Context: Paper armor originated in China as early as the 6th century, first improvised from books and later deliberately manufactured from folded or layered paper. It was widely used by regular armies, militias, bandits, and rebels due to its low cost and ease of production. Despite being lightweight, layered paper was sometimes combined with silk or soaked in water. It offered meaningful protection against blades and even some early firearms. Its effectiveness declined with the advent of modern breech-loading rifles, but it persisted into the 19th century in some regions.
The makeup of wood makes it a remarkably good armor.
The d-day boats were wooden because they stopped bullets much better than metal, pound for pound.
It was much easier to make a “bullet resistant” landing craft from wood than it was from metal.
Phonebooks are remarkably good At stopping bullets.
Books are still a “if you have a ton available, build your defenses from this” item
I forget which movie it was from, but I learned that you can armor a car on a budget by placing old phone books behind the door panels and under the dash. Doesn’t help with the glass, but it’s basically bulletproof behind the door.
They tested it on mythbusters, they popped the door frames and put phonebooks inside the doors.
They were very effective.
I’d like to caveat that I am in no way saying mythbusters methodologies are scientific in any way
I have no idea where I’d get my hands on a bunch of phone books nowadays.
Yeah.
Big Mobile out here making us less safe
They stopped arriving at the house one day and never showed up again and that sort of makes me very melancholic.
It’s good on a budget until you’re filling up on gas in half the miles because your car weighs an extra 30 phonebooks
I first saw this trick used in an episode of Burn Notice, which was (in my opinion) during the peak of the USA channel’s golden era
Great show.
What is a phone book?
I’m 40, I was just teasing and now I feel bad!
I can’t tell if this is a joke, but just in case, I’ll answer anyway.
It may vary by nation. I’ll speak about in the UK, but I’d expect something similar existed in other countries
Until very recently, most people and businesses had “landlines”, which were phones and phone numbers connected to buildings.
You used to receive 2 phone books each year, delivered to you for free, to every house and business address in a city/town.
One phone book would contain an index of every business in the city/town/area - grouped together alphabetically by the type of business - so you could look up e.g. plumber/electrician and there’d be a list of all plumbers and electricians in the city, and their phone numbers. Same for ordering a taxi, or a pizza.
The other phone book would be an index of people’s surnames and initials, addresses and phone numbers from the local city/town/region (unless they opted out of being included). So if you needed to contact someone, you could look them up in the phone book, e.g. trying to contact a bloke called “Dave Smith” who you think lived on “Fake Street”, you’d search through until you found “Smith, D, 12 Fake Street”, and it’d show his number.
It also meant you could just look through the phone book and find someone with a silly name, and then ring them up and say silly things i.e. phone up someone called “Zatman” and sing the Batman theme tune at them (I’m so sorry, Mr & Mrs Zatman, if you’re still alive).
It worked pretty well until someone invented “cold calling” marketing, and scummy businesses used to use the phone book to ring people up at random and try to sell things to them - after that, most people went “opt out” of the directory.
Because this was a large amount of information, both directories were a bit bigger than A4 sized pages and about 5cm (2 inch) thick.
Do you prefer this not-so-great paper armor, or would you rather have literally nothing?
I’ll take reconstituted wood any day over nothing. Train wheels used to be made out paper.
Subscribe to paper facts
If you eat enough paper, you can get an impacted bowel and then have your insurance deal with the strangest claim after you get another impacted bowel from eating the statement they sent you regarding the previous hospitalization.
“Under reason for visit, all you’ve put is ‘You’re not gonna believe this…’, I don’t think your insurance is going to cover this.”
I approve of this.
Of course you do, it’s wood armor with extra and unnecessary steps!
I read one source that said that back in the day, Polish peasants would find a sapling and shove bits of sharp stone into it. After a few seasons they’d have a nice sized club with one end studded with spikes.
Hell, it’s durable enough for people to build houses out of.
It was sometimes also soaked in oil and made to harden.
Modern governments: We should keep those peons poor as mice. Imagine if they make an armour with money and will try to overthrow our righteous and benevolent ruling?!
