All You Ever Wanted To Know About Bomb Suits

If you’re like me, you’re absolutely giddy that The Hurt Locker cleaned up at this year’s Academy Awards, winning Best Director and Best Picture (I’m also happy that Avatar won barely anything but that’s a different post entirely). Having seen the movie a few times (and I may go to a free screening tonight actually) I still had a few questions about the bomb suit itself. Fortunately Dvice has a great article up about it. Here are some of the best snippets:

This three-layer system is amazingly effective, but no EOD suit is perfect. With every step you take closer to the bomb, the destructive force of its blast increases by an exponent of three. “So the difference between being just a small distance away from the explosive device — even a few feet — versus being right next to it, can save your life,” Borkar says.

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You can’t see it in the film, but underneath all this gear is the EOD tech’s best friend: a flame-resistant inner layer that circulates ice water all over the body. (Defusing bombs in 120-degree Iraqi heat is stressful enough without adding risk of heatstroke to the mix. This layer is also similar to the water-cooled garments that NASA astronauts have worn inside their space suits since the Apollo missions.) The cooling suit runs off of the same onboard battery that powers the suit’s lamp, fan, and comm link; a pump circulates a liter of ice water (stored in a specially shaped bottle) from head to toe.

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Current suits on the market weigh anywhere from 60 to 70 pounds, and all that armor plating makes moving around pretty difficult. If there’s any gripe that Borkar has about in The Hurt Locker’s mostly-accurate portrayal of the EOD suit, it’s this: “The techs just walk far too easily.” That opening scene where Guy Pearce hoofs it away from the exploding bomb? Fat chance: according to Borkar, just walking in these suits feels like carrying an anvil between your legs.

(h/t: Danger Room)

—Daniel Strauss