Some thoughts about armor

[Fj45]

Yes, they can tell prey apart. But they wouldn't be able to tell what they were biting. 

[mpzambee]

Hi.  I recently bought this game on Steam, and have been reading this forums.

 

This is my first post, and I do not mean to sound rude, but it seems to me that very few of the people posting in this thread have any first-hand, practical experience with certain forms of body armor.

 

I was involved in putting on trashcans and hitting other people in trashcans with sticks reenactment swordfighting/European Martial Arts for several years when I was younger, and have quite a bit of practical experience with various non-firearm weapons and forms of armor.

 

There are a couple of problems I see people in this thread having:

 

1) Not understanding material strength

2) Not understanding the purpose of armor

3) Not understanding how (un)encumbering certain forms of armor can be

 

There is a common series of misconceptions I often see in people whose primary acquaintance with things like mail, plate, coat of plates, etc is from video games (which are based on Dungeons and Dragons), or from pen and paper games like Dungeons and Dragons.  In video games and PnP roleplaying games where you abstract the concept of 'health' into a numerical value you seldom come to understand the purpose of armor.

 

In this game, the Zombie disease is spread via biting and saliva, much like Rabies is.  The best way to not get Rabies is to not get bitten.  A rabid dog can drool on your arm all it wants, and as long as there is no cut or other open wound to provide an easy path for the virus into your body and to the nervous tissues you're not going to be infected (although I would still very much advise you to seek post-exposure treatment).

 

The purpose of armor such as chainmail, is very similar.  You primarily wanted to stop your opponent from putting the sharp pointy bits of their sword (or similar parts of whatever other bladed weapon they were using) into your soft, squishy bits before you could do the same to them.  However, you also wanted to avoid breaking the skin.

 

Mail, like most other non-rigid armors, does next to nothing to stop you from being bludgeoned to death.  That's what plate was for.  When fighting someone in chain, who is nominally protected from sword attacks, a weapon like an axe or warhammer was preferable, as even if you couldn't cut them, you could still break their bones and rupture their internal organs. (And chain can and does fail, depending on the kind of metal it is made from, whether it is butted or riveted, the kind of weave used, the kind of metal from which the weapon hitting it is made, and a great deal of other factors).

 

One of the common misconceptions about armors are their weight.  People look at the mass of a suit of plate, which can be around a hundred pounds, and fail to understand that there is a difference between 100 pounds of metal in a backpack on your back and 100 pounds of metal and leather attached to individual parts of your body.  Often the mass of armors is exaggerated.  Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 would have you believe a chain shirt weighs 25 pounds.  They don't.  10-15 would be more accurate.

 

If you are an adult who is not completely out of shape to the point where you can't walk around all day, you should be completely capable of wearing a chain shirt without it exhausting you.  A hauberk weighs more, and is more encumbering, and a coif (a kind of chain helmet) is also more encumbering.  Still, it's entirely possible to engage in very vigorous activity for prolonged periods in armor and not succumb to heat stroke.  Battles could last for hours, and you didn't exactly have breaks to drink Gatorade and rest during them.

 

Plate is quite hot, but people did, again, fight in it for extended periods of time.  You do move slower in Plate than out of it, and you will grow tired faster wearing Plate, but you are completely capable of running, jumping, and doing cartwheels in a suit of plate.  Not even a good suit, mind you.

 

Plate has an advantage over chain in that it is more evenly distributed about the body, whereas a hauberk mostly hangs from the shoulders.  However, in a Zombie Apocalypse like the one presented in this game, you would not want a suit of plate.

 

In this game, as aforementioned, the infection is spread by bite and saliva.  The best way to not get infected is to not get bitten.  The best way to not get bitten is to stay the hell away from the zombies.  If you do have to get near them, you will want some sort of light weight armor to protect you from being bitten.  There are a number of choices that many people already own, or are easily created.

 

1. Leather Jacket:  A leather jacket is going to protect you from being bitten.  Anyone who thinks a leather jacket is not a good and sufficient protection against bites from humans, I invite to go try to gnaw through a leather jacket themselves.  You're not going to do it.  Zombies would have to tear the jacket off of you, because they are never going to bite through it.  A leather jacket such as many people already own would be more than sufficient torso and arm protection in a zombie apocalypse.  During the summer or in warmer climes they are indeed hot, but I have never seen anyone keel over from heat stroke from wearing a leather jacket in the summer.  They just get rather sweaty.  We can extend this to articles of clothing such as leather pants (when made from real leather), although denim is just as good.
2. Denim Jeans:  Denim jeans will protect you from being bitten.  I've had a dog latch on to my shin and try to drag me out of a car before, and the dog did not manage to tear through my jeans before I slammed the car door on its head until he let go and ran off.  To anyone who thinks that denim jeans are not sufficient bite protection, I invite them to go try to gnaw through a pair of jeans. As to them being hot, I'm wearing them right now and am cold.
3. Work and Garden Gloves:  These are going to protect your hands from bites, specifically the leather kind.  I don't vouch for other kinds of materials.  Once again, anyone who thinks a human being can bite through a pair of leather work gloves, I invite to go try to do it and post video of the results.
4. Motorcycle Safety Gear:  This is a broad category, but it includes all sorts of jackets, chaps, gloves, helmets, and other miscellaneous gear that people on motorcycles wear to to protect them from injury in case of an accident.  There are many materials that are used for this purpose, such as leather.  If leather is sufficient to protect one from having one's skin ground into hamburger when falling off a motorcycle at speed, it's going to protect you from being bitten.
5. Occupational Safety Gear:  Mail aprons and gloves are used by butchers and others in the food industry who need to cut things or use other sharp equipment.  You can easily search for Meatcutter's Gloves on the internet.  Such gloves are mail, and weigh between and eight and a sixteenth of a pound, and provide resistance (but not immunity), to cutting yourself with a knife.  Knives are much harder and sharper than human teeth.  mail , being full of holes, is very breathable.  There is other gear that could be used, such a clothing for protection against heat and sparks from welding, but that is heavier and hotter.

I should like to point out that in the case of mail, you don't actually need chain of the quality that one would need to protect one against blows from real weapons.  The links need not be that numerous and small, as you don't have to worry about people stabbing you (although fingers getting in between them and tearing them apart is an issue).  The entire purpose for armor in a zombie apocalypse (that is meant to protect you from zombies, in an apocalypse such as the one in the game) is to stop the zombies from being able to break your skin via a bite, as the disease is transmitted via saliva.  If they can't bite you to create an open wound, your chances of infection drastically drop.

 

Mail is not hard to make.  It is time-consuming to make.  Very time-consuming.  It could easily take two weeks working eight hours a day to make a hauberk depending on the materials used and the pattern being used.  However, you do not need, as I have mentioned, to make such mail.  You don't need this mail to stop sword and axe and (maybe) arrow.  You just need it to stop a human being from biting you.  A human can exert about 120 PSI of pressure when biting.  An average dog can do around two and a half times that.  Denim and leather are capable of protecting against dog bites.  They would be more than sufficient to protect against human bites.  And humans cannot bite through iron wire, no matter how hard they try.

 

That said, all the above listed "soft" armors are going to do is protect you from being bitten and scratched, which is your primary concern as it is the pathway for the disease to enter your system.  Said bites and scratches would also allow pathways for OTHER disease to enter your system, and with no doctors around to give you a tetanus booster, you're going to want to keep your epidermis as intact as possible.  These armors do not, however, protect you from the pressure of the bites, or from the force of a blow.  Just because the zombies cannot bite you does not mean they cannot crush you, break your bones, and hold you down until you bleed to death internally.

 

I understand that having actual realistic renditions of armor in this game would not be fun for a great many people.  However, if realism is actually what you want, then that's what you're going to have to deal with.

 

[Realmkeeper]

mpzambee, a well-thought post indeed, however as I was reading it I started shaking my head to myself. Thankfully, even you addressed the issue which I had - Though a leather jacket and denims are great for preventing something like zombie teeth directly penetrating the skin, a bite is very different from a stab, jab, or blunt force crush.

I like to think of a bite as more of a pinch and pull type motion - that is, something like thin leather, and certainly denim become useless at preventing flesh wounds because although the 'pinch' may not manage to pierce your skin, the 'pull' would most certainly have enough force behind it to tear human flesh.

Have a go biting down on a denim covered leg as hard as you can, then pull your head back, and thrash your body round a little - I assure you there will be a lot of pain, and probably a bit of blood from the recipient.

 

The obvious solution to this would be layering protection, so that it is likely to slide over the next layer when the tugging begins. Perhaps light chain over leather, or even denim over some other clothing.

My point is, although your suggestions are certainly a lot more thoughtful than many of the posts here, you seem to be classing the zombie bite as either a pierce or crush, rather than the combination of the two that I view it as. A zombie wouldn't feel pain, or any obvious reason to let go of it's bite once it has latched on, so I think the most suitable protection would be something to stop a flesh wound in the worst-case scenario, and something that is very difficult to grasp and hold on to in the best-case scenario.

 

Just my 2 cents.

[syfy]

we are talking about a human bite here, not an animal. the zombie may be able to get a decent grip, but our necks are not really strong enough to "ragdoll" another human being the way a dog does with a toy. plus, as was mentioned, we really don't have that strong of a bite. certainly not when compared to animals.

 

so i don't see how the zombie would actually be able to bite down on something such as denim or leather and cause the type of damage you suggest. if we were talking bare skin, maybe. but i've seen quite a few bites where all that happened was some bad bruising. a zombie trying to actually pull, tear or rip human flesh that is confined inside denim or leather would not be able to actually pull it far enough to rip or tear before the fabric was stretched to the point it would not give any more slack. which would lead to one hell of a nasty bruise. which can in fact be a detriment to the person being attacked as that really limits the use of that appendage.

[Fj45]

I did mention armor protecting from bites but not broken bones in this thread.

[Realmkeeper]

I did mention armor protecting from bites but not broken bones in this thread.

Yeah, I think the length of this thread is going to mean quite a lot is skipped over or forgotten now.

The OP doesn't get updated with highlights, and if anyone is going to trawl through 7+ pages of (several off-topic) posts, I congratulate them.

[ApolloDiaspora]

 

I did mention armor protecting from bites but not broken bones in this thread.

Yeah, I think the length of this thread is going to mean quite a lot is skipped over or forgotten now.

The OP doesn't get updated with highlights, and if anyone is going to trawl through 7+ pages of (several off-topic) posts, I congratulate them.

 

 

I do it all the time

[DirectorPr]

Guys, if you get bit through any thin layer of protection its still going to crush the living hell out of your body part, and probably bite through it if then enough, but it will protect you from getting fluids in it maybe to prevent zombification. To be honest armor against zombies is probably useless, and not worth trying and risking your life over. Maybe just a kevlar vest to prevent getting your innards ripped out with a bullet by a raider, but anything more is asking for you to get killed.

[Fj45]

Yup, this thread is now too big.

[uberevan]

While we're at it, we should just make invincible Iron Man armor that makes you fly and never go hungry or die and you can shoot lazer beams and candy and kill stuff and never lose

[syfy]

hell, i'll just go grab Johnny 5 and have him as my cohort. no zombie would be able to get close to us

 

[Fj45]

Strange, video won't load.

[uberevan]

Yeah Me too

[syfy]

it's ok, just a scene from Short Circuit

 

 

"hey laser lips, yer mother was a snowblower"

[darthdraken]

Yes already discussed. Any form of armour will need a benefite but also a drawback.

Protection vs stamina maybies and heat.

So cold weather is a benefit for heavy padded stuff.

Now is it my understanding that the place the game is based on is a logging type of town / region. If this is true then i would think hunting wild game is a part of it too due to location. Now if that is the case then army surplus and hunting businesses would be about. So access to ex military stuff is possible as well as survival and extreme sports safety personal protective equipment.

Hey i live in england and about half an hours drive from 4+ army surplus stores.

And ex forces sell off a lot of their gear.

I cycle to work so have wets, tactical gloves, tactical goggles, ski mask, knee pads and more for my travels. Add that with a padded coat for a motorbike i feel protected. And yes i have been hit by a car and it worked kept me well padded.

So its all do able

[Gaffa Tape Warrior]

mpzambee, your post is very good.

I completely agree that it should count to have something between a zombie's tooth and your skin. I was a bit sad when my guy went out of his fortress and thought he'd investigate a bizarre pixelated thing on the ground, and when he was standing right over it turned out it was a zombie, I just couldn't make it out with my isometric view, and it jumped up and instantly bit right through his trousers like they weren't there and made him bleed so much he would have died without a bandage. Well actually he died anyway. I remember wishing he could have taped something to himself, and I expected armour to be added eventually. This was before looking at the forum.

People sitting in their fortress waiting for the whole thing to blow over would probably make armour anyway. Why sit knitting when you can sit making mail?

About the duckt tape armour mentioned earlier, it need not hinder your mobility at all, as long as you don't duckt tape anything to the insides of your elbows or knees.

I will mention ways of making armour I don't remember reading in this thread, and then list places to get armour:

Armour that almost any survivor can make:

• Duckt tape has been mentioned, but I will elaborate on it: Duckt taping to your forearm and your upper arm and your lower and upper legs; magazines, a folded teatowel, cardboard, rope, mat, carpet, sofa covering, paperback books, and a curtain would all serve to let a zombie hang off you without the bit intecting you. You could also just use pure duckt tape. Try biting all the way through a roll of duckt tape, or even half a centimetre.

  Some more armour:

• Plastic sheet heated over a fire or in hot water and curled around to fit a limb.
• A baking tray cut to shape with garden shears or tin snips or a pair of scisors and curled to fit a limb. You can also get metal from fridges, sinks, actually there's loads of sheet metal.

These two above can be simply duckt taped to yourself if you're short on time, and when you've got time you can drill holes in them and attatch a belt and buckle, or some string.

• Rope woven to make really thick cloth.
• Some sticks laid along the length of your forearm like splints, and kept together with fabric or leather like cricket pads, or with string or duckt tape (called splinted armour). You could also use butterknives or zombie bone. This would be wrapped around your forearm or wherever.
• Willow, that useful wood, can be woven into armour.

Basically, absolutely anyone can put stuff on his body. You'd have to be mad not to make armour if there were people out there to scratch and bite you.

I think we should look to the ancient wisedom of our ancestors, they really knew how to protect bodies from weapons. It's not obsolete, iron's iron, and there are books on the subject for the ignorant little survivors.

Getting armour from places:

• Museum

Lots of armour in there, but the plate armour's really noisy. Better make sure it doesn't rust if you take any.

• Cricket Kit:

Your shins and hands and head should be safe as you bludgeon your foes with your cricket bat (a club, basically).

• Trench coat:

Zombies can't scratch through it, and probably can't bit through it, but they can grab hold of it and use the handhold to bite you and infect you.

• Sport fencing Club:

Some suits have kevlar to stop the point of a broken foil. I think it may be impenetrable bite-wise, but you can still get bruises and crushed flesh from the force of the bites.

• LARP club:

Plenty of studded leather
Plastic plate armour.
Some people have metal armour.

• "Historical European Martial Arts" guy's house

Along with his blunt swords (and possibly sharp swords) he probably has strong gloves and a wire-faced helmet and some torso armour like a jupon.

• Strange person's house

Plenty of homemade weapons and armour here

 

I hope what our characters wear can protect them from more than cold, and they aren't effectively naked to zombies in a future update.

[Suomiboi]

I don't really know what to say other than read the thread... All of your points have been discussed, most of them have been proven as illogical in a situation like this.

I'll take an example. Duckt tape plus sheet metal. You're saying that duckt tape won't limit your movement if you don't put it in the joints. I wholeheartedly disagree. Rolling tape around your muscles if relaxed will very much restrict the full movement of the muscles when flexing. If not tight it will provide a great biting surface for ripping the skin. Add the sheet metal you suggested and your movement will be even further limited. Also there's the thing of sharp edges that will hurt when moving about if not padded extremely well and that in turn again restricts movement. Also as has been said the heat factor should be taken into consideration too. The breathing abilities of duckt tape aren't that great....

Now I'm not saying that they wouldn't work at all, but you seem to be suggesting a wonderarmor that no zombie is going to get through.

Also I don't think there are that many larpers or "historical European martial artists" in Muldraugh KY. We should rather focus from the top down in what's common and add those sort of things if they in fact do add something to the game play realistically and more common things are already in game.

[Daec]

I'd still go with the outfit i described earlier. Mostly Motorcycle equipment. First of all i guess it's pretty common. Second it is designed to be breathable and unless it is above 28°C no issue to wear and not very cumbersome. Third it is no wonder armor. But it will minimize the infection risk. Biting or scratching through it is almost impossible but you'll end up with broken bones, bruises, teared muscles and internal bleeding if you think you don't have to fear the zombies anymore

[Gaffa Tape Warrior]

I have indeed read the thread.

 

You may think of something and imagine it badly and see problems, but what may seem to be a defeating problem may actually be something easy to avoid. I too will take the example of sheet metal cut to shape and curled to fit the forearm with bare hands or a hammer and taped on with duckt tape straps, or maybe just loads of duckt tape all around it.

If the metal is thick enough, you can file the edges to round them off. You could even use a stone if you've not got a file.

Ideally, what you'd do with the metal around the cuffs and at the top near you elbow is you'd roll the edge around with plyers or maybe a hammer. Have you seen hair pins that are doubled over on themselves? That's like what you'd want to do. Sharp edges touching you can be avoided this way. Another thing you could do is sew hide over the edges or put several layers of duckt tape over them, but this'll wear through eventually.

 

As for your firmly held belief that - actually I'm not sure what you're saying. If you're still talking about sheet metal and duckt tape, then the ridgidity of the metal (if it's strong enough not to be deformed by a bite) would stop zombies tearing the skin beneath. This problem may still be present in some less ridgid or thick armour. To make it so that you can bump into things and fall over and get hit without getting hurt you should have some padding in any armour. Metal is itself not soft, so you should have some padding beneath it. Foam camping/exercise mats and pillows are two of the many many possibilities. Just add a blade and duckt tape or glue or string or needle and thread or whatever.

Seeing as he's a survivor we can assume he's clever so he'll be able to think of obvious solutions to potential problems.

Yes, I agree that the insulation would have some heat effect. Good in cold weather, not so good in hot. I'll put here two things that can be done to help the veltination: drilling small holes in the metal, and having gortex under it.

I'm not saying it's a wonder armour. I understand you can be hurt under your armour, hurt between the armour, and that you can be grabbed by a zombie, and that some materials may sustain damage, and things like that. Depending on the materials and construction of course.

 

Yeah, maybe there isn't anyone in the whole town who does the fighting sort of thing, I don't know.

 

Here's something: In the current version, you can get into a wrestling match with a zombie or two with a butterknive or a sharp knive or a club without a shirt on and be confident that the zombies cannot harm you. I think that if you wrestle a zombie without protection you should risk getting bitten on the fingers holding the club, or scratched by the zombie as you struggle. You may wear something that stops scratches, but then the zombie can still grab hold of you if it's got slack so you may need to make the zombie double dead. That would make sense.

 

Also, leather, yeah that's good. I'd probably rivet or sew metal plates over it to protect my body and do other metal-y stuff. That being said, I'd actually rather be able to outrun zombies than get tired and be very well-armoured. Hmmm.

[Suomiboi]

My whole point is that systems that would be natural, easy to use and effective should be added to the game first.

The point about zombies tearing skin was with duckt tape only. You didn't however counter my point about limited movement, which I consider the most important drawback of this kind of armor.

About the heat and insulation, yes those things might help but finding goretex isn't that plausible so I wouldn't go with that in the game. The most important thing in insulation and heat is the breathing abilities of the material. I agree that the holes might help with that, but only to a certain point. Even if you're well insulated the problem, even in winter, becomes that you will sweat inside the duckt tape. Now when you sweat and get wet, that sweat gets cold and pretty much acts as a freezer box around you. This is of course a broad generalization.

I do agree with the shirtless wrestling point with you and I imagine once "armor" to clothing is implemented being shirtless etc will be extremely dangerous.

[Daec]

Since the rolled sheet metal was one of my first suggestions (2 mm thick, so it isn't heavy and tied with shoelaces or similar OVER your clothes) i'll try to counter the movement point. Option a: i would only apply them to the forearms, and lower legs leaving enough space to elbows and knees. These are the most endangered bodyparts for bites and scratches since they are far away from the torso.

Option b: if you really feel the need to fully plate your arms and legs you leave enough space for the elbows and knees to move and maybe bridge the gap with rollerblade elbow and knee pads.

[Suomiboi]

Yes I got that point of not doing the joints, but frankly anything that is around your arm somewhat restricts muscular contraction.

Now I understand that what I'm saying may come as "if you do it you can't move" but that's not what I'm after. I'm merely pointing out that clothing which has been designed for movement and protection such as sports gear and eg. motorcycle equipment is a wholly different world, movement wise, compared to shoelaces around sheet metal. (sorry for the cheapshot, I had to take it ) Not to mention how clunky. I do agree that it might be fun to make a diy armor, but it should be flimsy and restricting.

[syfy]

you guys are forgetting an area of the body that the zombies seem to like, the groin.

if any type of armor was to be considered, some type of groin protection must be considered.

[Kajin]

Gotta protect the family jewels.

[syfy]

never thought i would write a post like that, but it's really odd how often my characters get scratched down there.

 

kinda think some of the zombies may have been street walkers before they converted to Zombieism