Crossbow Vs Kevlar Vest/Bullet Proof Vest

Crossbow vs Kevlar Vest

There has been an ongoing debate since a long time on whether a crossbow can penetrate a kevlar vest. Kevlar vests are bullet-proof vests in modern times. So they should most certainly easily stop an arrow, don’t they? Well, a lot of factors would dictate that and that’s what we are going to look into now. This article explains about Crossbow Vs Kevlar that you can use as the guidelines when searching for Crossbow Vs Kevlar.

When it comes to crossbows, in most cases people using them have always been working with them. There are a few hunters who switch between different weapon of choice. Hunters are really attached to their weapon and their style of hunting. There are pros and cons to that. It’s never easy to master a new hunting technique or a weapon in a short time. Only some hunters have the expertise to easily grasp new techniques. Let’s look into crossbow vs kevlar vest in detail an understands more about their pros and cons.

Kevlar Vest

Bullet-proof vests are worn on the torso and work as a personal armor for soldiers and hunters to protect themselves from projectiles fired from firearms or shrapnels from close-range explosions. They come in various designs. Some vests are soft and protect the wearer from small calibre guns and firearms and shrapnel from hand grenades.

At the time of the Korean war, the United States military came up with numerous new varieties of protective vests. They came up with a vest, the M-1951, that was made from either a fibre-reinforced plastic or segments of aluminium woven inside a vest made from nylon. But these vests were not much successful in stopping bullets and small fragments even though they claimed that they can stop 7.62×25mm rounds from a Tokarev pistol. All they did was be lighter in weight than the previous vests. Next came the T65-2 vest that introduced hard ceramic plates to be held within the vest. These were first vests to be able to stop a 7mm rifle rounds.

Then in 1969, the American Body Armor organization was founded. They successfully completed research on utilizing quilted nylon with steel plates for making the vest. They named it “Barrier vest” and marketed it to the US law enforcement. This was the first vest to gain wide acceptance in the US law enforcement groups.

Stephanie Kwolek, a research chemist, discovered a crystalline liquid polymer solution that portrayed exceptional stiffness and strength. This liquid led to the invention of a synthetic fibre known as Kevlar. This fibre can be woven into a layered fabric and depicts a tensile strength fives times that of steel. The fibre was introduced into the market by the mid-1970s. Immediately, the National Institute of Justice’s (NIJ) evaluation program took upon themselves to create lightweight body armor from this fibre. They ended up creating an armor that was lightweight, easy to wear, and can be utilized everyday by law enforcement people.

Crossbows

Crossbows are one of the first choices when it comes to close-range hunting. It works similar to a normal bow but with a slight difference in the design. It comprises of an assembly point called prod that has elastic properties. The prod is then mounted on a horizontal frame known as a tiller. Crossbows are handheld hunting devices and are held similar to a gun. When a person fires with a crossbow, they shoot out arrows.
Crossbows have become really pricey nowadays. The reason might be a drop in demand. People nowadays mostly prefer guns to crossbows when hunting. But there are still reasonable crossbows that come under $400. The only problem is that each arrow used in the crossbow comes for $15 and that turns out to be quite expensive.

For beginners in hunting, crossbows are a good choice. They are easy to handle and does not require too much maintenance. The only problem that might arise for newcomers is that time taken to reload crossbows is long. If you an amateur and you end up missing the first few shots, then by the time you reload the next arrow your target would have run away from the hunting grounds.

But there are certain advantages too. Crossbows make a lot less noise as compared to guns. In case of guns, if you miss the first shot then there’s very little chance that the target would not run away. The sound is so loud that even the nearby game get alerted and run away. But this problem will not arise with crossbows. Crossbows make very less sound. Even if you miss, only the nearest target would realize. There would still be more targets to make the hunt successful. Plus, crossbows have no recoil action.
Now the question remains is how effective these Kevlar vests are against crossbow arrows or any attack in general. In simple terms, a bulletproof vest is not exactly bulletproof. As in, the kevlar vest is strong enough to stop a bullet from penetrating the vest but that does not mean that the wearer is completely safe. The wearer might still get injured in terms of bruising or internal injury.

When it comes to crossbows, it depends on the composition and thickness of the vest. Sometimes, arrows from strong bows can penetrate vests. Kevlar vests are designed to stop bullets – not exactly stop but minimize the effect. The vest redistributes the direct force of the bullet across the padding as much as possible and minimizes the hit to a single area. So instead of ending up with a hole in the body, people wearing Kevlar vests get away with just a bruise. Bullets are made up of soft materials so that they easily disintegrate on impact and release shrapnels. Kevlar uses techniques to exploit this very fact. It uses its strength to deform the bullet and spread the impact across a wider area, rather than a single pinpoint.
But arrows work on a complete opposite mechanism. They are composed of hard steel and are designed to apply the force at a certain specific point. They don’t shatter on impact, they just cut clean through. The body of the arrow slices into the target once the tip of the arrow has penetrated. So there’s no way that their penetrative power can be minimized.

Conclusion

If the Kevlar is not thick enough, then the arrow stands a good chance of penetrating the vest. Just like a knife, it would cut apart the fibres of the vest and easily penetrate it. But in most cases, crossbows are used for close-range hunting. This means that super powerful arrows are not used. So, there’s a chance that these arrows might not be able to penetrate.