Is the “Old Painless” Gun From Predator, the Matrix, Terminator 2 and Many Other Movies a Real Gun?

It is one of the most iconic cinematic weapons in history, on par with James Bond’s Walther PPK, Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber, and Indiana Jones’s bullwhip. Strap it to your back, and you instantly become an unstoppable one-man army, a bullet hose spitting hot lead at 6,000 rounds per minute and turning dense jungle into leaf mulch, cars into twisted scrap metal, and your enemies into piles of hamburger meat. It is, of course, the M134 Minigun AKA “Old Painless”, the blisteringly fast rotary-barrel machine gun wielded by the likes of Jesse “The Body” Ventura in Predator, Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 2: Judgement Day, and Keanu Reeves in The Matrix. Unlike many other movie weapons, “Ol’ Painless” seems remarkably plausible, but does such a weapon really exist, and could you wield it the way it’s almost always shown in movies?

Well, strap on your bullet proof vest, as we dive into how humanity went from the Gatling Gun, to the incredible M61 Vulcan which, in turn, birthed one of cinema’s most badass, and misunderstood, weapons.

Author: Gilles Messier Host/Editor: Daven Hiskey Producer: Samuel Avila

0:00 Intro 1:06 Inventing the Gatling Gun 5:31 How Automatic Firearms Work and Aviation 15:49 Project Vulcan 19:10 The Incredible M134 "Minigun" 25:25 So, Is the “Ol’ Painless” Version of the Minigun From Movies Real? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices