Armor Is Useless: Difference between revisions
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** The Soviet Navy feared the Iowa-class battleships above any other ships in the US fleet because of this. There is a story that they even nicknamed them the "Cockroach Battleships" because, when the Sovs ran simulations, they just wouldn't die. |
** The Soviet Navy feared the Iowa-class battleships above any other ships in the US fleet because of this. There is a story that they even nicknamed them the "Cockroach Battleships" because, when the Sovs ran simulations, they just wouldn't die. |
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* Modern body armor, intended to stop bullets, is fairly defenseless against bladed weapons - the fiber weave is designed to stop (or at least slow) relatively blunt objects travelling at high speed, and can be cut or pierced by a sharp edge much like any other cloth. This has been a problem for some, such as prison guards, who wear [[Bulletproof Vest|Bullet Proof Vests]] as part of their standard equipment, but frequently face lower-tech threats than firearms. Stab vests, designed to protect against knives, have the opposite problem of offering no protection against bullets. Fortunately, most modern vest designs try to combine both protections in one way or another. |
* Modern body armor, intended to stop bullets, is fairly defenseless against bladed weapons - the fiber weave is designed to stop (or at least slow) relatively blunt objects travelling at high speed, and can be cut or pierced by a sharp edge much like any other cloth. This has been a problem for some, such as prison guards, who wear [[Bulletproof Vest|Bullet Proof Vests]] as part of their standard equipment, but frequently face lower-tech threats than firearms. Stab vests, designed to protect against knives, have the opposite problem of offering no protection against bullets. Fortunately, most modern vest designs try to combine both protections in one way or another. |
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* During [[World War I]], armies experimented with chain mail and found that it actually made bullet wounds ''worse'' -- it couldn't stop a bullet ''and'' the rings would shatter, shoving more shrapnel into the wound than if the bullet just hit an unarmoured person. However, when hung like a curtain, it proved surprisingly effective at stopping shrapnel, leading to terrifying items like the British |
* During [[World War I]], armies experimented with chain mail and found that it actually made bullet wounds ''worse'' -- it couldn't stop a bullet ''and'' the rings would shatter, shoving more shrapnel into the wound than if the bullet just hit an unarmoured person. However, when hung like a curtain, it proved surprisingly effective at stopping shrapnel, leading to terrifying items like the British [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3b/Splatter_Mask_%28WWI%29.jpg splatter mask] for tank crews. |
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* Not the fault of the armor, but human psychology can make armor useless. People tend to react to increased safety by ''taking more risk'', in an unconscious attempt to balance risk versus reward (riskier behavior is offset by safety equipment like armor, resulting in increased reward for the same amount of risk); this is called the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peltzman_effect Peltzman effect]. The problem is that a) risky behavior may transfer the risk to [[Innocent Bystander|Innocent Bystanders]] rather than the one wearing the safety equipment, and b) people are ''really bad'' at judging risk, meaning that instead of balancing out, safety equipment + risky behavior may actually be significantly ''more'' dangerous than no safety equipment + no risky behavior. |
* Not the fault of the armor, but human psychology can make armor useless. People tend to react to increased safety by ''taking more risk'', in an unconscious attempt to balance risk versus reward (riskier behavior is offset by safety equipment like armor, resulting in increased reward for the same amount of risk); this is called the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peltzman_effect Peltzman effect]. The problem is that a) risky behavior may transfer the risk to [[Innocent Bystander|Innocent Bystanders]] rather than the one wearing the safety equipment, and b) people are ''really bad'' at judging risk, meaning that instead of balancing out, safety equipment + risky behavior may actually be significantly ''more'' dangerous than no safety equipment + no risky behavior. |
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