We live in interesting and somewhat precarious times. No one can say for certain that they are immune from economic collapse, civil disturbance or even war. With the world’s escalating financial, environmental and political problems lately, anything is possible.
All the many benefits of earthbags are reported on our EarthbagBuilding.com website – low cost, simplicity of construction, durability, and on and on. But almost no one mentions the bullet resistance of sandbags (earthbags). As this post explains, it’s a bonus benefit of earthbag building that is often overlooked.
How effective are sandbags for stopping bullets? The Box O’ Truth website performed a test to find out: http://theboxotruth.com/docs/bot7.htm.
Testing bullet resistance of sandbags using boxes of sand.
They built boxes out of 2×6 lumber and drywall, and filled them with sand so they could measure bullet penetration. Four boxes were stacked back-to-back on sawhorses. But it turns out they didn’t need that many. Just one box would have been sufficient.
They started out with a .22 LR from a .22 revolver. It penetrated about 5 inches into the sand.
They continued the test using 9mm Ball, .45 ACP, 5.56mm XM-193 Ball out of a 20″ AR15, 7.62 X 51 from a FAL, a 12 gauge slug, and finally .223 and .308 rifle rounds.
None of the rounds penetrated more than 6”!
And I’m sure the military have done extensive testing on this or they wouldn’t have kept using sandbags for all these years. I think we can add bullet resistance to the list of earthbag benefits.
Good to know, since I have property in the woods and plenty of deer walking across it. Always a little nervous during hunting season. An earthbag structure might give me that extra peace of mind that I wouldn’t otherwise get with regular stick-built housing…