Penetration Tests - Beyond Ballistic Gel

I was thinking about ballistic gel testing… then I thought about the degree of crunch in the Special K Pumpkin Spice cereal I was eating…. then I thought about technological singularity… which of course caused me to think about the coming sentient AI Apocalypse… which eventually took me back to ballistic gel testing. It was an exhausting sixty or seventy second thought bubble at the breakfast table that burst with an empty cereal bowl and a sip of too hot coffee.

I had been taken to task by an armada of tech types for not giving enough credence to ballistic gel testing. Sure, they know I have posted meaningless pictures of spent bullets recovered from blocks of synthetic, but they questioned if I sincerely, wholeheartedly and unequivocally embraced the concept of shooting into a substance, with virtually nothing in common with a medium size mammal, as a substitute for using bullet manufacturers’ recommendations for bullet selections?

I mean, surely, if a bullet could penetrate a gel block it would penetrate a feral hog because the gel block simulates the density of swine muscle tissue? Right? Right? Porcine gelatin, organic 10% gelatin, has a specific gravity of 1.034. Clear Ballistics FBI 10% synthetic gelatin, which is intended to correlate to swine muscle tissue, has a specific gravity of 0.91.

However,  “The Science of Meat Quality – John Wiley & Sons” establishes swine bone specific gravity at 1.50, muscle at 1.06 and fat flabs in at  0.920. Subsequently, Porcine gelatin is much closer to the target simulation of average substance than Clear Ballistics, and even that is not very close.

Yes, the word “average”, as it appears above, is dramatically italicized for a reason. Anyone who has ever seen the movie “Fantastic Voyage”, or has entered a human blood stream in miniaturized form in a nano submarine knows, there are no large uninterrupted expanses of muscle tissue and each interrupting substance, as previously noted, has its own specific gravity assignment.

So how can we test and continue the illusion of scientific selection?

Just spitballing here, but I’m not sure we can test!..!! Even the armed forces, with zillions of taxpayers dollars to motivate the private sector and copious inputs from environmental scientists, yields less then acceptable results… which evolve into less than optimal results, which evolve into mediocre results, and then a soon declared obsolescence to pave the way for more of the same.

Of course, we can subcontract the process of testing to organizations dedicated to that process like… bullet manufacturers. They certainly have the incentive to do the job right as their livelihood, profits and market acceptance of their products depend upon getting it right. And, unlike the military, when they get it wrong, problems will be quickly addressed under the pressure of harsh criticism of social media. But that doesn’t let us pretend to test as we could with good old ballistic gel.

Produce Oriented Game Simulation

A less controversial, common sense test process alternative will soon be available to anyone with access to a supermarket produce department. By simply selecting the game animal from the table and assembling the produce in the order and quantities indicated, the intended game animal will be perfectly simulated for bullet testing purposes.

Buttercup Squash

Tough squash with a specific gravity of 1.505, the same as Swine bone. Impact: Ten yards, 9mm Luger Remington HTP +P JHP 115 grain@1016 fps not only destroyed this barnacled green Cucurbita, but caused these parts to be distributed uniformly over a 25 foot forward radius from a good deal of hydraulic influence. My favorite self defense ammunition in 9mm Luger and 45 Auto.

Butternut Squash

Specific gravity 1.505, butternut squash offers the same resistance as swine bone. The impact: Ten Yards, 9mm Luger American Eagle Syntech 115 grain@1062 fps and a good illustration why fully encapsulated bullets are a favorite of world governments, but not so much people defending their lives.

Conclusion? Why not?

Buttercup squash, which looks a lot like a green pumpkin with warts, is closer to bone density than either organic or synthetic gel, while still containing a fluid component of muscle tissue density. A 20″x6″x6″ block of Clear ballistics gel is currently selling for $151.94, marked down from $217.06. 24″ of Buttercup Squash, 4 gourds, costs $4 and it is biodegradable.. ants and wild turkey love the aftermath of a test session.

Am I suggesting that produce replace ballistic gel? No, but I am saying that ballistic gel isn’t much better as neither simulate a whole target. While it may illustrate how one cartridge and/or bullet perform in comparison to another, the results are irrelevant as the subject target exists nowhere outside of a test session.

Even following a manufacturer’s recommendations for bullet application doesn’t assure a uniformly successful result. If you’re a hunter, you know you might drop a deer or hog with a specific cartridge / bullet combination on one outing and get totally different results on another; changing the size of game, shooting distances and point of impact dramatically alter the result. How would a static block of gel, of uniform density provide useful information?