5 ms·

Have you ever worn Kevlar body armor? The Feds have rather stupid requirements for it, that don't match the real world, but depend on deformation of clay behin

by hga 12y ago

Have you ever worn Kevlar body armor? The Feds have rather stupid requirements for it, that don't match the real world, but depend on deformation of clay behind a vest. So what cops wear is stiffer, and perhaps hotter than needed. Although I think heat is unavoidable, there's even relevant lines in Shakespeare's King Henry the Fourth: Like a rich armour worn in heat of day, That scalds with safety. So plenty of cops are killed because they're not wearing their uncomfortable armor; it's sort of like strapping a barrel around your torso. Another factor is that better, albeit more expensive polymers have been developed, especially very long chain polyethylene (as in 1-2 million units long); my next vest will be made from that. Also Kevlar loses its protective strength if wet. There was also a short period where a very bad new polymer was used by at least one company, it quickly degraded, and that cost a few cops their lives. Finally, while the gun-grabbers' campaign against non-existent "cop killer bullets!!!" accomplished nothing directly affecting cops on the ground, indirectly it taught a lot of people that cops wear body armor, resulting, or so I've read without personally drilling down to the raw data, an increase in criminals killing them with head shots. Ah, I should also note that soft body armor saves by preventing penetration, and decreases kinetic impact by stretching the fibers. So a hit can still hurt a lot, enough to potentially fatally distract you during a fight, especially bad if you're alone. My home defense body armor has a hard rifle plate in the front to mitigate this. Ah, I should also add some numbers. There aren't that many cops killed on duty, here's numbers broken down by years: http://www.nleomf.org/facts/officer-fatalities-data/year.html http://www.nleomf.org/facts/officer-fatalities-data/year.htm... I don't think Kevlar body armor went into common use until perhaps the '80s, and without adding heavy rifle plates, which only SWAT teams routinely use (and our troops in the last decade), it offers very little protection against the #1 killer of cops, vehicle related accidents (in them, or struck by them).

reader5000 12y ago
>...especially bad if you're alone. My home defense body armor has a hard rifle plate in the front to mitigate this. I can't understand why a well-rounded individual like yourself would be living alone.
- hga 12y ago
  Heh. I'm not, but I live on a separate floor of a building with my father, so if we suffer from a home invasion one of us will be somewhat delayed in coming to the aid of the other. If we're alerted to it by the alarm system, then we'll be taking some time to clear our floor and turn off the alarm before likely realizing the other was threatened (an. And it's still an issue if you've got an armed partner, neither of you can necessarily afford to be disabled for a few moments. Suppose there are multiple invaders ... in any case, "tunnel vision" in focusing on one threat is to be avoided, e.g. you don't want to rush past a non-shooting invader and then get bushwhacked by him.
  - reader5000 12y ago
    This sounds good, but you're failing to take into account chemtrails. Think about it man, they already got you. Best to move to a safe location like say far outside of any US border.
    - hga 12y ago
      You and kghose laugh at me and my father, but it sounds like we've got proven, time tested answers to violent crime directed at us, and you're in the "Dial 911 and die" category. Latest failure: dial 911, get transferred to voicemail, and end up shooting one of the intruders: http://fox8.com/2014/06/14/man-shoots-intruder-after-his-911-call-is-transferred-to-voice-mail/ http://fox8.com/2014/06/14/man-shoots-intruder-after-his-911... I do hope that you have enough moral consistency that if or when things get nasty, you don't pester your "gun nut" and "prepper" acquaintances but accept the fate your unpreparedness would normally dictate.
      - salgernon 12y ago
        You make the world you want and deserve.
      - ForHackernews 12y ago
        > I do hope that you have enough moral consistency that if or when things get nasty, you don't pester your "gun nut" and "prepper" acquaintances but accept the fate your unpreparedness would normally dictate. What are you talking about? If Armageddon comes, we're obviously going to murder you and take all your supplies. I mean, "moral consistency" is nice and everything, but it's nothing weighed against the survival of my family. Maybe you should invest more effort in shoring up our civilization, instead of eagerly anticipating its downfall.
rdtsc 12y ago
> my next vest will be made from that Holly molly, do you live in Iraq or Syria, or some other war zone?
- hga 12y ago
  Just how peaceful do you think the US will remain after e.g. we no longer can borrow "a trillion dollars a year" at negative real interest rates? Wars on arithmetic eventually fail, and I expect our's to in my lifetime. Note that I don't currently wear it when I go outdoors, currently don't even carry as many spare magazines as I perhaps should when I do. It's one of the logical things to do after you buy and train up with your initial set of guns. Fairly inexpensive used sets can be bought; my current concealable one is used, Kevlar doesn't deteriorate in normal use, we've got a lot of experience with it by now. And putting on my chemist hat, I expect ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene (e.g. Dyneema and Spectra) to be very very stable.
  - nicholas73 12y ago
    Probably will mirror the experience Britain had once the pound lost its reserve status.
    - XorNot 12y ago
      The US dollar isn't losing it's reserve status. What would replace it? The day the Chinese Yuan floats freely might be a small step in that direction, but then we've also got "able to exchange any world currency into it" and "China has a growth rate which is realistically maintainable". You don't get negative interest rates because people don't want to hold US dollars.
      - hga 12y ago
        I don't think it's axiomatic it's status can't end in, say, the medium term, or that it would be replaced per se. As a hypothetical, suppose the Federal government decided to liquidate its debts the Weimar Republic/Zimbabwe way. You are of course correct about the current situation, including the PRC; I interpret it as the US dollar being one of the "least worst" places to put your money. I'm of course looking beyond this period ... which still doesn't necessarily equal people not wanting to hold US dollars, as we saw in the '70s when things got quite ugly. I'm just implicitly pointing out there's a whole lot being built on the current reality of the Federal government being able to borrow essentially for free, and that I expect the latter to end, with bad consequences for the former.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
AmVess 12y ago
Former LEO here. I wore it in mild weather (80F), and it wasn't a bother. Hot, but not uncomfortably so. Our portable offices where air conditioned, so this helped quite a lot. Traffic related accidents are more dangerous overall than getting shot, IIRC. Small sample size: I was never shot at, but T-Boned twice while driving through a intersections. Both times, not under code, but normal traffic speed. Nitwits.
- hga 12y ago
  I've not tried it in really hot weather, and haven't found it to be really uncomfortable, but certainly more that I judged worth it for my pretty low current threat level. I do wear it very occasionally when I have to go out late at night. (Level II-A from a company I've never heard of, 1994 manufacture, didn't go to any great effort to get something good or well fitted (it's oversized at the belly, no doubt making that area a lot stiffer due to overlap), it's more insurance for disasters and the like than anything else.) And thinking about it, if you ignore an ... adventure or two of my youngest brother's with shoplifters while he was working retail at a men's clothing store, none of my nuclear family have experienced any stranger face to face crime, as you might put it. But we do have a couple of incidents of sitting in front of a red light at an intersection and BANG! Something like that also happened to my father CORRECTION: while avoiding a head on collision with a Pepsi truck who's driver was asleep, his company car, fortunately, got a non-disabling hit in the rear left quarter. He did teach all of us to drive very defensively ... but there's not much you can do when in front of a red light. Nitwits indeed.

by hga 12y ago

reader5000 12y ago

>...especially bad if you're alone. My home defense body armor has a hard rifle plate in the front to mitigate this. I can't understand why a well-rounded individual like yourself would be living alone.

hga 12y ago
Heh. I'm not, but I live on a separate floor of a building with my father, so if we suffer from a home invasion one of us will be somewhat delayed in coming to the aid of the other. If we're alerted to it by the alarm system, then we'll be taking some time to clear our floor and turn off the alarm before likely realizing the other was threatened (an. And it's still an issue if you've got an armed partner, neither of you can necessarily afford to be disabled for a few moments. Suppose there are multiple invaders ... in any case, "tunnel vision" in focusing on one threat is to be avoided, e.g. you don't want to rush past a non-shooting invader and then get bushwhacked by him.
- reader5000 12y ago
  This sounds good, but you're failing to take into account chemtrails. Think about it man, they already got you. Best to move to a safe location like say far outside of any US border.
  - hga 12y ago
    You and kghose laugh at me and my father, but it sounds like we've got proven, time tested answers to violent crime directed at us, and you're in the "Dial 911 and die" category. Latest failure: dial 911, get transferred to voicemail, and end up shooting one of the intruders: http://fox8.com/2014/06/14/man-shoots-intruder-after-his-911-call-is-transferred-to-voice-mail/ http://fox8.com/2014/06/14/man-shoots-intruder-after-his-911... I do hope that you have enough moral consistency that if or when things get nasty, you don't pester your "gun nut" and "prepper" acquaintances but accept the fate your unpreparedness would normally dictate.
    - salgernon 12y ago
      You make the world you want and deserve.
    - ForHackernews 12y ago
      > I do hope that you have enough moral consistency that if or when things get nasty, you don't pester your "gun nut" and "prepper" acquaintances but accept the fate your unpreparedness would normally dictate. What are you talking about? If Armageddon comes, we're obviously going to murder you and take all your supplies. I mean, "moral consistency" is nice and everything, but it's nothing weighed against the survival of my family. Maybe you should invest more effort in shoring up our civilization, instead of eagerly anticipating its downfall.

rdtsc 12y ago

> my next vest will be made from that Holly molly, do you live in Iraq or Syria, or some other war zone?

hga 12y ago
Just how peaceful do you think the US will remain after e.g. we no longer can borrow "a trillion dollars a year" at negative real interest rates? Wars on arithmetic eventually fail, and I expect our's to in my lifetime. Note that I don't currently wear it when I go outdoors, currently don't even carry as many spare magazines as I perhaps should when I do. It's one of the logical things to do after you buy and train up with your initial set of guns. Fairly inexpensive used sets can be bought; my current concealable one is used, Kevlar doesn't deteriorate in normal use, we've got a lot of experience with it by now. And putting on my chemist hat, I expect ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene (e.g. Dyneema and Spectra) to be very very stable.
- nicholas73 12y ago
  Probably will mirror the experience Britain had once the pound lost its reserve status.
  - XorNot 12y ago
    The US dollar isn't losing it's reserve status. What would replace it? The day the Chinese Yuan floats freely might be a small step in that direction, but then we've also got "able to exchange any world currency into it" and "China has a growth rate which is realistically maintainable". You don't get negative interest rates because people don't want to hold US dollars.
    - hga 12y ago
      I don't think it's axiomatic it's status can't end in, say, the medium term, or that it would be replaced per se. As a hypothetical, suppose the Federal government decided to liquidate its debts the Weimar Republic/Zimbabwe way. You are of course correct about the current situation, including the PRC; I interpret it as the US dollar being one of the "least worst" places to put your money. I'm of course looking beyond this period ... which still doesn't necessarily equal people not wanting to hold US dollars, as we saw in the '70s when things got quite ugly. I'm just implicitly pointing out there's a whole lot being built on the current reality of the Federal government being able to borrow essentially for free, and that I expect the latter to end, with bad consequences for the former.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

AmVess 12y ago

Former LEO here. I wore it in mild weather (80F), and it wasn't a bother. Hot, but not uncomfortably so. Our portable offices where air conditioned, so this helped quite a lot. Traffic related accidents are more dangerous overall than getting shot, IIRC. Small sample size: I was never shot at, but T-Boned twice while driving through a intersections. Both times, not under code, but normal traffic speed. Nitwits.

hga 12y ago
I've not tried it in really hot weather, and haven't found it to be really uncomfortable, but certainly more that I judged worth it for my pretty low current threat level. I do wear it very occasionally when I have to go out late at night. (Level II-A from a company I've never heard of, 1994 manufacture, didn't go to any great effort to get something good or well fitted (it's oversized at the belly, no doubt making that area a lot stiffer due to overlap), it's more insurance for disasters and the like than anything else.) And thinking about it, if you ignore an ... adventure or two of my youngest brother's with shoplifters while he was working retail at a men's clothing store, none of my nuclear family have experienced any stranger face to face crime, as you might put it. But we do have a couple of incidents of sitting in front of a red light at an intersection and BANG! Something like that also happened to my father CORRECTION: while avoiding a head on collision with a Pepsi truck who's driver was asleep, his company car, fortunately, got a non-disabling hit in the rear left quarter. He did teach all of us to drive very defensively ... but there's not much you can do when in front of a red light. Nitwits indeed.