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Articles/Reviews

PolyShok 12 Gauge Anti-Personnel / Breaching Ammo
by Frank Borelli, published on-line at BORELLICONSULTING.com on October 31, 2005

Evaluating ammunition is one of those things that I almost hate to do. Why? Because testing it on inanimate objects is, well, objective. But how it will affect living creatures, animal and human, is subjective. While it's true that physical damage is physical damage and organic systems can only function or survive with a certain amount of physical damage, that "amount" can be drastically affected by the person's psychological, emotional and physical strength. In other words, while one man dies because he thinks he's been shot with a .22, another man keeps fighting even after taking thirty-three 9mm rounds (documented case). In that particular case, a twelve gauge round brought the man down.

Shotguns are fantastically destructive weapons. Because of the size of their bore, the payloads that we can load into them can be quite versatile. As a result, we use the shotgun for a collection of purposes from anti-personnel to breaching. Most often we have to have ammunition tailored for the intended use, and it's a rare occasion that you can use ONE kind of ammo for both kinds of work. Well, meet PolyShok: the twelve-gauge ammo that is like no other and is quite adept at both of the specified fields.

One of the reasons for that disparity is because we, as humans, have always depended on some type of metal object that we load into the front of a cartridge case in front of a propellant. We load that into a weapon, fire it, and the propellant burns pushing the metal object down through the barrel and out to our intended target (hopefully). That metal object then strikes an organism made mostly of liquid and an energy transfer occurs - in addition to the tissue damage that the metal causes tearing through.

Transferring energy from a solid to a liquid is difficult to do in an efficient manner. We've long recognized that "stopping power" is a combination of several factors:

1) Tissue damage to cause disability from damage

2) Functional damage due to blood loss

3) Functional damage due to perceived injury / pain

As we agreed above, everyone perceives injury to themselves differently. Therefore we can't measure number three in any meaningful way. However, numbers one and two are easier to predict. During autopsies, tissue damage can be viewed and measured. It is the result of two things:

1) actual damage caused by the physical object tearing through the impacted tissue;

2) temporary wound cavity caused by the impact and energy transfer;

The remaining permanent wound cavity that exists after all of the energy of the projectile has been expended can be used to very roughly estimate how effective the round might be in stopping an organic (man or animal) target. It has to be combined with information on how much energy the projectile brought with it and how it transfered - and since we all hear about how important penetration is, it has to be combined with information on how deeply that energy is delivered.

Now that I've bored everyone with that (and thanks for bearing with me), let me ask you this: How efficient would an energy transfer be if you were using liquid (or something that acted like a liquid) as your impact projectile? PolyShok does not load their rounds with water. Don't think that. BUT, they have developed a projectile that acts like a liquid on impact.

When I type things like that I can just see, in my mind's eye, those folks who have been around awhile going, "Oh, geez: now we're trying to develop less-lethal water-based shotgun ammo?" Well, truth be told, less-lethal shotgun ammo has been around a long time, but merely having a payload that acts like a liquid on impact has nothing to do with making the round any less lethal. In fact, quite the opposite is true.

Most everybody has seen or used a power-washer. We know that water under pressure can cut through damn near anything and can be quite damaging. In this case, PolyShok has - in a stroke of fantastic ingenuity - designed a projectile that conforms to our most desireable characteristics for performance both for anti-personnel and for breaching.

For stopping people (or animals) we've already discussed what must be accomplished. Tissue damage accompanied by energy transfer must occur. The more of each we can impart, the faster our target will cease to function (in general). Penetration, wound cavity, tissue damage, energy delivery: those four functions of terminal ballistics have to be ideally realized to increase the performance efficiency of what we're throwing down range.

Let's take a look at PolyShok in those areas:

Penetration:
Because the projectile PolyShok has invented is a solid but acts like a liquid, the energy it carries is 100% transfered to the target. That energy has to be delivered while providing at least some minimal level of physical tissue damage, and this is accomplished in the first eight inches of penetration. There are those who will argue that penetration has to go deeper than that or the bullet just can't be effective. Read down to "energy delivery" and we'll aruge that. FYI: I have not personally performed the ballistic gellatin penetration tests, but have viewed both videos of the tests and the printed data measured after the fact. For the doubting-Thomas readers, let me say this: I didn't just read PolyShok's test results. I researched independent test results as well. That independent testing was within just a few percentage points of being identical results to PolyShok's.

Wound cavity:
The temporary wound cavities created by PolyShok's projectile averages out at twelve inches. The permanent wound cavity averages six inches. How do we evaluate that in terms of "stopping power"? I don't think we can, and I think that anyone who tries to has forgotten the subjectivity of the person shot. Obviously there is a correlation between the size of the wound and the tissue damage done. So, as we debate whether or not a twelve inch temporary wound cavity is sufficient, take a look down at your own torso and imagine a one-foot-wide hole there. Would that have an impact on you? OK, so that's the temporary wound cavity and we have to consider the permanent wound cavity: that's only a six-inch hole. So imagine that and consider how effective such a permanent wound cavity might be if it were somewhere in your torso above your belly-button.

Tissue damage:
Okay, let's recognize that anything ripping through our bodies is a bad thing. As the PolyShok projectile rips into the body it does just as much damage as any other contemporary solid slug would do. We're not talking about jacketed hollow point, or other hollow point ammo. We're talking about plain old punkin ball slugs. A chunk of metal going through you, spinning or not. A ragged hole is a ragged hole is a ragged hole. However, because of the nature of the PolyShok projectile, over-penetration, if not impossible, is highly unlikely. The only reason I won't say it's impossible is because that's an absolute statement and I don't care for those. So, tissue damage is caused in two ways: by the projectile itself entering and ripping into the body, and by the stretch / tear damage done in the creation of the temporary wound cavity. Ouch.

Energy delivery:
Think back about one hundred years to the development of the .45ACP "ball" ammunition. Big and slow (the .45) was desired over small and fast (.38 or 9mm) because the bigger slower bullet was more likely to stop inside the target thereby delivering 100% of the carried energy into that target. If the bullet goes through then all the energy it has left upon exiting the target is wasted energy. Insuring that a projectile stops within the human system is the best way of leveraging the energy potential of the projectile. The PolyShok projectile, because it acts like a liquid, expends 100% of its carried energy within the target. How fast? I saw a one gallon plastic milk jug filled with water put in front of a glass window pane and shot with the PolyShok from a distance of five yards / fifteen feet. The gallon jug was literally destroyed. It looked like it disintegrated. The damage to the glass was NOTHING. No scratches, no cracks, no breakage. A milk jug is what, six to eight inches across? The energy gets transfered that fast.

The second series of two images shows the PolyShok round being fired into a flat tire. What impressed me was the fact that the round not only knocked some dust off that old beat up flat tire, but also that the pressure it took into the tire forced some of that stale air out. Look at the amount of gas / vapor being ejected from that tire upon entry of the PolyShok round.

I am highly impressed with the PolyShok ammo. I have the blessing of being involved in the start up of a new police agency and I will certainly be recommending this ammo to that Chief of Police for their duty use.

To get more info, request a sample, etc., please visit PolyShok online.

Be safe!!