My brother-in-law shadowed a coroner for a few weeks who showed him this strange contraption from a case 40+ years old. Apparently a young man constructed a suicide helmet that fired eight shotgun shells into his head simultaneously.
From my brother-in-law: "At the apex of each projection there is a hollow metal tube into which a nail was fitted so as to be very close to the primer on each of the protrusion's shotgun shells. The inside pic [below] shows a few of the shells pretty clearly. The nails were all wired together as well and wire leads were then attached to an arc welder which was to provide the electricity that would ignite the primer and cause them to fire. The nails are all absent from the helmet in its current state, as are the wires that connected the nails together, and the wire that was to connect to the arc welder. The wiring was believed to be metal from coat hangers. The whole helmet is covered in a fiberglass/epoxy shell that both maintained the integrity of the helmet during the blast and contained the resulting mess.
The side with the three protrusions was the front, and the one at the top of the head was wired up like the others, but also had a manual activation, as though it was his fail-safe if the electricity didn't cause the shells to fire. There's a bit of rubber tubing that was designed to go from one side of the protrusion on the top of the helmet to the other side of that same protrusion, like a sling-shot. The pathologist that did the autopsy said that the rubber tubing was attached to the nail in the top such that the nail could be pulled straight up, which put tension on the tubing and when released would propel the nail into the primer of the top shell, causing it to detonate and fire.
There are holes visible in the helmet opposite some of the shells - they're the holes from the shot - .33 inch lead balls - that passed through his head and embedded themselves in the helmet. He knew something about the skull: thicker and stronger at the front where he placed three shells. it would have made more sense - for maximum kill power - to put the shells at his temples, but it seems like he may have been trying to tic boxes for both 'homogenous skull obliteration' and 'maximum death.' This kid was sharp. On one side, there's a hole through the helmet from the shell opposite it. It also looks like he placed the shells in such a way so the shot would penetrate the majority of the brain tissue. The inside pic shows this pretty well and you can see the holes at 6, 12, and 2 o'clock opposite the shells at 12, 6, and 7 o'clock respectively. The others were aimed downward enough to miss the helmet oppositely, or simply didn't go through the cranium. Not only was this a feat of electrical design, but it had a backup system, and was made specifically to defeat the skull anatomy. This kid was brilliant. And all pre-internet."
