Bomb-Proof Wallpaper Developed 388
MikeChino writes "Working in partnership with the US Army Corp of Engineers, Berry Plastics has rolled out a new breed of bomb-proof wallpaper. Dubbed the X-Flex Blast Protection System, the wallpaper is so effective that a single layer can keep a wrecking ball from smashing through a brick wall, and a double layer can stop blunt objects (i.e. a flying 2×4) from knocking down drywall. According to its designers, covering an entire room takes less than an hour."
Forget bombs, think hurricanes and tornados! (Score:4, Interesting)
If this can stop projectiles from penetrating the wall, then think about the protection it could offer from tornados and hurricanes. Obviously not a direct hit, since there'd be far more structural damage, but how much of that damage caused by flying debris could be mitigated. At the very least, the protection it could offer for occupants.
Not a very scientific example (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Kevlar (Score:5, Interesting)
As for the other thing, that's the whole idea: better armor makes them develop bigger bombs. That is a back-and-forth that has been going on for centuries.
Re:Kevlar (Score:4, Interesting)
So some groups started attaching plates to their mail in front, in order to better deflect the arrows. (And other blows: they then realized that plates tended to spread the impact of other weapons as well, minimizing injury.) Plates worked so well that a few groups got the idea that covering the whole body in plates would make the ultimate warrior. And indeed, from s defensive standpoint, plate armor withstood sword blows and thrusts and also arrows much better than any of the older stuff did.
Henceforth, the elite classes would wear plate armor, and the lower classes would use mail or leather or lesser forms of armor. But the only time when mail and plate were commonly used together (i.e., large quantities of both plate and mail), was in that earlier, intermediate period when plates were added to mail as an add-on, as it were.
This is definitely not intended as a complete history, but a brief summary and generalization. Still, the main point is that among other things, the bow and arrow drove the change from mail to plate armor, and then, with the development of the longbow, made that obsolete as well.
Amazing what can be done with some bent pieces of wood.
Re:Forget bombs, think hurricanes and tornados! (Score:1, Interesting)
From what I've seen on the news (not living in a tornado-prone country and all), major damage can usually be attributed to the fact that houses are made out of ply wood and plastic, i.e. cheap. So I suspect an expensive bomb-proof retrofitting is out of the question or else they could have built a real stone house to begin with.
I'm looking at 40cm thick stone walls here. That should be fairly effective at stopping a bit of wind. Then again the worst weather condition I've seen around here, were hailstones the size of small grapes, nothing noteworthy.
Re:Kevlar (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not that simple, different arrow heads were effective against different armour types, this is why sometimes chain was worn with plate.
Arrows with thin, pointed heads (bodkin arrows) were more effective against chain mail armour because they could pierce between the links and split them much more effectively than wide edged broadhead arrows could.
In contrast, bodkins weren't terribly effective against plate - not so much because of the shape, but because they were rarely hardened. Whilst hardened broadheads fired from longbows could penetrate plante they were far from the death's knell of plate, hence why the Spanish conquistadors in South America were plenty happy to use it still despite the natives being extremely skilled archers having indepently created longbows.
The real death's knell for plate was the spread of firearms, something the native people of South America did not generally have (they had looted weapons and such but not widespread) as a weapon to fight back against the conquistadors.
Even certain silk armour was popular in some parts of the world, because it didn't tear when hit by a broadhead and so the silk could be used to remove the head preventing infection from the arrow head. It would sometimes be used under chain, plate or both.
Really, it's just not as simple as longbow beats plate, the only weapon to successfully have a long reign against pretty much all types of personal body armour has been the firearm until the invention of kevlar.
Re:Forget bombs, think hurricanes and tornados! (Score:4, Interesting)
For one thing, hard-science experiments and calculations involving the Bernoulli effect over curved surfaces were what allowed the Wright brothers to be the first in powered flight. This is firmly established in history.
On the other hand, what you say is true, in that symmetrical wing plans can still achieve lift. However (as you point out) not when completely horizontal to the airflow.
So on the other, other hand, there is still measurable Bernoulli effect over a symmetrical wing, at any significant angle of attack.
I am not disagreeing with you, simply saying that as far as I know, this is not a decided issue. Yet.
Re:Idle? (Score:3, Interesting)
Better yet, the armoured wallpaper makes it impossible for rescuers to dig you out, or air to get in.
Re:Kevlar (Score:3, Interesting)
I thought the main reason was that it takes years to train a longbowman and minutes to train a musketeer?
Rate of fire, accuracy, and distance were all superior for a longbow, the training and strength required to draw one was a biproduct of a very specific lifestyle that only existed for a short period of time historically.
Re:Kevlar (Score:2, Interesting)
A cheaper solution which i'm going to be experimenting with in earthquake prone mexico is building a zero energy home using 18"-24" rammed earth walls doped with lime and placing chicken wire inside both sides of the frame to embed it directly into the wall as it's being constructed. There's some evidence to suggest such a method will render an earthquake proof wall, though nobody has quite done it in this manner before, and give it a couple of years and no wrecking ball is going to tear it down either.
Top it off with a self-supporting roof and the most danger you'll be in is from falling books... and that 30' crevasse opening under your feet, but you can't solve everything in a day :)
If i could find a non-leaching easy to construct plastic (easy for an uneducated native as i want all my structures to be buildable by hand) i might try out the concentric rings idea to absorb and deflect seismic waves.
Re:Kevlar (Score:1, Interesting)
Cost is indeed the issue, but the cost of keeping a man in the field remains undiscussed here. The late Romans switched to cavalry because 1 man on a horse was indeed worth 20 men on foot: the logistic burden of feeding 20 man on horses in the field is a lot lower than keeping 20 garrisons of 20 men with limited mobility fed. This makes investment in arms and training worthwhile, and the knight is invented. They learned this lesson from fighting mounted barbarians: it's hard to chase them with legions.
An army cannot live off the land indefinitely, and the ability to keep an army in the field longer than the enemy is a decisive advantage. The Roman empire for instance derives much of its military success against barbarians from its more mature economy. Farmers are not stupid. You can only take their animals and plunder their granaries once. They will hide their animals, adjust their crops to root vegetables etc and keep those in the ground for as long as possible, and in the worst case scenario run away. This is also why the potato was such a hit in the 16th and 17th century in the war torn low countries and Germany: its productive and well suited to keeping from armies.
As long as long distance trade is immature and agricultural productivity low, small well trained heavily armoured armies, augmented with untrained local peasants if you are defending, are favoured. In the late middle ages things started to change. Moving people and large amounts of food on ships became cheaper, a greater number of people had the time and money to arm themselves and train, and the French took a long time doing something useful with the strategic implications of that. Already in 1302 a French army of knights and peasants was defeated by Flemish urban militia. In 1415 it is defeated by, amongst others, trained archers with heavy bows. The English simply invested more in trained mercenaries in that war.
In defence of the French it is of course important to point out that they were the underdogs in this war from an economic point of view, and relied heavily on the call to arms of untrained peasants because they were the ones fighting near their homes. For the English there was no point in shipping in untrained peasants: for them all soldiers were important and expensive assets. The French army may have been bigger, but the English army was better trained and equipped and won for no other reason than that. Crediting that to the invention of the longbow is as silly as crediting other victories over knights and peasants to pikes, to crossbows, or in the 1302 case to the "goedendag" (yes, can be found in Wikipedia).
Economic circumstances made investment in the training and equipment of infantry more sensible, leading to specialized mercenary infantry, and expensive armours for the increasingly less important heavy cavalry less sensible, leading amongst others to the development of the longbow and crossbow, and the gradual loss of armour by cavalry.