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When do you get knocked out, and when do you die instantly after getting attacked?

Clearly, you get knocked when you lose all your health in the blue, and you die in some time after getting knocked.

But there are times when you die directly from a shot/grenade. Why is this the case?

  • Do you always die instantly when there is no team mate to heal you?
  • Do you die instantly when the weapon/impact damage has a much larger effect on your health, such as a headshot when low health?
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    Could I get any feedback on the downvote reason, as to how I can improve the question?
    – DrFish
    Dec 6, 2019 at 10:59

3 Answers 3

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As far as I can recall, there has never been anything that instantly kills you when playing in squads or duos. I always go down if I have a teammate. Of course in solos, it's always an insta-kill. The only times you instantly die in duos/squads is if you get knocked out while swimming/in a boat because your character goes underwater and you cannot get revived while underwater.

According to the Wiki page for Down but Not Out, on your 7th knock down, you have 0 seconds to get revived, which would indicate an instant death.

  • You can enter the DBNO state multiple times during a match, but the time allowed for you to be revived will reduce each subsequent time (90s > 33s > 20s > 14s > 11s > 9s > 0s).

I can't say I've ever played a match where I've been knocked 7 times. I most likely was killed way before that.

I suppose another way you can instantly die is if you are the last standing teammate on your team while the rest of your squad are all downed. If you take enough damage to go down, you will instead die instantly, as will the rest of your team since it is physically impossible to get revived when all of your teammates are down.

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  • Thank you for the thorough answer. Does this also apply to grenades?
    – DrFish
    Dec 6, 2019 at 6:28
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    @DrFish Unless the ragdoll effect from the grenade (your character being thrown back) happens to deal too much impact damage to you or throws you into water, yes.
    – Mara
    Dec 6, 2019 at 10:10
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    @DrFish as Mara alluded to, grenades should always knock you as well unless you are the last teammate still standing as I've described. Grenades use to have pretty violent physics in that they would knock you and then cause your character to accelerate rapidly and go into the air slightly. Because of the rapid acceleration, when you character hit the ground again even if you were only blown into the air only a few feet, you would die from the impact since you were already down. I've believe this was in the early days of PUBG and this effect from grenades has been reduced significantly.
    – Timmy Jim
    Dec 6, 2019 at 12:14
  • Also keep in mind that if you were knocked down by gunfire, continued gunfire may rapidly deplete your knocked-down health bar, which can rapidly kill you as well.
    – Zibbobz
    Dec 6, 2019 at 14:26
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I can confirm: in PUBG there is nothing that can make you go from up to dead instantly, except the 7 DBNO or if nobody can revive you.

But there are exceptions: You cannot be downed while swimming. If you would be going DBNO while swimming, you immediately die.

Also you could get comboed. There is maybe .5 seconds of invincibility while going down, but if you get rammed by a car, bounce forward while the DBNO animation is going and then rammed again, you will then die.

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In a squad game, as long as you have team mates that can heal you up again, you will always get knocked out first when your health reaches 0.

If it appears that you died instantly by a grenade, then that grenade most likely has simultaneously knocked out your (remaining) team mates as well.

There can be other instances where it can appear that you died immediately like being run over by a car. The moment you get knocked out the moving car might still catch onto your downed body and will damage you again thus killing you. Basically any large amount of damage that gets applied to you right after being downed can make it look like you died instantly.

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  • Couldn't test it, but falling out of an exploding, speeding car I think one shots you. The explosion knocks you, and the falling on the ground at high speed finishes you.
    – Fredy31
    Dec 5, 2019 at 21:12
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    @Fredy31 technically that still isn't an insta-kill as you still go down first. I was going to mention that, but since it isn't a "one shot" I didn't. This is more of a "one-two punch".
    – Timmy Jim
    Dec 6, 2019 at 12:11

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