Silver bullet

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For people and things named Silver Bullet, see Silver Bullet.

The metaphor of the silver bullet applies to any straightforward solution perceived to have extreme effectiveness. The phrase typically appears with an expectation that some new technology or practice will easily cure a major prevailing problem. The term originates from folklore. Traditionally, the silver bullet is the only kind of bullet for firearms that is effective against a witch, vampire, monster, or a person living a charmed life.

The best known magical creature which is vulnerable to a silver bullet is a werewolf. The werewolf's vulnerability to silver actually dates back to the legend of The Beast of Gévaudan in which a gigantic Wolf is killed by a person wielding a gun loaded with silver bullets. As a more modern popular culture example, the Lone Ranger also used silver bullets. Functionally, though slightly lighter than lead, pure silver is an adequate bullet material, being hard enough to resist scuffing in a gun bore at high velocity, unlike lead. The terminal effects are not unlike a full-metal jacketed bullet, however, a silver bullet will tend not to fragment or deform even at rifle velocities, and would tend to over-penetrate. Because of its higher melting tempreature and hardness, it requires more sophisticated casting and forming techniques than lead for quality bullets. Crude bullets can be cast in a pinch, but a temperature of about 1800F(bright orange hot) is necessary to get good flow for casting.

In different traditions, silver is thought to be the metal associated with the moon and with the human soul. It is likely that these associations have contributed to the legend of the silver bullet.

Some have seen such apparently miraculous drugs as salvarsan and penicillin as "silver bullets".

Experts often use the term more cynically to dampen unreasonable expectations. Doctors, for example, will often readily characterise the latest fad diet as "no silver bullet."

It has been said that Jan Potocki, author of The Manuscript Found in Saragossa, shot himself with a silver bullet because he believed, perhaps under the influence of syphilitic madness, that he was becoming a werewolf.

A Silver Bullet is also slang for a martini cocktail because it "is clear, potent and never misses its mark," but this usage is on the decline.

The term was also a nickname for sabot cannon shells used by American tank crews during the first Gulf War due to the round's ability to destroy Iraqi tanks with one shot.

Silver bullet is a key metaphor of Eugene O'Neill's 1920 play, The Emperor Jones. Brutus Jones, ex-Pullman Porter, has fostered the illusion among the superstitious folk of the island of which he has become "emperor" that he himself can only be killed by a silver bullet. He himself has forged such a bullet just in case he is eventually faced with the necessity of committing suicide. Instead, the natives revolt, Jones sets out to escape but becomes lost within himself, in the maze of his own darkness, before being struck by the silver bullet of the natives.