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This idea is a spin-off of "Ice Sheild" and "Phonebook Body Armor"
Simply, creat a vest lined with packets containing pycrete and keep it in a deep freeze until needed. Pycrete, of course is a mixture of wood pulp and water, when frozen becomes bullet proof.
This vest could possible be made with
ziploc bags and duct tape. It could be constructed to protect the abdominal cavity, but because of the need for flexibility, it would leave joints exposed. Also, it would have a short window of usefullness once it was removed from deep freeze. Also, who's going to test it?
Baghdad Weather
http://weather.yaho...ecast/IZXX0008.html
[nuclear hobo, Jun 20 2007]
Body fat for ballistic protection?
http://www.newscien...-the-last-word.html
[ldischler, Jun 21 2007]
body armor
http://www.youtube....watch?v=LlEo5MbcaX0
[copycat042, Mar 06 2008]
Bulletproof Gel
http://www.telegrap...-stops-bullets.html
[imaginality, Mar 02 2009]
[link]
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Wikipedia tells me that you will need 6.5 inches of pykrete to stop a bullet. Human torso is about 18 by 30 inches, so to cover it front and back with 6.5 inches of pykrete would total 7020 cubic inches. A cubic inch of ice is about a half ounce in weight. So if this vest were pure water ice it would weight about 188 pounds. Ok, pykrete is 15% wood pulp, so slightly less than that. But add on straps, insulation underneath (so we don't freeze our protectee), and we are probably looking near 200 pounds. |
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Thanks, I'll take the Kevlar. |
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1: Make with balsa wood for lightness.
2: A compressed gas system would prevent the need for a freezer, which might fail. One could quickly vent the compressed gas and freeze the water. In fact the gas might be stored compressed within the vest itself.
3: Only robust and strapping vest wearers allowed. Alternately, a floor length gown-style garment might have castor wheels mounted along the bottom edge to help support some of the weight. |
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Even if you use wood with no weight whatsoever you still have over 150 pounds of ICE to carry around. |
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Now the floor length with wheels makes more sense. In fact you could make sort of a six foot tall cone with wheels at the bottom and a rounded top that you could push around from the inside. |
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Just look out for The Doctor and Romana. |
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Let's airlift a bunch of these to Iraq right away. [link] |
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|Also, who's going to test it?| why, you of coarse! |
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//why, you of coarse!// sp. course |
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// Economics never lies. // On the contrary, economics is always nothing but lies. It exists only in the minds of human beans. You can't fool Nature, however. |
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[tom], that reminds me of FFVII with the slight translation error in the battle arena:
Do you wish to continue? |
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Ah yes Piecrete, the pastry based protection garment developed in Greece. |
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Actually, it was developed in Crete from pies that had been left in the sun too long. |
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Is ice actually better than water for stopping a bullet? Couldn't be much, in any case. (All those dead fish in "Saving Private Ryan," that was bogus. No way there were that many fish within a foot of the surface.) |
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Ice, especially reinforced ice, is really pretty good at stopping projectiles. Not as good as steel or synthetics, but better than, say, custard. Fluids just have to be shunted out of the way of a projectile. Solids have to be broken, and the pieces moved out of the way, which requires more pieces to be broken to make way. Shattering takes up a lot of energy. |
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[Galbinus_Caeli] That's basically true, but // Fluids just have to be shunted out of the way of a projectile // understates how good dense fluids (such as custard or water) are at taking energy out of fast moving projectiles. Fluids don't STOP projectiles, but they can slow them down really dramatically, to the point where they're no longer lethal. |
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That foot of water [ldischler] referred to really will stop bullets being lethal. |
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[Cosh i Pi], but as [Galbinus_Caeli] points out, you need 6.5 inches of pycrete to stop a bullet. That's roughly half the amount of water you're talking about... but it would be terribly cool to see people in gigantic water-balloon suits. |
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"Look, the Michelin man is going into battle!" |
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//Ok, pykrete is 15% wood pulp, so slightly less than that//
Dispense with the water and just use the pulp--in the form of Bibles. (If you use Gideon Bibles, the cost is zero.)
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[CaptainClapper] I wasn't disagreeing - merely suggesting out that perhaps he'd somewhat overstated his (perfectly sound) case. |
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How is human fat about stopping a bullet? Could we make body armor from the residue of a liposuction clinic? |
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// How is human fat about stopping a bullet? // 8~) About as good as custard! |
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Grow your own body armour - make yourself into a bigger target (but be less likely to be hit in a vital organ...) |
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Apropos custard, I wonder if mercury could be modified into a thixotropic liquid such that movements of the walking around sort allowed it to flow, but rapid shocks (such as the entry of a projectile) thickened it to the point of impenetrability? |
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I think the only reason it's bulletproof is because it's completely covered in ice. |
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//Grow your own body armour// |
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Fat has proven effective, at least with knives. Don't know how it compares to custard though. How about a hybrid custard/fat armour that protects you while you stuff your face? |
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It's important to distinguish between raw and cooked custard in this context. The material of interest is raw custard - with a rather higher ratio of custard power to water (or, better, milk) than is normal in the final cooked product. |
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For stopping bullets, cooked custard is effectively pretty nearly the same as water. Fat is very similar, a little worse because it's slightly less dense. For bullets, even the interesting raw custard is negligibly better than water (or cooked custard) - its mechanical strength is too low to be of any relevance at all. It's only the density that matters, and it's about the same as the others. |
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The higher the speed of the bullet, the less mechanical strength matters, and the (relatively) more important becomes just plain density. |
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//more important becomes just plain density// |
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I beleive density is already a requirement for serving in the armed forces. |
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Hence the oxymoronic expression, "Military Intelligence"? |
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A non-Newtonian fluid that reacted quickly enough, and was viscous enough, would work. |
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Tactically speaking I would take a troop of rag-tag unarmored soldiers over a lumbering herd of squat portly icemen. Sacrificing manuverability for bullet proofing suggests that getting shot is innevitable, that your troops are going to act as walking targets to draw the opposition into open gunfights. |
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That said I suspect a paste of cornstarch meshed with steelwool would do quite nicely for dispersing energy. |
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Beer is great at preventing bullet wounds
to the chest and head. You're a much
smaller target when you're horizontal. |
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Galbinus Caeli, has a point in the way that if you were a skinny army man out in a war somewhere its probaley twice your weight. |
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I presume that if you compromise and make pykrete with kevlar as the fiber, you could probably use much less kevlar than in soft body armor (cheaper!), and also reduce the bullet stopping thickness of the pykrete to a couple of inches or less, but with the benefits of hard armor. |
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The material would be stronger to begin with, plus if the ice shattered, the kevlar would likely still hold the broken pieces together (unlike sawdust), allowing force distribution, kind of like dragon skin, and continued protection against additional rounds. |
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[idischler], the dead fish were not supposed to have been shot, they succumbed to the underwater explosions from the massive shelling. |
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