REPLY to DemolitionRanch - Can a Real Suit of Armor Stop a Bullet?!?!

this episode of chad diversity is brought to you by the upcoming launch campaign for the graphic novel adaptation of my book shadow of the conqueror there's a link in the description to the indiegogo pre-launch campaign so you can get in early and not miss out on any of the limited supply goodies that will be available when the graphic novel launch campaign goes live or if you'd like more information on the graphic novel and get some behind the scenes sneak peeks go check out my interview with the graphic novels artist mike s miller where we discuss how to do comic books right i'll put a card in the top right hand corner and a link to that video in the description below [Music] greetings i'm shad and matt from the youtube channel demolition ranch which i love by the way has recently made a video on the trope the idea of guns versus medieval style armor and as you might be able to guess this is a topic that i'm not only deeply interested in but i find very enjoyable and entertaining to explore and it's a topic that has been explored quite a bit within our community now matt's video let me just say off the bat i already mentioned i really like demolition range and i genuinely do okay some of the the highlight videos for me i like he did this one on concealed carry and he had like 20 to 30 hidden firearms underneath his clothing which was hilarious and i got another one where he was testing out like a new kind of ballistic shield i just found that really interesting because it was a handheld shield and of course i have an interest in that kind of you know comparison because it was a bit similar to like a medieval handheld shield and of course when you test out that giant sword as well and when he just explores really strange weird firearms so i've actually been a fan of demolition ranch for a while and i get that this video is made in it's harmless fun okay and it serves that purpose at all it's a really fun entertaining video yet there is a lot of important context that unfortunately is missing because when it comes to the topic of historical medieval armor there's a lot of sophisticated parts to it and where matt's area of expertise is of course modern day firearms my own area of expertise is of course the medieval period specifically weapons and armor and with that being said i feel i can add in that context i was missing from the video as a bit of a follow-up and i really want to emphasize i'm not criticizing that at all for any of the factual errors that do appear in this video because it's just repeating the common mainstream misconceptions that exist about medieval period and medieval arm and other things like that and so if you're not an enthusiast about this stuff this is the general kind of understanding that most people have in the world and it kind of begins one of the first ones he says is that he wants to test bullets versus armor because they didn't have bullets and by context is referring to the medieval period we have armor covering his entire body head to toe and we're gonna shoot it to see if it's bulletproof now they of course never tested this because they didn't have bullets they were trying to stop swords and arrows and again this is a very common misunderstanding because you don't really associate guns with knights and castles when in reality is guns actually yeah absolutely did exist in the late medieval period this is when they actually first started to be utilized in warfare they were somewhat different the very earliest forms of guns in the medieval period were like small handheld cannons okay they didn't really at first represent the stereotypical look of a gun more like an actual cannon but they did evolve to where still in the medieval period where at the late medieval period here you do see some types of guns that very much are now starting to look like what we would more generally understand to be a gun there are some unique kind of differences and things that need to be understood in context because if they worked perfectly and they could be made you know easily enough because that's the other thing that difficult to make and technology was evolving everyone would have been using them but because this is the very first iterations of these weapons being used in warfare they were far from perfect which is why not everyone used them and people were still using crossbows and arrows during the time when there's a bit of an overlap when guns also existed the reason being is that generally they were horribly inaccurate okay this is well before any rifling was actually added to the inside barrels to get the actual slugs to spin uh to stabilize their trajectory they so they were very erratic because of that now in terms of power it actually kind of depends on the size of the round and is this is this the caliber i think see this is where i am not an expert in terms of firearms and stuff but in terms of the internal caliber their effectiveness was very much determined on that because that would then directly affect the velocity momentum of the round and how much penetrative force they had there have been many other youtubers who've actually explored this area already scarlgrim has a couple of really fun tests where he does test modern firearms against medieval style armor and a really good one is also from modern history tv where jason kingsley actually tests a more historically authentic breastplate it isn't perfect but it's much closer than many other tests as well with actual fairly good replicas of medieval style firearms these ones have a much larger caliber if i'm using that term correctly and they have a lot of force and power behind them and in jason's test they punch through completely but there is context that needs to be understood because not all breastplates were equivalent and so just because it can punch through one breastplate doesn't mean it'll punch through every breastplate and this is the other thing if this new weapon was introduced where it was really effective against armor does that mean people just stopped wearing armor no no they actually tried to make armor better to combat these early firearms and they made the front part of the breastplate thicker and this is why when you see some of the breastplates of the renaissance period they're actually significantly thick and they're actually made to try and stop and deflect early firearms and then it will depend on the type of firearm because these early medieval kind of almost handheld mini cannons had a lot of grunt behind them and shot a fairly large lump of lead but when we get to their handheld flintlock pistols they shot a much smaller bullet and as a result actually had a lot of trouble penetrating the armor that was made specifically to try and prevent the ballistic weapons of their time and so again it depends on context because a much larger okay kind of rifle had much higher chance of penetrating that armor so again it's all it's all context but the primary takeaway from this first point is that to many people's surprise so again this is no criticism on you that you might not know this a lot of people don't know it it's a big misconception in the world is that guns did exist in the medieval period knight actually used guns at some times and again late medieval period but not everyone because again they just weren't wholly effective and in some instances a really powerful arrow from a war bow was more effective and efficient because better accuracy and you would be amazed at how much kick an actual medieval war arrow has i mean have a look at this the diameter is nearly half an inch and yeah these things were heavy as well and so the trade-off wasn't always guns universally better because if you could get a huge amount of power and you could be more reliably accurate and had a higher rate of fire because that was one of the other big flaws with these early medieval firearms is that it took ages to reload okay but with a bow and arrow you can reload pretty darn fast and so it's a trade-off because granted by the end of the day a war arrow is never going to match the power you can achieve with a firearm but when they were just being introduced there were more pros and cons to consider but i just want to see if like this is still a viable option in today's time if so intruder's coming in should i get on my suit of armor is armor a viable option now i don't think he's really asking this seriously it's just kind of fun thing like to find out how effective could it be if this was one of the things you had on hand and again well it always depends it depends on the type of armor depends on the types of bullets and stuff and ultimately at the end of the day most of the tests of these firearms versus armor firearms do eventually win out if you get a more a powerful enough firearm especially modern ones okay modern ones are way more efficient way more accurate and generally can always punch through medieval armor if it's powerful enough in the handgun category well you'd be surprised that there's actually a decent amount of you know guns that medieval armor can actually either block or deflect and we even saw that in your own tests where this armor you have and i do have a lot to say on the type of armor because in terms of quality that armor is yeah anyway we'll get there amazingly it still stops some of the 22 rounds which is that even surprised me because with how low quality the armor was i was expecting it to do nothing but it even stopped that and say that goes to show you that it can do something but then if you were to compare it to actually well-made armor that well-made armor is going to do even better but basically whenever you get to like rifle rounds of you know even moderate power medieval armor is not going to do anything for you and then you'll be restricted by the weight and it doesn't weigh nearly as much as many people will assume but of course it has a measure of weight which restricts some of your movement just doesn't make you immobile in any measure you can still be very mobile and it's also a bit harder to breathe nothing like and so those are the detriments you'll receive without really getting any of the benefit and so in those cases you're better off not wearing it at all if you are facing munitions that will just go through it no matter what all right so now i need to comment on the quality of weapons and armor that you have in the video and i think look we know this is just for fun and you're restricted by budget okay because getting properly made decent quality medieval replica armor is very expensive and then to sacrifice that in just a fun little test video well like it's not worth the money though having said that there are people who have done tests against much higher quality armor to try and find out what the results would be and you can find a lot of these videos on youtube right here also i'm not saying that everyone who does these kind of tests especially if it's just for fun you don't need to get the best quality armor and stuff um because interesting enough you can actually get some information from it the fact that this low quality armor stopped to 22 round and this really low quality which looks to be aluminium and it's definitely buttered male armor stopped some of the 22 rounds that really surprised me because i was not expecting that so that is actually useful information but what is inaccurate and matt doesn't say this okay i'm not saying he does but what's inaccurate is then to assume that because it got through this armor the same type of guns will then be equally effective against all types of armor which is no armor varied a lot in quality and i'm going to go more into that when i get to the breastplate but first i want to just quickly talk about the sword he has and the male i don't know where you got the sword but that is that that's that sort is is special in how bad it is and i think you would agree i think you could laugh at that because like the alignment of the blade is is even on the you know 90 degrees off from how it should be i mean uh i'm sure you've seen swords before and uh and like for instance this is a is a good high quality sword okay like a really high quality sword and uh and one thing that you see that the blade is in line with the cross guard uh that's that's the first thing and so when matt says that the armor can stop a sword strike it is all metal it's real it actually would stop a sword [Music] really does depend on the type of sword now i will say very clearly that most well-made armor will stop most sword strikes okay so in terms of penetration a sword will not penetrate properly made plate armor when it comes to mail that's a completely different topic because this type of sword that's made out of really good quality high strength steel and has a very acute tip has a much higher chance of penetrating male like that uh will this penetrate plate no if it's tin plated dirt possibly and with the type of armor that matt has there might be a chance that an actual properly well made sword could punch through that stuff uh so it depends but if it's well made a sword basically has no chance of penetrating plate in that sense but male like i said male has much high chances so now okay that's a comment i want to talk on let's just address the mail quickly we uh disrobed him of his armor and you can see where stuff went through so it just busts big holes in that chain mail obviously and look i get it there's a lot of things i'll be pointing out sharing additional context and i don't want it to come across like i'm going out of my way to rag on matt i know the purpose of matt's video demolition ranch was for fun entertainment it wasn't to make any grand historical statements or any scientifically you know impressive test or anything i get that it was for fun and the video was a heaps of enjoyment to watch okay so i don't want you to think i'm holding it to a higher standard than what it should be it's just a great point of reference for anyone who has watched that video if you want actually a bit of additional information about what the actual medieval period types of swords and armor were and how well they would probably fare against you know real firearms and what's the correct context this is why i'm making the video to share just additional information not to rag on demolition range i love demolition ranch i just really want to emphasize that point but i hope matt can understand and even laugh with me when i point out how atrociously bad that armor is because it is some of the highest tier garbage you know medieval armor you can get on the market today it is and it's almost beautiful that he got that level of bad quality and not just like it was consistently bad the mail was about the worst you could get the breastplate was the worst you'd get it the helmet is all i guess it's a whole complete bag of crap and i think you can relate to me matt here because comparing this armor to real high quality armor it is all metal it's real it's like comparing an airsoft gun with a real gun okay that's kind of the vast difference in quality and effectiveness that medieval enthusiasts like myself see when they see that level that armor you have in the video compared to the real stuff uh and i i hope you can understand that comparison being a gun enthusiast that that's kind of the difference and the male off the bat it's buttered buttered male and so buttered males when the rings simply touch okay there's actually no real solid connection in the ring um which is really weak okay historically they had what was called riveted mail and in in fact here is here is my you know male horberg so yes it's a riveted male horper it's bloody heavy and so these are a couple of signs of like real you know male armor versus fake male armor all right so this is kind of mid-range from average to decent quality okay and one of the good things is it's steel and it's got riveted male links interspersed with fully connected circular rings that were made in a full circle and so as you can see what that means is each ring is fully connected it's either been riveted connected or it's a full unbroken link and you can make that because the uh the riveted rings you can actually slip through the unbroken ring and then rivet them together so they've done tests riveted male is ten times stronger than buttered mail that's significant amazingly this incredibly low quality buttered mayo seemingly stopped some of the 22 rounds which i was amazed by i would have thought it would stop nothing uh but that just also makes me wonder what would actual good quality male do against light you know rounds like this might have a chance to actually stop some who knows that look it depends a lot because you know one of the last tests you layered the buttered aluminium male up quite a lot after seeing what we saw with the chainmail where it was catching bullets i kind of want to just shoot a pile of chainmail so we got all the chainmail that we have put it right here in this pile and we're going to shoot it with bullet and look i could be wrong this could be like is it galvanized you can do something to metal which makes it really shiny on the surface it could actually be steel butted and that's just been given a coating that makes it really overly shiny but again by the weight it really does look to be aluminium yet still it seemingly stopped some light around that that was shocking right but again such a test should never be considered representative of how effective firearms would be against proper medieval mail oh the shield because when i was saying like it was a whole like complete representative picture of the worst coi the shield is exactly one of those things where historically most medieval shields were not metal in actual fact it would be very out of the ordinary to have a full metal sheet uh steel your shield would usually always would but not only would they they would have certain layers to increase the strength now i'm not saying they were never metal there are some instances where i believe there were but in most instances they were wood and then they'd have like dried rawhide or linen laid linen over the top surface but as i said most of the time they were wood and as a result they would have even less chances of stopping but again the thickness gives a bit more of cushion and stopping power but more often than not a bullet will always go through a medium shield like that but the shield in demolition wrenches video is really thin like like incredibly thin and even though it's metal a proper made medieval shield even out of wood would still perform better than the shield in the video uh but again just clearing out the misconception no they're not metal they would be wood all right so now actually moving on to the plate armor shown in the video and this is a lot wrong with this armor we don't know what strength of steel but having said that the levels of steel that were used in medieval plate armor also varied quite considerably sometimes you had basic mild carbon steel to medium carbon steel to high carbon steel so i was almost on a spectrum right and even then there would depend on if it would be hardened properly and tempered properly in the quenching process we have examples of armor across that whole spectrum of sometimes low carbon steel almost iron to medium carbon to high carbon and then sometimes the medium carbon high carb wasn't even quenched and tempered properly and then sometimes it was but the best quality medieval plate armor was good carbon steel that was quenched and tempered and this would be hardened steel good quality carbon hardened steel and that is like the creme de la creme of medieval armor and his performance in terms of preventing penetration is significant when you compare hardened steel versus unhardened steel and then even more so when you compare just carbon steel to mild carbon steel the performance is significant not so much when it comes to swords okay a sword will have a huge amount of difficulty penetrating mild carbon steel of certain thicknesses higher chances if it's thin and then you might actually be able to get somewhere especially if you're using something that's actually made to do damage even against armor like this this is what was called a bechter corbin or a crow's beak sometimes people can also call it a pole hammer but this is a great example of the type of weapons that were made to combat armor and because of the leverage the length you have on this and sometimes they could have a much longer you know pole on it there the momentum and power behind that has much higher chances of penetrating armor depending on the quality of steel and depending on its thickness but much higher chances than a sword and even if it doesn't penetrate there is so much power behind something like this and even if you hit with the hammer it has such blunt force going behind it that if you struck someone in the head okay with that the knock even doesn't penetrate the helmet the acceleration and just concussive force behind it is still enough to do serious damage this is why they were made okay has massive advantages of fighting against someone in armor and to even good armor this will offend it this is dangerous it gets even some of the best quality armor and gosh look at i know it's not just the crow's beak spike right it's also the head spike this is this is a multi-purpose armor combating devastating weapon oh my my viewers actually haven't seen this they didn't even know they didn't even know i got this oh yes maybe i should do tests with it because this is vicious and like so i have no idea what type of steel the armor you were testing was made out of be really interesting to know i was honestly surprised that stopped the 22 round because that was issues there are other big issues about this type of armor that a lot of people are usually fully unaware of because it goes beyond just type of steel and thickness of steel but also the shape the shape is really significant actual you know medieval breastplates have far more tapering at the waist well first off the waistline okay the waistline on the armor in demolition range is too low uh and what that means is when you try and bend over and move sideways and i think matt you might have found this out when you were wearing it is that it starts to dig into your gut and even you know pelvis line because the bottom of the breastplate like if they're properly made should stop at the waistline not the hips okay so if you actually your waistline is usually in line with your belly button or navel okay but your hips are lower convention like fashion at the moment is to have pants that you know sit on the hips not going up fully to the waist there are exceptions in fashion and stuff but the reason why this is important is because when your body moves okay it bends at the waist not at the hips and so if the armor goes down to the hips it'll start to dig in so historically armor would end at the waist about here so when you bend over the end of the armor kind of just bends in with the waist and you get far more movement out of it and then they have the fold underneath which is the part of armor underneath which then covers the waistline and upper thighs and things like that so that's when you can tell ah that is type of armor that is made to reflect what historical armor looked like because historical armor was made to be functional i i would be you know amazed that if any actual soldiers medieval period accepted armor that had that shape which is why i think it would be almost impossible to find historic example of armor in that shape because it comes from misunderstanding of the function of armor what it's meant to do it's meant to allow move it which means you know ending at the waist not at the hips but most reproductions people who make this stuff the cheap ones they don't know about this functionality and they just kind of think oh well it needs to cover your whole torso and they don't add a proper fold or anything like that and so if it ends you know at the waist it's leaving the bottom navel and growing open and stuff like that and so they make it go down far lower than what historically it should this is actually a key indicator of cheap armor versus good quality armor just just the shape because then yeah there's it doesn't have proper doming is it supposed to have proper doming depending on the type of historical army you're reflecting and other things like that this one is pretty flat on the chest but there was medieval armor that was flat when talking about plate the more significant one is the length but also just how much it cuts in over the shoulders so you can raise your arm properly without any restriction things so there are all these things to take into consideration in the quality of armor in regards to the shape and the example shown in the demolition range video it fails dramatically this is again a prime indicator of some of the lowest year garbage armour you could find which of course for the purposes of this fun light-hearted video was perfectly fine we just shouldn't be taking this as any type of representative example of what real medieval armor would function like interesting thing about equips this is something that you see perpetuated in films a lot it's pretty cool is how loose it is this is another prime indicator of poorly made and inauthentic reproduction is when the male koif is so loose it's not to say there wasn't loose armor in the medium period that people wore and this is one of the interesting kind of things about tailored armor versus kind of munitions great arm and armor that was mass produced and then you just had to find one that fit best because that absolutely existed it's incorrect to think that all medieval armor was perfectly tailored it wasn't there was a lot of secondhand hand-me-down armor that wouldn't have been tailored for people just by the fact that it was second-hand but you do need to find armor that at least fits enough now the koi thing is interesting though because one of the things a koif is supposed to protect is like the throat and neck uh that's why it should come up to here and if it's hanging down like that it's not protecting the throat and neck at all uh it's really really loose and has a chance of just falling off in the heat of battle because it's so loose and i think reproductions especially in film have it made like that so it's easy to get on and off and it doesn't cover up too much of the face because they want to see the actors and things but historically in an actual battlefield context that's terrible you don't want your koi falling off ever you would want it secured and covering as much of the face as possible which is why in many you know actual historical examples they have this additional attachment that comes up over the mouth and they can tie it with a liver cord and it covers the full you know face only leaving you know kind of like the eyes and nose and sometimes even covers the nose uh like that sometimes closer actually put over like metal skull caps to just increase the defensive value and of course padding oftentimes coifs will put over actual padding because a thin male coif just sitting on your skull that is not going to do very much i was going to say it's not going to do anything but of course it will stop you know the blade digging into your skull but it's not going to stop any of the concussive force and even those swords have very little mass in the blade talking about a sort of considerable size will transfer enough concussive force to do damage let alone something that has even more mass in it that's going to do serious damage if you don't have padding underneath that koif so that's also very important uh you know a thing to accompany that that male coif so now rounding off this video i just want to end it off with showing some examples of armor that was made and this is either you know breastplates from the renaissance uh this video will be an an example of a renaissance press plate but also armor even from the medieval period that there were examples made to stop the firearms of their day they were just made extra thick and better quality steel is significant in being able to have the strength to stop firearms and in those cases yeah there's actually a considerable amount of time where metal armor was contemporary with the early firearms and have a look at this test here where they are testing a flintlock pistol by the look of it against a renaissance style and this looks almost light renaissance style breastplate where and this one is made to try and deflect the bullets but this shot lands dead center and all that force is going in there and it still stops it because that it was made to have high chances of doing that and so when you have armor that's actually made to try and combat the firearms of the time of course has much higher chances and has much more effective defensive value but even these breastplates and we've seen this in tests have very little chance of stopping higher caliber rounds like proper powerful rifle rounds right no metal breastplates like this aren't going to stop you need something modern this is why modern ballistic armor of course exists which you have tested many times on your videos and i really like like i said one of my favorite ones is that handheld shield i was amazed at how thin that was but of course it was heavier you could see how heavy that was and you show it in your video but i was still amazed that the rounds that thing stopped that was amazing so imagine a breastplate made out of that stuff that's full-on uh but would it be too heavy to wear that that's the kind of the limitation with modern body armor these days you're too thick too bulky too cumbersome too heavy to do full body armor even though full body hammer does because i get that but it's not common and it's interesting even some modern day combat soldiers in response to other videos i've made have responded in comments saying well the reason why we don't wear the full body armor is because it's too heavy and too cumbersome so they just opt for you know the plates over the vital organs uh so anyway really interesting stuff and i want to end off that the video was heaps of fun i loved it i just wanted to take the opportunity to add this additional context to actually share okay what would real medieval armor operate like be like and sharing just just that additional context so like i said this is an attack or anything like that i really like you know demolition ranch's videos and if you guys don't know of demolition ranch i really suggest you subscribe because they're a load of fun and honestly they've been copying a lot in these these past times like over the past five or more years being demonetised because it's a you know channel about guns and guns are bad you know in the modern day and i always have sympathized with what's happened with demolition ranch because guns are not too far removed from swords the only difference is of course there's a lot of differences but one of the differences is that it's a modern day weapon versus a past historical weapon and therefore the controversies exist but i tell you what all it would take is enough stupid people doing stupid things with swords that my own channel would face some of the same difficulties that demolition ranch has faced over the recent years um because he's doing what he loves with guns okay and i'm doing what i love with swords they're both technically weapons and i'm dealing with real ones as well uh and so it sucks what's happened to demolition here so if you can support his channel subscribe watch absolutely please go do that because not only has he been unfairly treated i think in terms of the monetization and stuff but it's legitimately great fun light-hearted content and so if you're after that kind of thing comes my full recommendation so thank you for watching guys i hope you've enjoyed and of course i hope to see you on the next video on shadowversity so until that time [Music] you

Channel: Shadiversity

Views: 762,586

Keywords: reply, medieval, armor, armour, knight, response, test, sword, swords, castle, castles

Id: JIYFCjZKDio

Length: 30min 51sec (1851 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 16 2020