Seattleite

That was a legitimate question. Gender is 100% mental. Only sex is physical. I am already there. If you had immense disposable income, so much that if you waited one week you'd have so much that no matter how much you gave away you could never hurt your standard of living at all? (By the way, hundreds of thousands of people in the world have that much income and just sit on it.)

If you think that six hours of sleep is really bad and want to complain about that to real insomniacs, do us all a favour and hit Alt-F4.

I meant they were less shitty than the older PASGT plates. There's a 7-year gap in my knowledge. It's 1996-2003. I looked into the years before because of Somalia and the first Iraq war. After because of the second Iraq war and our involvement afterwards in Afghanistan. Don't bother asking me what happened in 1996-2003 with body armour. I'd have to look it up, and have been looking it up, and you can do the same yourself. Because kevlar is soft, and provides negligible resistance to sharp objects. They cut it with scissors, dude. And not big industrial scissors either, regular ones. Funny thing, I looked into it, and the armour was somehow III-A on its own. The source that said it had CFRP plates was full of shit. Or maybe the new source is. For the record, the only modern armours I've ever worn myself were civilian-issue, except for once each RBA and OTV. So those are the (modern) armours I know the most about. I get ALL my information on armours other than civilian, historical, RBA and OTV from online sources. Online sources you could find yourself if you looked, you know. Hate to hammer that in, but this discussion is wearing on me. I am not an expert, I am a hobbyist, and I divide my attention amongst all things martial past and present. You can likely get all the information I can at any point. That'd be best.

Do you mean gender, or sex? They are very, very, VERY much not the same thing.

The RBA armour didn't change, only the plates did. And several rangers during the battle of Mogadishu that had back plates died because they were discarding them. Before the deployment in Somalia and during the early stages they weren't issued, they started before the battle but some marines didn't take the new plates out with them once they were and got killed in that unexpected clusterfuck. I don't get it. Who decides "Well, they're giving me something to fix my armour's biggest flaw, but nah, I think I'll save a couple pounds."? Kinda. RBA got updated first to plates equal to the OTV vest's plates in the mid '90s. PASGT got shit plates at least better than their old shittier plates, then a limited run of OTV-style plates that didn't accomplish anythin due to low numbers until the interceptor armour replaced it. And as tired as I am, I could not make a good guess on much of anything right now and I don't care to look up a demonstration like I normally do. Maybe in the morning. Because III-A is useless against rifles at most ranges and angles, and the "shrapnel protection" really only applied to the plate and nowhere else. It really was heavily underpowered for its purpose. If the numbers were 4000, I doubt it. Dude, I don't even know right now. I'll check it tomorrow. Tests proving the armour stops the bullet aren't that hard. I showed one, couldn't find the really good one though, and there's likely more out there. But tests that show how the bullet performs when it hits somebody wearing it don't exist. Nobody is going to do that kind of test. Nobody is willing to stand in front of a .50, and telling them "it's okay, I know it looks like it'll kill you but we think it'll just break a rib and rupture your lung" doesn't help. And no, I have nothing on friendly-fire incidents with .50 bullets where the soldier was only hit once *and* was hit in the chest. Do you realize how unlikely that is? Also, I hate to be so forward, but you checked out the health and damage scores I posted, right? I mean, you asked for them, I want to make sure I didn't put them all up for nothing.

As a person who goes without sleep for days at a time on a weekly basis, I can sympathize. As for me, I came here to complain about the Steam in-game browser's habit of refreshing pages every time you change tabs, which fucks Youtube up the ass, but on second thought I'll complain about a lack of sleep too. Because I have NO FUCKING REASON to not be sleeping during the week anymore and I still can't do it.

I don't know if you know, but inlaid plates have to be accounted for in the design. They couldn't build a vest without them and then suddenly decide to issue them because then there'd be no place to put them. And yeah, I see a source now that says that the back plates the armour was BUILT to have just weren't being issued. Fucking cheap bastards. I see three questions here. 1. This is a little ambiguous. Do you mean for RBA or PASGT? Yes in either case. 2. A. For the ranger armour? I don't rightly know. They did show that after being hit once with a 7.62x51 it was unable to stop a second one, though. The newer plates stopped the first, second and third shots. B. For PASGT? The older plates only made it IIIA, and would be penetrated by any rifle. The newer plates post-1993 made it III, and would stop a rifle a grand total of once and wouldn't reliable against a second shot. C. I don't know. But given the basically identical performance of the older RBA plates and the newer PASGT plates I am inclined to believe they were the same ones or at least the same model, but I'd have to look. It was NIJ-II without, but it had spaced for inlaid plates and they issued shitty inlays similar to those of police vests that made it III-A, the exact same level as police vests. This was later traded out for ones suspiciously similar to RBA SAPI plates. And that's referring to a later run of stronger plates that could actually do the job more than once. Something better than the old SAPI-style plates the PASGT was using up to that point. I looked, and they seem to be (as far as I can see) identical to SAPI plates. Which were the old insert plates for RBA before the battle of Mogadishu. Those only stop one bullet reliably, and for further shots it's a total crapshoot. That's possible. They are VERY stupid, after all. But even after all that, I still find it unlikely Freeman could stop them with the number of shots he's using. Not really. Bullets don't have the mass to function as blunt weapons. They have plenty of energy, but very little momentum. They might cause some minor lung damage, but no more than a hard slap to the chest would do. Repeating that a could times wouldn't change anything, it's not enough. I must be getting the IOTV and OTV confused on that one. It's impossible to find a source for something that never happens. Our soldiers aren't being shot at with .50, you know.

That is NOT what I fucking said, and if you're so STUPID you can't UNDERSTAND what I have ALREADY EXPLAINED AT LENGTH MULTIPLE TIMES, then I am NOT going to bother explaining it again.

Not as far as I am aware, no. Even games like ARMA assume armour is totally worthless. The only issues I have with this are: A: The MP5 is a perfectly sensible weapon for the marines. They are going into CQB, expecting predominately unarmoured targets. They would be using a weapon well-suited for that, and the MP5 is very, very well-suited for that. While them also brining along carbines would make sense, the MP5 present and their primary weapon for the circumstance is entirely logical. B: The HD pack STILL has the M4 chambered in 9mm. No amount of ignoring this issue will make it go away. No, the front and back were both covered. Assuming the soldiers actually wore the back plates like they were supposed to. Plenty didn't, which was swiftly corrected after the battle of Mogadishu. A few things. Let's go one at a time. It came with back plates, but the plates were frequently discarded out of lazyness, and ranger armour was not common in the military as a whole. While the battle of Mogadishu was the reasoning behind the decision to up-armour US troops and issue stronger plates. I believe the nickname for that armour was "second chance" because it couldn't reliably stop more than one rifle bullet. (Sometimes it did, sometimes it didn't.) The ranger armour failed to function for the soldiers because they were hit multiple times and the plates couldn't handle multiple shots. New plates were later issued that could stop multiple rounds. It also didn't really provide much protection against shrapnel. It was complete shit, and the reason most veterens from that era firmly believe body armour to be worthless. Kevlar is useless against edged weapons and the thing was overall useless in warfare. The armour itself was NIJ-II, but with the plates originally issued it was III-A. After 1993, new plates were issued for PASGT that brought it up to NIJ-III, but they didn't last under fire any more than the ones the rangers used to have. (I think they may have inherited the old ranger plates, but I could be wrong.) Those plates may have been issued, but they were neither the first nor the largest run of anti-rifle plates for the PASGT vest. I believe you're thinking of the limited run of OTV-style plates that was put out to increase protection until interceptor armour could be issued. I thought that was later than 1996, though I could be wrong. For the most part, that's correct. It also features an actual anti-shrapnel chainmail layer, which the PASGT didn't. The thing is, though, that 7.62 is a large range. Do you maybe mean 7.62x51mm or 7.62x39mm? In the former case you'd be correct, in the latter it would be more and likely as many as half a dozen. The IOTV is nice, but the plating doesn't cover the abdomen or sides, only the kevlar does. And yeah, it's pretty damned awesome. 1. Doing that kind of damage through impact alone would take a cannon. And not a small cannon, either. The .50 is NOT that powerful, and while the impact would likely break a rib or two and rupture a lung that's all it's going to do and it's highly unlikely such an injury would even be life-threatening. Firearms do NOT work as bludgeoning weapons, they do NOT have the momentum, and the .50 is no different. There's no man-portable firearm with enough power to turn internal organs "into jelly from the pure kinetic energy". The human body is one durable piece of machinery, one especially strong against "pure kinetic energy" and it's certainly not the plasticine figure you seem to be imagining. 2. The number of plates has no bearing, the first plate stopped it and did so in a circumstance where it is MUCH worse off than it would be inside body armour on a soldier's body. (As it's more firmly fixed and can't move away from the impact or shift to change the angle like it would in a vest.) Granted, that's a standalone plate, but NIJ-IV body armour on a soldier's body would outperform a standalone plate sitting against a hard object.

Game studios don't hire consultants at all. When they do, they don't hire ones that know what they're talking about. On the rare instance that manages to pass, they don't listen to them. It's the exact same shit you see with consultants in movies, only worse. Except even with the abdomen, there's still kevlar and chainmail that will stop all small-arms fire dead. The armour is still IIIA down there and nothing Gordon has will penetrate that. That may be what you meant, but it is not what you said. 1. Man, I'm just justifying a gameplay choice. 2. You'd be surprised how similar PASGT and Interceptor look, especially with the older OTV vests. 3. You'd also think that by the nature of their unit the HECU would bring, you know, hazmat equipment. And probably a better supply of anti-material munitions. And have dedicated ordnance technicians. Yet, none of that's there. Before 1993? Basically non-existant. During 1993? Very limited usage. After 1993? Any troops deployed were supposed to wear them but there weren't many before the interceptor replaced it and just because they were supposed to doesn't mean they did. It was the battle of Mogadishu that made them start issuing them, where the weak plates in the current armour failed to stop a rather massive number of US troops from dying of chest wounds from the local militia's rifles. Damn straight. Yes, it would. To the OSIPR's credit, it is a functional energy weapon with a very small magazine that holds a LOT of ammunition and hits pretty well, but the hit effect, a small, concentrated surface blast, makes me believe it isn't a very good armour penetrator compared to a rifle and that's important to the damage scores I end up assigning. If it would deal great damage but it is terrible against armour, it still gets a low score (see: shotgun) but if it would deal little damage but it is great against armour (see: 5.56) it still gets a high score. I have no doubt the OSIPR would be better against some targets, but against soldiers in padded body armour it seems doubtful it would be all that effective if it really is dealing blast damage. The thing about the .50 is that its penetration really isn't that fantastic. It penetrates about twice as deep as a 7.62x51mm FMJ round. Know what else penetrates about twice as deep as a 7.62x51mm FMJ? A 7.62x51mm AP round. Guess what the plates in our troops' armour has no issue at all stopping over and over again? Well, in the .50's case it hits really hard so it'll break the plate and likely cause quite a bit of damage clear through the armour, but NIJ-IV body armour with inlaid ceramic plates can stop it exactly one time enough to make it a (most likely) non-lethal wound at the expense of destroying the plate. I could only find one example that didn't use armour-piercing rounds on it, or was actually testing body armour. Stopped it on the first plate. I've seen better tests, though. Including one with an actual IOTV vest on a wooden stand, being shot with an M107 at 50m, where the armour stopped it but the stand fell over and the plate inside was shattered.

On request, here are the health scores, attack damage and known multipliers for each enemy. Headcrab: Health 5 Damage 3 in Half-Life and Black Mesa, 2 in Half-Life 2 Headcrabs will (usually) die in a single hit. Only hits from other headcrabs and individual shotgun pellets fail to kill them in a single shot, although occasionally a pistol shot will hit their leg and fail to kill them. Not a threat to anybody. Fast headcrab Health 3 Damage 3 Fast headscrabs will survive, I think, no attack from anything in the game if it hits their body. Poison headcrab: Health 10 Damage 25 (to NPCs), irritating poison effect to player characters that makes them growl and shoot the damned thing a hundred extra times. These take two bullets, one every once in a while if you hit the right place but that's finicky as hell, and are likely the most irritating enemies in the whole damned game. Just blast them with the shotgun or the SMG, there's no shortage of either. Zombie (normal): Health 20 in Half-Life and Half-Life 2, 40 in Black Mesa Single slash 25 Double slash 50 In Black Mesa, 2x damage from 9mm and 4x damage from buckshot, 1/2 damage from the crowbar These guys hit hard and all, but they're too slow and fragile for that to be meaningful. The crowbar makes quick work of them in Half-Life, but in Black Mesa it can take a couple hits. In all games, the pistol and shotgun do them in quick. The was a damage difference in HL2, but I fixed it. Zombie (security): Health 30 in Half-Life and Half-Life 2, 60 in Black Mesa Single slash 25 Double slash 50 In Black Mesa, 2x damage from 9mm and buckshot, 1/2 damage from the crowbar. What's left of their body armour works pretty well at keeping them running, but they're still pretty weak enemies. Pistol and shotgun are still the best weapons, just less so for the shotgun now. Zombie (marine): Health 40 in Half-Life Single slash 25 Double slash 50 These guys can take more to kill, but that doesn't change their weakness compared to other enemies. They're too slow and don't last very long in a fight, just take the shotgun and double-blast them in the head. I only wish they appeared in Black Mesa. Zombie (combine): Health 40 Single slash 25 Double slash 50 Basically identical to the marine zombie, except with a new suicide bomb attack that will ruin your day. As in, it'll take off a good chunk of your health and possibly kill Alex. Don't let them get close. Zombie (gonome): Health 30 Single slash 50 Gore grenade 25 Bite 100 Faster and harder hitting than the typical zombie, still goes down fast but they're more likely to get a good hit in and if they do it'll be a strong one, especially since Adrian is less resistant to damage than Gordon. Finally, a zombie worth fighting. Zombie (fast): Health 20 Single slash 25 Double slash 50 These damned things can't have different stats from the regular zombies for some reason. So they get to go from "annoying" to "annoying and possibly actually dangerous". At the very least it makes Ravenholm a bit more frightening. Zombie (poison): health 40 Melee 25 Used to be 15, but I fixed it. Gonarch: Health... Doesn't actually have a health score. Somehow. Melee 25 Splash 20 The melee of this thing is pretty weak, despite its size. Kinda how it goes when you have a contact area so large. Just watch out for its chemical attack and all the irritating as hell baby headcrabs, and take it down. Houndeye: Health 30, 60 in Black Mesa Damage 60, 30 in Black Mesa In Black Mesa, 2x damage from 9mm bullets and 4x damage from buckshot Houndeyes can be easily killed in a single shotgun blast from the front in Black Mesa as most pellets will count as headshots. In Half-Life, not so much, they're actually harder to kill there due to the lack of multipliers and no weak spot. (Though their attack is SO SLOW in the original Half-Life they're no threat at all, and in Black Mesa it's pretty damned fast.) Barnacle: Health 20 in Half-Life 2, 40 in Black Mesa In Black Mesa, 1/2 damage from .357, 2x damage from crowbar. Couldn't find the convar for them in Half-Life. Odd. Anyway, dies real quick to the crowbar, but if you don't want to risk it just use the handgun or shotgun and kill them quickly. And they're not actually stronger in Black Mesa, it's just some weirdness with the hitbox I had to adjust for. Bullsquid: Health 160 Bite 30 Whip 50 Spit 5 in Half-Life, 1x5 in Black Mesa In Black Mesa, 2x damage from 9mm and buckshot Bullsquids take a surprising amount of fire to bring down, especially in Half-Life. From a distance they aren't a big threat, but in the segments with low ammunition availability they serve to soak up all your rounds and then you're stuck fighting them with a crowbar and they hit like a ton of bricks if you get close. In Black Mesa they're easier to kill as long as you have the 9mm or shotgun available but their spit attack is more impressive and harder to avoid. Icthyosaur Health 240 Shake 50 The tonnes and tonnes of health and its erratic underwater movement make it a bitch to kill and it's easier just to avoid it. Antlion: Health 10 Swipe 10 Jump 15 Air 20 A very weak glass cannon. Mostly just distracts the combine so you can flank them, honestly not very useful as allies. Worker: Health 10 Burst 20 Spit 20 Poison ratio 0.5 Dangerous as hell at range, and in melee they blow up in your face. You will be losing health in these fights, the question is how much. Myrmidont: Health 1500 Charge 20 Shove 10 Throws you all around and tanks hits like a champ. Much, much more dangerous than those low damage scores make it sound. Vortigaunt: Health 60 in Half-Life and Half-Life 2, 30 in Black Mesa Claw 30 in Half-Life and Black Mesa, 25 in Half-Life 2 Rake 60 in Half-Life and Black Mesa, 50 in Half-Life 2 Zap 50 in Half-Life, 50 in Half-Life 2, 100 in Episode 2, 25 in Black Mesa In Black Mesa, 1/2 damage from 9mm and 1/4 damage from buckshot. Note that Vortigaunts attack faster in Half-Life 2 and their zaps are MUCH faster in Black Mesa. Also, partial damage is a thing, at least for NPCs, so doing 0.5 damage is totally possible and that 1/4 damage effect totally works even though the shotgun in that one only does 2/pellet. Just stick to the .357, crossbow and crowbar and use the MP5 if you get desperate. Alien grunt: Health 80, 40 in Black Mesa Bash 50 In Black Mesa, 1/2 damage from 9mm and explosives, and 1/4 damage from buckshot, 1/2 damage from the front and 1/5 damage anywhere they have armour plates. Melee used to be 40, but I fixed it. Alien controller: Health 50 Small zap 10 Large zap 50 In Black Mesa... I'm not sure if they benefit from the multiplier, but if they do then 1/2 damage from 9mm and 1/4 damage from buckshot. If not, then normal damage from all things. The reason I'm not sure is I know the grunts DO benefit from the vortigaunt's damage scaling convars but I don't remember with the controllers and don't have a handy save to test it. Gargantua: Health 2000, invincible in Black Mesa Slash 100 Stomp 10 Fire 10 The gargantua shouldn't be fought. You will have a very hard time killing it without an almost silly amount of explosives. The one time you have to at the end of Half-Life you should just mine the crap out of the hallway before it, lure it into all the mines and satchel charges, then if it's still alive rocket it to death. Nihilanth: Health 2000 Zap 50 This thing has the health of a gargantua, and when it starts out fires a barrage of balls like a controller with the firepower of the controller's large ball. Prepare to die. A lot. HECU marine: Health 150, 125 for Black Mesa grenadiers and Opposing Force engineers, 100 for Black Mesa and opposing force medics, 75 for Black Mesa officers Melee 30 These guys are DANGEROUS. They take a lot of fire to bring down and rack up hits really, really fast. Fights with them can take a while and usually cost you a lot of ammunition, armour and health. Of course, when they're on your side in Opposing Force they're pretty impressive and those fights would be just about impossible without them (on hard, at least). Black ops (Female): Health 50 Pistol 3 Melee 30 in Half-Life, 20 in Black Mesa The pistol does less damage because it's suppressed. Trust me, that makes sense. Their melee in Black Mesa is also weaker to make up for how fast it is. Black ops (Male): Health 100 Kick 50 These guys are a decent compromise between their female counterparts' speed and the marines' power. Even their grenades move 25% faster than the ones the marines use. Security guards: Health 75 These guys are relatively strong and are quite capable of handling the early-game Xenian wildlife. The problem is both the Xenian and human soldiers are too much for them, so they need a lot of support. Basically, you need to tank for them and let them help with the DPS. Scientist: Health 25 Heal 5 They go down way too quickly, faster than should be possible, to most threats due to a complete lack of protection and their own frailty. Thankfully, they tend to stay in the back and cower. Pit drone: Health 10 Bite 50 Whip 100 Spike 25 These things are the glassiest of cannons. They go down in one Desert Eagle shot or two Glock shots, but they will take off big chunks of health really fast if allowed. Shock trooper: Health 100 Kick 50 These things actually kick a lot of ass, and will happily make the ass they kick yours if given the chance. They're dangerous due to a combination of high-damage attacks, even though their health isn't stellar. Shock roach: Health 10 Damage 0 Lifespan 60 Yeah, I didn't think their behaviour made any sense. They can't hurt you anymore, they just can't attach if you already have one. Voltigore: Health 400 Melee 25 Shock 25 Their attacks are too slow to be a threat, so in the open they're just a damage sponge, but in confined spaces they can be dangerous. Hint. Baby voltigore: Health 200 Melee 25 I'm just going to say I don't fight these things. And you really shouldn't either. Just run right past them, they're not a threat and they're not worth the ammo. Also, I don't like killing baby animals, but maybe that's just me. Pit worm: Health 50 (Only stuns it.) Swipe 100 Beam 10 Still a puzzle boss. Just be careful, this thing hits like a freight train. Gene worm: Health 250 (Per stage.) Spit 25 Hit 50 The final boss is a tad underwhelming, but it was in Vanilla as well. Citizen: Health 100 Heal 10 The citizens in later sections of HL2 are pretty helpful, but the combine will kick their asses if you don't help them out. They're just not as durable and their AI is inferior. Combine Metropolice: Health 100 Stunstick 10 Pretty weak for humanoid enemies, and their weapon choice and AI don't help much, but they'll feel pretty damned potent the first time around when you realize they can take plenty of bullets to down. Though, of course, after fighting the overwatch a while these guys seem like total chumps. Combine Overwatch: Health 150 Kick 30 Good and solid, just like the HECU. Challenging, fun to fight and satisfying to defeat. Kick used to be 15 but I just fixed that. Combine Elite: Health 200 Kick 40 Same as above, but more so. Kick also used to be 20 but that has also been fixed. Manhack: Health 5 Melee 10 This thing dies in 1-2 hits and is a light hitter. Not a threat, it's only meant to flush you out of cover so the CPs can shoot you. Scanner: Health 10 Dive 20 Also dies fast, only damages you when it dies. The blinding effect is annoying in fights, though, and it's not a combat unit anyway. Hunter: Health 100 Charge 20 Slash 50 Flechette 10 Explosion 10 1/4 bullet damage, 1/16 buckshot damage. Engaging hunters with the 9mm and SMG takes forever, and you almost cannot carry enough ammunition to kill it with the shotgun. Use the AR2, crossbow, crowbar, explosives or a vehicle for full damage. Gunship: Missile hits 3 (hard), 2 (normal), 1 (easy) Cannon 250 Immune to most weapons. This thing will 4-shot you and flies too high to hit with anything but rockets 99% of the time. This thing is a proper boss. Strider: Missile hits 5 (hard), 4 (normal), 3 (easy) Cannon 250 Immune to most weapons. Highly resistant to everything but the rocket launcher. This thing will 4-shot you and can take dozens of hits from energy balls, grenades and explosive barrels to down so only rockets really work. The one in the citadel is a royal pain as a result. Helicopter: Health 7500 Bomb hits 30 (hard), 20 (normal), 15 (easy) Cannon 25 Bomb 25 One of the most dangerous enemies in the game, but the slug-out with it once you get the gun on your airboat is one of the most fun in the game, and so is the gravity gun slug-out in Episode 2. APC: Health 10000 Missile 500 Gun 25 These things are plenty dangerous and your airboat gun will take about 400 shots to kill them. That's less than it sounds.

I've said everything I'm going to say about it.

If game designers had ANY clue what the word "realistic" meant, they would. But they don't. The energy is meaningless. Even rifle rounds don't do shit through body armour if they don't penetrate it. I don't know if you know, but body armour is and always has been padded, and bullets don't have much momentum. The rifles would have to penetrate to do more than bruise. And really, the answer to this question comes down to "how long before a couple rounds go through the abdomen" or else "how long until the plate breaks". There's no answer to the former, for the latter I'll go with the manufacturer-guaranteed twelve shots and add 50%. I'll go ahead and say 18. No, that plate is a level-IV standalone. As in, without the rest of the armour. It's for when a full vest is too bulky. I don't think so. Budget may be a factor, but I think the simple fact that keeping our troops from at all bending their torso even the tiniest little bit while also increasing the weight of their armour would be a recipe for disaster and might be the reason they choose not to do that. And even the IOTV only reaches down a bit lower to cover some vital upper-abdominal organs. No, you said that it would be immediately incapacitating. I said it was not. Although it CAN blind you for a bit, like any hit to the head is prone to do. These stories weren't just survival stories, they were stories of people continuing to function with gunshot wounds to the head. A man shot all to hell by a firing squad (with full-power rifles at that) playing dead, waiting for them to leave and then getting up (with his fucking arms bound together!) and walking off to find a doctor, with all those bullet wounds, means he's still pretty functional. So is losing a solid third of your brain and then staying conscious long enough to fatally wound a man at long range with your rifle (which takes a lot of precision) also means he's functional. A small child being shot all over with hollow-point pistol rounds, including two through the brain and one damaging her thalamus (the "YOU ARE FUCKING DEAD NOW" part of the brain) and still crying when the cops find her also means she's functional, as does her mother overpowering the shooter after being shot in the head and running out of the car screaming for help. These people were all shot in the head, some of these being multiple headwounds or extraodinarily large headwounds, and kept on going anyway. And even in the cases where the victim dies, it's not that strange for them to keep going anyway for a while. 1. 100 is not 50% less than 150. 2. Medics usually wear lighter armour as they're NOT meant as direct combat troops. Many medics in Iraq, for instance, kept wearing PASGT armour well after it was phased out for actual combat troops. I think they inherited the OTV vests when the combat troops switched to IOTV in 2007, but I could be wrong. I assumed the grunts and marines were wearing OTV, while the medics (both of which are support troops) were still wearing PASGT and the officers were lazy enough to either remove parts of their armour or keep their older PASGT armour to save on weight. (NOT that far fetched. I knew a guy whose officer would stay in the vehicle and have the enlisted men do everything so he never had to walk anywhere, and still complained about how heavy his gear was. Managers are just fucking pricks the world over, aren't they?) Well, there's a lot of them, but sure. I'll go post those in the other thread. Are you STILL ignoring their extremely high melee damage? Or the fact that (outside of Black Mesa) they come grouped with hard-hitting vortigaunts like, ALL the time? They are quite challenging, even to the very heavily armoured Gordon Freeman, and scuffles with them are best handled from a distance, vortigaunts killed first, otherwise you will lose a LOT of health and armour and likely all of your allies if you have any at that point. Also, if you thought the grunts were beastly before, you should see how they perform now. I think the wake-up call is when you've gotten pretty used to the idea that HECU=BADASS and then see two marines get killed by a pair of grunts right after they wake up. See, combining very high melee damage with good speed and near-invulnerability to bullets from the front makes them extremely dangerous. I usually find circle-strafing to hit them in the back, preferably with a weapon they don't resist (energy weapons, crossbow, .357 or the crowbar) is the best way to deal with them because otherwise you're stuck fighting an enemy head-on that can totally tank full magazines of fire and hits like a runaway truck. 2. Depends on difficulty and hit location. I only play on hard and usually use 2-3 shots. Whereas with the tank I'd show up with full ammo and have to scavenge for more rockets just to take it out because the rocket launcher (otherwise overpowered as hell) can easily take over half a dozen hits on hard and keep on going. 3. 150, same as the HECU marines. The Overwatch elites have 200, same as the Opposing Force marine allies. Why not? I assumed his armour to be much better than the IOTV, and the IOTV will stop it a grand total of once. (Although the soldier will still have at least one broken rib and a deflated lung, not necessarily a fatal injury but enough to take him off active duty for quite a while and it could be fatal under the right circumstances due to internal bleeding and breathing issues.) The .50 isn't a cannon, and it only has about the penetrative ability of an armour-piercing rifle round. It's a lot bigger and hits a lot harder, so hard armour has a much bigger problem with it, but it can still be stopped at least once by an NIJ-IV vest. I assumed Gordon's armour had somewhat better protective abilities and could take multiple hits due to its nature as electro-reactive armour. In-game the .50 takes four chest shots to kill Gordon on hard if he has full health and armour charge, two if at full health and no armour charge. For comparison, the 25mm takes three in the former case and two in the latter. A 9mm bullet takes 200 in the former and 100 in the latter. Both guns do SO much damage they absolutely will instantly kill Gordon if they hit him on hard, compared to the 9mm only doing 20 damage on a headshot. (If you must know, the damage comes to 1040 for the .50 if it hits Gordon in the head, and 1600 for the 25mm. But then, most powerful attacks would instantly kill Gordon if they hit him in the head, and other than these two most powerful enough aren't locational.)

That's called "Waking up".

To be honest, I don't even LIKE it. It's too smooth. I mean, I bought it so I'm going to drink it, but when I don't have to slow down and it barely makes an impact, it's too smooth. This shit is dangerous because I could drink enough to get absolutely hammered completely by accident with how smooth and easy to drink this is. I do not desire any more than a light buzz. Maybe I should have bought Jack Daniels instead of Jim Beam, or maybe even scotch, and next time I'm definitely getting fireball or something else with flavour.

Ain't it amazing? But keep in mind that's an NIJ-III standalone plate and is actually tougher than the plates in our soldier's IOTV vests. IOTV vests are NIJ-IV as a whole, and it's an easier mark to hit. I know that sounds weird. But see, a trauma plate is SO much more effective when part of a heavily padded, double-layered, chainmail-reinforced kevlar protective vest, as the padding, chainmail and kevlar all help cushion the impact and reduce damage to the plate, that a fairly unimpressive plate (that as a standalone would likely only be NIJ-II) can bring the system (that without it is NIJ-IIIA) all the way up to NIJ-IV. Keep in mind the "12 hits" claim was vague on the calibre the plates were meant to stop, and was at point blank instead of 100 metres. This was a 100-metre test. A rifle at 100 metres is a lot weaker than a rifle at 10 metres, much less 1 metre. In CQB that plate would have broken to fewer shots, due to a combination of greater hitting power, faster fire rate and tighter grouping. http://firstdefense.com/html/Hard_Armor.htm According to them, their model AA4 level-IV standalone plates will stop a 7.62x54 or a 12 guage slug just fine at point blank, and hold up to twelve shots from some vague attack at point blank. Yeah, in the abdomen. The IOTV trauma plate reaches down lower and (I believe) covers the liver, stomach and spleen and nothing below. The OTV doesn't reach as low and only covers the chest. So abdominal wounds only have to contend with kevlar and very thin chainmail, which would stop a pistol but is no issue for a rifle. Which also makes more sense than drinking it. So you know, the record is only remarkable because the bullet stayed in. Many people have taken headwounds from rifles and kept going. Good examples being Wenseslao Moguel and Simo Hayha. Wenseslao was shot by a firing squad eight times in the chest and twice in the head, then sought medical attention under his own power. Simo Hayha was shot in the head with an enormous expanding rifle round that took off a huge chunk of his brain, then shot back and killed his attacker before passing out. Both men survived. For a non-rifle example, there's tiny little Alexis Goggins. A seven-year old shot six times with a pistol at point blank, including four head wounds although only two hit her brain, survived and was still conscious and moving when the police finally removed her from the vehicle. Her mother was also shot in the head during this incident, and managed to overpower her attacker and flee the vehicle. Yes, that's for hard, it'll take fewer shots on lower difficulties. And yes, not having a helmet makes a huge difference, especially since I can't just change the headshot multiplier for them like I'd rather do and have to compromise between them dying in a silly low number of chest shots or taking way too many bullets to the head. But there's more than that, of course. Although I think my disdain for military officers might have had an impact. You seem to have missed how unbelievably brutal the grunts are in melee combat, since the damage wasn't listed. And the fact that they tank an almost silly number of bullets and it frequently feels like you're, to use Freeman's words, fighting a dump truck. They only have 40 hit points in Black Mesa, but since they take basically no damage anywhere they have armour, take half damage from the front already, take half damage from the 9mm and quarter damage from buckshot, I have seen one literally take over a hundred bullets to kill. They're also surprisingly fast and hit like a freight train. The grunt encounters here are brutal and you definitely do not feel like you have them under control at any point, unlike the vortigaunt fights. They're not as good in Half-Life as in Black Mesa, but they're more common and aren't supposed to be as impressive there. In Half-Life, they have 80 hit points and take no damage anywhere they have armour. This, combined with their armour covering their entire chest and almost their entire head, can make them either more or less durable than marines depending on how you handle them, but they're common, hit hard in melee and make damned fine damage sponges to protect the vortigaunts and let them get off multiple high-power lightning blasts. 1. Keep in mind that "chest" and "abdomen" are totally different here. I was given the option to make them different and they are. You do half damage to the abdomen against all opponents. It shouldn't be like that for marines, but I can't change them separately. 2. I think it was more than 5, but it was indeed shit. But right now it's ungodly powerful and makes the LAV more dangerous to the player than the Abrams you fought to get to it. (Although, obviously, the Abrams takes way more hits to kill, the environment and its choice of weapon work against it.) 3. I chose 10 for the AR2. It's higher than vanilla, for starters, in proportion to the pistol and SMG. (The 5 and 4 values are the same as in vanilla, but coincidentally so, and the AR2 did 8 in vanilla. Making it 10 is making it better than in vanilla.) That already makes it better than vanilla by 25%, and there's no other source to work with. The AR2 also has an advantage later on in being more effective against hunters than any of your other "standard" weapons. Even in HL2 itself, once you get the AR2 it is by far your best weapon as only it and the SMG-1 can down an overwatch trooper in one magazine without requiring headshots. (Excluding the rocket launcher, of course.) And compared to the SMG-1 it does the job much faster and can do it twice in a single magazine instead of only once, and can do it to the stronger overwatch elite when the SMG cannot. I've already made the AR2 by far the best weapon in the game. I don't need to do it by any more. The .50 doesn't actually gib people in real life. At best it might take somebody's arm off. It's not a cannon, and I wish people would stop treating it like it is. And Gordon's armour being able to stop it isn't that far fetched either, because once again it's not a cannon. And human soldiers taking a bullet from it and surviving also isn't that far fetched, because it's once more not a cannon. Do I need picture links to prove otherwise? Adrian's armour isn't the same design.

I haven't had any of this brand before! I was just trying it out, and now suddenly I'm a "drunk". I only had one friggin' shot!

kf3r2Tja0-8 It's a tribute by Maynard James Keenan to his mother. The mother he watched slowly die over the course of 27 years. The album is called 10,000 days because that's how long she spent paralysed before she finally passed. This eulogy is strong, heart-felt and moving, and displays an artistic value most music simply lacks.

I know it's 7:30. I don't fucking care. Can't I have ONE shot of whiskey without people calling me a drunk?

I don't. I like the classic look of the original, and I don't like it when hitboxes and models don't match. Less "Official Timeline" and more "Compilation of statements from Valve and in-game materials". But one can be found on every wiki. But all we really have is the date in the manual and Mark Laidlaw saying the manual's date was correct. The sources you read are half-right. The inlaid plates in older PASGT armour were shit, but during the incidents in Somalia they started giving out better ones to the troops there and then they became standard. 1. No, chainmail doesn't work that way and never has. 2. Even if it did work that way, there's still a layer of kevlar under it. 3. Even if the kevlar wasn't there, all chainmail armour ever worn was worn over padding and there's plenty of that here as well. Any manufacturer of modern body armour will tell you how many hits it can take. I'm going off their statements, but here's a rifle test. With a total of 63 shots withstood from an M16 at 100 metres. abd9bpvd6zY The 5.56 doesn't do a damned thing against hard armour and never will. Not really. Depends on whether it's OTV or IOTV how much, but it's not all. Most part, no objections. But I don't think that green stuff is meant to be drank. I think it's applied to wounds directly, as a salve. Well, a gunshot wound to the head still isn't a one-shot instant out. In fact, its worldwide average survival rate is at 10%, with no adjustment for the size or number of wounds, quality or speed of medical attention or any other factors. (If you had a single small wound, fast and quality medical attention or other positive factors it'd likely be WAY higher. If you had multiple large wounds, no medical attention or other negative negative factors, it'd likely be WAY lower. This is just an average.) For the chest, I believe the average survival rate was 33%. (Same deal.) For the abdomen the average survival rate was, IIRC, 80% around the world and 95% in developed countries. (I can only imagine it's infection that makes the death rate outside of developed countries so high.) "OW, FUCK! Okay Barney, stay down and he won't shoot you again. Maybe he won't shoot you again. He won't shoot you again. He's gone. Okay, time to find a way out before he comes back. Fucking sociopath." I don't follow it as well as I should. I do just try to make sure others know it's bullshit and don't make a big deal out of it. It is. And of course it's a lot harder in the Black Mesa version, but I love it even more. (The hardest one is the Blue Shift one, though. Dear god, the trainyard fight is brutal. Take cover! Protect your arms and legs, they're not armoured!) 2. A. Explosives are fine, but limited and seldom do it in one unless you're using the overpowered-like-mad rocket launcher. The crowbar works wonders if you can get in range, use the environment to get in close when you can. The .357 takes a lot to do them in but with precise headshots it does pretty good damage and even the marine grunt (or any marine outside of Black Mesa) will drop in exactly one mag if you score nothing but headshots. The energy weapons are beastly but they run out of ammo quick so I only use them when desperate, and the crossbow is only good against aliens to be honest and is kinda iffy against the marines. I usually use the MP5, crowbar when really close, .357 at range and Glock if that runs out, explosives as needed. And I burn a LOT of ammunition fighting these bastards, but I get through alive and that can be a struggle since these fights lost long enough to get shot many dozens of times. B. Depends on which you're in, and in none are the multipliers the same as before. In Half-Life (and Blue Shift, and Opposing Force) they all have 150 health. However, in Black Mesa they range from 75-150. Commanders (friggin' morons didn't even bring their helmets) have 75, medics (only partial helmets, still morons) have 100, grenadiers have 125 and grunts have 150. The 9mm does 5 damage, so with the present multipliers that means that depending on difficulty grunts take 10-15 to the head, 20-30 to the chest, 40-60 to the abdomen, 54-80 to the legs or 80-120 to the arms. Keep in mind your accuracy is seldom 100%. C. The fights are pretty one-sided, yes, but not always in their favour. There are a few they lose pretty hard. The gargantua fights are one-sided in the gargantua's favour, the grunt fights in Black Mesa (DAMN the grunts kick ass in Black Mesa, even in this mod) usually are losses for the marines, and even vortigaunts can (and do) take down marines if they can survive long enough to make a few direct hits. (2-3, varies heavily in Black Mesa but is usually more since the shots there are faster and weaker.) D. That thread was horribly out of date. I just fixed the numbers to match the present version of the mod, I had to do a lot of changes to avoid issues with the Source engine and knockback. The .357 presently does 14. The 5.56 rounds of the sentry turrets and M249 do 15. The .50 bullets of the M2 browning do 260, and in Black Mesa the LAV-25's 25mm does 400. (So you know, Gordon takes 26-52 from the .50 and 40-80 from the 25mm, and both instantly kill Gordon if they hit him in the head regardless of health and difficulty.) No idea, but I can tell you that most marines in Half-Life are NOT wearing the same armour as Shepherd, even in Opposing Force. I can only assume Shepherd is part of an elite unit. I'm still tuned in. I am a bit tired and need to go get myself some caffeine (SWEET, GLORIOUS CAFFEINE!) but you're not boring me so don't worry about that.

Well if the game says it's a 9mm, I'm going to assume it's a 9mm. I have no reason to disbelieve it, especially since I don't use the HD pack in Half-Life and there is no equivalent for Black Mesa. Yes, a manual says it. So does the timeline. But even assuming it was just a manual, SO WHAT? It's the only source on the matter, nothing contradicts it and it's a reasonable time for it to be occurring. There's been inlaid plates for quite a while. They just added the chainmail and better plates in the Iraq war. Yes, there's chainmail in body armour now. It's between the layers of kevlar, just under the trauma plates. It's meant to stop shrapnel and other minor edged weapons that would flat-out ignore any thickness of kevlar. It can't stop a serious edged weapon, if somebody had a big knife they could get through, but it works on shrapnel. And that's why it's there. There were serious concerns with IEDs in the Iraq war, the soldiers wanted something in their armour that could resist shrapnel and they got it. They also upgraded the inlaid plates about the same time. A few shots from a REAL rifle, sure. A 7.62x51mm would only be stopped 2-3 times. The 5.56 is just a really, really, REALLY crappy round for defeating hard armour. And, technically, if you hit exactly the same place, you could get through on the second 7.62x51mm round or maybe the third or fourth 5.56x45mm round. But the odds of you hitting the exact same place are so slim as to barely be worth talking about. And the plating only covers the chest, keep in mind. I still don't like the HK53 theory, but that's for in-game reasons. You can subscribe to it if you want, but I don't. Then the guy who never handled a gun before is a ballistic wunderkind? That's silly as hell, but it still makes more sense than what we're seeing, I'll go with it. The guards should be able to take quite a bit of that, actually. Even at point blank, it'd only knock the wind out of them and maybe break a rib. It's bullshit. We all know it's bullshit. You're wasting your time justifying it, because we all know it makes the show go a lot faster and that's important. And if you want to keep pondering it, here's some fantastic advice from an ancient TV show on the matter. 4Ugebzq3juE You have NO idea. Oh, and you need to play on hard to get the best picture. Although I should let you know that Freeman's armour lets him tank hits like a champ and the early sections before the marines show up you're going to feel like superman. ("Oh, a headcrab. It did a single point of damage. My turn." *SPLAT*) Once the marines do show up, even though they're not nearly as tough as you the encounters with them will likely drain a huge chunk of your resources, armour charge and health. Also, just realised I made a slight typo regarding Freeman's head and then repeated it over and over. Freeman's head was only taking half the damage it was supposed to be. I fixed it. 1. There's not much I can do about the shotgun and 9mm hurting them, it's just a .cfg mod. They *are* extremely ineffective, for what that's worth. 2. The HD pack screws with the models without changing the hitboxes, so you can be shooting at what appears to be the chest and actually hitting the gut quite a bit, especially with vortigaunts. I also assumed the MP5 was an MP5 and a 9mm when I set its damage, so it'll take a full magazine to the chest to bring down a marine, but you'll mostly be using it, the crowbar and grenades to combat marines. (And the marines are tough enough that using satchel charges and trip mines on them doesn't feel like overkill and doesn't even always work the first time. I place mines in pairs to deal with them.) 3. Again, I highly recommend the one for Black Mesa instead of Half-Life. I could do so much more with Black Mesa, and the soldiers in particular respond more realistically to gunfire. The only thing I was missing was the ability to assign multipliers to weapon damage for the marines, and the ability to set shot placement multipliers for individual enemies. And if you must do Half-Life, use GoldSrc instead of Source for the same reason. If he doesn't know what he's talking about, he doesn't know what he's talking about. And if he hasn't gotten the message after all this time, he's never going to and there's no point giving him shit about it. I'm just going to recite the MST3K mantra and keep enjoying the show. Funny, I assumed they were wearing interceptor body armour. I personally put it as "Makes the IOTV look like the PASGT." I fail to see how that point was expressed in that statement.

1. A rifle still chambered in 9mm, need I remind you. 2. Those in active combat, especially close combat, roles? YES. And the game takes place in the 2000s anyway, it says it quite clearly. May 200X, according to the manual and all other official sources. And yes, in the 2000s, soldiers outfitted for heavy close combat would be wearing armour made out of kevlar, with chainmail inlays to resist shrapnel, padded to reduce the impact from bullets and with boron-carbide inlay plates covering their chest and upper back. They would be quite nearly immune to small arms fire, and rifle fire could not enter their chest. And yes, the 5.56 IS that weak. The round has too little mass and can't sufficiently damage a boron carbide plate unless it's fixed in place. The plates in armour are not fixed in place. You need to pierce kevlar just to get to them, which disperses the impact slightly and slows the bullet a bit, then the chainmail beneath helps spread the impact out over the padding that softens the impact by allowing the plate to move back from the shot and spread out the force over time and partially put it into the padding and target while diffusing it too much to be harmful, so the plate takes much less damage from the bullet and the wearer takes almost none. It would take dozens to penetrate modern trauma plates, and even 1990s plates could take 6-8 with no trouble. 3. Head or heart, and you can do a lot better than the instant-death bullet nonsense of Freeman's Mind if you're concerned with realism. (I get that Ross isn't, so I'm not going to give him any shit about it.) Even with the crappy hitpoint system used in Half-Life, you can do better than they did. (And I think my mod is much closer, if you want to see what I think is better.) 4. And since my case is that the game and series are extremely unrealistic, talking about how unrealistic the game is acts as an argument against my position HOW?

Do regular US Marines have shitty armor? No? Then where did you get that? I personally believe in the HK53 theory. I mean, there isn't any other logical explanation for why a US Marine wearing modern body armor would die after getting shot only a few times. Except: 1. The HK53 theory is clearly bullshit since the pistol and MP5 share ammo. 2. Even if it wasn't bullshit, the HK53 is a 5.56 and still couldn't defeat modern armour in a few shots because there is no way it could get through the trauma plates and everywhere there's not a trauma plate you can't stop somebody with it without shooting them quite a bit. 3. The number of shots the marines take still wouldn't be incapacitating with an HK53 even if they weren't wearing armour. 4. This theory doesn't explain how Freeman's pistol and shotgun can hurt the marines even though they would both be completely useless.

The game is set in the 2000s. Problem is, they'd still need to have something physically possible. And something that could eat through materials that varied is already impossible, then doing it fast enough for it to mean anything is even more impossible. But they need to survive the impact to make it through the armour. I'm not just talking about their life, I'm talking about their body, and the armour is tougher than they many, many times over. There's no speed at which they'll penetrate because they could never survive an impact even close to that hard. And it's still not an argument. If gameplay is all you have as a source, and it is, then it's what you go with. They home in on the chest in gameplay and there's nothing contradicting it, therefore they home in on the chest. By your logic, maybe the thornets are bright green. They aren't in-game, but if you can ignore gameplay when there's nothing contradicting it then they can be bright green just as easily as they could home in on parts other than the chest. They stated directly they can heal wounds without extract, hers were just too severe. Maybe they'd be using the electricity they drain from targets to power that healing magic crap. Or maybe Decay is just a non-canon DLC and nothing in it matters. Because there's NOTHING to contradict the thornets homing in on the chest, and there's PLENTY to contradict gibbing. That's the important part. If the doors were locked they could not possibly open them no matter how strong they were as their arms would not hold up to the force. They're clearly not durable enough to withstand breaking the locks because you can hurt them with bullets. Breaking the locks would also be extremely loud. They opened them, therefore they were not locked. Assuming those are even canon, there's not much doubt about Opposing Force or Blue Shift but Decay is unlikely to be canon and we know Uplink is non-canon, you can't rely too much on visual effects in-game because all the ones shown are clearly physically impossible. Like objects being smashed into pieces bigger than the original object, that's a common one. Or just being smashed like that instead of crushed to begin with. Like with gibbing, it's unlikely to be representing something as spectacular as the visual effect given. Vortigaunts have tiny, tiny claws that account for little here regardless of strength. No amount of force will make those decapitate. They have magic-looking powers, therefore can do anything, is a non-starter argument. It's more likely they just had it happen without thinking because the first Half-Life had, like, NO thought put into it at any point. And even with their strength, the grunt's arms are just too broad. It'd be like getting hit by a speeding moped. Sure, it'd do a lot of damage, but it's not fully incapacitating much less an instant kill and you could defend against it pretty well by just putting your arms out and pushing down, then you'd just get thrown and most of the damage would be from the fall and not the impact.

More than anything a civilian could ever buy. As in, more than the twelve I just mentioned. Civilians are strongly restricted from purchasing quality body armour just like they are weapons. Even if we assume the same strength, although the military would call those plates "light", that's still a dozen 5.56mm bullets. And yes, those are "light" plates that can stop a dozen bullets. That is totally a thing. Then my eyes are just sharper than yours. Even worse explanation. See, in reality, there is no magical super-powered movie acid that dissolves all of everything in seconds. In reality, acid takes a damned long while and materials that are chemically different react differently. Acids that can dissolve metal are frequently more or less useless against flesh, for instance. No acid in this world can eat through both kevlar and metal, much less kevlar, metal and flesh. Even if they could, chemical reactions are just NOT that fast. Keep in mind they're living creatures and there's a limit to how fast a living thing can move. Even if they're being launched the acceleration would kill them if they were moving fast enough to penetrate armour, even if it didn't the impact certainly would. And this doesn't apply as an argument. The game's health system is unrealistic, no shit. Could hit, yes. But that doesn't change where they home in on, and where they home in on is the place they are by far the most likely to hit. Likely in the same way they healed Alex's puncture and bludgeoning wounds in episode 2, just without the fancy visual effects. Because gibbing makes NO sense from a physics perspective and just about all the weapons that do it in-game are completely incapable of such in real life. A hand grenade is NOT that powerful, or anywhere even remotely close to approaching sort-of not really resembling a level similar to that powerful, a 40mm grenade is even less powerful. Neither of them is capable of even taking off a limb in real life. If a grenade went off in your hand you would lose your bare hand, and likely most of your upper arm, but no other part of your body would be severed. Yet in-game it blasts an entire fully-armoured human body into little giblets. That is physically impossible. There is no chemical explosive powerful enough to make it possible. Gibbing is done in Half-Life because they couldn't do complex wound graphics like severed or mangled limbs and somebody being totally intact after being, say, crushed by a giant chunk of concrete or being hit with artillery would be ridiculous. It's purely a visual effect, moreover the result of a technical limitation, and should be completely ignored at all times. Are you assuming they're locked? Because if they're not locked that's just "super-human", not "hulk-like". You could roll open doors that heavy manually with a couple guys. You're using the word "repeatedly" wrong. A vortigaunt does it once, a grunt does it twice. And for the vort, it's not even close to effortless. And a human neck doesn't need to be as strong as steel or concrete. (And for the record, sinew is as strong as iron and the neck is mostly made of sinew.) It just needs to not be locked in place. See, the human body owes a big part of its durability to its low weight, when it gets hit it just moves away from the hit and takes a LOT less damage as a result. This is why being punched in the face is painful, but being punched in the face while your head is against the ground is LETHAL. I don't doubt they could do a lot of damage, even with the grunt's ridiculously broad arms distributing the force over a huge area, but decapitation is essentially impossible with a blunt weapon strike because of the way the human body is built. And the funny thing is that Newton's first and third laws basically mean super strength is a WORTHLESS power. Seriously, if they had the strength to break concrete walls or smash down steel doors, the first law says that once they accelerated like that (which is ALL strength does) they would stay in motion and that means they'd be throwing themselves. And that's assuming they could use it in the first place, and there's NO way they could ever use it since there's no surface that would ever provide enough traction for them to exert that much force without slipping and falling. Third law says the opposite force has to go somewhere, once you exceed your own inertia you need to rely on traction and there just isn't enough. Sorry, super strength can never be a useful power, physics won't allow it.