Could a human body survive the shockwave from a 2 megajoule explosion?

And if not, how could you reinforce it so that it would? I'm trying to figure out if it's realistic in any possible way for a cyborg to dodge or deflect a bullet, and while my initial assessment of the situation led me to believe "better not accelerate any of the squishy bits at over a 1000g if we want to keep using them later", replacing one arm with a fully synthetic one dedicated to the task that would move to deflect the bullet while the body remained still seems like it might be the way to go.

But then we run into the biggest problem with this beloved superhuman feat, kinetic energy. A lightweight prosthesis + some sort of one-handed weapon, be it a baton, bat, sword etc. would probably mass around 3.2kg on the lower end, and in order to deflect most bullets from a reasonable distance, a top speed of 1200 m/s would be ideal for our ninja arm. Unfortunately, most pedestrian weapons would break into pieces at the sudden acceleration up to this ass-cracking speed, and even assuming the same problem doesn't apply to your arm or any of its more delicate components (which it might), you still have to face the inevitable reality that by swinging this magical bullet-deflecting arm, you're going to create a shockwave like a grenade going off right next to your body, just without the shrapnel. It'd probably be about equal to 2 megajoules all told, though not all of that would be going into the shockwave.

Can you even begin to modify a human body to survive this? Reinforce the bones with fullerenes and install subdermal polysaccharide armor, maybe? What about organ damage from the shockwave or the arm ripping itself out of the socket? Can you prevent this? Or would it be smarter to have a bullet-deflecting drone you command remotely, or simply modify yourself so getting shot is less of an issue?

posted about 7 years ago

Z. Schroeder‭

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