Fly Navy said:
That's always hard to tell. Plenty of soldiers in WWII survived multiple hits with .30-06 and 8mm Mauser. It all depends on what the bullet hits and the trauma surrounding it.
Theres good reason to that, the temporary wound cavity though big with a big 7mm+ round may be mean but they dont tumble like the intermediate rifle cartiridge. They go straight on through for the most part and dont have the same kind of permenant wounding ability of a tumbling round, so a pressure bandage will do alot more to stop the bleeding and buy enough time to get to an aid station. An intermediate cartridge on the other hand tumbles and yaws creating a much more damaging permenent wound cavity (think a 5.56 has more size laterally then a .308 from the front). Also at the higher velocitys these rounds also have a tendency to break up on impact creating a peppering effect inside the body. It takes alot more treatment to stop the kind of bleeding that can be expected from a smaller cartridge. The damage caused by that 5.56 is actually worse medically then the AK, one straight hole is easier to treat.
Level IIIA armor actually stops shotguns better then low caliber high velocity pistols. The thump in the clay you see is the blunt trauma being transmitted to the target. If you used the old armor vests that predated Kevlar you actually get a much deeper thump, where Kevlar spreads it across the chest allowing for a lower chance of you surviving the bullet but dying from shock. And funny enough but actually one of the biggest threats out there to a vest is a low caliber (17-25cal) round with alot of velocity at close range. Thats one of the big deals with the .40 cal that was discovered during its development its the most likely round to fail against an IIIA armor so the likely hood of an officer hitting another and it being fatal (hey some of the departments out there..... aint to far off) went down from the 9mm, plus hitting power went up a bit.
RevnR6,
Unless its III ceremic or SAPI over a level II concealment vest or better its not rated to stop a highvelocity rifle round. They sell vests like this for about 600, and they way about 12 lbs, thats why nobody wears them till they need them.
Ryoukai,
Dont worry about the chest, the stomach is where I worry about taking a round. Thats where your kidneys, liver, gall bladder are and if you hit one of those the likely hood of dying from infection caused by all the toxins being released into your body goes way up. Remember the human body originally walked on all fours, standing upright was a bad idea because it exposes all our organs.
