I saw an interesting program on Cable TV this week. It started with the
suicide bombing of the Marine Barracks in Lebanon in 1983, and during the
program they discussed ways to place armor on buildings, cars, etc. A firm in
California that makes spray-on pickup bedliners decided to test their yellow
goop on cars, hadite (concrete) blocks, brick walls, and a variety of other
surfaces. They dropped a treated block from 25 feet and all it did to the
exterior of the block was dent a corner. The insides were fine gravel, but
completely contained in the original shape. Spraying bedliner on the inside
wall of a building greatly reduces the fragmentation effect of an explosive.
Spraying it on a car "bulletproofs" the metal sides, depending on the
thickness.
Isn't it interesting that the American pickup truck is possibly the safest
vehicle in the world? Drive-by shooting? hop in the bed of your pickup.
Tornado? Tie yourself down in the bed. Fueding with families from nearby
mountainous states? Let the wife drive while you use the pickup bed as a
"bunker".
On a serious note, there may be some merit in using Rhino-Liner as a
"scattershield" for objects trying to enter the cockpit from underneath. It's
not going to stop all the pieces of flywheel from a 10,000 RPM explosion, but
it will slow them down, and it might completely stop objects with less kinetic
energy. Andy will use the stuff in his E Mod Roadster, mostly for
waterproofing, but there will also be the added armor protection.
Leisure Suit Terry
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