Different pieces of body armor are designed to be used at different times, for that reason you should decide if you’re going to be wearing your body armor underneath or over your clothing.
Covert varieties of body armor are made to be used beneath clothes. For this reason they are generally created to be as thin and as light-weight as possible, and are designed to be undetectable when put on under clothing. These kinds of body armor are often made of moisture wicking materials that help to keep the wearer cool, and are usually produced in lighter colours than other types of body armor.
Covert body armor is worn by people who prefer the fact they are wearing body armor to go unnoticed. This can be individuals such as close protection officers, undercover operatives and door supervisors, where an overt type of body armor may not be practical for them.
Overt forms of body armor are designed to be worn above your clothing, and as a consequence they tend to be made from tougher fabrics than those used for covert pieces of body armor. The idea of overt body armor is it will be recognizable to other people, and because of this normal overt body armor covers tend to be black, however there are various other colours that are available. In many instances overt pieces of body armor will have high visibility strips, or be made completely from high visibility materials, meaning that the wearer sticks out.
Police forces across the country use overt types of body armor, as do security firms and security staff. An overt piece of body armor will often act as a deterrent, because it can help identify an individual of power quickly in a group.
Body armor has become commonly used over the last twenty five years, for two major reasons. Firstly, early forms of body armor were heavy and stiff, however breakthroughs in technology means that the body armor people wear these days can offer high levels of protection, whilst also being light-weight, flexible and comfortable even when used for long periods of time. The second reason for the rise in body armor use is that, sadly, it’s actually starting to be essential in several types of work as a result of the increased dangers that people deal with in modern-day society.
Once you have decided if you will need a covert or overt type of body armor, it’s then vital to decide what protection levels you’ll need. When picking a piece of body armor you have to take into consideration what kinds of threats that you will encounter, since different kinds of body armor will provide protection for different kinds of risks.
A bullet proof vest is the most well known item of body armor available on the market. This kind of body armor is created to stop a bullet by “catching” it within a web of very strong fibres, preventing it from penetrating through the vest itself. They can provide a number of levels of protection, which can offer the person wearing them protection from low powered handguns up to high powered Magnums.
Another popular form of body armor is stab proof vests. Most people believe that if a piece of body armor can stop a bullet then it can easily stop a knife, however this isn’t the case. The reason is , a blade penetrates fabric in different ways to a round, and therefore a standard bullet proof vest can’t protect its wearer from a blade based assault.
In recent years spike resistant vests have also become obtainable on the body armor market. These kinds of vests offer the wearer protection from spiked weapons like needles and also syringes, which can very easily slide through the weave within the material of a bullet or stab proof piece of body armor.
With such an array of body armor available you will need to think about which sort is correct for you. If you’re doing work in an area with absolutely no gun crime but high amounts of knife violence then it’s useless using a piece of body armor that will just protect you from guns. Likewise a knife resistant piece of body armor will be pointless if you are at risk of getting shot.
Fortunately modern varieties of body armor can now provide multi-threat protection. As a result they’ll protect the wearer from different kinds of attacks, for example there is now body armor that’s both bullet and stab proof, and even bullet, stab and spike proof varieties.
The key aspect when selecting your body armor is to make sure that it’ll protect you. Make certain you have the appropriate type of protection for the dangers you’re likely to encounter, as you can not put a price on your life.