There are stories that sound too good to be true, like a man rescuing 64 pets from shelters. And then there are the ones that are awful and totally fake.

A story posted on the website CGCnews.com claimed that a Myrtle Beach man died after shooting at Hurricane Florence according to a source who responded to the scene. The story suggested that the 33-year-old fired a "large calibre weapon" (yes, they spelled it wrong) before the bullet ricocheted and hit the man in the head.

Several users on Reddit took the account at face value in a thread that has since been deleted. The damage was done though, as the misinformation spread onto other social platforms.

Let's clear up why this particular story was fake for three reasons:

The local paper, the Myrtle Beach Sun News, asked police in both their city and Florence about the validity of the claim. Both departments said they no information to show that to be true. Snopes did the same and found the paper's account to be true. As of early Monday afternoon, 17 deaths in North Carolina have been confirmed by Gov. Roy Cooper. The causes of deaths have included a tree falling on a mother and her infant daughter, but no reports linked to gunfire. The website was set up earlier this month according to a domain registration information but contains story dates from last year. The website and it's author also have no social media presence unlike the vast majority of news media in 2018.

Florence coverage you can trust

The fake story did pull from one piece of reality: A Facebook group of 80,000 users interested in an event titled "Shooting Guns At Hurricane Florence To Scare It Away." But the story skewed the nature of the event by saying the man who died was inebriated at one of the "hurricane parties."

The reality is, the event never held a physical party or event. Instead, it operated as a space on the social media site for users to post comments and for some, jokes, about the Hurricane. To go a step further, the page's about section contained a disclaimer telling people to not actually fire their guns in the air.

The event's organizer, Ryan Stumpf, told the Washington Post the "event has never been anything but a joke."

"I’m sure there are disturbed individuals who could believe that shooting at a large cloud could effect it, but the very vast majority of ‘participants’ know that it’s just an excuse to make memes and laugh about the absurdity of it all," Stumpf wrote in a direct message.

But, you may be asking, what WOULD happen if someone was dumb enough to actually do this? Chaos for starters.

Shooting straight up means, well, that bullet is coming back down. Certain bullets shot straight into the air can reach speeds of 1500 mph, but come back down with just 10% of that speed. If you do some quick math, that's still a lethally powerful bullet. In wind, it's even more unpredictable.

Winds speeds can change both the speed and trajectory of bullets. Mythbusters performed this test, shooting both straight up and at a slight angle in a limited wind. The paintballs, and later bullets they fired, never came straight back down.

Online science news site Inverse estimated that in 60 mph winds, the first bullet shot from an AK-47 would drift about 6 inches from its path. The second bullet? About 30 feet. Of course, that's assuming the wind speed remains exact, so in reality, there's no way to truly take aim in those conditions.

The lack of accuracy has led to injuries and death before, but for innocent bystanders, not shooters. As recently as last year, a Texas state representative was injured outside his home and in Indiana, a boy was killed while playing basketball outside.

But could a shooter have their own bullet hit them? We're not saying it can't happen, but it would have to a be one in a trillion shot and something we don't want to ever see happen.

Nate Chute is a producer with the USA Today Network. Follow him on Twitter at @nchute.