2 Kevlar Vests vs. a .308?

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One of my friends collects old newspapers and magazines. The newspapers of the 1860-1890 era were of cotton, before Herst's paper based yellow journalism, and that cotton newspaper is still perfectly good and readable.

We've had several get togethers where he has rewarded us with copies of these old papers to read. I was particularly interested in a long editorial about gut shooting from about 1860. The article, in summation, was about police and hoodlams wearing heavy silk vests, some wore two of them and heavy silk coats as well, to stop bullets. Some even wore heavy silk cloaks, which they would pick the bullets out of and melt down the lead for re-use. There were so many folks wearing these bullet-proof silks (at least they were bullet proof against those .25, .30, .32, .38, and .45 slow moving bullets) that it became the custom for hoodlams to shoot for the area below the vest and waistcoat. This was very ungentlemanly, this gut shooting, and was a slow death as the guts were perferated to poison the victim over hours or even days.

There is a bad-boy saying regarding the shooting of cops, that was repeated by G. Gordon Liddy several times. "Stitch 'Em", meaning start at the knees, or testicles, and shoot several times up to and including the upper chest, neck, and head. To shoot a person from below the bullet proof vest, then up along it for continued blunt trauma shock, and then to keep right on up, stitching; pop, pop, pop, pop, like a sewing machine of hi-cap 9mm bullets.

Not me, I don't want to be planning on the bad guys aiming for that tiny little spot on the front that is covered by a vest... What if they miss the vest?????????????

And, I know that the FTRA, Freight Train Riders of America, those BAD drug dealing low-lifes that ride the tracks across the country but particularly in the North West and the South East... They supposedly use 30-30s with cut down stocks and specialize in gut shooting...
 
I do know that during the War of Northern Agression (that's the Cvil War to a Yankee :D) that some of the Sutlers that followed the Union Army were selling so called " bullet proof" armor. The stuff weighed a ton and covered the chest area. I understand that after a long days march many were found on the side of the route of march. Stuff got heavy. I also understand that it did not wrk either. There was a Union general (I can't remember which one it was) that was killed by a shot to the chest. When they picked up his body the general had been wearing the armor plate vest under his uniform, it failed the big test.
 
Orlando,Thanks for giving more details on Alpha team. I'm not sure if at this time the're anti-terrorist FSB (previosly KGB) unit or military intelligence (GRU) "assault group". Their status is somewhat mysterios. However, they are not involved in "torture", unless you consider torture that petty tough procedure they use when taking care of opponents during actual operation. No doubt they are very professionally trained to kill.
 
Oh I am 100% sure they where involved in torture. No doubt about that. In their choosen field, torture is a skill that they must perfect.

They operated in Afghanistan long before the Afghanistan war started. You are correct that the Spetsnaz ALPHA is also an anti-terrorist unit in the 80's.

This is how they deal with hostage taking in the 80s. Russians is being held in a hidden location. The Spetsnaz ALPHA will find a terrorist member. Torture the terrorist even if the terrorist do not know the location. After a long torture they kill the terrorist, cut his hands, ears, and head off. Send it in a box to one of the terrorist leader with a note saying to free the Russian hostage. Hostage problem solve. They were very efficient at what they do.
 
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Q-man,
Thanks for taking the time write up the proper engineering on this topic. I am not a typist--that would have taken me an more tan an hour. One thing I would like to point out is the efficiency with which fluids transmit shock waves. We are mostly fluid. The intensity of the shock wave is partially determined by the time of the impulse. The fluid transported shock wave inside the body would be devastating in the case of a non-disperessed but non-penetrating impact (near total energy transfer.)
 
Vests vs 7.62 Nato-

The video refered to is available through Lenny McGill, called Deadly Weapons. The moderator of the video stands on one foot to dispell all the movie bs and is shot by Richard Davis with a FAL 7.62 at about three feet distance.
Everyone should see this video, I've seen it run in several gun shops..Roy
 
"One of my friends collects old newspapers and magazines. The newspapers of the 1860-1890 era were of cotton, before Herst's paper based yellow journalism, and that cotton newspaper is still perfectly good and readable."

Jody, no offense, but that is not true. I also collect ephemera (papers and the like) and most papers post War Between the States, and virtually all of them in the 1890's, were wood-pulp-based. Yellow comes from lignin, the glue which holds wood fibers together in the tree. Lignin is removed from better papers because it causes paper to yellow and become brittle. That is why writing paper takes much longer to yellow or brown. However, newsprint is the poorest quality paper produced (the cheapest) and is considerably cheaper than cloth-based papers (far more trees than old clothes). In any case, the pulp used in newsprint has a large amount of lignin and so yellows and becomes brittle. That is why it is harder to get quality papers from the 1890's than from the 1790's. I have papers that were stored nearly perfectly detailing the Jack The Ripper murders that are far more delicate than The Observer from the late 1600's or even the wood-cut prints that were the precursors of the paper from the late 1500's. Not only do I know that because of being a collector, but I am also a Forester and know wood tech and all the methods of producing paper (as well as the ideal woods to use for each type as well as ideal blends).

As to the butt-plate description on rifles, it is close to pointing out why a rifle doesn't damage you with a single shot. The butt is pulled firmly against your shoulder and your body becomes part of the recoil system of the gun. It fires and the forces transmit fairly cleanly from the action to the wood to your shoulder, forcing you back.

But try holding said FAL or M14 two inches from your shoulder and then firing it. The rifle will hit pretty darn hard.

Now imagine something with a tithe the surface area without any benefit of the energy being absorbed by the weight of the weapon nor of the cycling of hte action.

Davis
 
Here ya go....

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I wouldn't want to try two vests...

I used the Army's Interceptor vest many moons ago. It uses a ceramic plate to break up the round, then the soft kevlar soaks up the fragments. (I think this is all on YouTube under Futureweapons...)
In the dinosaur days (the 80's when I was watching Transformers and Thundercats), they used a steel plate to do the same thing. It would break up the round, but instead of containing the fragments, it sent them skittering across the surface, hoprefully ending up in Kevlar and not bouncing up to the face, or down to the nether regions.

I'd rather bet on a class IIIA vest with a nice hard trauma plate, rather than getting an extra soft vest that will just give me heat exhaustion. Can't blame him for trying though...
 
he's not going to survive a direct hit from a 308nato wearing anything that he'll be able to walk around in.in fact most vests will be defeated by any rifle bullet more than a 22lr and even that has a chance cause of how thin the bullet is.a cop was killed here by a 25acp last yr.it went through the chest of his bullet proof vest into his heart.even if he got lucky and it did'nt go through,how is he going to stop the criminal from walking up to him and finishing him off after he's knocked out by the 1st shot.vests are for 9mm's.yeah i know body armers for everything up to 12guage slug.does anyone care to try it out?lol,i did'nt think so.
 
This thread would be laughable if it wasn't sad that there are so many people ignorant of a shooting/ballistics technology that has been around for decades.

Ziggy before making statements that make you look like a ------- why don't you read the whole thread and do some reading on the sites recommended.

Hard armor and soft armor work in different ways. As has been pointed out steel, Titanium and other hardened metals are used to stop a projectile through there strength, breaking up the bullet

Ceramics also break up the bullet, but because their properties spread the energy, they can be made lighter than metal plates and do the same job.

Soft armor, Kevlar Twaron, Zylon and others work by tightening their weave under impact.

Often these technologies are combined to make a unit that will defeat more powerful rounds than their individual components are able to simply by increasing the amounts. As in the original thread....

It is highly unlikely that 2 standard police style soft vests would be able to stop a .308 or most any major cal rifle round for that matter.

Though single standard vests have saved several of their wearers when hit with rifle rounds at an oblique angle.

The myth of blunt trauma killing the wearer of a vest was disproven almost 30 yrs ago, and if you care to do so, you may look at literally thousand of pages photos and graphs showing real live scientific tests (Not ------n phone books or Fells Naptha or wax....

Additionally there are scores of anecdotal evidence from the actual wearers
from Cops to our servicemen in the Gulf.

FWIW I have witnessed Rich Davis shoot himself on separate occasions with a .357 and later with a .44 Mag out of a 6.5" S&W Md 29.

On both occasions factory ammo was used and he and the gun were inspected. After shooting himself point blank he was able to clean off a table of bowling pins with the remaining rounds. He would then pull up his shirt and show the welt left by the impact. He repeated this demonstration hundreds of times over the years.
As was mentioned he also demonstrated his "Hardcore" series vests by being shot with 7.62 NATO out of an FN FAL.

A former colleague took 2 38 spl +P+ rounds on his vest over the sternum and immediately drew and killed his assailant but only after he saw his partner gunned down in front of him. The partner was not wearing a vest. He later commented that it felt like a "slap" to his chest.

Would I let you shoot me while wearing a vest?? HELL NO!!

Not because of lack of faith in the vest, but lack of faith that anyone making such callous uninformed comments could be safely trusted with a firearm.

Sad but true.
 
As I understand the principles, the vest material in soft body armor will cause the bullet to deform increasing the sectional density. This is particularly the case with softer lead bullets. If the tip of the bullet is hardened then perhaps the weave can be forced open by the shear forces involved.

What do you think the penetrating power of something like Remington Bronze Point bullets through a ballistic vest is?
Penetration through a plate would be unlikely but if all you need to do is cause the weave to separate these appear to be ideal.

Here's a cross section photo:
brzept.jpg


I wonder sometimes why our military never adopted bullet types like those; they cannot be classified as hollow point afterall.
 
Twoblink, the physics are pretty simple - something like "for each and every action, there is an equal opposite reaction". If it won't knock you down to shoot it, it won't knock someone else down. Period.

Knock down is a myth and back deformation on a vest is much more survivable than no vest.

Giz
Click to expand...

There is a serious flaw in this example. My father shot Japanese during a banzai charge (running at them full speed) and his .45acp handgun would knock them clean off their feet backwards!!
 
That is one good thing about shotgun slugs, even if they don't penetrate the vest, they would likely incapacitate the target for a while.
 
Body armor

Engineering is ....build something I can't destroy and another engineer will find a weak spot and destroy it ...

Kevlar is a fabric,it is sewn together,so a knife can penetrate it and kill you,a slow moving projectile(pistol round) the Kevlar absorbs the energy and tranfers it around the area of the impact,much like sand does....at a burm.....you'll be hurting but not dead....if so all bullet wounds would cause death, which is not true...see "flesh wound" at Hollywood.

A high velocity projectile ,IIRC a 5.7x28MM will penetrate 24 (+) layers of Kevlar :eek:

Throw in a metal or ceramic plate (or something like dragons skin) ,and that 5.7x28 energy is dispersed ....

In the hollywood shoot out,the bad guys made their own body armor,and were pretty good at it,but the police were out gunned....the first bad guy down was shot in the ankles w/a 9mm,by a P.O. from the other side of the car/or truck that would not start, IIRC....the second guy,(two different stories) was taken out by a high velocity rifle round shot by P.O. and or then took his own life...depend on what story you read or follow...but the bad guy was about to open up on some more P.O. .so nonetheless it was good he was "dispatched".

As for a 45 ACP taking japs off of their feet ,in the 2nd w.w.,thats what it was designed to do....soft bodied men ,hit at 850 FPS by a 45 caliber bullet ,equals KNOCK down....if they were 9mm it would have gone right through them....the 45 was brought into fighting for the Bollo war (help me out here with the history gentlemen) the 38 ,was to small to knock down the enemy,expecially one wound up in tight leather and high on drugs....the 45 settled that issue ....45 ACP's have also been known to bounce of car windshields....

In the 2nd w.w. German snipers would set up metal "hides" armor cover at an angle and pick off british troops....the 303 British round would just glance off of
the angled steel plate....the germans being cocky would advance on the enemy this way ,and the brits were helpless....until someone brought in the big nitro rifles ....big fast projectile steel coverd,went right thru the stell plates at that angle and took out the german sniper/gunner ...(read my first sentence)....

If a Cape Buffalo is heading straight at you where do you place the shot?

In his nose,because the bullet will bounce off his head !

All this writing of mine should keep this thread going for a while ....

I love it,Jim:D
 
Is this officially the oldest thread necroed here? Or is it just the oldest one I have seen? Eleven years... is the OP still alive?
 
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