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Polyethylene Bulletproof Vests Better Than Kevlar
teflonscout writes "When I think of bulletproof vests, the first word that comes to mind is Kevlar. Wired is running a story on Dynema SB61, a bulletproof material that is made of polyethylene. It is a higher grade of the plastic found in Tupperware. The story also mentions the recall of Second Chance bulletproof vests that were made from Zylon, a material that degraded slowly when exposed to moisture. At least one police officer was injured when a bullet penetrated his Zylon vest. Polyethylene is impervious to moisture. The first vests made from this new material are 5mm thick and can stop a 9mm bullet traveling at 1777 feet per second, which is slightly better than other top of the line vests."
Dynema SB61, a bulletproof material that is made of polyethylene. It is a higher grade of the plastic found in Tupperware.
There goes my idea for a zip-tie & Tupperware bulletproof vest. It also explains why the prototypes failed in the field.
Trolling is a art,
Can't wait to see The Box O' Truth give it a try.
After what I put my tupperware through im not surprised that it can stop a bullet
Dragonskin was kicked out of the running due to failures with angled shots and not standing up to temperature variance.
Or you could just get some Dragon Skin armor that will take the force of an exploding hand grenade and not allow penetration...
i n.php
http://www.pinnaclearmor.com/body-armor/dragon-sk
Do they burp when they're hit?
Mr. McGuire: I want to say one word to you. Just one word.
Benjamin: Yes, sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Benjamin: Yes, I am.
Mr. McGuire: Plastics
"doubt this technology will see iraq, oh and don't flame the truth, thanks"
Yes, don't flame the truth. Rather, flame the complete ignorance of the process by which new technologies trickle down to soldiers from the numerous trials and tests.
If it's good enough, it will eventually be used. The question then will be whether troops will still be in Iraq at that time.
More Twoson than Cupertino
well, if he is standing 20 years in front of you, I'm sure weapon advancements would nullify any protection it gives today.
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I think maybe they should rethink the name of the material ("Dynema SB61")when/if it goes into production.
I, for one, would rather not have my bulletproof vest sound like it's a cross of high explosives and bowel cleansing kits.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
How can that be?
"especially in hot/wet conditions"
And it really brings a whole new dimension to crotchpot cooking.
> The question then will be whether troops will still be in Iraq at that time.
And the correct answer to this query is:
wait for it...
Yes.
Tin foil hat... check! Tupperware shirt... check! Zip-lock underwear... check!
And more importantly how does it compare with the secondary injuries caused by the impact of the bullet. One of the issues with modern vests is that you can still receive substantial injuries when the vest hits you after the bullet hits it.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
The correct term is bullet-resistant.
Like the stuff that's good enough that we already have, that to my knowledge, still isn't being used in Iraq?
Maybe it's a few months out of date, but last I heard, the only troops who have bullet resistant body armor over there are the ones who's families bought/shipped it, or got it from an NPO that is buying them and shipping them to the troops.
34486853790
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If you haven't heard about the history of "second chance" one of the very first commercial vest manufacturers, that is basically how they sold it. Walk into a police station, pull a gun, shoot oneself at point blank. Put the gun, vest, and business card on the front desk and walk out. As I understand they arrested the founder (Richard Davis) for firing a pistol within city limits, and placed a huge order. He eventually had to quit doing it because all the bruises from the gunshots were starting to give him heart problems.
Regardless, you could take down a police officer if he was wearing inch thick steel plating by just hitting him in the face. Might not be quite as mortal as a shot to the heart, but he is at least out of the fight. Alot of good modern kevlar does against headshots, huh? Not to mention you can do it with any gun and a rock if you throw it hard enough.
Rather, flame the complete ignorance of the process by which new technologies trickle down to soldiers from the numerous trials and tests...If it's good enough, it will eventually be used.
Not quite. There's a lot of good products that should be used, but they aren't because of the almighty dollar. Usually it takes a few dead bodies, the tears of weeping mothers, pointed fingers, and fistfuls of public rage to force the government to supply adequate equipment to its troops. And even then they only supply it because of public image.
For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.
Most current suits of body armor can stop a pistol caliber bullet. Rounds designed to pierce armor, or designed to be fired from a more powerful gun, are another story. Armor that will stop a small, soft bullet will still be penetrated by a faster, or less malleable one.
For civilian or police protection, we have nearly impenetrable suits now; increasing their coverage, or decreasing their weight would be more practical (both of which can be achieved by making them out of lighter materials). For something like military protection, well, we may never have impenetrable body armor. Whenever defensive technology gets good enough, the military turns their attention to piercing those defenses; see for example the death of the battleship as a viable class of warship.
Apart from that, conservation of momentum applies. There is an upper limit whereby body armor would remain intact, while the flesh beneath is reduced to a pulp. Though admittedly conservation of momentum also applies to the shooter, and to the recoil of their gun, so there is a similar upper limit for muzzle velocity per unit of projectile mass.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
I'm sure this is not a slab of plastic. Allied Signal has a very similar product that they've been marketing for years. It is highly oriented HDPE fibers. Think about what happens to a bread bag when you pull real hard on it. The fibers become highly oriented and crystaline -- and very strong. Since the vest is made of layers of fabric woven from these fibers, it is flexible and breathes.
Why don't they just make the bullets softer?
How can that be?
I've never heard that story, but I have seen a video clip of Davis doing that. Basically put on a set of the armor, took a little snubby .38, held it out at arm's length, and shot himself in the sternum.
Looked pretty unpleasant -- he immediately fell down, and it took a few seconds before it was clear that he had not, in fact, been shot -- but damned impressive.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
1) You are equating weight with stopping power for different materials. That is an incorrect comparison. That might make sense when comparing two vests of the same material and design. Vest A has 10 lbs of Kevlar, Vest B has 20 lbs Kevlar. Both vests are of similar designs and Vest B should be better at stopping bullets. However if another company designed a different type vest (Vest C) with Kevlar that had better stopping power but only used 10 lbs Kevlar, the use of weight alone in comparing effectiveness would not be valid.
2) Body armor is heavy, especially considering all the other gear a soldier has to carry. If body armor was lighter and provided the same amount of protection, many soldiers would prefer it.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
If it's basically like wearing a big plastic slab, isn't that going to get super hot?
That's why you lacquer the chestplates in white to dissipate heat, and give them a black spandex bodysuit underneath...add a scary looking helmet and most of your vitals are covered. In theory it should deflect blaster bolts. Where I'm stationed we wear them all the time (I work in law enforcement).
In practice, they don't stop crap. Like last week this scruffy-looking nutjob with a walking carpet for a sidekick breaks in to rescue his girlfriend. Next thing we know there's a weapons malfunction down in the cell block, and four of my buddies find out the chestplates don't quite work as advertised.
I hate this posting...maybe I can get transferred before something else goes wrong.
- TK421
Study everything, you'll find something you can use - Jason Bourne
Perhaps it can be combined with the liquid body armor for extra protection.
Soft body armor is designed to defeat handgun bullets, which is why it is so useful for police. Hard body armor is much bulkier but is designed to defeat rifle rounds. In general, a rifle round is significantly more powerful than handgun rounds.
Are there any other benefits? Not to underscore the vest's foremost job (stopping bullets) but if there is only a "slight" improvement over existing vests I don't find this all that newsworthy.
Without answers to these questions, these vests will be nothing more than a "slightly better for a lot more money" niche solution.
Because if you carry less weight in body armor, you carry more weight in ammunition, med supplies, whatever. The protection they have today is generally sufficient for small arms rounds, so they don't usually need more protection. Reducing the weight of current equipment, however, goes a long way toward making your troops more mobile, responsive, and better prepared to face an enemy. Not to mention, it makes them feel better to not lift a 35 pound vest over their head.
I've worn the modern vests, and while they aren't nearly as bad as they were 10 years ago, they still aren't good. If I could get the same protection from something even a quarter less weight, I'd make the switch without a second thought. That two or three extra pounds can mean the difference of being able to march my ass another couple of kilometers to safety or have a few extra rounds of ammunition when I really need it. That's a huge mental advantage, and despite all we say about war, it's the mental aspects (on the soldier) that make it difficult in the long run.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
Found this and it looks like a court found enough evidence to say the vest failed due to heat, moisture, and light. Also, the vest was made of Zylon and the company stopped using it 4 months after the cop was killed.
m
http://www.whistleblowers.org/Cop_s_widow_wins.ht
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
This is one of those cases where allegory is truly misleading. The article makes the comparison to shopping bags and tupperware in order to emphasize the "everyday" nature of the material. The truth is that they have similar basic components, but the exact composition and processing differences cause one material to be good at resisting bullets and another at storing food (or selling at parties.) Unlike Tupperware, Dyneema vests are composed of woven and laminated fabric.
Dyneema is actually a trade name for a thread derived from Ultra High Molecular Weight polyethylene. The intrinsic strength of the material comes from the ability to increase the length of the polyethylene chain to extreme lengths. Since the structure of UHMW derives its strength mostly from the intermolecular Van-der Waals forces, the longer the polythethylene chains get, the stronger the forces holding the material together become. When the processing of the polythylene allows the length of the chains to become uniform, then you can engineer it into useful forms, such as a fiber which eventually be formed into fabric, then laminated and put on your chest.
Of course, being UHMW, Dyneema has a weakness: Its melting point is about 300 degrees Fahrenheit, or about the temperature of a hot light bulb. Which means that while your body heat might not harm the vest, carelessness in storage might.
Independent tests do not support the army's conclusions. Since there is already some question about the validity of the army's tests (e.g. the designer of the vest that "won" in the army's test says that dragon skin is actually better, the person who conducted the army tests left to work for a dragon skin competitor, etc.) I don't think just repeating the army's conclusions (or quoting the Washington Compost as doing so) really proves anything.
--MarkusQ
I hear Endor's a pretty easy assignment.
As with anything, the devil's in the details. From a previous trip around the web in re: bodyarmor.
It's not Tupperware, but 'Ultra high molecular weight polyethylene'.
See also:
Spectra
Dyneema
Aramids (from "aromatic polyamide")
- Example: Twaron
Kevlar, of course.
Also Nomex - known for it's heat-resistant attributes, also strong. It's an "aromatic nylon, the meta variant of the para-aramid Kevlar."
Of course, it is great marketing to show that your body armor can stop all rounds up to a 30mm A-10 round, but what LEOs really need is something a bit less.
If I could invent two types of armor, one that worked against a 30mm round, but looked like the bomb disposal suit, and a piece of armor that only worked against 22 caliber rimfire, but looked and felt identical to a cotton T-shirt; the Tshirt-like armor would be the real success.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
Is designed to defeat low caliber rifle rounds, up to .308 depending on the propellant load. To the best of my knowledge there isn't a vest that can reliable stop anything bigger and even stopping a .308 is unlikely.
Of course, being UHMW, Dyneema has a weakness: Its melting point is about 300 degrees Fahrenheit, or about the temperature of a hot light bulb. Which means that while your body heat might not harm the vest, carelessness in storage might.
Dyneema's also used a lot in rock/mountain climbing gear. Webbing made from it is generally rated to stronger than nylon of the same wieght/size, but it's a lot more susceptible to melting, abrasion, uv exposure, and it's less dynamic.
I remember this, too. Unfortunantely I also have forgotten many of the details. IIRC, this was proposed as a riot-proof window, made of a special plastic that could endure an insane amount of punishment. I believe the video was from a test done by a SWAT team because the company manufacturing the products wanted to sell their windows to some division of the government.
The guys attempting to trash the window only got a large slit into the window, and while the company had deemed the windows "indestructable", they still got a passing grade because the slit in the window was not large enough to get in (or out of). They threw everything at the window, from rocks, bottles, to all sorts of heavy weaponry, and still only a slit (and the window was no longer clear.)
Something that stood out to me was how the window absorbed bullets. Rather than bouncing off (and possibly hurting others) the bullets would actually stick into the plastic, and remain there.
Does anyone else remember this?
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While we're on about history, traditionally speaking this has always been the case for armor. Medieval armors usually have a nice dent or two that is integrated with the armor decoration, because after finishing the breastplate (in the case of plate-type armor) the armorer would put it on and the prospective buyer would test it with any weapon he cared to use. Armorers literally stood behind their work, and the buyer proved it worked (hence, I believe, the etymology of 'bullet-proof' -- the proof was the fact that it had been proven under test.) After the client was satisfied, the armorer would often decorate the armor with gilding and etching, and work the proof point into the design -- many of the fancy armors from the English civil war have dents from firearms serving as the center of a rose, for instance. In an arms museum in Copenhagen, I saw a very small suit of armor made for a child. Apparently, since the armorer couldn't wear it, or maybe to be more generous because it was necessary to make it lighter so a child could wear it, it was insufficient. There's a big ragged hole in the back and a matching big dent in the chest, where a crossbow bolt went through. I've heard the child survived and went on to become a Danish prince (probably not Hamlet, though.)
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
If you mean assault rifles rather than assault weapons, you're right. Assault rifles, by definition, fire rounds of intermediate power; between handgun rounds and traditional rifle rounds. An assault weapon could fire anything from .22 short to .50BMG.
Either way, assault rifle rounds like 5.56 NATO and 7.62x39mm (along with any rifle round commonly viewed as suitable for deer hunting) don't have too much trouble with the body armor typically worn by police.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
The low melting point is also not good in combat situations.
Its highly recommended to wear *cotton* and not nylon clothes, for example, because cotton won't melt to your skin if you survive an IED attack.
-- My Sig is a P228.
My Ph.D. project happens to be on super-fibre materials, nice coincidence.
As it happens, dyneema is highly stretched polyethylene. As such, it melts at a fairly low temperature (and performs less well before reaching such temeratures. Temperatures around 80 degrees centigrade would do...). Twaron and Kevlar are aramids. They decompose at around 400 degrees, and hardly any change in performance is seen.
Now, 80 degrees C is a quite high temperature, but with a (desert) sun baking on a vest, I would rather wear the slightly heavier aramid vest.
B.
Every experiment which ends in a big bang is a good experiment.
Strictly speaking, rifles are small arms. Generally, "small arms" is a term that encompasses anything a soldier can fire unsupported.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
I had occasion to work with Dr. Dusan Prevorsek, the original inventor of ultra-high strength polyethylene fibers on a different project. The original patents on this material date to the early 1980's.
Since it's commercialization it has been in wide use throughout the world, and has had performance advantages over aramid fibers like Kevlar. In addition to great performance it is also significatly less expensive, and the manufacturing process has much lower environmental impact.
In the early 70's, guns were not as big of a deal in the US and were not treated with quite the same hysteria they now are. Mr Davis was a former marine and a pizza shop owner who had been shot several times while working. He was one of the pioneers of the bulletproof vest market. There are plenty of videos of him online, shooting himself while wearing a vest, usually with a .38. He did it at conferences around the country. I have little doubt he knew the legal implications, but was willing to suffer them to promote his business and new product. It's called a publicity stunt.
And what kind of police force would let someone walk out of the building after a stunt like that?)Have you ever seen large police stations. Usually they have a bulletproof glass booth up front with an often unarmed clerk on duty. From the story I heard (from one of his ex-employees) he was arrested on the steps outside.
It sounds like marketing fiction to me.It could be, but I did not hear it from a marketing person, just from a former manufacturing supervisor. From the other things that are easily verifiable facts, I don't find a lot of reason to doubt the account.
You'd think so, wouldn't you? Well, let me tell you, I'm an independent contractor in a project the Empire has going on over there and even though the money is good and we get lots of benefits (it's a government contract after all), I fear for my life. Heck, a friend of mine refused to take the job because of the risk, but I'm just trying to scrape a living, I have no personal politics.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
There's another factor here too that many people don't consider. Even if the vest *were* to completely stop the penetration of a high powered rifle round, there would still be severe injuries to the person. All the kinetic energy from the bullet has to go somewhere...the vest may stop penetration but all that energy can't just mysteriously disappear. That's why when someone gets hit with a high powered round, even if the vest completely stops the bullet, they often get burns, bruises, and sometimes broken bones. There's no way around this until someone invents inertial dampeners.
I personally think we are maybe 10 years away from finding an impenetrable body armor solution.
I somewhat doubt it.
on the one hand you have companies developing armor on the other you have companies developing weapons. Armour manufacturers will reasearch what the weapon manufacturers are doing and vice-versa and attempt to counter it and users of the equipment will just adjust what proportion of thier weight or financial budgets they spend on each so that the armour on the battlefield stays balanced with the weapons on the battlefield.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
I'm from the small town in Michigan in which second chance was founded, and I know the entire history of the "incident"
The officer in that shooting was shot 6 or 7 times. *ONE* bullet penetrated the Zylon, and it was on the periphery of the vest. The edges of *ANY* vest are vulnerable and not as strong as center-mass.
Second chance has 960+ confirmed saves with their body armor.
What they've done to the second chance business as a result is, on the whole, a travesty. They were/are one of the few american manufacturers, and they did nothing wrong at all.
I've been using polyethylene armor on my fighting robots for years. It's extremely tough, lightweight, and relatively cheap. There was a fashion for using polycarbonate (Lexan) on fighting robots for a while, and while it looks cool (it's clear), it just can't take impact like UHMW polyethylene.
Your design to a real part online: Big Blue Saw
square root(999,106) = 999.5529
I'm in between insightful sigs right now...
Some words about polymers for people who aren't familiar with them: First of all, plastics are polymers. There are natural polymers like cellulose, but most of them are produced artificially. Every kind of polymer has a monomer, which is basically the low-level element that mades up polymers. The physical properties of a plastic mainly depend on the monomer, but on a smaller extent on a lot of things like structure as well. Now there are special materials called composites which are macroscopic mixtures of two or more distinct materials. Fiber (carbon or glass or something else) stuff like the wings of airplanes or kevlar are composites. I believe that TFA is about a PE-and-somehting-else composite, but I haven't RTFA. Composites have a lot of nice features and some not-so-nice-one as well, like nearly impossible recycling and vulnerability to tensions orthagonal to the fibers. But if used wisely they can be really efficient.
Since I work for a large company that sells body armor, I have to know about this sort of thing to help our customers. In essence, no body armor is "bulletproof". That is why if you look at any reputable manufacturer or distributor's catalog, they will list it as "ballistic armor". While it is designed, tested, and certified to defeat a large selection of threats, there can be no guarantee that it will always stop everything. As others have noted, the type of body armor that uses these materials is designed to be concealable beneath an officer's uniform. As a result, the highest threat that it can be expected to protect against are from handguns. Rifle rounds will go right through them. Also, as a side note, ballistic armor will NOT protect against a knife, you would have to specifically purchase stab armor, which is designed differently. Combination ballistic & stab armor is very expensive, although it exists. As far as Zylon is concerned, there is no vest currently being manufactured or sold with Zylon as a component. Recently I found a couple of old vests that had been stashed away and forgotten about. Since we could not sell them (one was at about 4.5 years old, and the other was Zylon), I talked my way into getting them for free. A few days later some friends (including a police officer) and myself went out to a farm and had a fun day shooting skeet. We also shot the vests. The first was your typical Kevlar construction, and it stopped everything from .22 caliber to a .45 magnum. It would not have passed certification because of the back-face on the higher calibers (look up the NIJ's testing standards), but it still worked. The Zylon vest didn't even stop a 9mm. Interesting, no?
Patience is a virtue, but haste is my life.
While there is an ongoing debate about the quality of the current system, US troops do have bullet resistant body armor.o r
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interceptor_Body_Arm
Polyaramid fibers like kevlar may lose strength when they get wet, but polyethylene generally doesn't tolerate heat very well.
A good way to stay inside the boundaries of the international rules of war(the giant compendium of questionable facts says that bullet rules are generally from the Hague conventions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hague_Conventions_(18 99_and_1907)) is to use full metal jacket ammunition. This ammunition is also good for piercing armor. As someone who has never been shot, I'm willing to bet a serious amount, like a dollar, that if you ask someone who had been shot with FMJ and with other ammunition, that they would rave about what a wonderful experience the FMJ was, as it tends to go right through things, rather than mushrooming into a two inch wide circle of shrapnel and tearing things to shreds.
As crazy as it is to have rules about shooting at each other, the ones that exist have good reason.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
I've read late Industrial Revolution writers who have claimed that until the advent of percussion-cap-based muskets, a talented person with a crossbow or a longbow was still far more effective as a soldier than a person with a matchlock/flintlock, as regards accuracy, deadliness, and rate-of-fire. The problem was just that nobody had the time to spend getting good enough with the older weapons, while you could hand a rifle to a raw recruit and with a week's training you'd have a soldier.
The Longbow required lots of practice to achieve accuracy, and a lot of strength to operate as well.
The Crossbow required little practice to achieve accuracy - but required both time and strength to reload (though a crank-type could trade additional time to reload for a reduction in required strength). This reduced the rate of fire. So crossbows were used by lower-skilled soldiers, especially from fortified positions where they could reload behind a wall or some other barrier. Its stock (the basis of the accuracy) served as the model for those of longguns.
Early longguns had the low-training-for-accuracy, long-reload, characteristics of crossbows. But they didn't require great strength to reload. Their ammunition was also lighter to carry (though consumable rather than recoverable). A 98-pound weakling, or a soldier bone-tired after a long march, could be relied on to fire more than one shot. This was the improvement that caused them to displace crossbows even though they were not yet up to the same absolute accuracy or firing rate.
http://www.somethingawful.com/d/news/nardo-design- empire.php
Subject E-11 Blaster Rifle Calibration Still Off
From Stormtrooper Commander 09731
Date A Long Time Ago 3:51 PM
To Nardo Pace
As you know, the E-11 has come a long way since its initial prototype. Thanks to your hard work over the past three years the rifle no longer fires completely sideways, and with your latest revision, the number of casualties resulting from blaster fire being directed completely backwards has been drastically reduced.
That said, the E-11 still has some accuracy issues. We recently bolted one of the rifles to a testing mechanism so that it couldn't move even a millimeter, then set up a human-sized target six feet in front of the blaster's barrel. Shooting in two second intervals, we let the E-11 fire at the target continuously for three days.
The result? Not one shot hit the target. I realize you're busy, but perhaps we can go over the design one more time and iron this out.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
Rifles are considered "Small arms".
Pistols are considered "Side arms".
Artillery pieces are usually called "Guns". This includes Naval rifles, up to 16 inches in diameter.
Mortars and Heavy Machine guns are called "Crew served weapons".
Hope that helps.....
Today's show is brought to you by the number 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0: 25
Which is how my tired morning eyes read that headline.
The idea that FMJ bullets tend to zip straight through people leaving a relatively simple wound developed in the late 19th century when ammunition was commonly loaded with flat-based, round-nosed bullets. These bullets were inherently pretty stable due to their center of gravity being forward of the middle of the bullet.
When the spitzer (pointed) bullet was developed in an effort to improve the bullet's aerodynamics and increase range, a secondary effect was discovered. The longer point of the spitzer bullets caused the center of gravity to be pushed more toward the rear of the bullet. This resulted in bullets that were inherently inclined to travel backwards. The gun's rifling was adequate to stabilize these bullets in a point forward orientation through the air, but when they encountered a denser medium (such as a human body) the bullets would tumble as it tried to reorient it's self. The tumbling bullet caused much more sever wounding than the 'icepick' type wounds seen with the older round-nose bullets. Often the combination of tumbling and centrifugal forces (bullets commonly spin in excess of 100,000 rpm) causes the bullet to break into fragments and cause even more nasty wounds (often far worse than what would be seen with soft-point or hollow-point expanding bullets).
Bullet fragmentation is a critical factor in the wounding characteristics of modern military rifle bullets.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
The Yamato had 18 inch "guns".
I did wonder if someone would comment on that :)
Contrary to popular belief it is possible to be both a trekkie and a star wars fan. It's not like we're members of violent factions locked in an endless war against one another. And when we are fighting, we're more comparable to the Sharks and the Jets in West Side Story. We go out in gang colors (uniforms) whistling Jerry Goldsmith stuff while the other side whistles John Williams. I don't think any actual killing can go on, unless I were to date someone from the Star Wars clan.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.