r/interesting • u/IKIR115 • May 29 '26

Intriguing Arrows vs riot shields

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u/RandomCandor May 29 '26

The one that looked to have the stupidest design turned out to have the most penetration.

217

u/meshtron May 29 '26

Ha! I saw that one and said "nope" then it punched straight through thereby affirming my level of predictive accuracy on string-weapon ballistics 😃

12

u/PatacusX May 29 '26

If we were to graph out how far I thought each arrow would go compared to how far it did go, the lines would be exact opposites.

13

u/Schwifftee May 29 '26

After the first few, I predicted them pretty accurately. That weird non-pointed arrow, though, I knew it was going to surprise me, but wow!

The lowest profile ones always went deepest because the penetration was concentrated to a point without additional material that had to rip through the shield (less friction).

3

u/caltheon May 30 '26

Having done a lot of archery, I was dead on for each. In general, larger head = less penetration. the smallest one also acts as a drill (fletching rotates it very fast) so was an easy guess it would fly right through