As mentioned in my last post, high-speed operator gear is the new hotness in the prepper community. A part of that means plates and carriers. And with that comes the influx of guntubers and tactical redditors and dubiously-qualified ‘experts’ with their fudd-lore and naval gazing that is always presented as if it were lessons learned through the expenditure of blood, sweat and tears.

And they’re almost all wrong.

Don’t get me wrong, there are a bunch of real experts out there. There are even some larpers who have managed to stumble or naval-gaze their way into good advice. But not a lot, not in comparison to the hordes of fudds and tactiboos. So even smart, well-meaning people are getting duped. Hence this post: I’m going to talk about the purpose and proper use of armor in a tactical scenario.

To start with, we need to establish some context. For the purpose of this essay, I’m going to be assuming the most likely civil-defense scenarios. Namely, defending one’s self or loved ones from tyrannical law enforcement officers who have no legal jurisdiction over US citizens but take action anyways because daddy Trump said they could, defending one’s home during a WROL period (that’s Without Rule Of Law, for those not familiar with prepperese), and skirmishing with irregular opposition forces during a time of civil strife, such as The Troubles in Ireland.

I will not be discussing this in a post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland scenario, because if you’re in a post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland, you’re a skeleton scattered over about three acres and buried under rubble, and don’t need to worry about this shit. I won’t be discussing this in a zombie apocalypse because, frankly, you’ll be a zombie (so will I, that’s not condescension, just realism). And I won’t be discussing this in a purely military context, such as the War in Ukraine, because I don’t have any experience fighting that war. And if you want to know about those, either enjoy some fiction (where the good guys actually tend to win most of the time) or read what Ukraine vets have to say about it.

Finally, I won’t be talking about this in the context of the GWOT, though I will be referencing it a lot, because that’s where I made my bones.

So, let’s start with some principles that are universal. Namely, the purpose of plates and carriers, the proper use of them, and some little-discussed facts and considerations about using them.

Let’s start by going over some real fundamentals. Not everyone reading this will know everything about armor, so I think it helps if we get those people caught up.

The fundamentals

Modern combat armor tends to consist of a plate carrier (or PC) and 1-4 plates. At a minimum, it will be a PC and a front and back plate, though it’s also very common to add side plates, which are generally smaller and cheaper. Sometimes, there will be pauldrons, which are shoulder pieces. These tend to be rated lower than the plates, and mostly meant to protect against glancing hits or fragmentation.

NIJ ratings

The National Institute of Justice certifies a number of laboratories around the country to test armor and issue it a rating on a scale that goes from 2 (II) to 4 (IV) (there used to be a level 1, but it’s not standard anymore, and there are some variants in there, like 2A and 3A).

• Level IIA is the lowest rating, and it will protect against handgun rounds up to .45ACP. Note that the most common handgun caliber is 9mm, and that’s covered here.
• Level II will protect against handgun rounds up to .357 magnum, but not .357 SIG.
• Level IIIA will protect against handgun rounds up to .44 Magnum, which is the largest common handgun caliber. Larger and more powerful rounds do exist, but they are exceedingly rare.
• Level III will protect against handgun and rifle rounds up to 7.62x54mm, M80 ball ammo. Armor penetrating ammo, such as ‘green tip’ or ‘black tip’ rounds can generally penetrate this armor. Note that the 5.56x45mm M855 is included in this, but the 5.56x45mm M855A1 ‘green tip’ will penetrate this.
• Level IV will protect against handgun and rifle rounds up to .30-06 Springfield M2, which is an armor penetrating version of the common full-size .30-06 round. It will protect against at least a single hit from any common ‘green tip’ or ‘black tip’ ammo, as well.

In addition to those, there are a couple of ‘industry standard’ ratings out there. Level III+ or 3+ will generally protect against any ‘green tip’ or ‘black tip’ variant of anything up to 7.62x54mm. This is functionally identical to, and rapidly being deprecated by so called ‘Special Rifle Threat’ armor. There is also level II+ or 2+, which will protect against 5.56x45mm M855, but not 7.62x54MM M80. Finally, there is level IV+ or 4+, which really varies from manufacturer to manufacturer, with some bragging that it will stop a .50BMG round. Note that if you get shot in a level IV+ plates with a .50BMG, it doesn’t really matter whether it stops the round or not, your heart won’t be beating either way.

Be careful of those ‘industry standard’ ratings. Also be careful of manufacturers who

Armor Materials

Armor plates generally come in four different materials. Ballistic fiber, steel, ceramic composite and UHWMPE (Ultra High Molecular Weight PolyEthylene).

Ballistic Fiber

Also known as soft armor, this is made of dozens of layers of synthetic fibers such as Kevlar, Twaron or Spectra. They work by slowing down and then catching the bullet like a net. Advantages of this armor are that it is thin, soft and flexible and generally lighter than any other type. Disadvantages are that it’s completely unable to deal with rifle rounds, and only goes up to level IIIA on the NIJ scale.

Steel

This is not regular steel (do NOT run down to Home Depot and pick up some mild steel to cut into plates), but specifically made, hardened steel like AR500 or AR600. This is the same stuff that passive tank armor is made from. Advantages of steel are its unparalleled multi-hit performance (it can often handle multiple hits in the same location) its thinness, often coming in at under 1/2″ thick, and its low cost relative to protection, being available in ratings from III+ all the way up to the mythical IV+. Disadvantages are the weight and the potential for spalling (discussed below), though the latter is a much-misunderstood subject that’s not as big a deal as the fudd-lore and tactiboos make it out to be. This is what the armor I used to wear in the Army was made of.

Ceramic Composite

This is the most common and most popular type of hard plate out there. It’s made of ceramic which is reinforced with another material, like Kevlar or UHWMPE. Advantages of this kind are its light weight compared to steel and (at least with modern styles) it’s ability to stand up to multiple hits. Disadvantages are its thickness (it’s almost always at least 0.9″ thick if not thicker), the fact that it does produce spalling (though less than steel) and the fact that the ‘multi-hit’ capabilities which manufacturers love to crow about very much assume that the second hit is at least 3-4″ away from the first, otherwise, it’s not going to stop shit.

UHMWPE

This is a sort of plastic. In fact, it’s a variant of the same kind of plastic that milk bottles are made from. When people on YouTube make ‘DIY body armor’, it’s almost always made from commercially-available variants of this stuff. Advantages are its light weight (even lighter than ceramic), its very low potential for spalling and its ability to stand up to multiple hits (somewhere in between steel and ceramic). Disadvantages are the thickness (it’s almost always at least 1.2″ thick) and cost relative to protection. Pure UHMWPE level IV armor can get close to $800 a plate.

Penetration and Backface Deformation

Penetration refers to round penetrating all the way through a plate. This is a bad thing (duh), and is to be avoided. Backface deformation refers to how far the back of the plate will be outdented by an impact. Less backface deformation is better, but some is inevitable. Too much can kill you, even if the round doesn’t penetrate the plate, so do not ignore this stat. The NIJ ratings allow for a certain degree of backface deformation (45mm, which is about 1-3/4 inches). This number is about the most your body can easily handle, and armor which deforms more than this can kill you even if it stops a round, if that round impacts where your heart is.

Trauma pads

Trauma pads (or plates) are foam inserts that go behind your plates in your plate carrier. They exist to spread out the force of impacts and soften the blow from the backface deformation that the plates will experience. Do not skip these, no matter what. Trauma pads can catch a small amount of backface spalling (the only kind that’s really dangerous) and they will turn an injury that definitely will break ribs into one that only probably will. They are a cheap purchase (often as cheap at $25 per pad), and they make a big difference.

Spalling

Spalling is a big concern among tactiboos and fudds on the internet. It is the tendency of hard armor like ceramic or steel to shatter rounds, and the tendency of those rounds to tear off tiny pieces of the armor. When that happens, those little chunks have a lot of kinetic energy. Fudds on the internet will warn you of the grave danger this can produce, and liken it to a frag grenade going off right in front of you. They will even tell you that coatings specifically marketed as a solution for spalling are worthless. They will insist, almost without fail, that getting hit while wearing steel armor is a death sentence.

To be frank, this is nonsense.

For starters, the amount of spalling that happens even when the hardest steel armor is struck by the hardest, fastest-moving rounds is much, much less than the internet will lead you to believe. It’s usually tiny little particles that won’t do worse than cause a light rash, and the bigger pieces (big enough to cause any real injury) can usually be counted on the fingers of one hand. And the number of bits big enough to cause a life-threatening injury is virtually nil. It would be incredibly unlucky to have a tiny bit of armor fly off and sever a major artery.

For another thing, these tactiboos simply haven’t done enough naval gazing. When bullet impacts armor, the kinetic energy gets deflected. Armor is rarely flat, and even when it is, it sits proud of your chest, and back, which generally sits proud or level to (or at least close to) your head and ass. The majority of spalling will thus happen away from you. Yes, it can strike your arms, but look back to the last paragraph. You can also wear long sleeves (believe it or not, this will help). In a close enough firefight, this might actually be helpful, though I’ve never seen that happen.

For the final point, you have to remember what kinds of forces are involved here. Yes, bullets move very fast. But they’re also very small and relatively light. It doesn’t take as much energy as you’d expect to get them moving, which is one of the reasons why guns are so damn reliable. The bullet will impact the armor and immediately begin deforming the armor and itself. That’s going to bleed off most of that energy. Then, as the armor and bullet deform, that deformation will produce cracking. That cracking will bleed off even more energy. Finally, that cracking will make its way through back to the surface and produce a spall, which will fly out under whatever energy is left to it (understanding that all of the other spalls, including the tiny little particles no bigger than a grain of dust, also took some of that leftover energy). The speed at which a spall is moving is much, much less than the speed of a bullet. Like 1/4 down to 1/10 the speed. Being smaller and having jagged, sharp edges, yes, it can still penetrate flesh. But the odds of a spall flying directly up and back, going in your jaw, penetrating your soft palette and the bottom of your skull to bounce around inside your brain pan is virtually nil.

I wore steel armor during my deployments, as did my entire team, and collectively we took about two dozen hits to our armor during that time (yeah, we sucked at dodging). For all of those hits, the total number of spalling injuries we experiences was 1. And that was what could accurately be described as a ‘boo-boo’ on my buddy Jim’s inner bicep. Yes, he got two stitches in it, because it took a little chunk of meat out. But he was still able to use that arm, the same day he was hit.

And, to be fair, we don’t know that it was spalling. It could have been a bit of rebar or fragmentation from something else. We just know he got hit, and while checking him, Doc noticed his arm.

Plate Carriers as Load Carrying Equipment

Your carrier has a secondary purpose beyond holding the plates, and that is holding other stuff. Most modern plate carriers will have MOLLE webbing on them. Some will have it in specific areas and others will have it in other areas. In almost all cases, there will be some. The current hotness is to lace al your chest gear to your plate carrier and save yourself from having to buy a separate chest rig. Either way, it’s best to be aware that people will talk about the PC both in terms of the actual armor and in terms of Load Carrying Equipment (LCE).

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s move on to the purpose.

The Purpose

The purpose of armor (the plates themselves) is not to keep you in the fight. I don’t care what your favorite guntuber says or what the consensus on r/BodyArmor is. Armor might keep you in the fight, if the stars align juuuuust right and you have really good luck, but the most likely outcome of you getting shot, even in the plates, is you being out of the fight, at least for a while. And gunfights don’t usually last all that long.

Instead, the purpose is to make it more likely that you will survive the fight and make a better recovery after. And that very much assumes that you have access to medical treatment. Yes, you are very likely to survive tanking a .22LR round in the plates and to keep fighting. And yes, you are very likely to make a full recovery from taking a 9mm round in your level 4 plates without a trip to the hospital. But those possibilities do not make up the bulk of the odds when you go into a fight wearing armor.

The way armor is used in the military is going to be different from the way it will be used by civilians. Civilians don’t have radios to call for a CASEVAC (Casualty Evacuation) in the middle of a fight. Yes, ambulances exist, but paramedics aren’t armed (and armored) soldiers riding around in armored vehicles or flying in via chopper to an LZ (Landing Zone) that’s defended by a platoon armed with small arms and AA (Anti-Armor) munitions.

For a civilian, armor is going to be something that might turn a GSW into a BFT (thats Gun Shot Wound and Blunt Force Trauma), thus making your need to receive immediate medical attention a bit less pressing, hopefully keeping you alive long enough to wait out the fight and be seen. Maybe, if you’re lucky, you’ll be able to flee the fight.

Let’s be clear on this. Your armor will not keep you up and fighting. It will simply make you more likely to survive being shot.

The Considerations

Tactiboos will invariably tell you that anything less than level IV armor is a waste of money and a death sentence, when the boog (another term for the Civil War 2: Electric Boogaloo) kicks off. But remember, tactiboos are armchair tacticians who don’t have any real experience with combat.

Remember what I said above about the purpose of armor? Go look at my exact wording. You’ll see I keep talking about odds and chances and things being more or less likely. I’m not discussing penetration characteristics of different rounds, the way that tactiboos do. Why is that? Because, as I said above, the purpose of armor is about increases your chances of surviving a gunfight. In that vein, considering what you are likely to be shot it is perfectly valid, and doing so opens you up to more possibilities, and to getting armored at a lower cost.

Level IV plates and a PC that’s NIJ rated to level IIIA will run you at least $750, and that’s if you find them on a clearance-level sale. It’s much more likely that you’ll drop at least $350 per plate and another $300 on the carrier. That’s a solid grand.

Which brings me to my setup. My armor, which is functionally very similar to the armor I wore back in the day when I was nominally a professional gunfighter, cost me $500, and it would have been less than that, if I hadn’t changed my mind about the carrier.

I’m running a Tacticon (sorry about the lack of link, but the company got sued out of existence by Crye for allegedly offering tactical gear with the Woodland pattern camo) Battlevest Elite (you can see what it looks like here), which is functionally similar to (and the same cost as) a Condor MOPC, which is my #1 recommendation to people as an entry-level or mass-purchasable option. I run level III+ steel plates with extra nylon coating to cut down on spalling (because why not?), backed by level IIIA soft armor inserts and trauma pads. I have side plates on mine as well, providing protection to my flanks, though I lack the level IIIA inserts on those. I’m currently looking into making my own pauldrons out of level IIIA rated material, and adding plastic chainmail on top, for the drip.

Contrary to what any tactiboo will tell you, drip matters. No, that’s not a joke. If you step into the room looking like a modern-day viking warrior with an insatiable thirst for blood, that’s going to have a very different effect on the enemy than if you step into the room looking like a weeboo in airsoft gear or a gravy seal with more money than training. To that end, I also keep a viking-style battleaxe with my rattle, which serves the same purpose as a tomahawk I used to carry, but will have a better impact on my future potential enemies. Anyone who tells you that gunfights happen too fast for that to matter lacks understanding of combat psychology. Gunfights do happen very fast, which makes instinctive reactions much more important.

Getting back to the topic, here’s a question for you. When was the last time you went to the range and saw someone shooting a .30-06?

Speaking for myself, I last saw one about three months ago. Of people I know who own rifles for hunting (not for preparedness), I’d say about half of them have one. You don’t really need a .30-06 to hunt deer, for example. It’s more of a bear (think grizzly or polar, not black bear) round. You might use it for elk, but if you’re hunting mule deer with it, you’re probably not a very prolific or experienced hunter.

Now ask yourself what purpose most gun owners own their weapons for. I’ll save you the trouble of looking it up. Most Americans own guns for protection. About a third (a little less) of Americans own a gun for hunting. Finding actual numbers is hard, but in my experience, about half of them own a rifle chambered in .30-06. Perhaps a few more own military-style .30-06 rifles.

About 5% of Americans own an AR15. About a third of Americans own guns at all. So let’s take that 1/3 who own guns and take the 1/3 or so of them who own guns for hunting, and then the 1/2 of them who own a .30-06, to get about the same percentage.

Now try to figure out which of them will be carrying their .30-06 instead of a 5.56 for fighting, in the event of some WROL scenario. Judging by the sentiment of the tactiboos online, I’d say that’s about 1% of those. Or about 0.05% of Americans.

Now, we then multiply those numbers up, because if you’re in a firefight, you’re going to be facing armed people. Indeed, we can multiply those rifle numbers up (most gun owners in the US actually own a single handgun, with so-called ‘super owners’ bringing the average number up to 5 guns) because most of the people motivated to fight will be those who have been preparing to fight.

So there’s a 99% chance you’ll be facing a 5.56 rifle, and about a 1% chance you’ll face someone with a .30-06. Of course, these odds will change depending on where you live, but most of us live in the cities. Historically, there hasn’t been a lot of grizzly bear or elk hunting in the cities (shocking, I know), so for most people, the odds of facing a .30-06 are even lower. But we’ll stick with those numbers.

How many firefights do you think you’ll be in? If your answer is even close to 100, then congrats, you’re a tactiboo, and you have no idea what you’re talking about. How many enemies do you think you’ll face in those fights? If you answer is even close to 20, congrats again.

Odds are, you’re going to find yourself in 1-5 gunfights, each time facing about 1-5 enemy. So maybe 25 enemies over the course of whatever nightmare civil war scenario the tactiboos are planning. And note; I’m using the Mad-Max style predictions here. More realistic predictions bring those numbers down to less than one firefight against less than one enemy.

So, with that in mind, how necessary are level IV plates again? From the get-go, we’re playing the odds here. This is classic Risk Management.

“Yeah, but if shit does go down, would you rather have level IV plates or level IIIA plates?” That’s an ignorant question, because it ignores the cost and weight considerations. If shit does go down, I’d rather have level IIIA plates, plus a couple upgrades on my rifle, plus maybe a training course or two than just level IV plates, a bone-stock poverty pony rifle running knockoff optics and no training. I’d rather be running around in the weight of level IIIA armor than in the weight of level IV armor. I might even rather have the freedom of movement provided by soft inserts than the protection provided by hard plates.

So the actual degree of protection you need is going to depend on the scenario you’re planning to find yourself in.

Choosing Plates and Plate Carriers

Now, the carrier itself has two purposes. The main purpose is to hold your armor in place, where it needs to be. The secondary purpose is to give you space and means to carry some of the gear you will be carrying into the fight.

Now, when wearing your armor, the top should be at about your clavicle, lined up with your collarbones. The bottom should extend below the bottom of your rib cage. You’ll notice that this is the exact height of your rib cage, and that’s no coincidence. Your ribs are a sort of armor, protecting the delicate internal organs behind them. Those organs, namely your lungs and heart, are the ones that, if damaged, will drop you right away.

When choosing plates, your armor should be sized to not be smaller or larger than this. For most people, that means a 10″x12″ plate, but smaller people should wear an 8″x10″ plate and larger people should wear an 11″x14″ plate. For people smaller or larger than this, custom-sized plates are out there, but they can get quite expensive, especially for larger plates.

When choosing a PC (Plate Carrier), you should consider all the factors involved.

• Will your plates fit them, along with a trauma pad? You may plan to stack plates (this is what I do, and I’ll explain that lower down, when discussing which plates you need), and if you do, you will need to account for that, as well. The type of plate you choose will also matter. Steel is generally thinner than soft armor, which is generally thinner than ceramic, which, in turn, is generally thinner than UHMWPE. I wouldn’t plan on stacking UHMWPE plates at all.
• Can you move freely while wearing it? Most plate carriers are resizable, but all have a smallest and largest setup, and the range of sizes will vary from PC to PC. You not only want to be able to size the PC to your body (so that it sets right), but you want to be able to freely move your arms and bend at the waist as much as possible while wearing it.
• Is the PC itself NIJ rated? Many of the more expensive options out there will have an NIJ rating, meaning that they provide protection even without plates inserted. This will tend to be either level 2 or level 3A. If you are considering stacking hard and soft armor the way I do (and again, will describe below), you might be better off spending the extra $100 on buying a PC that’s NIJ rated to IIIA and just adding level III plates to that.
• Does the PC have what you need as far as gear goes? MOLLE, pockets and pouches can all be found on many different PCs, and in many different configurations. Will your LCE work with it?

When choosing plates for the armor, you should consider how you will be using the armor. What circumstances are you planning for?

• Riots and protests. If you’re planning on attending a lot of protests and worry about their potential to turn into riots, you probably don’t need rifle-rated plates. Yes, the police use rifles, and yes, they will shoot unarmed civilians (they’ll even drop bombs on civilians). But the vast, vast majority of rounds fired will be handgun rounds or less-than-lethal rounds. And if those civilians start shooting back, they’ll be using mainly handgun rounds, as well. PCCs (Pistol Caliber Carbines) are growing in popularity among preppers, as are PDWs (Personal Defense Weapons), which are usually pistol caliber, as well. Concealability will be a major concern for those bringing weapons to protests, as this is often illegal, even in open-carry states. In these cases, the weight savings will justify the added risk. I will also note that even level IIIa armor can slow down rifle rounds, making the wounds they cause less severe and more easily treatable. This is especially true of 5.56, the most common rifle round in the US, which requires a high speed on impact in order to tumble through tissue. I would still not advise taking a 5.56 round in a level IIIA plate, however. It likely will tumble some just from the impact of the armor, and the reduction in wound severity isn’t going to be all that much.
• Defending one’s home or community from tyrannical overreach by law enforcement. The same basic logic applies here. Most of the rounds directed your way will be pistol caliber rounds. That being said, the balance is slightly shifted, because the enemy are on a dedicated offensive, and they will likely have more rifles. You may want to consider level III plates for this.
• Defending one’s home or community during a period of time in which the rule of law is gone. This is the most likely scenario in which a full set of battle rattle (referring to the guns and gear you see high-speed operator types using in media and the news) might be justified. For this, I would tend to recommend at least level 3 plates, because 5.56 is the most common rifle round, and people who want to take what you and your community have are likely to have this. You may even consider getting level III+ or level IV plates, though I don’t think this is necessary.
• Skirmishing with the enemy during a period of civil strife akin to The Troubles in Ireland. This is the scenario that bears the most resemblance to the Mad-Max-but-American-so-less-leather-and-more-nylon (though there’s still likely to be a lot of homoerotic tones to it all) scenario that tactiboos talk about, but which is still realistic. This is the possible scenario where level IV or level IV+ plates would be most useful. Even still, you’re much more likely to be a foot soldier, facing guys armed with 5.56 rifles and PCCs and handguns.

My Recommendations

Here, we get to the meat of the matter. Here’s what I think. Above, I’ve described what my loadout is. In the future, I plan to upgrade to a PC that has a level IIIA rating, for the extra protection without a lot of extra weight. I’m fairly confident that about $750 worth of armor will be all that I need and more. But I also don’t have a shit-ton of community organizing and mutual-aid skills. I honestly don’t know what good I would be, except as a field leader for partisans during partisan skirmishes. So for myself, I’m planning on the worst possible scenario.

For you, I recommend you sort out exactly what you think will happen (I’ll write a post about that in the near future, to help you work it out). Pick which scenario I outlined above you think you’re going to find yourself in (not necessarily the most likely one you’ll find yourself in, but the worst one you expect to find yourself in). Bear in mind that if you’re not in good shape, you’re not going to be guerilla. Sorry, but that’s the way it is. And most of us are not in good shape. I’m not really in great shape myself, and I’m in better shape than 90% of Americans. I just have the training and experience (and I’m working on getting myself back into shape) to do that work.

Buying the cheapest armor of the rating you think you’ll need might be attractive, but this is one field in which I don’t recommend buying 5 different off-brands at 20% of the going rate for name-brand stuff. Because trying it out means either shooting plates backed up to clay boxes to measure backface deformation as well as penetration, and because off-brand armor manufacturers are generally one of the shadier sides of the tactical gear community. Cheap brands like OneTigris or Votatu or Feyachi or CVLife might be fine for what they provide, but there are a host of businesses out there straight up lying about the rating of their armor, and many many more deceptively claiming that their armors ‘meet’ NIJ standard ratings, without ever actually getting them certified.

The NIJ mantains a list of armors which have been tested and certified. I would recommend buying only armor that exists on that list, because you need to be able to trust your armor, and testing is difficult. But within that restriction, I would encourage you to find the cheapest armor you can get, at the lowest rating you think you’ll need.

Below, I’ll outline a couple of possible scenarios.

• Protestor working within the ROL. Buy a level II or level IIIA armored vest. Don’t worry about plate carriers or inserts, just buy a concealable vest. You’ll come in under $500 and be done. You throw this on under your overshirt and that’s it.
• Community defenders in the vein of the Black Panthers. Buy a level III plate and a carrier and set it up the way you like. Don’t forget your trauma pads.
• Community defenders during a WROL scenario. Same as above. Level III is all you need.
• Skirmisher during The Troubles 2: American Boogaloo. Buy level III+ (or Special Rifle Threat) plates and a plate carrier. Invest in a level IIIA rated carrier if you can, or add level IIIA inserts behind your plate. Again, don’t forget your trauma pads.
• Mad Max apocalypse or Civil War 2 bullshit that will never happen, but you do you, boo. Buy level IV plates and a level IIIA carrier, plus level IIIA inserts. Stack plates/inserts with your trauma pads. Also, write your will. Your family is going to need it.