- The phrase "bulletproof vest" is often a misnomer. Many military vests or helmets, particularly those made before the modern era, are actually intended to prevent injury from the fragmentation cast about by explosions. Some observers have commented that helmets or vests were "useless" because they did not stop rifle ammunition. This is a fallacy, as most injuries in warfare are caused by fragmentation, against which helmets and armor were rather effective. The term "proof" historically referred to being tested (as in proof reading), not being invulnerable — indeed, it is so statistically difficult to say that any piece of armor is guaranteed to stop a given bullet that vests usually report what test loadings the vest has a 50% chance of stopping. The shift in meaning has led to conscientious makers and writers calling the vests "bullet resistant". Like any other type of armor, ballistic armor is not supposed to prevent you from being hurt; it's to prevent you from being killed.
- Not all body armor is created equal
. Different levels are made to resist different calibers of ammunition; Levels I, IIA, II, and IIIA will resist most pistol rounds, but only levels III and IV will resist rifle rounds. - Anti-ballistic armor works by dispersing the force applied to the person by the bullet across a wide area of the body, preventing the bullet from piercing the body and wreaking havoc on blood vessels and organs. Compare the lethality of fists with knives: They deliver about the same amount of energy to the target, but the latter attacks a much smaller area. For the same reason, bullet resistant armor protects nicely against shrapnel produced by fragmentation explosives like typical grenades, but is far less effective against an explosion itself (which will apply the same amount of force anyway).
- Bulletproof vests and stab-proof vests require a rather different Kevlar weave, which can be a problem if you're wearing the sort that's not optimal for the weapon you're being attacked with: A stab vest will do very little to protect against even small-calibre bullets, and ballistic Kevlar only offers as much resistance to a sharp blade as the equivalent thickness of dense cloth by itself.
- Modern military body armor:
- The Soviet Union did perhaps more than any other nation in the development of the modern military body armor, especially thanks to the development of three specific pieces. The 6B2 (6Б2) was introduced in March of 1979. While it used the traditional flack jacket formula of metal plates and aramid fibres, it set the style for future armors, vests, and plate carriers by having solid front and rear sides, and being donned over the head and adjusted by straps on the shoulders. The 6B3 (6Б3) and 6B4 (6Б4) were introduced in the summer of 1979, and were revolutionary advances in body armor. These were the first widely-used systems to offer more than just protection. They came with integrated pockets for magazines, grenades, and other items. They had projections on the shoulders to allow soldiers to comfortably sling weapons and equipment over their shoulders without it falling off, the vests could be adjusted from both the shoulders and sides, and they were modular, with a baseline amount of soft armor integrated into the vests, with the option for soldiers to add more or less armor as they wished, thanks to using smaller plates housed in internal pockets, meaning that protection could be precisely tailored and taking a hit did not necessitate replacement of all the armor. The supplemental armor plates were also made of materials which would become global mainstays. The 6Б3 used titanium plates and the 6Б4 used ceramic plates. Lastly, the 6Б3 was the first vest in the world to be widely supplied with camouflage covers which could easily be added and removed as needed in the field.
- U.S. soldiers in Iraq have reported being hit by rifle fire and not knowing they were hit, due to the modern heavy body armor they are wearing. Many injuries are due to explosives, which pierce the armor, or more often, damage parts of the body which are not protected. The force of the blast also is not reduced by much, which can cause brain damage when the brain is bruised against the skull. However, such body armor can only withstand one or two hits — at medium range.
- The effectiveness of body armor is highly underestimated. As this article demonstrates, modern body armor can receive a full-contact grenade blast.
- Many army medics in Iraq reported that soldiers who survived an IED blast would often have shrapnel injuries on the limbs that would stop in a very neat line where their body armor started.
- The latest trend in body armor? Ballistic shorts which provide coverage to the groin area. This being intended to address a major problem for troops riding in vehicles that roll over landmines or IEDs. Various styles are being evaluated, including "ballistic boxers" to shorts made from more conventional body armor materials. Puns abound, obviously.
- Several variations of armor are used by US personnel, the most common ESAPI stopping two 30.06 AP hits, while the best stopping three M993 hits.
- The Soviet Union did perhaps more than any other nation in the development of the modern military body armor, especially thanks to the development of three specific pieces. The 6B2 (6Б2) was introduced in March of 1979. While it used the traditional flack jacket formula of metal plates and aramid fibres, it set the style for future armors, vests, and plate carriers by having solid front and rear sides, and being donned over the head and adjusted by straps on the shoulders. The 6B3
- A black joke appreciated by British troops in Northern Ireland (and probably today in the Sandpit) is that wearing the issue flak jacket/protective armour ensures that if you are blown up by a terrorist bomb, at least the jacket will keep enough of you together in the same place afterwards to justify a coffin at your funeral, and make it easier for Forensics to identify the bits. So always paint your name on the flak jacket to make sure your family get the right corpse.
- A primitive version of such a vest is reputed to have been used by tax-gatherers. It consisted of a plank of wood hanging under the clothes on their back, and apparently it was not unknown for them to go about their business with arrows sticking out of it.
- Ned Kelly, outlaw and Australian Folk Hero, is famous for his standoff with the police with him and his gang dressed in body armor made out of plow parts. Unfortunately for the gang, they didn't armor their legs and only Ned survived to sit trial...
- The infamous shootout in North Hollywood persisted because the two robbers were well-armored. Police, unable to penetrate their armor with their service pistols and shotguns, nonetheless put up great resistance without any loss of life; several officers also went to a nearby gunshop to procure rifles that could penetrate the armour. Then the SWAT team arrived. Like Ned Kelly above, these guys suffered from both a lack of mobility and leg protection, which is how they got cornered. Phillips eventually committed suicide (and was shot in the spine with a rifle) after his gun jammed and he was shot in the arm. Matasareanu was crippled by gunfire to his legs and died before aid reached him.
- People who make mail as a hobby can make good money not only by making costume-armor for Renaissance fairs but also selling mail vests to police officers looking for greater knife-protection than what their standard-issue body armor provides. However, according to research carried out by the British army in World War I, mail will actually make a gunshot worse. It's not strong enough to stop a bullet and will actually fragment, carrying more shrapnel into the body, as well as making it hard to reach the wound for treatment. Additionally, any stabs that do get through the mail will drive part of the mail into the wound, which can easily lead to infection. Also, while high quality mail coupled with effective padding is effectively knife proof, lower grade mail is not. Mail is also pretty heavy and cumbersome as it hangs from the shoulders. Thin steel panels are much lighter and provide comparable knife protection. Modern aluminum alloys are stronger than low-grade steel and weigh one-third as much. Titanium weighs 2/3rds as much as steel and is stronger by weight but not volume; however, unlike aluminum, which can be reasonably priced, titanium is ludicrously expensive.
- The popular Society for Creative Anachronism song "I'll See Your Six" tells of Sir Trude, the first of the Lady Knights, who wore her SCA armor home through the streets of New York City. She was accosted by a mugger and his three cronies... whose switchblade failed to so much as faze her due to the heavy mail she wore. All four were chased off when she responded by drawing and brandishing a three foot broadsword at them that they hadn't noticed her carrying earlier. Mugging the Monster at its finest as well as an example of how mail can at the very least reduce damage from blade slashes.
- A story is told about an early 90s Russian LARP enthusiast who wore a mail shirt under his jacket. Only in that case, the story has a punchline: the muggers thought that the "victim" was Duncan McLeod the Immortal because of the guy's immunity to knives and him carrying a sword.
- Silk armor:
- Silk was used in various items of medieval armour, notably by the Samurai and the Mongol warriors. Though it wouldn't stop a blade or arrow, rather than being cut it would stretch and be pushed into the wound allowing for easier extraction of arrowheads which would otherwise require (probably fatal) surgery or result in (also probably fatal) infections.
- When he was shot dead in 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand was wearing a silk bulletproof vest. These vests were starting to become obsolete due to faster bullets, but the point was moot because he was shot in the throat. In other words, if he had worn a bulletproof scarf, he could have saved thousands.
- A new method of making bulletproof vests with layers of silk was adopted by the Thai police, in an effort to reduce costs in having to import kevlar by using their own Thai silk instead. Thailand is a rare case of a country using silk because it is cheaper for them to do so, since they have a thriving silk production industry.
- During the USA's campaign to subjugate the Philippines, natives would wrap thick ropes around themselves as armor against the the standard .38 Long Colt revolver round the Army had at the time. This led the Army to temporarily bring the Single Action Army in .45 Colt back into service, and led to the development of the more powerful .38 Special round and the M1911 pistol with its even more powerful .45 ACP rounds. The ropes actually didn't provide much protection against bullets, but they did restrict circulation, making it take longer to bleed to death from bullet wounds.
- During the 1920s/30s, a typical bulletproof vest worn by a bank robber or bootlegger was just a vest with thick layers of cotton padding and cloth. These vests, up to 20 layers of cotton, with a few thin steel plates, were still quite effective against the standard issue .38 Special revolvers used by most police officers at the time. One rather well known hitman was killed while wearing one by a officer using a BAR, essentially a light machine gun. These vests had a very unfortunate consequence for the criminals wearing them: to not lose the police market to Colt and a M1911 pistol variant chambered for the proprietary .38 Super round (that could pierce those bulletproof vests), Smith & Wesson and Winchester developed the .357 Magnum round (including armour-piercing variants) with the Registered Magnum revolver, renamed the Model 27 in 1957. The bulletproof vest disappeared very quickly. Lastly, many types of ammo were less powerful than their modern-day counterparts, due to newer guns being made of stronger materials. Very important if you buy a vintage gun and try loading it with modern ammunition, which can easily overpressurize the firing chamber and cause the gun to explode.
- Scientists from China, the US, and Switzerland developed a body armor made from cotton t-shirts. The process involves soaking the shirts in a boron/nickel catalyst, then heating them to over 2,000 degrees Farenheit, which turns the fibers into boron carbide, the third-hardest material on Earth. Nobody Doesn't Like Molten Boron? Not as effective as it sounds, because the material's hardness means it would fracture where softer materials like steel would bend against similar impacts, but boron carbide is one of the materials used to make the "trauma plates" that are placed within a ballistic vest.
- In Mexico, there is a clothes designer who specializes in making very stylish, bulletproof sports jackets, coats, T-shirts and the likes which cannot be easily visually distinguished from their normal brethren.
- Dragon Skin armor was an armor made by Pinnacle, which went under afer a massive controversy, where they claimed superior multiple and high power hit protection to standard armor, but the military reported massive issues such as over twice the weight, and horrible reliability issues. The point is now moot due to the fact that armors today achieve better protection than both the IBA and the DS armor.
- Bulletproof armor is much Older Than They Think, and than steam. Back in the Middle Ages, the invention of firearms didn't immediately end the use of armor. Blacksmiths actually shot their own armor, showing their customers that the armor would protect them — The marks left by the bullets being deflected off the plate would be the 'proof' of the armor's ability to stop bullets. However, the steel plating used in typical infantry armor did get almost twice as thick up until about 1600. This still wasn't enough to keep pace with the developments in musket power, so in the 17th century infantry slowly began abandoning armor altogether. Even for cavalry, a full suit of knight-style armor got too heavy and expensive to be practical. But as they could take a heavier loadout with them than infantry heavy cavalry compromised on slowly decreasing the amount of armor being worn, and armor survived in the form of breastplates worn by heavy cavalry (and cuirassiers in particular) in many countries throughout the 19th century and into World War I. While it was vulnerable to medium and short-range musket fire during the Napoleonic Wars, it was effective against swords, lances, and bayonets, and also had a great psychological effect on both cuirassiers and the enemy. Also note that throughout this period, the armor had exactly the same problems the modern variant does: it was more often than not ineffective at stopping a musket ball at short range, but with some luck protected against attacks at larger ranges, or with pistols or non-firearm weapons.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/BulletproofVest/RealLife
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