Hello this is Jeff from Taofledermaus
Is it possible that a Zippo ligher in your pocket could save your life?
This idea was sent to me
Stephen who has a channel called Miiigoreng
and he's a big-time zippo collector. An interesting story
from Vietnam was that a soldier was carrying a Zippo
lighter in his pocket and a bullet struck him
and just happened to hit were that Zippo was in his pocket and it saved his life
Now we know that up rifle used in combat
will go through half and inch of steel or so. I wondered how a Zippo lighter could
possibly
a stop a bullet or deflect the bullet.
The outer case is made of brass.
it's not very thick and brass is not very bullet-resistant
The inner workings are made out of steel
and a magnet will stick to it
if also is not very thick. We've got about four layers a material here
and some cotton on the inside \
We'll use CCI standard velocity 22 long rifle rounds
and these are round nose bullets traveling it 1,070 FPS
We definitely know from previous tests that
a bullet like this will go through something like a baseball
with no problem at all.
Another Zippo - Vietnam story that I
always heard was that soldiers would tie a boot lace
to their Zippo and dunk in the gas tank of a Jeep
to refuel it. so we're gonna fill this with gasoline
just to simulate that
and of course the Zippo works perfectly fine using gasoline
as you can see here
well put the Zippo in front of five pound (2.2kg) block of clay
This will simulate flesh
and also it leaves nice impressions
The gun we're going to use Remington Speedmaster - it's an old clunker
piece a junk but it works just fine for these tests
so here we go - BANG
I'll be first to admit that I am a terrible shot
I'd much rather film other people shooting than me
however this is still pretty good because we can see what a bullet will do
that Clay block
so the good news is I didn't completely miss it
but I grazed the top and the bullet continued on
through the clay blocking - blew a big cavitation hole through it
let's try it one more time - kapow!
so you're probably asking yourself why did I use a
22 you for this test instead have a cartridge that is used by the military?
well we know that a normal rifle round would go through ten Zippos
So I'm thinkin the case of the soldier being saved by Zippo in
vietnam
the bullet may not have had a whole lot of energy. It may have bounced a couple times
It may have lost about two-thirds of its energy. It still would have had enough energy to kill him.
but that Zippo was just strong enough to save his life
so I figured a twenty-two would give us the best possible chance
to simulate their condition. The first shot this left the dent
the second shot made it through a couple layers - hitting the striker wheel
but was definitely stopped and deflected away up
and I gotta tell you I'm very surprised I thought I would just go
right through it like the baseball I definitely want to thank Stephen
for these excellent idea I think a
it was well worth destroying the zipper for this test because
I always heard that story too and thought it was a bunch of BS
but its very possible that a Zippo
DID save a soldier's life in Vietnam
I hope you were as surprised as I was
with this test I enjoyed doing it and I hope you enjoyed watching it- thank you!
All your Zippos are belong to us.