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

Episode Date: January 8, 2009

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. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff stuff that'll piss you off Cops, are they just like looting? Have they just like pillaging they just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or be in Rob they call civil acid Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast Hey, I'm Lance Bass host of the new iHeart podcast frosted tips with Lance Bass Do you ever think to yourself what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation if you do? You've come to the right place because I'm here to help and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life

Tell everybody yeah, everybody About my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye bye bye Listen to frosted tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts brought to you by the Reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Welcome to stuff you should know from house of works calm Now you're welcome to the podcast Chuck. I was just caught by surprise. Oh, I too. I was called by surprise as well I mean the push of a button and here we are. Yeah stuff. You should know is what you're listening to And what we have a we were actually doing a special request our first one fairly rare for us

Okay, well, yeah, if it's our first one then it's exceedingly rare It's um If we got a letter from a soldier in Iraq, right? And he says he says hey guys I'm deployed to Iraq right now and just recently subscribe subscribe. Excuse 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 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 Iraq 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 have it didn't say like Corporal right Anderson of the whatever battalion. So that's all we have to do. We go so far as to call him Donald Sure, it seemed like a fairly casual. Yeah, we're civilians I think we can and 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 Chuck really wanted to do this because he's trying to make up for the fact that his father was a draft dodger But other than that, that's you know, that's that's pretty much the criteria for us to do a special request

All right, my father doesn't listen to these so I have no chance of being called out on that. Okay, good good And neither do the Quakers. This is actually a thank you to the soldiers over there. Yeah, that's much more succinct It is let's get into it. All right, so we started researching a couple articles on body armor on the site And this is what we came up with Chuck. You want to you want to lead off here? Sure Little history of body armor, I guess. Yes, 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's 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 actually heavier for a really long time Yeah, it worked really well because you know, I mean all you're defending yourself against if you have like chainmail I don't know how many of you are or if you Chuck ever played Dungeons and Dragons I did there's all sorts of different, you know kind of Males sure armor right and it you know, you you get more hit points. I believe I haven't played since I was It's been a while. It's been a couple weeks, right? but

Anyway, it works because all you're doing is defending yourself against the sword, right, you know Sword loses to chainmail every time right 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 to go through a metal plate right and so once we really got gunpowder under control Armor isn't anybody wearing armor like that's in trouble, right? 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 exactly the kind you see

You know, I'm Jamie Foxx running around a Baghdad in and that one movie that I never saw. Yeah. Yeah, that one So, you know like a Kevlar vest, right not bulletproof No, people call these bulletproof vest and that is incorrect actually bullet resistant, right bullet resistant is preferred There's no proof to it. Okay. It's not a hundred percent all the time They do their best, but they can't claim to be bulletproof. I think 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 as a catch-all because that's actually a specific brand name made by Dupont All right, it is so that's like calling, you know any copier Xerox or right or any kind of pain reliever Tylenol

So Kevlar is a specific type of thread, right? Right. It's a fiber. It's a fiber and pound for pound or ounce per ounce or gram for gram. However, you'd weigh it It's what five times stronger than a similar steel strand of fiber. Correct of the same weight So basically what you this is all woven together, right? I think in the article it uses a good 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 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 very very tightly woven net

Right 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 gonna go onto the other side into the net further, right? But if you keep that net really tight, it's gonna bounce off with barely any movement whatsoever, right? How's that game these days? It's not so good anymore. Yeah, I haven't played in a while. Yeah, but um, okay So there's the both a tennis and a soccer analogy, right? Which I think is more than enough. Uh-huh, but but with with Kevlar and other kinds of Soft bulletproof vest. We'll get into hard bulletproof vests momentarily These things these weaves are so tight that the impact of a bullet is distributed across them

Exactly. So it's layered. There's different layers. I think they're covered in plastic film Yes, sometimes there's a resin this woven in as well And then there's their sandwich like each each layers made more rigid with like a plastic a Plastic layer on either side of the Kevlar weave, right? And then that's a layer and then there's layer upon layer So, you know, maybe 14 or 15 layers depending on how thick it is, right? 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 correct

So such as the case with layer upon layer of bullet resistant material But obviously the more you have the better off you're gonna be Although you want to still be able to draw your gun or you don't want to be like Randy in a Christmas story You can't put his arms down, you know, but my arms exactly you're gonna be in big trouble Yeah, so we've reached the point. Here's the point of contention. You want protection that can stop a bullet and Or fragment or fragment sure in the case of war Or but at the same time you want flexibility you want motion. Absolutely and when we're talking about Hard body armor

These are actually like ceramic plates. It's not like ceramic like a coffee mug. That would be almost useless Yeah, I would say so. What's it called Chuck? It's like a lumina or something like that. There's a it's a type of ceramic Right, let me check on that. Okay as you continue. Anyway, it's a that's right. It's a lumina. Yes It's a type of ceramic plate and it's exceedingly hard and it doesn't shatter like you know a ceramic coffee mug would and These things are they'll they will stop a bullet. Yeah, that's pretty much guaranteed. The problem is they're thick 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 is they will stop a rifle bullet

Whereas your average Kevlar vest soft vest 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 if you have a hunch that you're gonna get shot They make a lot of these soft vests now with pockets that you can slip the ceramic plate into and out of mm-hmm, which is good Right, so if you're walking around Detroit You can just wear the soft vest right if you're walking around Baghdad You should probably keep these ceramic plates in at all times. I would say that's a good idea. Okay All right, so that's the that's the soft body armor the hard body armor

And Chuck I actually went a little off. I found another article called liquid body armor really yeah, okay? That that problem we were talking about flexibility, but also strength. Uh-huh They may have it licked. How's that? There's this stuff called sheer thickening fluid. Okay, that's TF and basically what it is Is it's these tiny little particles of silica, right? And they're suspended in some kind of oily kind of slick oily substance 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 don't they don't want to be around one another. There's kind of taken up space

Okay, so they slide over one another very easily so it's kind of liquidy right right, but an impact actually It overwhelms the repulsive forces and all of a sudden these silica particles form the shield really yeah And it happens in a few milliseconds. Uh-huh, so I mean the moment the bullet starts to touch that vest It just it turns into the shield Wow But the but but the beauty part is is that after the bullets, you know been stopped and bounced off or whatever This liquid the these the silica particles start to repel once once more and now this Average ordinary Kevlar vests body armor it goes back to being you know supple and easy to move in Wow How cool is that that sounds like some Batman stuff? It totally does and

It does actually I love it when you bring in the supplemental stuff that you don't even tell me about Josh Well, we'll get like I'm learning I'd like to keep you on point in 1968 five black girls dressed in oversized Military fatigues were picked up by the police in Montgomery, Alabama I was tired and just didn't want to take it anymore The girls had run away from a reform school called the Alabama Industrial School for Negro children And they were determined to tell someone about the abuse. They'd suffered there Picture the worst Environment for children that you possibly can I believe Mt. Mays was patterned after sleep

I don't understand why I had to go through what I was going through and for what I'm writer and reporter Josie Duffy Rice and in a new podcast I investigate how this reform school went from being a safe haven for black kids to a Nightmare and how those five black girls changed everything All that on unreformed Listen to unreformed on the I heart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts Attention Bachelor Nation He's back the man who hosted some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with a brand new tell all podcast The most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison. It's gonna be difficult at times. It'll be funny

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Apparently in tests of these this kind of this what is it a sheer thickening fluid and actually I want our colleague Tracy Wilson Used a great example. It's like cornstarch and water if you put it in equal parts They just kind of It's it's still liquidy, right? But you can make it into a ball because you're applying pressure, right? But when you put the ball back down, it's gonna go back into it more of a liquidy state It's very much the same except not quite, right? Okay, the beauty thing about sheer thickening fluid is that in tests from what I understand They you need four layers of Kevlar To get the same stopping power with the STF on it to get the same stopping power as

14 layers of plain old also called neat Wow Kevlar, so it's much more flexible, right? But it works now are 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. That's great. 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, right? You know because you can draw a gun faster than anybody sure and that's important I know they 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 those are 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 into consideration that I I we don't necessarily but you know manufacturers of bullet resistant right body armor should And that is blunt force trauma, right? Okay, so that the both the tennis and the soccer analogy had a commonality When that ball hits that net the net gives some 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 body right 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, right? And I imagine this would be kind of similar it'd be like cavitation without a puncture wound You know it could probably do some serious damage to soft tissue Maybe even create enough of a shockwave to break a bone, right? They've got this problem lick though body armor manufacturers have that this this exceedingly tight weave sure take advantage of like you said the horizontal and the vertical weave and it so efficiently Distributes the the force of the bullet that you'll feel it But you actually won't feel where the bullet hit it'll just your whole your whole torso will will feel the impact

Right. They actually twist the wires too at the fibers. I'm sorry as well So they're twisted and woven and twisted so what you get is a really dense dense weave Yeah, they go to a lot of trouble and for good reason. Yeah, exactly All right, so there's some other stuff that's on the horizon. I understand things like chicken feathers. Yeah, did you hear about this? I did Kevlar, you know works pretty well But they are their 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 want to discount the citizen

You can definitely walk around with one if you like. Well, there's one called fiber called Vectran and And Vectran is about twice as strong as Kevlar, which 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 that is 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 I think that's a question of the day right there Yeah, we'll touch on how do you go spider silk and chicken feathers as you said is a possibility 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, and to find out how bullet resistant chickens are you could shoot one with a gun? Yeah, you could conduct your own field test. I guess you could all right Well Chuck that's body armor and actually there's a lot more to it I would strongly recommend Donald or anyone else who's very interested in it to check it out on our handy search bar No, I think just body armor will do we'll probably bring up some stuff

Absolutely well, but before we let you go. How about some listener mail 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, it's just one of our recent podcast We left one part out we did and both these are pretty good suggestions So I'll read them real quick William Hartel who is a dentist in st. Louis Writes 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'd been shot in the face When he examined him it became clear that he had been 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 door something? Okay, maybe William can write us back. Yeah, right now the exit side was badly bruised. He said which I would figure but they basically 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 except the dorsum of your tongue and then we have Lewis from North Carolina Per parentheses born in Ethiopia. Yes, that's very interesting. He said the hand or foot was the best place Even or 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 I know in the podcast We mentioned the bundle of nerves in the pelvic region. Yeah, 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 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 it wouldn't be able to sit down

You'd have to lay on your stomach for a while the dorsum of your tongue would remain intact or true So those are both pretty good suggestions From our readers for a good place to get shot Yeah, and so if you can manage if you know if you're held at gunpoint to get the cheek in there or Whether it's on your backside 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 right so we want to thank them for writing in and we want to thank Donald Especially our friend in the military serving the United States and Iraq and all of our friends in the military. Thank you exactly Thank you very much. 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 a an email to us to let us know what you're doing it in 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 that howstuffworks.com For more on this and thousands of other topics visit howstuffworks.com Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you the war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with? Absolutely insane stuff stuff that'll piss you off the cops are they just like looting I think just like pillaging they just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or be in

Rob, he called civil acid Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the I heart radio Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast Hey, I'm Lance Bass host of the new I heart podcast frosted tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself? What advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation if you do you've come to the right place? Because I'm here to help and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life tell everybody Yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen So we'll never ever have to say bye bye bye listen to frosted tips with Lance Bass on the I heart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts