Reactive personal armor?

hey listen up, imagine troops are traveling in a truck, a Humvee or an APC. Now, one stray bullet can trigger one vest which than triggers another and the whole thing goes up like giant fireworks, with personnel flying high above ground. Soudns silly but there is full potential for that.

Originally posted by gekko
Again, Newtons law. If it could be fine-tuned in some way, so that the energy of the outward explosion exactly matched the force of the bullet, the soldier wouldn't feel anything. I see that is not likely to happen, but as I mention above, even then the actual forces propelling a bullet aren't that big.

Yeah but althought thats true, only one problem. Figure how much of an explosion would it take to equal the force of the bullet? Well I'm pretty sure that explosions work both ways, therefore wouldn't the soldier recieve the other end of the force?

I'm no expert on explosives, but I'm fairly sure they can be shaped to be directed one way. I know they do in this some way in the M 72s (single use anti armor weapons) and probably in other antitank weapons. This is actually one of the things reactive armor is designed to protect against.

I don't think the explosions need to trigger each-other of. In regular reactive armor they don't. Some models even have a double layer of explosives, so they could take a hit two times in the same spot without danger...