Video: BulletSafe Bulletproof Baseball Cap Brain Test
Russ Chastain 06.04.15
I’ve been following this product since December of last year, when I reported on a kickstarter project for a bulletproof baseball cap. Initial reports were met with much scoffing, but as time went by I talked with the inventor at SHOT Show 2015 to confirm it was real, and I shared a video of a test on a production prototype. Now we’ve got the most significant test to date, as seen in the video below.
The test video begins with an introduction to the tools used to test the cap: Ballistic gel busts containing resin skulls made to replicate a real human skull. Each skull contains a ballistic-gel brain, made of a different color ballistic gel.
We then head to the range. For testing, BulletSafe owner Tom Nardone used 45 ACP 230 grain ammo, firing from very close range–maybe 5 or 6 feet.
He began by shooting one of the replica heads without any protection at all. As you would expect, the bullet simply passed through the skull.
Next, he fired a round into a BulletSafe bulletproof cap atop the head of one of the test heads. This resulted in the bullet being captured by the cap’s protective insert. The skull predictably suffered significant fracturing behind the panel, but the bullet failed to penetrate–and any time you can keep a bullet out of your brain, do it.
Next, he left the range for an examination of the gel brains inside the test heads.
The brain from the first shot was split to examine the bullet’s path, which revealed bone fragments strewn along the bullet’s path through the brain. In other words, the brain not only had a large-caliber bullet pass completely through it, it also showed serious trauma from bone “shrapnel.” Without question, a person being shot in that way would be dead and far beyond reach of medical help or healing.
A look at the pseudo-brain from within the head that was shot while wearing the cap showed that it was in good shape, as was some ballistic gel that had been sandwiched between the brain and the inside of the replica skull behind the point where the bullet struck.
Of course, gel is not a brain and cannot show bruising or similar trauma, which would likely have been significant. But it was one heck of a lot better than a bullet through the brain, and conceivably survivable.
And let’s remember that the ammo chosen for the tests is pretty powerful–a 230-grain bullet from a 45 packs a heck of a wallop–and was fired at very close range. This cap should do an even better job on the ever-popular 9mm and at bullets fired from further away.
Pretty cool.
