Tigerstripe said:
not for AP rds but what about doubling the soft plates to reduce weight and cost of steel or ceramic plates? would it handle 5.56?
AND if we are worried enough about being shot at i want to know where to get "blood clot" bandages preferably cheap. a year ago the 4x6 size was 5 bucks at walmart. now if they have it its either 10 or 20. there is a larger size too.
Almost certainly not. Think about it: if you could double up a pair of 3A vests and stop the most common intermediate rifle threats for 1/10 the price and weight, why would plates be on the market?
Even the "lowly" 30-30 has three or four times the energy of most pistol rounds. Soft armor may help against frag, spall, richochets, or low energy rounds at extreme ranges but they will not stop rifle rounds that hit at any sort of reasonable distance.
You can test it yourself for $40, though, with a pair of surplus kevlar panels if you don't believe me... To start stopping rifle threats at anything other than extreme ranges you need plates. There are some companies doing cool things with new materials, like Midwest Armor's MASSIII, but those are super expensive. There is no armor that is light, cheap, and protects against everything. You need to decide what's important to you. For many civilian defenders, the primary scenarios requiring armor are probably bunkering down in the house during a home invasion, so you can probably compromise on weight as you're not going to be rucking all day with the stuff on. A civilian could also compromise on cost/weight by just getting a front plate, on the theory that the likely scenario involves you stationary and bunkered at the end of the hall/top of the stairs/behind the bed.
5.56 is actually really tough to stop. Level III plate armor isn't rated to stop the SS109 AP green tip penetrator at all, and it is only rated for the M193 FMJ ball outside of around 50-100 meters (it is based on round velocity). Generally Level IV is needed to stop that SS109 round. Even in the expensive, advanced MASSIII plates to get the AP protection you almost double the weight.
As for bandages, you can get new in box CAT tourniquets and Israeli Bandages from Chinook Medical for reasonable prices. They can also be found on Ebay, but a lot of those bandages are not the self-tightening Israeli bandage types. Get at least basic red cross first aid training, or better yet, a TC3 class. TC3 protocols are actually moving AWAY from QuikClot and similar agents. QuikClot is the absolute last resort. If you do opt for a clotting agent, get a bandage with the QuikClot impregnated into it rather than a loose powder.
