Picture of ipod 1Photos sent to me by my friend Danny with this caption:
My wife’s uncle works in a military hospital and told me about this. Its pretty amazing. Kevin Garrad (3rd Infantry Division) was on a street patrol in Iraq (Tikrit I believe) and as he rounded the corner of a building an armed (AK-47) insurgent came from the other side.
The two of them were within just a few feet of each other when they opened fire. The insurgent was killed and Kevin was hit in the left chest where his IPod was in his jacket pocket. It slowed the bullet down enough that it did not completely penetrate his body armor. Fortunately, Kevin suffered no wound.
Pictuce of ipod 2
Basically they are crediting the ipod, not the body armor, for saving the soldiers life, with posts like the following after I tell them I think its bullshit:
When he refers to the shape of the bullet, he is referring to the far right bullet in this picture which another poster assumes is the ammo the insurgents were using. So I have two questions:Well, first look at the shape of the bullet, its designed to penetrate. But its also easily mangled. An Ipod is a half inch thick piece of aluminum and plastic, and would damage the bullet enough so that the body armor would take the rest of it and stop it.
Without the ipod the bullet may have penetrated the armor completely.
How likely is that assumption on the ammo used to be correct ?
Assuming that this event did happen as described, what difference would the ipod of actually made ?
Here is the thread in question
More seriously, I would say the results of the Mythbusters' "What is Bulletproof? episode preemptively disprove that an iPod could slow a bullet sufficiently to make a difference in lethality for a weapon of that calibre at that distance:
