Latest / Stuff You Should Know / How Body Armor Works: A Special Request

Transcript

How Body Armor Works: A Special Request · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
0:03
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
0:08
Speaker 1: from House Stuff Works dot com? Even welcome to the podcast, Chuck.
0:13
Speaker 1: I was just caught by surprise too. I was called
0:16
Speaker 1: by surprise as well. I mean the push of a
0:18
Speaker 1: button and here we are. Yeah, stuff you should know
0:21
Speaker 1: is what you're listening to. Um, and uh, what we
0:24
Speaker 1: have we have. We're actually doing a special request. Our
0:27
Speaker 1: first one. Fairly rare for us. UM. Okay, well yeah,
0:30
Speaker 1: if it's our first one, then it's exceedingly rare. Um.
0:34
Speaker 1: We got a letter from a soldier in Iraq, right
0:37
Speaker 1: and he says, he says, hey, guys, I'm deployed to
0:40
Speaker 1: a rock right now and just recently subscribe subscribe, excuse
0:44
Speaker 1: me to your podcast. They're great to listen to my downtime.
0:47
Speaker 1: I just listened to the newest one about where it's
0:49
Speaker 1: best to get shot, one of my favorites. Uh, I
0:53
Speaker 1: think the hands and feet are the best also. So
0:55
Speaker 1: he agrees with us, and he wants to request to
0:57
Speaker 1: do one about body armor. We wear this stuff out
1:00
Speaker 1: here in a rock and some of the guys would
1:01
Speaker 1: kind of like to know how what we wear works.
1:04
Speaker 1: Donald Anderson and Baghdad. Thank you, Mr Anderson. We don't
1:08
Speaker 1: have it, didn't say like Corporal Anderson of whatever battalion.
1:13
Speaker 1: So that's all we have to Should we go so
1:14
Speaker 1: far as to call him Donald? Sure? It seemed like
1:17
Speaker 1: a fairly casual email, civil and uh, well, we're gonna
1:21
Speaker 1: We're doing this for two reasons. Number One, he legitimized
1:23
Speaker 1: our theory that the hands and feet are the best
1:26
Speaker 1: place to get shot. Sure, what with him being a
1:28
Speaker 1: soldier in Iraq. If he agrees, then yeah, we're legitimate. Secondly, um,
1:33
Speaker 1: Chuck really wanted to do this because he's trying to
1:35
Speaker 1: make up for the fact that his father was a
1:37
Speaker 1: draft dodger. Um. But other than that, that's you know,
1:41
Speaker 1: that's that's pretty much the criteria for us to do
1:44
Speaker 1: a special request, right. My father doesn't listen to me,
1:46
Speaker 1: so I have no chance of being called out on that,
1:49
Speaker 1: and neither do the Quakers. This is actually a thank
1:52
Speaker 1: you to the soldiers of it there. Yeah, that's much
1:54
Speaker 1: more succinct. Let's get into it, all right. So we
1:57
Speaker 1: started researching a couple of articles on body arm around
2:00
Speaker 1: the site and this is what we came up with. Chuck,
2:03
Speaker 1: you wanna you want to lead off here? Uh? Sure? Um,
2:07
Speaker 1: little history of body armor. I guess it's been around
2:09
Speaker 1: for a long long time. We're talking thousands of years.
2:13
Speaker 1: It's nothing like the body armor today. No, it was
2:15
Speaker 1: like animal hides or tree bark or something, right. Yeah,
2:17
Speaker 1: early on, I think man figured out that hurled objects
2:22
Speaker 1: hurt when they hit your body, and it might be
2:25
Speaker 1: a smart thing to put tree bark or just whatever
2:27
Speaker 1: I can get my hands on. And that evolved eventually
2:30
Speaker 1: into metal of course, which that works for a really
2:33
Speaker 1: long time. Yeah, it worked really well because you know,
2:36
Speaker 1: I mean, all you're defending yourself against if you have
2:38
Speaker 1: like chain mail. I don't know how many of you
2:40
Speaker 1: are or if you Chuck ever played Dungeons and Dragons,
2:43
Speaker 1: but there's all sorts of different you know, kind of
2:46
Speaker 1: males armor, um, and you know, you you get more
2:50
Speaker 1: hit points. I believe I haven't played since I was
2:53
Speaker 1: it's been it's been a couple of weeks. Um. But anyway,
2:58
Speaker 1: it works because all you're doing is defending yourself against
3:01
Speaker 1: the sword. You know, sword loses to chain mail every time, right,
3:06
Speaker 1: But we came up with something. We invented something, and
3:09
Speaker 1: it kind of made armor obsolete, right because armor clearly
3:13
Speaker 1: is bulky heavy, hard to maneuver it is. And also,
3:16
Speaker 1: if you get shot with a bullet, it's probably going
3:19
Speaker 1: to go through a metal plate. And so once we
3:22
Speaker 1: really got gunpowder under control, armored, isn't anybody wearing armor
3:28
Speaker 1: like that's in trouble. But people were running around getting
3:32
Speaker 1: shot and not necessarily just in the hands or feet.
3:34
Speaker 1: So we needed to come up with something, and finally
3:37
Speaker 1: we come up with modern body armor the kind you
3:40
Speaker 1: see you know, um, Jamie Fox running around a bagdad
3:44
Speaker 1: In in that one movie that I never saw that one. Um,
3:48
Speaker 1: So you know, like a kevlar vest n bulletproof. No,
3:52
Speaker 1: people call these bulletproof Fastin's incorrect. Actually a bullet resistant, right,
3:56
Speaker 1: bullet resistant is preferred. Um, there's no proof to Okay,
4:01
Speaker 1: it's not all the time. They do their best, but
4:04
Speaker 1: they can't claim to be bulletproof. I think, um, Donald's
4:07
Speaker 1: gonna find this kind of discomforting, right, I think I
4:10
Speaker 1: think they know. Okay, Well, we also probably shouldn't use
4:13
Speaker 1: the word Kevlar is a catch ball because that's actually
4:15
Speaker 1: a specific brand name made by du pont. Right, So
4:18
Speaker 1: that's like calling you know, any copy or xerox or
4:21
Speaker 1: or any kind of pain reliever tile. In all, kevlar
4:24
Speaker 1: is a specific type of thread, right. It's a fiber.
4:29
Speaker 1: It's a fiber and a pound for pound or ounce
4:32
Speaker 1: perounce or graham for graham, however you'd weigh it. It's
4:35
Speaker 1: what five times stronger than a similar steel strand of
4:39
Speaker 1: fiber same weight. So basically what this is all woven together? Right.
4:44
Speaker 1: I think in the article it uses a good uh
4:47
Speaker 1: frame of reference to help understand it. If you think
4:49
Speaker 1: of a soccer goal with the net in the back,
4:52
Speaker 1: when when you kick the ball into the net, every
4:55
Speaker 1: piece of the net reacts to it. So even though
4:58
Speaker 1: it hits a very small part, uh, because it's woven
5:00
Speaker 1: together vertically and horizontally, it all absorbs the impact. And
5:04
Speaker 1: it's kind of a similar concept. It's like a big,
5:07
Speaker 1: very very tightly woven net wearing And I guess kind
5:11
Speaker 1: of like if you've ever played tennis, when you hit
5:13
Speaker 1: a ball into the net, it's a loose net. It's
5:16
Speaker 1: going to go onto the other side into the net further.
5:19
Speaker 1: But if you keep that net really tight, it's gonna
5:21
Speaker 1: bounce off with with barely any movement whatsoever. It's not
5:26
Speaker 1: so good anymore. Yeah, I haven't played in a while. Yeah,
5:30
Speaker 1: but um, okay, so there's the both a tennis and
5:32
Speaker 1: a soccer analogy, which I think is more than enough.
5:36
Speaker 1: But but with with kevlar and other kinds of um
5:39
Speaker 1: soft bulletproof vest, we'll get into hard bulletproof vests momentarily.
5:44
Speaker 1: Um these things, these weaves are so tight that, um,
5:49
Speaker 1: the impact of a bullet is distributed across them exactly.
5:53
Speaker 1: So it's layered. There's different layers. I think they're covered
5:56
Speaker 1: in plastic film. Uh yeah. Sometimes there's a resin, and
6:01
Speaker 1: then there's there's sandwich like each each layers made more
6:04
Speaker 1: rigid with like a plastic a plastic layer on either
6:08
Speaker 1: side of the kemblar weave, and then that's a layer,
6:11
Speaker 1: and then there's layer upon layers, so you know, maybe
6:14
Speaker 1: fourteen or fifteen layers, depending on how how thick it is,
6:18
Speaker 1: the problem is it's like a piece of paper. If
6:20
Speaker 1: you take a piece of paper, you can easily fold it.
6:22
Speaker 1: If you take a ream of paper, it makes it
6:24
Speaker 1: much more difficult to fold. So, such as the case
6:28
Speaker 1: with layer upon layer of bullet resistant material. But obviously
6:34
Speaker 1: the more you have, the better off you're gonna be.
6:37
Speaker 1: Although you want to still be able to draw your gun.
6:40
Speaker 1: You don't want to be like Randy and a Christmas story.
6:42
Speaker 1: You can't put his arms down. You know exactly, you're
6:46
Speaker 1: gonna be in big trouble. So we've reached the point.
6:49
Speaker 1: Here's the point in contention. You want protection that can
6:52
Speaker 1: stop a bullet and or fragment or fragment shore in
6:57
Speaker 1: the case of war um or. But at the same time,
7:01
Speaker 1: you want flexibility, you want motion absolutely And when we're
7:04
Speaker 1: talking about um hard body armor. These are actually like
7:09
Speaker 1: ceramic plates. It's not like ceramic like a coffee mug
7:13
Speaker 1: that would be almost useless. What what's it called, Chuck,
7:17
Speaker 1: It's like alumina or something like that. There's a it's
7:19
Speaker 1: a type of ceramic right. Let me check on that
7:22
Speaker 1: as you continue. Anyway, it's a right solumina. Uh, it's
7:27
Speaker 1: a type of ceramic plate. And it's exceedingly hard and
7:30
Speaker 1: uh it doesn't shetter like you know, a ceramic coffee
7:34
Speaker 1: mug would. Um and these things are they'll they will
7:38
Speaker 1: stop a bullet. Yeah, that's pretty much guaranteed. The problem
7:41
Speaker 1: is they're thick, um, and you only want to wear
7:45
Speaker 1: them when you know somebody's going to be shooting at you. Right.
7:48
Speaker 1: I think the key here to the ceramic plates, as
7:50
Speaker 1: they will stop a rifle bullet, whereas your average kevlar
7:54
Speaker 1: vest soft fest will stop a nine millimeter pistol round.
7:58
Speaker 1: So if you know, like you said, if you know
8:00
Speaker 1: you're gonna get shot, which is probably not a good feeling,
8:03
Speaker 1: or if you have a hunch that you're gonna get shot. Um.
8:05
Speaker 1: They make a lot of these soft vests now with
8:07
Speaker 1: pockets that you can slip the ceramic plate into and
8:11
Speaker 1: out of, which is good. So if you're walking around Detroit,
8:15
Speaker 1: you can just wear the soft vest. If you're walking
8:18
Speaker 1: around Bagdad, you should probably keep these ceramic plates in
8:21
Speaker 1: it all times. I would say, okay, um, all right,
8:24
Speaker 1: So that's the that's the soft body armor, the hard
8:26
Speaker 1: body armor. Um and Chuck, I actually went a little off.
8:30
Speaker 1: I found another article called liquid body armor. Yeah, that's
8:35
Speaker 1: the problem. We were talking about flexibility but also strength. Um,
8:40
Speaker 1: they may have it licked. How's that. There's a stuff
8:43
Speaker 1: called sheer thickening fluid that's t F and basically what
8:48
Speaker 1: it is is it's these tiny little particles of silica, right,
8:54
Speaker 1: and they're suspended in uh some kind of oily, kind
8:57
Speaker 1: of slick, oily substance. Uh, polyethylene glycol i believe is
9:02
Speaker 1: what it's usually used. And so the particles are just
9:05
Speaker 1: sitting there and they're actually repelled by one another. They
9:08
Speaker 1: don't want to be around one another. There's kind of
9:11
Speaker 1: taken up space, so they slide over one another very easily.
9:15
Speaker 1: So it's kind of liquid e right, right, But an
9:19
Speaker 1: impact actually it overwhelms the repulsive forces and all of
9:24
Speaker 1: a sudden, these silica particles formed the shield. Yeah, and
9:28
Speaker 1: it happens in a few milliseconds, so, I mean, the
9:31
Speaker 1: moment the bullet starts to touch that vest, it turns
9:34
Speaker 1: into the shield. But the but, but the beauty part
9:38
Speaker 1: is is that after the bullets you know, been stopped
9:40
Speaker 1: and bounced off for whatever, um, this liquid, these the
9:45
Speaker 1: silica particles start to repel once once more and now
9:48
Speaker 1: this average ordinary kevlar vests body armor. It goes back
9:52
Speaker 1: to being you know, supple and easy to move in.
9:55
Speaker 1: How cool is that? That sounds like some Batman stuff?
9:58
Speaker 1: It totally does, and um, it does actually I love
10:01
Speaker 1: it when you bring in the supplemental stuff that you
10:03
Speaker 1: don't even tell me about. Josh, we'll get it. Like
10:05
Speaker 1: I'm learning, I'd like to keep you on point the
10:08
Speaker 1: the Apparently in tests of these this kind of this
10:11
Speaker 1: what is it, sheer thickening fluid and actually our our
10:15
Speaker 1: colleague Tracy Wilson used a great example. It's like corn
10:18
Speaker 1: starch and water. If you put in equal parts, um,
10:22
Speaker 1: they just kind of um. It's it's still liquid e.
10:26
Speaker 1: But you can make it into a ball because you're
10:29
Speaker 1: applying pressure. But when you put the ball back down,
10:31
Speaker 1: it's gonna go back into more of a liquidity state.
10:34
Speaker 1: It's very much the same except not quite. Okay. The
10:38
Speaker 1: beauty thing about sheer thickening fluid is that in tests,
10:41
Speaker 1: from what I understand, uh, they you need four layers
10:46
Speaker 1: of kevlar um to get the same stopping power with
10:50
Speaker 1: the STF on it to get the same stopping power
10:52
Speaker 1: as fourteen layers of plain old also called neat kevlar.
10:57
Speaker 1: So it's much more flexible, but it works. Now are
11:01
Speaker 1: they is this in use right now or is it
11:02
Speaker 1: still in development? I believe it has exited development and
11:06
Speaker 1: started to go into production. Yeah. Yeah, So if you
11:10
Speaker 1: can get your hands on a on a kevlar vest,
11:14
Speaker 1: piece of body armor with stf right, that's the one
11:17
Speaker 1: you want, you know, because you can draw a gun
11:19
Speaker 1: faster than anybody. Sure, and that's important. I know they
11:22
Speaker 1: say a lot of times that with the heavier vest,
11:25
Speaker 1: police officers are less likely to use them. So what
11:29
Speaker 1: good is a vest if it's in your police car. Yeah,
11:32
Speaker 1: So they try to make them as comfortable as possible,
11:33
Speaker 1: so the so the officers of the law and military
11:35
Speaker 1: will be more likely to put them on. Yeah. Well,
11:37
Speaker 1: there's one other aspect that you have to we have
11:40
Speaker 1: to take any consideration that we don't necessarily, but you know,
11:43
Speaker 1: manufactures of bullet resistant body armor should. Um, and that
11:48
Speaker 1: is blunt force trauma. Okay, So that the both the
11:52
Speaker 1: tennis and the soccer analogy had a commonality. Um, when
11:56
Speaker 1: that ball hits that net, the net gives. Sure, you
12:01
Speaker 1: don't want your kevlar I'm sorry, you don't want your
12:03
Speaker 1: body armor to give, right, because it's still touching your
12:06
Speaker 1: body and even if it's not piercing, it could do
12:09
Speaker 1: some serious internal damage. I would imagine. Yeah, when we
12:12
Speaker 1: were talking about best place to get shot. We talked
12:14
Speaker 1: about cavitation, and I imagine this would be kind of similar,
12:19
Speaker 1: would be like cavitation without a puncture wound. You know,
12:21
Speaker 1: it could probably do some serious damage the soft tissue,
12:24
Speaker 1: maybe even create enough of a shock wave to break
12:27
Speaker 1: a bone. They've got this problem, Lick though. Body armor
12:31
Speaker 1: manufacturers have that this this exceedingly tight weave to take
12:35
Speaker 1: advantage of, like you said, the horizontal in the vertical
12:38
Speaker 1: we've and it so efficiently distributes the force of the
12:44
Speaker 1: bullet that you'll feel it, but you actually won't feel
12:47
Speaker 1: where the bullet hit. It'll just your your whole your
12:50
Speaker 1: whole torso will will feel the impact. Right. Actually, twist
12:53
Speaker 1: the wires too, fibers, I'm sorry as well. So they're
12:57
Speaker 1: twisted and woven and twisted so which you get as
13:00
Speaker 1: a really dense, dense weave. Yeah, they go to a
13:03
Speaker 1: lot of trouble and for good reasons, exactly. All right.
13:06
Speaker 1: So there's some other stuff that's on the horizon, and
13:08
Speaker 1: I understand things like chicken feathers. Yeah, did you hear
13:12
Speaker 1: about this? I did? Uh. Kevlar you know, works pretty well,
13:17
Speaker 1: but they are there. People are always searching for better
13:19
Speaker 1: and better ways to protect our soldiers and officers of
13:22
Speaker 1: the law and citizens if you'd like one, Yeah, I
13:25
Speaker 1: don't want to discount the citizen. Definitely walk around with
13:28
Speaker 1: one if you like. Well, there's one called fiber called vetran,
13:32
Speaker 1: and vetran is about twice as strong as kevlar, which
13:36
Speaker 1: is five to ten times stronger than steel, which is good.
13:38
Speaker 1: They're experimenting with spider silk, believe it or not. Yeah,
13:42
Speaker 1: they've actually genetically engineered goats to produce spider silk. And
13:48
Speaker 1: I take it maybe their hair grows like that. I
13:50
Speaker 1: have no idea, because I don't know where the silk
13:52
Speaker 1: would come out of the poor goat. Yeah, well we'll
13:54
Speaker 1: look into that, and uh, I think that's a question
13:56
Speaker 1: of the day right there. Yeah, we'll touch on how
13:58
Speaker 1: how do you produce biers still and chicken feathers, as
14:02
Speaker 1: you said, is a possibility. Um. Researchers in Nebraska are
14:06
Speaker 1: spinning these feathers into a cloth, and it's turns out
14:09
Speaker 1: it's really sturdy because of the honeycomb texture of the feather.
14:12
Speaker 1: So very cool. Go figure one day your body armor
14:15
Speaker 1: might be the same thing that's in your pillow. Yes,
14:19
Speaker 1: And to find out how bullet resistant chickens are. You
14:21
Speaker 1: could shooting with a gun. You can conduct your own
14:25
Speaker 1: field tests. I guess you could. All right, well, chuck,
14:27
Speaker 1: that's body armor, and actually there's a lot more to it. Um.
14:32
Speaker 1: I would strongly recommend Donald or anyone else who's very
14:35
Speaker 1: interested in it to check it out on our handy
14:39
Speaker 1: search bar. I think this body armor will do. We'll
14:41
Speaker 1: probably bring up some stuff absolutely well. But before we
14:45
Speaker 1: let you go, how was some listener mail? It sounds
14:47
Speaker 1: good to me. So today, keeping with the bullet thing
14:53
Speaker 1: that we've got going on the body armor, we're gonna
14:56
Speaker 1: read a couple of suggestions for where to get shot. Yes,
14:59
Speaker 1: which one of our recent podcasts we left one part
15:02
Speaker 1: off we did, and both these are pretty good suggestions,
15:05
Speaker 1: So I'll read him real quick. William Hartel, who was
15:08
Speaker 1: a dentist in St. Louis rights and suggests the mouth
15:12
Speaker 1: is a good place to get shot. He is a dentist,
15:15
Speaker 1: like I said, and during his hospital training, he treated
15:17
Speaker 1: a man who had been shot in the face. When
15:20
Speaker 1: he examined him, it became clear that he had been
15:22
Speaker 1: shot at close range in the cheek and it basically
15:25
Speaker 1: went through one side went out the other never hit
15:28
Speaker 1: any teeth and only did slight damage to the dorsum
15:31
Speaker 1: of his tongue, he said, and obviously two holes in
15:34
Speaker 1: his cheeks. Where's the dorsum? I don't know. I have
15:38
Speaker 1: to look that out. Maybe William can write his back us.
15:41
Speaker 1: Uh the exit side was badly bruised, he said, which
15:43
Speaker 1: I would figure. But they basically uh stitched him up
15:47
Speaker 1: a few stitches and that was that was all he needed.
15:51
Speaker 1: So the mouth, if you can manage to get shot
15:53
Speaker 1: through your cheeks without it touching anything else, I would
15:57
Speaker 1: agree that your tongue. And then we have Lewis from
16:01
Speaker 1: North Carolina parent parentheses born in Ethiopia says it's very interesting.
16:07
Speaker 1: He said the hand or foot was the best place.
16:09
Speaker 1: Uh even I'm sorry we said that. But he suggests
16:13
Speaker 1: the buttocks. And he's not the only one. There was
16:15
Speaker 1: another person who suggested the buttocks. Right and now in
16:17
Speaker 1: the podcast we mentioned the bundle of nerves in the
16:19
Speaker 1: pelvic region and he said, if you could manage to
16:22
Speaker 1: get shot in the buttocks and avoid this region, presumably
16:26
Speaker 1: again like the cheek, maybe from the side it would
16:28
Speaker 1: go in this cheek and out the other. I would
16:31
Speaker 1: say that's probably not a bad place to get shot either,
16:34
Speaker 1: other than the fact that you wouldn't be able to
16:36
Speaker 1: sit down and you'd have to land your stomach for
16:37
Speaker 1: a while, the dorsum of your tongue would remain intact. True.
16:41
Speaker 1: So those are both pretty good suggestions from our readers
16:44
Speaker 1: for a good nice to get shot. And so if
16:47
Speaker 1: you can manage, if you know if you're held at gunpoint,
16:49
Speaker 1: to get the cheek in there, or whether it's on
16:52
Speaker 1: your back side or your face, then you might be
16:54
Speaker 1: doing well. I'd still take a foot any day of
16:56
Speaker 1: the week. I'd like that not to be challenged. So
17:00
Speaker 1: we want to thank them for writing in, and we
17:01
Speaker 1: want to thank Donald especially a friend in the military
17:04
Speaker 1: serving the United States and Iraq, and all of our
17:07
Speaker 1: friends in the military thing exactly. Thank you very much.
17:09
Speaker 1: I hope you get this podcast and I hope it
17:11
Speaker 1: finds you well along with your fellow soldiers. And maybe
17:14
Speaker 1: you know what you're wearing protecting you right now. Yeah,
17:17
Speaker 1: and if you want to send an email to us
17:20
Speaker 1: to let us know what you're doing at a given
17:22
Speaker 1: point in time, whether it's walking the streets of Detroit
17:24
Speaker 1: or the streets of Baghdad or whatever. You can email
17:28
Speaker 1: us at Stuff Podcast, how stuff works dot Com for
17:35
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it
17:38
Speaker 1: How stuff works dot Com brought to you by the
17:43
Speaker 1: reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, Are you