January 8, 2009 • 17 mins
Body armor has used by bodyguards, celebrities and soldiers for thousands of years. Tune into this HowStuffWorks podcast to learn how the constant innovation in weaponry has led to a similar evolution in defense and armor.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
from House Stuff Works dot com? Even welcome to the podcast, Chuck.
I was just caught by surprise too. I was called
by surprise as well. I mean the push of a
button and here we are. Yeah, stuff you should know
(00:21):
is what you're listening to. Um, and uh, what we
have we have. We're actually doing a special request. Our
first one. Fairly rare for us. UM. Okay, well yeah,
if it's our first one, then it's exceedingly rare. Um.
We got a letter from a soldier in Iraq, right
and he says, he says, hey, guys, I'm deployed to
a rock right now and just recently subscribe subscribe, excuse
(00:44):
me to your podcast. They're great to listen to my downtime.
I just listened to the newest one about where it's
best to get shot, one of my favorites. Uh, I
think the hands and feet are the best also. So
he agrees with us, and he wants to request to
do one about body armor. We wear this stuff out
here in a rock and some of the guys would
kind of like to know how what we wear works.
Donald Anderson and Baghdad. Thank you, Mr Anderson. We don't
(01:08):
have it, didn't say like Corporal Anderson of whatever battalion.
So that's all we have to Should we go so
far as to call him Donald? Sure? It seemed like
a fairly casual email, civil and uh, well, we're gonna
We're doing this for two reasons. Number One, he legitimized
our theory that the hands and feet are the best
place to get shot. Sure, what with him being a
soldier in Iraq. If he agrees, then yeah, we're legitimate. Secondly, um,
(01:33):
Chuck really wanted to do this because he's trying to
make up for the fact that his father was a
draft dodger. Um. But other than that, that's you know,
that's that's pretty much the criteria for us to do
a special request, right. My father doesn't listen to me,
so I have no chance of being called out on that,
and neither do the Quakers. This is actually a thank
you to the soldiers of it there. Yeah, that's much
(01:54):
more succinct. Let's get into it, all right. So we
started researching a couple of articles on body arm around
the site and this is what we came up with. Chuck,
you wanna you want to lead off here? Uh? Sure? Um,
little history of body armor. I guess it's been around
for a long long time. We're talking thousands of years.
It's nothing like the body armor today. No, it was
(02:15):
like animal hides or tree bark or something, right. Yeah,
early on, I think man figured out that hurled objects
hurt when they hit your body, and it might be
a smart thing to put tree bark or just whatever
I can get my hands on. And that evolved eventually
into metal of course, which that works for a really
long time. Yeah, it worked really well because you know,
(02:36):
I mean, all you're defending yourself against if you have
like chain mail. I don't know how many of you
are or if you Chuck ever played Dungeons and Dragons,
but there's all sorts of different you know, kind of
males armor, um, and you know, you you get more
hit points. I believe I haven't played since I was
it's been it's been a couple of weeks. Um. But anyway,
(02:58):
it works because all you're doing is defending yourself against
the sword. You know, sword loses to chain mail every time, right,
But we came up with something. We invented something, and
it kind of made armor obsolete, right because armor clearly
is bulky heavy, hard to maneuver it is. And also,
if you get shot with a bullet, it's probably going
(03:19):
to go through a metal plate. And so once we
really got gunpowder under control, armored, isn't anybody wearing armor
like that's in trouble. But people were running around getting
shot and not necessarily just in the hands or feet.
So we needed to come up with something, and finally
we come up with modern body armor the kind you
(03:40):
see you know, um, Jamie Fox running around a bagdad
In in that one movie that I never saw that one. Um,
So you know, like a kevlar vest n bulletproof. No,
people call these bulletproof Fastin's incorrect. Actually a bullet resistant, right,
bullet resistant is preferred. Um, there's no proof to Okay,
(04:01):
it's not all the time. They do their best, but
they can't claim to be bulletproof. I think, um, Donald's
gonna find this kind of discomforting, right, I think I
think they know. Okay, Well, we also probably shouldn't use
the word Kevlar is a catch ball because that's actually
a specific brand name made by du pont. Right, So
that's like calling you know, any copy or xerox or
(04:21):
or any kind of pain reliever tile. In all, kevlar
is a specific type of thread, right. It's a fiber.
It's a fiber and a pound for pound or ounce
perounce or graham for graham, however you'd weigh it. It's
what five times stronger than a similar steel strand of
fiber same weight. So basically what this is all woven together? Right.
(04:44):
I think in the article it uses a good uh
frame of reference to help understand it. If you think
of a soccer goal with the net in the back,
when when you kick the ball into the net, every
piece of the net reacts to it. So even though
it hits a very small part, uh, because it's woven
together vertically and horizontally, it all absorbs the impact. And
it's kind of a similar concept. It's like a big,
(05:07):
very very tightly woven net wearing And I guess kind
of like if you've ever played tennis, when you hit
a ball into the net, it's a loose net. It's
going to go onto the other side into the net further.
But if you keep that net really tight, it's gonna
bounce off with with barely any movement whatsoever. It's not
so good anymore. Yeah, I haven't played in a while. Yeah,
(05:30):
but um, okay, so there's the both a tennis and
a soccer analogy, which I think is more than enough.
But but with with kevlar and other kinds of um
soft bulletproof vest, we'll get into hard bulletproof vests momentarily.
Um these things, these weaves are so tight that, um,
the impact of a bullet is distributed across them exactly.
(05:53):
So it's layered. There's different layers. I think they're covered
in plastic film. Uh yeah. Sometimes there's a resin, and
then there's there's sandwich like each each layers made more
rigid with like a plastic a plastic layer on either
side of the kemblar weave, and then that's a layer,
and then there's layer upon layers, so you know, maybe
(06:14):
fourteen or fifteen layers, depending on how how thick it is,
the problem is it's like a piece of paper. If
you take a piece of paper, you can easily fold it.
If you take a ream of paper, it makes it
much more difficult to fold. So, such as the case
with layer upon layer of bullet resistant material. But obviously
(06:34):
the more you have, the better off you're gonna be.
Although you want to still be able to draw your gun.
You don't want to be like Randy and a Christmas story.
You can't put his arms down. You know exactly, you're
gonna be in big trouble. So we've reached the point.
Here's the point in contention. You want protection that can
stop a bullet and or fragment or fragment shore in
(06:57):
the case of war um or. But at the same time,
you want flexibility, you want motion absolutely And when we're
talking about um hard body armor. These are actually like
ceramic plates. It's not like ceramic like a coffee mug
that would be almost useless. What what's it called, Chuck,
It's like alumina or something like that. There's a it's
(07:19):
a type of ceramic right. Let me check on that
as you continue. Anyway, it's a right solumina. Uh, it's
a type of ceramic plate. And it's exceedingly hard and
uh it doesn't shetter like you know, a ceramic coffee
mug would. Um and these things are they'll they will
stop a bullet. Yeah, that's pretty much guaranteed. The problem
(07:41):
is they're thick, um, and you only want to wear
them when you know somebody's going to be shooting at you. Right.
I think the key here to the ceramic plates, as
they will stop a rifle bullet, whereas your average kevlar
vest soft fest will stop a nine millimeter pistol round.
So if you know, like you said, if you know
you're gonna get shot, which is probably not a good feeling,
(08:03):
or if you have a hunch that you're gonna get shot. Um.
They make a lot of these soft vests now with
pockets that you can slip the ceramic plate into and
out of, which is good. So if you're walking around Detroit,
you can just wear the soft vest. If you're walking
around Bagdad, you should probably keep these ceramic plates in
it all times. I would say, okay, um, all right,
(08:24):
So that's the that's the soft body armor, the hard
body armor. Um and Chuck, I actually went a little off.
I found another article called liquid body armor. Yeah, that's
the problem. We were talking about flexibility but also strength. Um,
they may have it licked. How's that. There's a stuff
called sheer thickening fluid that's t F and basically what
(08:48):
it is is it's these tiny little particles of silica, right,
and they're suspended in uh some kind of oily, kind
of slick, oily substance. Uh, polyethylene glycol i believe is
what it's usually used. And so the particles are just
sitting there and they're actually repelled by one another. They
(09:08):
don't want to be around one another. There's kind of
taken up space, so they slide over one another very easily.
So it's kind of liquid e right, right, But an
impact actually it overwhelms the repulsive forces and all of
a sudden, these silica particles formed the shield. Yeah, and
it happens in a few milliseconds, so, I mean, the
(09:31):
moment the bullet starts to touch that vest, it turns
into the shield. But the but, but the beauty part
is is that after the bullets you know, been stopped
and bounced off for whatever, um, this liquid, these the
silica particles start to repel once once more and now
this average ordinary kevlar vests body armor. It goes back
(09:52):
to being you know, supple and easy to move in.
How cool is that? That sounds like some Batman stuff?
It totally does, and um, it does actually I love
it when you bring in the supplemental stuff that you
don't even tell me about. Josh, we'll get it. Like
I'm learning, I'd like to keep you on point the
the Apparently in tests of these this kind of this
what is it, sheer thickening fluid and actually our our
(10:15):
colleague Tracy Wilson used a great example. It's like corn
starch and water. If you put in equal parts, um,
they just kind of um. It's it's still liquid e.
But you can make it into a ball because you're
applying pressure. But when you put the ball back down,
it's gonna go back into more of a liquidity state.
It's very much the same except not quite. Okay. The
(10:38):
beauty thing about sheer thickening fluid is that in tests,
from what I understand, uh, they you need four layers
of kevlar um to get the same stopping power with
the STF on it to get the same stopping power
as fourteen layers of plain old also called neat kevlar.
So it's much more flexible, but it works. Now are
(11:01):
they is this in use right now or is it
still in development? I believe it has exited development and
started to go into production. Yeah. Yeah, So if you
can get your hands on a on a kevlar vest,
piece of body armor with stf right, that's the one
you want, you know, because you can draw a gun
faster than anybody. Sure, and that's important. I know they
(11:22):
say a lot of times that with the heavier vest,
police officers are less likely to use them. So what
good is a vest if it's in your police car. Yeah,
So they try to make them as comfortable as possible,
so the so the officers of the law and military
will be more likely to put them on. Yeah. Well,
there's one other aspect that you have to we have
to take any consideration that we don't necessarily, but you know,
(11:43):
manufactures of bullet resistant body armor should. Um, and that
is blunt force trauma. Okay, So that the both the
tennis and the soccer analogy had a commonality. Um, when
that ball hits that net, the net gives. Sure, you
don't want your kevlar I'm sorry, you don't want your
body armor to give, right, because it's still touching your
(12:06):
body and even if it's not piercing, it could do
some serious internal damage. I would imagine. Yeah, when we
were talking about best place to get shot. We talked
about cavitation, and I imagine this would be kind of similar,
would be like cavitation without a puncture wound. You know,
it could probably do some serious damage the soft tissue,
maybe even create enough of a shock wave to break
(12:27):
a bone. They've got this problem, Lick though. Body armor
manufacturers have that this this exceedingly tight weave to take
advantage of, like you said, the horizontal in the vertical
we've and it so efficiently distributes the force of the
bullet that you'll feel it, but you actually won't feel
where the bullet hit. It'll just your your whole your
(12:50):
whole torso will will feel the impact. Right. Actually, twist
the wires too, fibers, I'm sorry as well. So they're
twisted and woven and twisted so which you get as
a really dense, dense weave. Yeah, they go to a
lot of trouble and for good reasons, exactly. All right.
So there's some other stuff that's on the horizon, and
I understand things like chicken feathers. Yeah, did you hear
(13:12):
about this? I did? Uh. Kevlar you know, works pretty well,
but they are there. People are always searching for better
and better ways to protect our soldiers and officers of
the law and citizens if you'd like one, Yeah, I
don't want to discount the citizen. Definitely walk around with
one if you like. Well, there's one called fiber called vetran,
and vetran is about twice as strong as kevlar, which
(13:36):
is five to ten times stronger than steel, which is good.
They're experimenting with spider silk, believe it or not. Yeah,
they've actually genetically engineered goats to produce spider silk. And
I take it maybe their hair grows like that. I
have no idea, because I don't know where the silk
would come out of the poor goat. Yeah, well we'll
look into that, and uh, I think that's a question
(13:56):
of the day right there. Yeah, we'll touch on how
how do you produce biers still and chicken feathers, as
you said, is a possibility. Um. Researchers in Nebraska are
spinning these feathers into a cloth, and it's turns out
it's really sturdy because of the honeycomb texture of the feather.
So very cool. Go figure one day your body armor
might be the same thing that's in your pillow. Yes,
(14:19):
And to find out how bullet resistant chickens are. You
could shooting with a gun. You can conduct your own
field tests. I guess you could. All right, well, chuck,
that's body armor, and actually there's a lot more to it. Um.
I would strongly recommend Donald or anyone else who's very
interested in it to check it out on our handy
search bar. I think this body armor will do. We'll
(14:41):
probably bring up some stuff absolutely well. But before we
let you go, how was some listener mail? It sounds
good to me. So today, keeping with the bullet thing
that we've got going on the body armor, we're gonna
read a couple of suggestions for where to get shot. Yes,
which one of our recent podcasts we left one part
(15:02):
off we did, and both these are pretty good suggestions,
So I'll read him real quick. William Hartel, who was
a dentist in St. Louis rights and suggests the mouth
is a good place to get shot. He is a dentist,
like I said, and during his hospital training, he treated
a man who had been shot in the face. When
he examined him, it became clear that he had been
(15:22):
shot at close range in the cheek and it basically
went through one side went out the other never hit
any teeth and only did slight damage to the dorsum
of his tongue, he said, and obviously two holes in
his cheeks. Where's the dorsum? I don't know. I have
to look that out. Maybe William can write his back us.
Uh the exit side was badly bruised, he said, which
(15:43):
I would figure. But they basically uh stitched him up
a few stitches and that was that was all he needed.
So the mouth, if you can manage to get shot
through your cheeks without it touching anything else, I would
agree that your tongue. And then we have Lewis from
North Carolina parent parentheses born in Ethiopia says it's very interesting.
(16:07):
He said the hand or foot was the best place.
Uh even I'm sorry we said that. But he suggests
the buttocks. And he's not the only one. There was
another person who suggested the buttocks. Right and now in
the podcast we mentioned the bundle of nerves in the
pelvic region and he said, if you could manage to
get shot in the buttocks and avoid this region, presumably
again like the cheek, maybe from the side it would
(16:28):
go in this cheek and out the other. I would
say that's probably not a bad place to get shot either,
other than the fact that you wouldn't be able to
sit down and you'd have to land your stomach for
a while, the dorsum of your tongue would remain intact. True.
So those are both pretty good suggestions from our readers
for a good nice to get shot. And so if
you can manage, if you know if you're held at gunpoint,
(16:49):
to get the cheek in there, or whether it's on
your back side or your face, then you might be
doing well. I'd still take a foot any day of
the week. I'd like that not to be challenged. So
we want to thank them for writing in, and we
want to thank Donald especially a friend in the military
serving the United States and Iraq, and all of our
friends in the military thing exactly. Thank you very much.
(17:09):
I hope you get this podcast and I hope it
finds you well along with your fellow soldiers. And maybe
you know what you're wearing protecting you right now. Yeah,
and if you want to send an email to us
to let us know what you're doing at a given
point in time, whether it's walking the streets of Detroit
or the streets of Baghdad or whatever. You can email
us at Stuff Podcast, how stuff works dot Com for
(17:35):
more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it
How stuff works dot Com brought to you by the
reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, Are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
from House Stuff Works dot com? Even welcome to the podcast, Chuck.
I was just caught by surprise too. I was called
by surprise as well. I mean the push of a
button and here we are. Yeah, stuff you should know
(00:21):
is what you're listening to. Um, and uh, what we
have we have. We're actually doing a special request. Our
first one. Fairly rare for us. UM. Okay, well yeah,
if it's our first one, then it's exceedingly rare. Um.
We got a letter from a soldier in Iraq, right
and he says, he says, hey, guys, I'm deployed to
a rock right now and just recently subscribe subscribe, excuse
(00:44):
me to your podcast. They're great to listen to my downtime.
I just listened to the newest one about where it's
best to get shot, one of my favorites. Uh, I
think the hands and feet are the best also. So
he agrees with us, and he wants to request to
do one about body armor. We wear this stuff out
here in a rock and some of the guys would
kind of like to know how what we wear works.
Donald Anderson and Baghdad. Thank you, Mr Anderson. We don't
(01:08):
have it, didn't say like Corporal Anderson of whatever battalion.
So that's all we have to Should we go so
far as to call him Donald? Sure? It seemed like
a fairly casual email, civil and uh, well, we're gonna
We're doing this for two reasons. Number One, he legitimized
our theory that the hands and feet are the best
place to get shot. Sure, what with him being a
soldier in Iraq. If he agrees, then yeah, we're legitimate. Secondly, um,
(01:33):
Chuck really wanted to do this because he's trying to
make up for the fact that his father was a
draft dodger. Um. But other than that, that's you know,
that's that's pretty much the criteria for us to do
a special request, right. My father doesn't listen to me,
so I have no chance of being called out on that,
and neither do the Quakers. This is actually a thank
you to the soldiers of it there. Yeah, that's much
(01:54):
more succinct. Let's get into it, all right. So we
started researching a couple of articles on body arm around
the site and this is what we came up with. Chuck,
you wanna you want to lead off here? Uh? Sure? Um,
little history of body armor. I guess it's been around
for a long long time. We're talking thousands of years.
It's nothing like the body armor today. No, it was
(02:15):
like animal hides or tree bark or something, right. Yeah,
early on, I think man figured out that hurled objects
hurt when they hit your body, and it might be
a smart thing to put tree bark or just whatever
I can get my hands on. And that evolved eventually
into metal of course, which that works for a really
long time. Yeah, it worked really well because you know,
(02:36):
I mean, all you're defending yourself against if you have
like chain mail. I don't know how many of you
are or if you Chuck ever played Dungeons and Dragons,
but there's all sorts of different you know, kind of
males armor, um, and you know, you you get more
hit points. I believe I haven't played since I was
it's been it's been a couple of weeks. Um. But anyway,
(02:58):
it works because all you're doing is defending yourself against
the sword. You know, sword loses to chain mail every time, right,
But we came up with something. We invented something, and
it kind of made armor obsolete, right because armor clearly
is bulky heavy, hard to maneuver it is. And also,
if you get shot with a bullet, it's probably going
(03:19):
to go through a metal plate. And so once we
really got gunpowder under control, armored, isn't anybody wearing armor
like that's in trouble. But people were running around getting
shot and not necessarily just in the hands or feet.
So we needed to come up with something, and finally
we come up with modern body armor the kind you
(03:40):
see you know, um, Jamie Fox running around a bagdad
In in that one movie that I never saw that one. Um,
So you know, like a kevlar vest n bulletproof. No,
people call these bulletproof Fastin's incorrect. Actually a bullet resistant, right,
bullet resistant is preferred. Um, there's no proof to Okay,
(04:01):
it's not all the time. They do their best, but
they can't claim to be bulletproof. I think, um, Donald's
gonna find this kind of discomforting, right, I think I
think they know. Okay, Well, we also probably shouldn't use
the word Kevlar is a catch ball because that's actually
a specific brand name made by du pont. Right, So
that's like calling you know, any copy or xerox or
(04:21):
or any kind of pain reliever tile. In all, kevlar
is a specific type of thread, right. It's a fiber.
It's a fiber and a pound for pound or ounce
perounce or graham for graham, however you'd weigh it. It's
what five times stronger than a similar steel strand of
fiber same weight. So basically what this is all woven together? Right.
(04:44):
I think in the article it uses a good uh
frame of reference to help understand it. If you think
of a soccer goal with the net in the back,
when when you kick the ball into the net, every
piece of the net reacts to it. So even though
it hits a very small part, uh, because it's woven
together vertically and horizontally, it all absorbs the impact. And
it's kind of a similar concept. It's like a big,
(05:07):
very very tightly woven net wearing And I guess kind
of like if you've ever played tennis, when you hit
a ball into the net, it's a loose net. It's
going to go onto the other side into the net further.
But if you keep that net really tight, it's gonna
bounce off with with barely any movement whatsoever. It's not
so good anymore. Yeah, I haven't played in a while. Yeah,
(05:30):
but um, okay, so there's the both a tennis and
a soccer analogy, which I think is more than enough.
But but with with kevlar and other kinds of um
soft bulletproof vest, we'll get into hard bulletproof vests momentarily.
Um these things, these weaves are so tight that, um,
the impact of a bullet is distributed across them exactly.
(05:53):
So it's layered. There's different layers. I think they're covered
in plastic film. Uh yeah. Sometimes there's a resin, and
then there's there's sandwich like each each layers made more
rigid with like a plastic a plastic layer on either
side of the kemblar weave, and then that's a layer,
and then there's layer upon layers, so you know, maybe
(06:14):
fourteen or fifteen layers, depending on how how thick it is,
the problem is it's like a piece of paper. If
you take a piece of paper, you can easily fold it.
If you take a ream of paper, it makes it
much more difficult to fold. So, such as the case
with layer upon layer of bullet resistant material. But obviously
(06:34):
the more you have, the better off you're gonna be.
Although you want to still be able to draw your gun.
You don't want to be like Randy and a Christmas story.
You can't put his arms down. You know exactly, you're
gonna be in big trouble. So we've reached the point.
Here's the point in contention. You want protection that can
stop a bullet and or fragment or fragment shore in
(06:57):
the case of war um or. But at the same time,
you want flexibility, you want motion absolutely And when we're
talking about um hard body armor. These are actually like
ceramic plates. It's not like ceramic like a coffee mug
that would be almost useless. What what's it called, Chuck,
It's like alumina or something like that. There's a it's
(07:19):
a type of ceramic right. Let me check on that
as you continue. Anyway, it's a right solumina. Uh, it's
a type of ceramic plate. And it's exceedingly hard and
uh it doesn't shetter like you know, a ceramic coffee
mug would. Um and these things are they'll they will
stop a bullet. Yeah, that's pretty much guaranteed. The problem
(07:41):
is they're thick, um, and you only want to wear
them when you know somebody's going to be shooting at you. Right.
I think the key here to the ceramic plates, as
they will stop a rifle bullet, whereas your average kevlar
vest soft fest will stop a nine millimeter pistol round.
So if you know, like you said, if you know
you're gonna get shot, which is probably not a good feeling,
(08:03):
or if you have a hunch that you're gonna get shot. Um.
They make a lot of these soft vests now with
pockets that you can slip the ceramic plate into and
out of, which is good. So if you're walking around Detroit,
you can just wear the soft vest. If you're walking
around Bagdad, you should probably keep these ceramic plates in
it all times. I would say, okay, um, all right,
(08:24):
So that's the that's the soft body armor, the hard
body armor. Um and Chuck, I actually went a little off.
I found another article called liquid body armor. Yeah, that's
the problem. We were talking about flexibility but also strength. Um,
they may have it licked. How's that. There's a stuff
called sheer thickening fluid that's t F and basically what
(08:48):
it is is it's these tiny little particles of silica, right,
and they're suspended in uh some kind of oily, kind
of slick, oily substance. Uh, polyethylene glycol i believe is
what it's usually used. And so the particles are just
sitting there and they're actually repelled by one another. They
(09:08):
don't want to be around one another. There's kind of
taken up space, so they slide over one another very easily.
So it's kind of liquid e right, right, But an
impact actually it overwhelms the repulsive forces and all of
a sudden, these silica particles formed the shield. Yeah, and
it happens in a few milliseconds, so, I mean, the
(09:31):
moment the bullet starts to touch that vest, it turns
into the shield. But the but, but the beauty part
is is that after the bullets you know, been stopped
and bounced off for whatever, um, this liquid, these the
silica particles start to repel once once more and now
this average ordinary kevlar vests body armor. It goes back
(09:52):
to being you know, supple and easy to move in.
How cool is that? That sounds like some Batman stuff?
It totally does, and um, it does actually I love
it when you bring in the supplemental stuff that you
don't even tell me about. Josh, we'll get it. Like
I'm learning, I'd like to keep you on point the
the Apparently in tests of these this kind of this
what is it, sheer thickening fluid and actually our our
(10:15):
colleague Tracy Wilson used a great example. It's like corn
starch and water. If you put in equal parts, um,
they just kind of um. It's it's still liquid e.
But you can make it into a ball because you're
applying pressure. But when you put the ball back down,
it's gonna go back into more of a liquidity state.
It's very much the same except not quite. Okay. The
(10:38):
beauty thing about sheer thickening fluid is that in tests,
from what I understand, uh, they you need four layers
of kevlar um to get the same stopping power with
the STF on it to get the same stopping power
as fourteen layers of plain old also called neat kevlar.
So it's much more flexible, but it works. Now are
(11:01):
they is this in use right now or is it
still in development? I believe it has exited development and
started to go into production. Yeah. Yeah, So if you
can get your hands on a on a kevlar vest,
piece of body armor with stf right, that's the one
you want, you know, because you can draw a gun
faster than anybody. Sure, and that's important. I know they
(11:22):
say a lot of times that with the heavier vest,
police officers are less likely to use them. So what
good is a vest if it's in your police car. Yeah,
So they try to make them as comfortable as possible,
so the so the officers of the law and military
will be more likely to put them on. Yeah. Well,
there's one other aspect that you have to we have
to take any consideration that we don't necessarily, but you know,
(11:43):
manufactures of bullet resistant body armor should. Um, and that
is blunt force trauma. Okay, So that the both the
tennis and the soccer analogy had a commonality. Um, when
that ball hits that net, the net gives. Sure, you
don't want your kevlar I'm sorry, you don't want your
body armor to give, right, because it's still touching your
(12:06):
body and even if it's not piercing, it could do
some serious internal damage. I would imagine. Yeah, when we
were talking about best place to get shot. We talked
about cavitation, and I imagine this would be kind of similar,
would be like cavitation without a puncture wound. You know,
it could probably do some serious damage the soft tissue,
maybe even create enough of a shock wave to break
(12:27):
a bone. They've got this problem, Lick though. Body armor
manufacturers have that this this exceedingly tight weave to take
advantage of, like you said, the horizontal in the vertical
we've and it so efficiently distributes the force of the
bullet that you'll feel it, but you actually won't feel
where the bullet hit. It'll just your your whole your
(12:50):
whole torso will will feel the impact. Right. Actually, twist
the wires too, fibers, I'm sorry as well. So they're
twisted and woven and twisted so which you get as
a really dense, dense weave. Yeah, they go to a
lot of trouble and for good reasons, exactly. All right.
So there's some other stuff that's on the horizon, and
I understand things like chicken feathers. Yeah, did you hear
(13:12):
about this? I did? Uh. Kevlar you know, works pretty well,
but they are there. People are always searching for better
and better ways to protect our soldiers and officers of
the law and citizens if you'd like one, Yeah, I
don't want to discount the citizen. Definitely walk around with
one if you like. Well, there's one called fiber called vetran,
and vetran is about twice as strong as kevlar, which
(13:36):
is five to ten times stronger than steel, which is good.
They're experimenting with spider silk, believe it or not. Yeah,
they've actually genetically engineered goats to produce spider silk. And
I take it maybe their hair grows like that. I
have no idea, because I don't know where the silk
would come out of the poor goat. Yeah, well we'll
look into that, and uh, I think that's a question
(13:56):
of the day right there. Yeah, we'll touch on how
how do you produce biers still and chicken feathers, as
you said, is a possibility. Um. Researchers in Nebraska are
spinning these feathers into a cloth, and it's turns out
it's really sturdy because of the honeycomb texture of the feather.
So very cool. Go figure one day your body armor
might be the same thing that's in your pillow. Yes,
(14:19):
And to find out how bullet resistant chickens are. You
could shooting with a gun. You can conduct your own
field tests. I guess you could. All right, well, chuck,
that's body armor, and actually there's a lot more to it. Um.
I would strongly recommend Donald or anyone else who's very
interested in it to check it out on our handy
search bar. I think this body armor will do. We'll
(14:41):
probably bring up some stuff absolutely well. But before we
let you go, how was some listener mail? It sounds
good to me. So today, keeping with the bullet thing
that we've got going on the body armor, we're gonna
read a couple of suggestions for where to get shot. Yes,
which one of our recent podcasts we left one part
(15:02):
off we did, and both these are pretty good suggestions,
So I'll read him real quick. William Hartel, who was
a dentist in St. Louis rights and suggests the mouth
is a good place to get shot. He is a dentist,
like I said, and during his hospital training, he treated
a man who had been shot in the face. When
he examined him, it became clear that he had been
(15:22):
shot at close range in the cheek and it basically
went through one side went out the other never hit
any teeth and only did slight damage to the dorsum
of his tongue, he said, and obviously two holes in
his cheeks. Where's the dorsum? I don't know. I have
to look that out. Maybe William can write his back us.
Uh the exit side was badly bruised, he said, which
(15:43):
I would figure. But they basically uh stitched him up
a few stitches and that was that was all he needed.
So the mouth, if you can manage to get shot
through your cheeks without it touching anything else, I would
agree that your tongue. And then we have Lewis from
North Carolina parent parentheses born in Ethiopia says it's very interesting.
(16:07):
He said the hand or foot was the best place.
Uh even I'm sorry we said that. But he suggests
the buttocks. And he's not the only one. There was
another person who suggested the buttocks. Right and now in
the podcast we mentioned the bundle of nerves in the
pelvic region and he said, if you could manage to
get shot in the buttocks and avoid this region, presumably
again like the cheek, maybe from the side it would
(16:28):
go in this cheek and out the other. I would
say that's probably not a bad place to get shot either,
other than the fact that you wouldn't be able to
sit down and you'd have to land your stomach for
a while, the dorsum of your tongue would remain intact. True.
So those are both pretty good suggestions from our readers
for a good nice to get shot. And so if
you can manage, if you know if you're held at gunpoint,
(16:49):
to get the cheek in there, or whether it's on
your back side or your face, then you might be
doing well. I'd still take a foot any day of
the week. I'd like that not to be challenged. So
we want to thank them for writing in, and we
want to thank Donald especially a friend in the military
serving the United States and Iraq, and all of our
friends in the military thing exactly. Thank you very much.
(17:09):
I hope you get this podcast and I hope it
finds you well along with your fellow soldiers. And maybe
you know what you're wearing protecting you right now. Yeah,
and if you want to send an email to us
to let us know what you're doing at a given
point in time, whether it's walking the streets of Detroit
or the streets of Baghdad or whatever. You can email
us at Stuff Podcast, how stuff works dot Com for
(17:35):
more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it
How stuff works dot Com brought to you by the
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Josh Clark
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