen what happened to Claire, he wouldn't pose any sort of threat even if he lived.

Re-watching now:

- Yes, 17th IS very good!

I want to know about Hurley so very, very much. I really do think that Walt will get that $20,000 someday.

Well, I mean, I can think of ways to distract my followers which are as distracting as a hanging, or moreso. Actually, they involve things like unconsciousness and/or bloody head wounds, neither of which takes a long time to prepare, and both of which leave the followers with a big ole floppy body to deal with. Unconscious or just woozy/bleeding, Charlie is a huge impediment to the followers; dead, he could be much less of an impediment. Depending on how Kate and Jack react to obviously-dead people, and considering Jack's a doctor, I think he can probably be pretty dispassionate about, say, finding Charlie's decapitated head on a spike.

If they had brought Charlie down off the hanging tree, and thumped him for 30 minutes, and stil got nothing, well, he would have been dead and that would have sucked, but Jack and Kate could have kept on looking. The real 'impediment' to their searching was that Charlie lived.

In sum, this is the same reason why bullets are designed to spin sloppily: a living and wounded comrade is more work to deal with than a dead one.

bullets are designed to spin sloppily

All of them? Really? I'd have thought there are other pragmatic uses for bullets too.

Makes hunting seem much more cruel now.

All of them? Really? I'd have thought there are other pragmatic uses for bullets too.

No. Mostly military weapons, and not even all of those. You'd lose accuracy over distance.

I don't know all of them, but the majority of them anyway. (Not super-long-range rifles, since spin affects aim at long distances.) Most modern guns pon't back the bullet tightly into the barrel, so when it comes out its spin is as messy as a kindergartener throwing a football.

As opposed to 1890, when a standard-issue army rifle could drop a soldier dead at some hundreds of yards. It became clear, after a war or two, that dropping a man cleanly, while cute, is not nearly as psychologically devastating as making him scream and cry; and you can leave a dead body on the field, but soldiers tend to rescue their living mates, and when you're rescuing somebody, you're a lot less likely to be shooting at the same time.

eta: Yes, I mean military weapons; I don't know a thing about weapons for non-military use.

You'd lose accuracy over distance.

That's what I figured. I mean ... sniping alone would be a toss up.

Which guns are these, and really, what's the point? I think I'm shooting to kill, but really I'm just shooting to wound? Or I, by pointing at the heart, know that I'm going to just hit somewhere more messy?

I knew full metal jackets were designed to injure rather than kill -- but I didn't think that messing with aim was how they did it.

Most civilian weapons, both pistols and rifles, do not cause the bullet to spin sloppily. They have what's known as rifiling, which is spiral cut grooves along the barrel, which causes the bullet to spiral like a football when it leaves the barrel. This improves both accuracy and distance. You get bullets from civilian weapons to cause a lot of painful damage by making them dum-dum, or flatten out, when they hit the target. This is frequently illegal.

And actually, a slopilly spinning bullet, such as what comes out of the barrel of an assault rifle, is designed to do that because it's more likely to kill, not less. The sloppily spinning bullet carves out a much bigger chunk of the person it hits, and also takes unexpected paths through the body.

Military weapons really aren't designed to wound or maim. They are designed to kill.

Which guns are these, and really, what's the point?

The M-16, for one. The bullets tumble in the same manner a knife tumbles when you throw one at a target.The tumbling causes serious wounds even if it only hits an arm or a leg. If it hits someone in the chest, it's more likely to be lethal.