It's the last few meters that are the most deadly. Point blank range is a new range category that represents firing at absolutely the last second at the closest range possible. Its the same for all weapons-between 1 and 3 meters. At this distance you get a +4 modifier on your to hit roll when firing any ranged weapon except flamethrowers and other area affect weapons. Once you're in close combat you no longer get the point blank bonus. You're too busy trying to defend yourself.
One good thing about being prone is that it reduces your targeting profile against ranged weapons. You make a much smaller target for anyone shooting at you when you are flat on the ground. When you are prone, anyone not at point blank range is at -4 to hit you. Of course there's a downside, while prone, you cannot dodge and you're pretty vulnerable to close combat attacks.
Waste World was designed to simulate the level of carnage that you encounter in the averagely violent Japanese anime. That is to say - its very violent but we still show some restraint and don't model reality exactly. After all, in the real world, nobody has lifeforce which ablates before they take damage from a weapon - when hit you just get damaged.
If you want to set the level of psychotic violence to maximum, you can use the gorefest rules. Gorefest rules show you what happens when hyper-deadly futuristic weapons in the hands of super-powered characters encounter something close to our own world's level of reality. i.e., there is a bloodbath.
Basically, when using gorefest rules, you only use the normal system of taking damage of your life force when engaged in hand to hand combat using fists and feet. All weapon damage goes directly into generating critical hits. You lose lifeforce and you take a critical hit simultaneously.
That's right - there's no attrition through lifeforce first. If you take 10 points of damage through your armor, you lose 10 LF and take a +10 critical hit. On the plus side, when using gorefest rules, you don't use the stunning rules.
So why even bother keeping track of LF loss at all, we hear you cry. Simple, the recovery rules work the same as usual, so you need to know how much LF you have lost when trying to get better from minor and major wounds.
Normally we only use the gorefest rules when PC's are fighting against extras. It gives the proper feel of overkill. PC's and major NC's still get to use the normal combat rules. However, if you're the sort of sick puppies who want to use gorefest rules for everybody, there's absolutely nothing we can do to stop you.