Shock to the System

Are you sure that Rand survey was talking about all deployed troops? That number seems high, and I wonder if they weren't referring to front line soldiers.
Anyone have a direct reference?

Perhaps would be good to try a Faraday cage kind of system integrated inside a helmet.
That's a way to protect from EMP

The first commentor may have been dropped on his head as a child. I suffered a TBI in 1991 and spent the next fifteen years recovering from it. When I awoke from an induced coma, my IQ had been cut in half. I was Forrest Gump without the math. It took 15 years to get it back to 124, still a 20% loss of cognitive function. And will they even have that much to spare? I still suffer the sequeli today.
Is the army willing to put the monies needed for thousands to recover from this type of long term disability. Or are we headed to a situation like the post vietnam era. With untreated soliers living under bridges and self medicating with drugs and alcohol.

The brief but extreme blast forces on the thorax and abdomen force venous and arterial blood as well as cerebral spinal fluid retrograde into the cranium like multiple caliber shotgun blasts through foramina or openings at the base of the skull. The brain, having no place to go, receives multiple traumatic squeezing forces due to the different diameters of these openings. Neuroimaging should reveal evidence of injury in keeping with these anatomic alterations along the inferior surfaces of the brain and along the course of major vascular supply and CSF spaces. I propose preventing or reducing these blast forces by wearing a blast resistant, hard shell of strong carbon composite material over the entire chest and abdomen minimizing these pressures to the brain and thereby preventing these devastating injuries.

i'm not sure, what is needed, but the one thing thats certain is that a much better system is needed to protect our troops!

I FOUND THAT THIS ARTICLE IS CORRECT IN THE SYPTOMS, BUT WRONG IN THE REASON. THIS IS BATTLE FATIGUE, AND THE SAME AS THE VIETNAM VETERANS SUFFERED.
THE EARLY ARTICLE IN THE SAME ISSUE IS VERY ACCURATE.
LONG PERIONS OF STRESS = PLUS A MAJOR SHOCK OF ANY KIND IS THE ISSUE.
IT PRODUCES CORTISON WHICH DAMAGES THE HIPPOCAMPUR AND THE ENTIRE PITUATARY GLAND. THIS AFFECT THE ENTIRE BODAY. THE DIAGRAM AT THE END IS EXTREMELY CORRECT IN THE RUSULT. RESEACH IT YOURSELF AND FIND OUT.

Way back in the 1950's and 1960's there was a German guy who had survived a grenade explosion next to his body in W.W.II and developed a theory about how a properly positioned human body can survive an explosion if the shrapnel doesn't kill the subject. The ex-soldier developed a carnival routine which I witnessed during a demolition derby half-time. He built a coffin out of cheap plywood and about a foot from the head of it was placed a stick of 50% dynamite. Then he would lay down in the coffin without even a helmet and detonate the explosive, spectacularly demolishing the coffin and leaving himself unharmed.

As an entertainment routine this act was spectacular (I believe I read about it in Popular Science before actually seeing it) but took place so quickly that the guy had to do a lot of talking and build-up in order to hold 15 minutes of the audience's attention until a climax that would only take a micro-second.

In his heavily accented English the guy admitted that he had gone deaf from doing this stunt. He also said that the closest he had come to being really hurt was when he performed the routine out on the end of a pier at a marina show in Florida. The plan was that the blast would drop him spectacularly into the water. It worked as planned but what he didn't know is that explosions create a great amount of static electricity. As soon as he contacted the water he suffered serious burns over a good part of his body.

I can't remember his name other than that it was German.

So, shockwaves from explosions can damage the human body... How is this a surprise really? Receiving an abrupt blow to the head can lead to coma, but apprarently having a grenade explode a couple of meters from the head cannot be dangerous??

This kind of reminds me of the first experiments with atomic weaponry, noone thought the radiation could be "bad" - we all know how that turned out.