Ghetto Bulletproofing

Anyone else catch Mythbusters last night? The "secondary myth" was whether or not you could bullet-proof a car using phone books. They did show that a single, thick phone book stuffed into the body cavities around the doors could stop up to a .45 (so B3 level protection). Two were good enough to stop .30-06 and 12-gauge deer slugs.

The phone books worked better behind a hard object (the steel skin or tempered glass windows), but that impinged on internal volume. So you either trade space (internal mounting) or weight (external mounting).

They put 400 books outside and inside a first-generation Range Rover and it proved pretty resistant all the way up to 5.56x45mm NATO (though fired from a serious distance - so it's certainly not B6 level protection), but when they went to sniper/anti-material rounds (.338 Lapua, .416 Barrett, .50BMG) it didn't work at all. In fact, a single .50BMG round stopped the engine.

yeah I saw it kisk and I was amazed at how well the phone books worked. i have to saww though I don't think there is much out there that would stop the .50BMG outside of some serious armor

Wow. And here I was thinking that trick wouldn't work for anything above 9mm...

Ghetto Bulletproofing is right. I seehomes walking around with straps all the time where I live and most of th time they have something in the 9mm, .375, or .44-.45 range.

boomer_gonz wrote:Ghetto Bulletproofing is right. I see homies walking around with straps all the time where I live and most of th time they have something in the 9mm, .375, or (.45).

Well a single phone book (plus a thin piece of steel) is enough to stop all of those calibers.

Back in high school, we made a ballistic shield made from 1/4" steel (boiler plating) and backed it with 2" of high density rubber foam. We also accomplished similar protection with 1/2" Aluminum plate and high density foam.

The trick to the science is, striking the metal portion of the shield, the bullet is slowed enough for the foam to catch it. But if the bullet strikes the foam layer first, it will go through the metal layer though slowed down but still deadly.

As for phone books, my friends and I have used them to test out our guns and ammo at home and there was nothing to work with. 4 books stacked up against a wall usuallly stopped anything we threw at it.

One of the favored tricks for testing bullet expansion (on the cheap) is to tie several phone books together with twine and soak them in water for a few hours. The water-logged, thin pages then act similar to ballistics gelatin, though not nearly as well. This is handy if you're testing expansion of self-designed bullet molds, or even just the penetration of a load.

phone books stoping a .30-06
i was in the i will stop hand guns but it stoped full size rifle rounds.
and now we know why the plates for bullet proof vest go in the center of two layers of kevlar.

you may care to read these
book vs bullets
bullets vs cars


the old two layer armor is how nasa armord some space ships just two layers of metal with a gap,the rock /bullet hits the first and brakes up in to smaller parts that are stopd by the secon layer.