Body Armor Info Source

Body Armor Info Source

by George Paul Tire

Many preppers are concerned with defending themselves at some point and wind up getting weapons. Hopefully, they also get the training to use them responsibly and effectively. Should the grim day arise that we have to fight for ourselves and our families, we must consider the likelihood that we might get hurt. That leads us down two branches. The first is being able to care for injuries and the second is being able to minimize them. We’ll look into the first sooner or later, but I wanted to write about the second now.

Body armor has saved countless lives and minimized injuries for public safety and military personnel. Many people have begun purchasing it to round out their preps. The subject, however, can be complex with unfamiliar terms and vendors with claims that are hard to test. There are number of types of armor and different levels of protection. There is no perfect armor, and you have to balance protection, weight, bulk and cost before making a buy, so it’s off to the Internet we go for some serious research.

Among the most useful sites I found was D-Rmor Gear . While some gear is sold there as a part-time endeavor by an armor enthusiast, the main thing on the site is information and quite a bit of it at that. The best part of the blog for me is a collection of posts called Body Armor, The Good The Bad and The Ugly. In them, you can find a wealth of information about the many types of armor and the good and bad of each. I’m sure some will disagree with D-Rmor, but I found balanced discussions that came to pretty much the same conclusions I reached after many hours of investigation. I wish I had found D-Rmor sooner, though I’m glad I did the other research. You can never know too much.

There are a few items for sale on the site to help solve some problems with armor. A critical one with steel armor is that bullets fragment when they hit it. Those fragments can hurt you. Most steel armor vendors now offer coatings to contain these fragments, but there is a lot of bare steel out there. D-Rmor makes guards for it that will contain almost all of the perpendicular splash of lead and copper bits.

An item I’ve tested from D-Rmor is their Armometer, a heat recording strip that will warn you if your armor has been exposed to too much heat. Some types of armor can be ruined by temperatures as low as 170 degrees which can be reached in a car in a hot climate. The Armometer has a series of spots that turn black at temperatures from 170 to 200 degrees. I left one in my car (a white Honda CRV) for a couple of weeks and was pleased that it never hit 170. Then I put it in my wife’s small, black SUV and was surprised that it didn’t turn there either. Being inquisitive, I got out my heat gun and infrared thermometer to make sure it worked. Sure enough, at 170, the appropriate dot turned black as did the 180 one when I reached that temperature. I was reassured that I can probably store my armor in either car, but since the Armometer can only be used once, I will have to get another one to attach to my armor.

Regardless of your interests in the D-Rmor products, the site is a good starting point if you want to explore body armor and it is well worth reading every page there.