Ever thought of getting something like a Cressi-Sub Star SL-40? No rubber bands, the tip will open up if someone tries to remove it, so it has to be pushed all the way through or microsurgery is necessary, should go through body armour, replacement spears are available, can be loaded in less than a second, nice and small, pneumatic/compressed air piston, holds a charge and does not have to be charged every shot, comes with a pump so you can regulate how powerful it is. Just as powerful as one of the 6ft band powered guns, so I hear. I reckon more, or at least, as powerful as a decent crossbow. Smaller though and faster to load.

Thoughts?

I don't know how a speer gun could possibly defeat body armor.

Anyway, they aren't very accurate unless you are underwater. Plus, you look stupid carrying around a spear gun unless you are wearing scuba gear. I think those feed off of your scuba tank as well.

Sharp point, heavy, fast. 16 inches long. Does not require scuba tank.

http://www.joediveramerica.com/page/JDA/PROD/FR374000

They're accurate enough, and they will go a long way. You could hit a man at 30m with one, easy.

Just use Barnaul steel core 9mm ammo or 5.56 HIFH from a CZ-52.

But I like your exotic solution too. I'd use it if it came to that, so thanks :).

Use any centerfire rifle

Fixed that for you

Also, obligatory HIFH nostalgia commences now:

I miss that witty fellow.

[QUOTE=LavaRed;10889218]Just use a bow./QUOTE]

How much simpler can we get! :eek:

Thoughts?

Just that it depends a lot on the body armor in question. Aramide, high-carbon steel, boron carbide, and industrial sapphire all have very different properties, for instance, and something that was designed to crack boron carbide or sapphire might get lodged in a thick enough plate of spring steel, or at least rendered less effective against the following layer...

Should plausibly work beautifully on the simple aramide weave varieties, which are most common. They work wonders on slashing and high-velocity blunt impact, but are weaker against a sharp point. If it hit boron carbide, though (brittle, hard as fuck, next to impossible to exploit brittleness)... it'd be fucked. No scratches, no chips.

Nice thought. Good for copkilling. Outside the "generic cop vest," each piece of armor is its own unique puzzle, though.

But, yeah. You've solved for one component pretty well.

[quote=LavaRed;10889218]Just use a bow./QUOTE]

How much simpler can we get! :eek:

I hadn't thought of that.
But, in all seriousness:

A) Use a knife
B) Shoot for the head
C) Run

I apologize if I sound like I'm making fun. This is a poor attempt at making a joke at 1 AM in the morning while I am half asleep.

Just that it depends a lot on the body armor in question. Aramide, high-carbon steel, boron carbide, and industrial sapphire all have very different properties, for instance, and something that was designed to crack boron carbide or sapphire might get lodged in a thick enough plate of spring steel, or at least rendered less effective against the following layer...

Should plausibly work beautifully on the simple aramide weave varieties, which are most common. They work wonders on slashing and high-velocity blunt impact, but are weaker against a sharp point. If it hit boron carbide, though (brittle, hard as fuck, next to impossible to exploit brittleness)... it'd be fucked. No scratches, no chips.

Nice thought. Good for copkilling. Outside the "generic cop vest," each piece of armor is its own unique puzzle, though.

But, yeah. You've solved for one component pretty well.

What do you think, if it stops a centrefire rifle, it shouldn't stop the spear, and reverse?

What do you think, if it stops a centrefire rifle, it shouldn't stop the spear, and reverse?

No, the kevlar won't stop the rifle, either. The rifle-resistant armor is the same carbide stuff JP mentioned. A rifle will likely penetrate anything the spear will, but the spear will penetrate better than the average handgun.

I always wondered how well a crossbow would do against body armor

You know that wuld be useful for when you are trying to stay stealth. spray paint it black and it will go good with the mall ninja gear.

I always thought if they could make a decent land spear gun it would be sweet just to keep. Might go through police armor at close range, I know I wouldn't want to test it. Don't know any vest that can stop 5.56 w/o plates ;). Stick with the AR-15 if you feel worried about body armor.

Armor? I'd be more than willing to let someone test it on me, those things will only penetrate an unloaded kevlar vest they don't stand even the slightest chance at piercing a trauma plate or dragonskin. Hell even those flak vests they sell on cheaperthandirt have been documented to stop 9mm at close range; and they're not even as reliable as an empty kevlar vest.

Armor? I'd be more than willing to let someone test it on me, those things will only penetrate an unloaded kevlar vest they don't stand even the slightest chance at piercing a trauma plate or dragonskin. Hell even those flak vests they sell on cheaperthandirt have been documented to stop 9mm at close range; and they're not even as reliable as an empty kevlar vest.


You've got to be kidding. You obviously have never worn modern body armor of any sort. Ask any soldier if he feels protected with kevlar inserts in his vest against any service pistol. Much less I would even say most cops wouldn't place there life on a vest protecting them from a serious gun fight as california proved. We are talking without plates as most people couldn't afford such luxurious as the fest alone will run you $600 at least for a good one and plates easily double that to stop .223 and higher. Normal SAPI plates were known in Iraq to fail against more then 1 AK round in the general area. Dragon Skin is a whole nother beast the videos don't lie but the army rigged the test which is well known now so thats why we don't get it. Fucking government contracts.


Don't get me wrong I felt invincible with my ESAPI plates and IBA but anything less and I wouldn't count on it stopping much. Biggest thing is you pay for extra protection both in pocket and on your body. Shit weighs 50lbs total with what I have to wear and it destroys your knees if you constantly using your legs which is why officers refuse to wear such protection except SWAT.

Pretty much anything that uses 7.62, specifically Tokarev for those of us who like to be discrete. ;)

Speaking of armor: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7811567.stm

You've got to be kidding. You obviously have never worn modern body armor of any sort. Ask any soldier if he feels protected with kevlar inserts in his vest against any service pistol. Much less I would even say most cops wouldn't place there life on a vest protecting them from a serious gun fight as california proved. We are talking without plates as most people couldn't afford such luxurious as the fest alone will run you $600 at least for a good one and plates easily double that to stop .223 and higher. Normal SAPI plates were known in Iraq to fail against more then 1 AK round in the general area. Dragon Skin is a whole nother beast the videos don't lie but the army rigged the test which is well known now so thats why we don't get it. Fucking government contracts.

Can't afford to spend six hundred dollars on what may cost your life some day? Perhaps you should stop living like a typiamerican and save a little more on that military salary of yours. Seeing as the ARMY, like every other major governmental body and health association in this country doesn't care about your health nor the truth; why do you continue to serve them? That's what I want to know, why man isn't proactive about fucking those who fuck him.


Don't get me wrong I felt invincible with my ESAPI plates and IBA but anything less and I wouldn't count on it stopping much. Biggest thing is you pay for extra protection both in pocket and on your body. Shit weighs 50lbs total with what I have to wear and it destroys your knees if you constantly using your legs which is why officers refuse to wear such protection except SWAT.

Your knees can adapt to loading; if I was an officer I would have no problem wearing a blast suit every day all day. The only people that fuck their knees are people who don't know how to cycle that shit in or, in the case of soldiers, don't have an option. And yeah a trauma plate no matter how cheap will stop one of these spear guns, even a dinner plate would stop one.

I remember, possibly incorrectly, that Lava was testing armour, and found that a sharp object like a knife would go through when a round wouldn't, so by my reasoning, the spear should go through when a round won't.

It's getting closer to government worker killing day. And before I get arrested for sedition, I would just like to add, if another Hitler or Stalin came to power would you be expected to lie down?

And, naturally, I do not think the current government, or any in the near future, would warrant any kind of uprising.

What do you think, if it stops a centrefire rifle, it shouldn't stop the spear, and reverse?

Theta covered about 99% of it already. The exception would possibly be thick layers of high-density kevlar felt or quilting, which I'd expect a sharpened (and/or teflon coated) tip to do better per unit of force... but I don't think that's even been on the market for a long-ass time...

(technically, I don't think it's ever been on the market - a similar construction was used with silk from about the 1800s-1950s or so, and worked as decently as anything could and fairly well against the powders avaliable to the earlier part of that period, but I think it died out when silk was replaced with kevlar)

When comparing weapons for use against armor, some of the things that have to be considered are charge, bullet, and firing platform. Pure soft-lead hollowpoint might be defeated by a kevlar weave that wasn't generally considered "rifle resistant," simply because it's made to splatter like a liquid. A .223 round will generally perform better than a .22, not so much because of differences in bullet size (in fact, for the same charge being utilized, smaller calibers would be more likely to yield overpenetration due to lb/in^2 considerations), but because there's a fuckload of a lot more powder being utilized, I believe...

...and lastly, there's platform. If I remember correctly, the .50 cal usually gains most of its penetration power from the use of slow-burning powder in a long-ass barrel, which allows for good, gradual acceleration. Put the same round in a custom short-barreled revolver, and the thing'll probably fall to the ground ten feet away, and all your charge will burn harmlessly off into the open air... which illustrates at least part of why rifles tend to have greater penetrating power than handguns (and hence, different ratings of armor to try to resist them) - to try to put the same velocity on the same weight of bullet in a handgun, one would have to use an obscenely quick-burning high-yield powder, which would make your gun turning into a shrapnel grenade in your hand into something far more likely than the bullet actually coming out the barrel. Our materials technology hasn't developed to put the kind of continued acceleration one can get from a four or five foot monster-barrel into the much shorter timeframe allowed by a five-inch barrel without something rupturing.

Now, just as a disclaimer, I know armor a lot better than I know firearms... but I do know that boron carbide or similar inserts are considered to be required to resist a decent rifle, due to the larger charge load, while simple aramide or HDPE fabric is considered suitable for the average handgun.

Ironically, the currently-used penetrator for boron carbide is itself... a speargun. However, that speargun is a (I think two-foot) depleted-uranium flechette fired from a tank mounted cannon. Each substance used in armor has different properties. With kevlar weave, you want the sort of sharpness (or teflon coating) which can push fibers aside without pitting one's round against their strength; a speargun or icepick would do ideally for that, and probably better than your average teflon-jacketed round unless you craft your bullet to have some manner of sharp steel point (at which point the teflon-coated sharpened steel will work the best, whatever it comes out of).

Boron carbide, however, is not a weave - it's a brittle rock that's fucktardedly strong. For something like that, you want a crapload of weight with a bitchin' chisel tip, basically, and best o' luck if you're taking it on with a hand-fired weapon against the thickness found on, say, an Abrahms tank. That's why depleted uranium rounds are so popular - it's several times heavier than lead, of a similar strength as some of the lower grades of steel, and - most importantly - it's natural cleavage pattern makes it fracture to a very sharp point. That makes it a fucktardedly dense ever-sharp projectile, and has the best chance of cutting through (or shattering) a number of armors, boron carbide among them. Industrial sapphire - still used in some armors, and often as a windowport in the more-armored sorts of armored vehicles - has roughly similar properties to boron carbide or boron nitride (fucktardedly strong, shatters)... but has the added issue that it melts at about 2000c, if one wanted to do an incindiary/steel-core combination penetration. Most high-carbon steel, which is occasionally still used in armors, behaves mostly like a high-viscosity fluid; it will deform and penetrate with extremely stiff resistance like firing bb pellets through silly putty... which actually makes it a very potent outer layer, since velocity and trajectory are essentially fucked by the time it makes it through an inch of high-carbon steel, which as mentioned essentially behaves as a thick liquid; I'd imagine that an aramide/steel/aramide/boron carbide laminate plate, in about the 1cm/4cm/2cm/5cm thicknesses, would perform well against first impact from a number of challenges.

I'd expect hand-fired rifle fire from anything without a sharpened steel core to leave the laminate untouched, and your speargun, with sufficient velocity, to penetrate the outer kevlar and leave the steel essentially untouched. I'd also expect a depleted uranium flechette to be degraded in velocity and vector coherence to where it destroyed the outer layers and left the BC untouched, compared to a normal boron carbide challenge which was equivalent...

So, breaking armor down into different examples to answer your question...

Flak vest/light vest
Construction : aramide fabric. Older models included silk or polyester.
Stops : most handgun rounds, soft-lead musketball or analogs from most rifles.
Does not stop : teflon, spearguns, most rifle rounds, depleted uranium.

Heavy vest
Construction : aramide covered with plate insert pouches. Plates are usually boron carbide, with some use of other armoring materials such as boron nitrite or sapphire.
Stops : damn near anything you can fire from your hand.
Does not stop : depleted uranium, possibly a steel core fired from barett's fuctardedly high-velocity .50, or anything that hits a gap between the plates that would not be stopped by a light vest.

Tank armor
Construction : multilayered boron carbide plates with aramide mortar and coating, usually.
Stops : almost anything.
Does not stop : two feet of high-velocity tank-fired depleted uranium flechette.

Old vest
Construction : silk, polyester, and occasionally other polymers with steel insert plates. Essentially the same construction as a modern heavy vest with less modern materials.
Stops : shrapnel any ricochet, a number of handguns, and some of the lighter rifle rounds.
Does not stop : medium to high powered rifle rounds, higher power handgun rounds at closer range.
Would do to your speargun : I'd expect you'd get partial penetration, denting and gouging or puncturing the steel. Whether you'd get penetration into the flesh would probably depend mostly on how much padded armor was packed behind the steel plate, in my opinion, unless the plate was thin enough for a clean puncture.

In short, your speargun will outperform almost any handgun on a light or old vest. It is likely as fucked as most firearms on a modern heavy vest. It will perform better on the penetration-resistant fabric, but slightly worse on the steel, on an old vest. This means you might damage the steel plate more with a speargun depending on the thickness and resistance of the forerunning material before the insert. Last but not least, if you take anything that fires a nonexploding projectile against a tank, you're pretty much fucked, unless it's something that is bolted to the ground permanently in normal operation.

What your speargun will probably work better against is anything without a plate, generally speaking. This includes most of the lower grades of body armor not intended for use against high-velocity rifle fire. What your speargun will probably work worse against is anything which is hard and brittle, which includes the majority of modern insert plates; even if you're getting comparable energies, the same sharp point which gives you a large advantage over the gun in ballistic-resistant fabric will chew up much of your energy in the course of being blunted on impact. In the "hard softs" variety of armors - polyacrylic and steel plate, for instance - your sharpness will give you an advantage, but not one which is greater than the velocity required to maintain motion through what is essentially a thick-ass fluid at these energies; you will only outperform a blunted steel-core round at the same velocity.

Please note that the "hard softs" are usually used in conjunction with another class; in the pre-1950s attempts at hard body armor, it was used (in the form of steel) with the best ballistic-resistant weaves of the day (usually silk, and later polyester). In modern usage, so-called "bulletproof glass" is a microlaminate of polyacrylic plastic with standard glass; cracking the glass stops the bullet, while the polyacrylic holds the glass together and forms a net to catch the now-spent bullet.

If you're looking to take down a rifle vest, your best bet (aside from a seven-foot barrel with a half-ounce of powder, e.g., the "bigger gun," or aside from aiming at the seams) would be to try to overload the crap out of the powder on a shotgun and load it with steel slugs essentially consisting of a lead-filled steel or titanium cup with a hard chisel point. You won't get a damned bit of penetration, but in the course of cracking all of this persons ribs with several shots, you will theoretically reduce their plates to useless powder, allowing them to eventually be taken out with a high-powered rifle or a speargun due to the degredation of their armor by several levels.

Personally, I prefer the "kill it with fire" method, myself.

Keep in mind that your average shotgun will not be able to withstand the charge neccesary to fling 50 grams of steel and lead for several miles. Cracking boron carbide (e.g., the usual difference between a IIIa and a I) requires high mass at high velocity at an unbendable chisel tip to make it shatter, normally. That's why depleted uranium rounds are so valued - the most mass in the least space (and hence the least barrel volume for gases to decompress into) with good strength and resharpening upon impact cleavage.

Your speargun could do that, but it would require a five mile range, custom metals, and a custom-designed tip. If you're hell-bent on taking out BC, look into the tanto. It won't manage the job or even make a scratch, but it will give you an idea on some of the design characteristics you need - an armor-piercing fucktardedly strong chisel.

The shit's hard. Luckily, there's one more weakness - it's just sintered - but no one's figured out how to exploit that yet, without having already killed what's inside.

Incidentally, one more common component in armor is... sandbags. It has its own properties, namely some very curious force-dispersion, which have not been discussed. Your speargun should outperform most bullets, but still won't perform well against it.

In short, your speargun will take out anything that teflon goes through. Teflon does not penetrate even close to everything.

Great post.

The shafts are spring/leaf steel or whatever.

So, I'd be better throwing it away and sticking with a centrefire rifle, in your opinion?

I have a post just above yours also.

It's getting closer to government worker killing day.

You better draw quicker than I do, then. :p

You better draw quicker than I do, then. :p

You and me both.

Oh I see, yes I forgot to check my calender "Government Worker Killing Day" is indeed looming near. No wonder you're frantically searching for a substitute for a firearm. Although I must ask, seeing as you are clearly willing to do something that will warrant your life imprisonment; why are you trying to acquire your means legally? Certainly you would just go out and purchase or borrow a gun, after all you have all of these "European Royalty" friends and sPeTzNaZ oPeRaTivEs at your disposal.

Don't bring a gun to a bomb fight ;).

Oh I see, yes I forgot to check my calender "Government Worker Killing Day" is indeed looming near. No wonder you're frantically searching for a substitute for a firearm. Although I must ask, seeing as you are clearly willing to do something that will warrant your life imprisonment; why are you trying to acquire your means legally? Certainly you would just go out and purchase or borrow a gun, after all you have all of these "European Royalty" friends and sPeTzNaZ oPeRaTivEs at your disposal.

I'm not friends with European royalty. I hate the government, they fuck people over.

Ever been raided by the cops? Why would you want to go to jail? If you need a gun on you, immediately accessible, you shouldn't be where you are.

Anyway, last time I had contact with the police, I crashed a car. At around midnight on a sunday. First car on the scene was federal police. And no cops had been called. Took them about 5 minutes to get there.

I like having my house raided because I get turned on by being dominated by men with guns. I like to go to jail because I like to get fucked and I want a bunch of guys to force me to put on make up (kool aid powder) on and laugh at me and force me to visit my parents in drag, because I am a closeted homosexual with reputation for my willingness to spoon and getting fucked in the ass extremely hard without lube with no resistance. I also weigh two hundred and seventy pounds at a towering height of five foot eight, and I get some self-confidence in telling people online that I have seven percent body fat but it clearly isn't enough to help me look in the mirror every morning at my nearly completely bald head (despite my age of 20) and my lazy eye which I cannot fix no matter how hard I try.

Teflon, eh? I was under the impression that PTFE was used primarily for the sake of the weapon, not the target. Makes things easier on the barrel, and probably doesn't hurt feed reliability. The rounds penetrate better, yes, but that's because they used brass cores. Being considerably harder than lead, they were murdering the rifling in the barrels, hence the teflon. I can't imagine it holding on that well after impact. I think narrow steel or tungsten cores are still the best thing going for defeating armor with small arms.

Now I wanna see someone chuck a carbide drill bit in a sabot and see how that goes. :D

You and me both.

Which department are you with, if you don't mind my asking? USDA, myself.

The shafts are spring/leaf steel or whatever.

Sweet. :D High-grade spring steel is actually a damned good material for antiarmor, if one's not going into exotics...

So, I'd be better throwing it away and sticking with a centrefire rifle, in your opinion?

That depends. They both perform well against light and heavy vests, but the spear would probably work better on a light vest that was upregulated by virtue of being multilayered, rather than by adding plate, whereas the rifle will (usually) work better on hard plate.

The spear will also likely work a bit better against ballistic glass that's already been cracked. Not that it's likely to go through, but it's intimidating as fuck to have a spear sticking in the thing with more on the way. If you can't fight the shooting war, fight the psychological war... the bullet should just hit the 'net' and bounce off...

Teflon, eh? I was under the impression that PTFE was used primarily for the sake of the weapon, not the target.

Mostly - but they also reduce fiber binding on attempted penetration. Kevlar's strong thread; the less you try to tear it while slipping something between it, the better.

It's probably not quite supermagic, not antifriction enough to keep a lead core from deforming on impact I'd imagine - but try two experiments. Take a pencil, slip the tip into a piece of scrap fabric, and rotate until all the fabric is bunched in a tight wad against the tip.

Gets pretty hard to move the thing around, doesn't it? That binding's what teflon can reduce or prevent, though it doesn't magically take care of everything.

Conversely, take the tip of a pencil, and spend ten to twenty minutes working the threads apart at a single hole without tearing any of them, just by gently spreading them aside. Pretty easy to put it through the big hole now, isn't it? That's the effect you're looking for when working against kevlar - molecular seperation rather than molecular severance - and the things which help this are "sharp" and "smooth," because they help you move between fibers instead of trying to strain them to their breaking point...

The brass core probably does more than the teflon all told, but teflon does help reduce binding, I believe...

tungsten cores

Oh, crap, thanks for reminding me...

Those are bitchin'. Unless you have a handy uranium mine, use that instead, folks. Seriously bitchin'...

I have a post just above yours also.

:D

You've captured the concept excellently - low area of initial impact + non-deformable substance + incredible force = armor penetration.

Of course, a hand-wielded knife has additional advantages in that the person can keep applying force after the initial contact, but... yes. That is the basic point, if you'll pardon the pun. DU rounds are used because they are heavy, which helps allow delivery of larger force to the target. They are also used because they are strong, preventing the dissipation of force from the point of impact by the armor. They are also used because they resharpen on breakage, which distributes the force across a smaller area for greater pressure.

Steel, brass, and tungsten are mostly used because they are strong. They are not as heavy as lead, gold, or depleted uranium - but lead and gold deform too readily to achieve overpenetration, and DU's a bit hard for some citizens to get, despite the fact that enriched uranium is covered by the second amendment. 'n I think tungsten's decently heavy, compared to some of the lighter metals.

'n sadly, you're right. It is well past governmet worker killing day. The sad thing about that is that the people who die are the good citizens, and the poor schmucks in the middle who just happened to have the wrong job, not some fat fuck who's too lazy to do their own antisocial criminal activity when they could just order others to do it. Sadly, that's the way of the world - the innocent tend to die for the guilty.

~sigh~

Speaking of enriched uranium and the second amendment, the iranian nuclear facilities the propaganda pretends to be terrified about essentially amount to a test tube duct-taped to the spoke of a bicycle wheel. If you live in the US southwest and want to be armed...

Well, whatever you do, have fun.

Which department are you with, if you don't mind my asking? USDA, myself.

No offense, but I prefer to remain mysterious on this website. :-).

Which department are you with, if you don't mind my asking? USDA, myself.

He's a janitor, no joke.

Random_Looney, we don't buy your G-Man doubletalk. We all know you're with DHS, padding out the terrorist watch lists with TOTSE regulars...

He's a janitor, no joke.

I'm glad someone pays attention :-). Then again, we have the rumor I'm BATFE, and I "clean" for a lot of agencies, so who knows, right?

Random_Looney, we don't buy your G-Man doubletalk. We all know you're with DHS, padding out the terrorist watch lists with TOTSE regulars...

Surprisingly, DHS has been one of the few agencies I've personally found to be very rude in my... dealings with them.

Can't afford to spend six hundred dollars on what may cost your life some day? Perhaps you should stop living like a typiamerican and save a little more on that military salary of yours. Seeing as the ARMY, like every other major governmental body and health association in this country doesn't care about your health nor the truth; why do you continue to serve them? That's what I want to know, why man isn't proactive about fucking those who fuck him.


BBV are not cheap and $600 is for a lower class vest with option to add plates and yes it is that expensive how often do you wear a vest? The only money shot is with the plates I am telling you the army stopped using Flak vests for a reason they didn't stop shit and the kevar inserts wore out quickly with exposure to light, wear and tear and water/washing. This is why we got rid of the flake vest. We can't buy and wear our own army in the militay its officially banned by the Department of Defense years ago. Think each ESAPI plate (the kind that can take more then a couple hits and still have over 90% chance of stopping follow on rounds) cost the same as the vest for each plate. Front + Back + Side Plates + Modified inserts + Vest = up to $2,500+. Your talking a few rounds from multiple AK/M4 rifles at the most before the cermite starts to crap out and seperate. If a half dozen cops were shooting you with hand guns that plate will last maybe a dozen rounds before it starts to break apart like a cookie.



Your knees can adapt to loading; if I was an officer I would have no problem wearing a blast suit every day all day. The only people that fuck their knees are people who don't know how to cycle that shit in or, in the case of soldiers, don't have an option. And yeah a trauma plate no matter how cheap will stop one of these spear guns, even a dinner plate would stop one.




As I mentioned before you have obviously never had to wear 50lbs of armor to know better. A blast suit is easily double that. The toll it take over time on your body wearing it all day will yes eventually make i less painful on the back/chest but try running. Its like putting too much weight on shocks, what happens? Your knees are just like shocks.

Im a total armchair warrior, but Id like to add in my .02

From what I understand, most bulletproof vests will not stop a knife stab. This is because of the large amount of continuous energy a human can exert through the sharp point of a knife on such a tiny surface area. Knives can be so sharp that they get between the fibers that make up a vest, which I guess a bullet or speargun could also do, but again, the difference being that the user of the knife continues to push, whereas the bullet/spear only has X amount of energy/momentum to expend.

Furthermore, Im pretty sure the vast amount of bulletproof vests out there are designed to a reasonable standard - meaning they are designed to protect against all the types of ammunition/projectiles that they are likely to be shot with (so: shrapnel, pistols, shotguns, assault rifles, battle rifles, sniper rifles, etc). Making vests to higher standard would mean much more expensive for not a noticeable increase in lifesaving.

Assuming this logic, the way to defeat common vests would be to use exotic ammo/projectiles. Bolts/arrows/darts I guess would fall into this category, but I dont know enough about their energy levels/range/etc to make any arguments about how realistic this is. I would imagine that flechet(?) ammo from a shotgun (or any rifle, I guess) would be effective against your average battlefield BP vest, although probably not a the ceramic plate portion.

The only types of ammo I would bet my lunch money on would have to have ridiculous energy properties - so large caliber sniper or hard-skin Big Game type shit. Bullets that can go through elephant skulls would more than likely killed someone no matter what vest they were wearing. I thinking of this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vgr3kTU68uw) here. BP vests are designed to stop what they are likely to be shot with - which arent really that powerful of bullets. Shoot vests with ammo that the designers never in hell imagined theyd be shot with and they wont be too effective.

Grenade for the win, lets see body armor stop that one.

im a total armchair warrior, but id like to add in my .02

from what i understand, most bulletresistant vests will not stop a knife stab. This is because of the large amount of continuous energy a human can exert through the sharp point of a knife on such a tiny surface area. Knives can be so sharp that they get between the fibers that make up a vest, which i guess a bullet or speargun could also do, but again, the difference being that the user of the knife continues to push, whereas the bullet/spear only has x amount of energy/momentum to expend.

Furthermore, im pretty sure the vast amount of bulletresistantvests out there are designed to a reasonable standard - meaning they are designed to protect against all the types of ammunition/projectiles that they are likely to be shot with (so: Shrapnel, pistols, shotguns, assault rifles, battle rifles, sniper rifles, etc). Making vests to higher standard would mean much more expensive for not a noticeable increase in lifesaving.

Assuming this logic, the way to defeat common vests would be to use exotic ammo/projectiles. Bolts/arrows/darts i guess would fall into this category, but i dont know enough about their energy levels/range/etc to make any arguments about how realistic this is. I would imagine that flechet(?) ammo from a shotgun (or any rifle, i guess) would be effective against your average battlefield br vest, although probably not a the ceramic plate portion.

The only types of ammo i would bet my lunch money on would have to have ridiculous energy properties - so large caliber sniper or hard-skin big game type shit. Bullets that can go through elephant skulls would more than likely killed someone no matter what vest they were wearing. I thinking of this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgr3ktu68uw) here. Bp vests are designed to stop what they are likely to be shot with - which arent really that powerful of bullets. Shoot vests with ammo that the designers never in hell imagined theyd be shot with and they wont be too effective.

fixed.

Grenade for the win, lets see body armor stop that one.

A person in the blast radius of a grenade would have damage done in armored regions depending greatly on what type of grenade it was, how it was made, how close he is, and of course what kind of armor he is wearing. There have been cases where coalition soldiers fall over on a nade and get up without any serious harm to them. One story that comes to mind was a British solder that covered a grenade and only suffered a bloody nose.

The human body presents a very large resistance in a volume of space of relatively little resistance. Thus, most of the pressure of a concussion grenade would simply go around him. (Well, this is true for subsonic shock waves. I don't have much knowledge on supersonic hydrodynamics. :o)

Grenade for the win, lets see body armor stop that one.



lol well they are supposed to stop most shrapnel but the blast at close range you might be fucked. I'm going for the AT4.

lol well they are supposed to stop most shrapnel but the blast at close range you might be fucked. I'm going for the AT4.

Just punch him in the bloody nose methinks.

hit with car?

7,62 mm sk ptr 10 prick sabot round?:)
http://www.soldf.com/images/s_psg90_underk.jpg

7,62 mm sk ptr 10 prick sabot round?:)
http://www.soldf.com/images/s_psg90_underk.jpg



Me likes, where can I order :).

To the OP your probably right that a spear gun would defeat most SOFT armor, however, the lethality of that bolt would probably be limited unless the target was hit in a very vital area. After all the spear is not capable of expanding, yawing or fragmenting in soft tissue. The subject may even be able to run a short distance after bing shot. Over all a novel method, however may I suggest a wasp knife (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sa_NC-_fvKs) type design that would inject the gas through a hollow tube. Incapacitation would be instant in this case.

Me likes, where can I order :).
Don't think you can. 'tis a round developed for L96A1 AW in the Swedish army (PSG90)

Wonder what the accuracy is like, very very rarely will you find a person who can get consistant groups with them and you need to clean the barrel ever 3 - 10 shots. I played with them a bit but couldn't get any practical results with any of the bullets I tried (50gr - 70gr), at 50y you'd get 3 going into about 1" only for the next 3 to go into 10"

The accuracy is actually worse than the standard 7.62 tthey use for the PSG90, but it travels twice as fast. So it has it has its pros and cons.