armor up? 1 of 2

ARMOR UP?

*
note: a good movie unto itself, an added bonus is Enfield Love.  On Netflix, "The Siege Of Jadotville".
*

Today’s Question Of The Ages is, “should I even consider wearing body armor”.  I’m going to carefully go over every aspect of that question, use logic and common sense, and then I expect that every one of you will just ignore everything I wrote and do as you please anyway.  Well, that does suck, but it comes as little surprise as I’m sure that is what you normally do.  If the only thing I do is to get one or two of you thinking in another direction, I’ll consider my time far from wasted.  My short answer is No.  Here is a longer version.  Whenever I think of body armor, I envision the crème de le crème of the French aristocracy laying in a layer of mud filled with arrows like pin cushions.  They had so much armor on ( as well as their horses ) that mobility was sacrificed for safety and in the end they just made fabulous targets for the English bowmen.  And yes, I understand that this instance was a bit of a fluke.  The mud was especially bad that day-tactically they shouldn’t have engaged.  You can’t discount armor because in one case it was counter-productive.  I’m only saying that this particular vision is always what answers my query on wearing bullet protection.

*

Now, PLEASE keep your Hello Kitty bikini underwear from bunching.  I understand the many and varied nuances of body armor.  In a stationary position in a less than tropical climate they might have some utility for the reserve personnel.  Nobody wants to come home to find their wife looking like pink Swiss cheese if a simple couple hundred dollar investment could have saved her life.  But that is little more than an emotional argument.  Let’s start from the beginning with combat utility then move our way to defending your family members.  First off, this is an Oil Age piece of equipment.  Once abused and used, shot up and soaked with so much sweat it has become useless, the armor probably won’t be replaced.  Kevlar is an industrial material, not a cottage craft one.  You might think this is okay, since the bullets will also pretty much be gone by then, but I have my doubts.  Okay, you say, I just need it to save my life once and then it will be worth any price.  Yeh, about that.  

*

There are a lot of things you should be doing to save your life in the near future, but you aren’t, are you?  You still live in the suburbs near millions of people.  You still work at a high stress job despite what it is doing to your health, even though you know money will soon be worthless.  You should be storing a lot more food than you are.  You should be more worried about ammo stocks than buying yet another semi-automatic, but you are using Hillary’s election as an excuse to do that, aren’t you?  In short, not having a bullet resistant vest is really the least of your problems.  You need a lifestyle change, not another Tommy Tactical Tool.  Just like all the other optional tools we talk about here, body armor is just another piece of equipment slowing you down.  You are a French knight stuck in the mud.  A mule with a bulls eye.  Remember, military personnel are merely cannon fodder.  You think they are making armor mandatory to save a troopers life?  No, not a chance.  They are so short on personnel they are trying to wring out some more combat time on the ones they have-the armor keeps you going longer until you finally die another way as you lumber along slowly under too much weight.

*

Why are you looking at our military as inspiration?  The same idiots that want to put females in combat?  The same jag-offs that spend a hundred billion on a ship that a three million dollar missile can mess up?  You want to look at the winners, not the losers.  Who won a war against both the Soviet Union and the USA?  Little Afghan dudes.  And they are extreme light infantry.  They don’t ask how many kitchen sinks they should be bringing to a conflict.  They want mobility, not weight.  You can justify any tool as a life saver, yet the Afghans reject them all to stay alive.  Sure, if you think a super studly combat pack of sixty pounds is a good idea, why not add another twenty in armor?  At that point it can’t hurt much, and it can only help since you are already under the hindrance of near zero mobility.  And as far as going with minimal armor to reduce weight, why are you bothering?  Much past a 9mm round they won’t accomplish much except overheat you.

*

Armor is a hot SOB.  In Korea in the wintertime, they are pretty helpful for insulation ( not for mobility, of course ).  Every where and every when else, they hurt rather than help.  Armor is good if you are a cop in an air conditioned car or a soldier not moving around too much outside their mechanical transport ( assuming the lack of mobility is manageable ).  In real world conditions, armor just makes you so miserably hot ( the devices sold to cool you down while wearing armor only decrease the temperature increase marginally-better than nothing of course, but it is the difference between dipping your dingus in a pool of molten lava or boiling water ) that you are NOT paying sufficient attention to your surrounding threats.  Just as being overburdened does.  Being tough is one thing, being miserable to the point of distraction because of flawed planning is quite another.  Your men are getting shot at, stop acting like they are pussies because their knees blew out from a hundred pound ruck or they passed out from heat exhaustion. 

*

As a survivalist, you have it in your power to prevent poor judgment planning for combat.  No dumbass officer is there passing down holy commands from on high at the Pentagon.  We finish up tomorrow.

END 

Please support Bison by buying through the Amazon ad graphics at the top of the page.  IF YOU DON’T SEE THE AD, DISABLE AD BLOCK ( go to the Ad Blocker while on my page and scroll down the menu to “disable this site” ). You can purchase anything, not just the linked item. Enter Amazon through my item link and then go to whatever other item you desire. As long as you don’t leave Amazon until after the order is placed, I get credit for your purchase.  For those that can’t get the ads because they are blocked by your software, just PayPal me occasionally or buy me something from my Amazon Wish List once a year.  Pay your author-no one works for free.  I’m nice enough to publish for mere Book Money, so do your part.*** 
*Contact Information*  Links To Other Blogs *  Land In Elko*  Lord Bison* my bio & biblio*   my web site is www.bisonprepper.com           *wal-mart wheat
*Link To All My Published Books
* By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there