Bio-Armour
Bio-Armour (Biological Armour) is a fictional body armour system which includes living biological parts.
Design
Bio-armour is based around an adaptive living biological framework, consisting of an extremely hardy synthetic muscle suit with a composite armoured carapace. Due to its "living" construction, bio armour will theoretically be able to self-repair in the manner of a living organism, and other combat benefits may include total biological integration with the wearer, allowing for greatly improved healing, sensory awareness and physical endurance. Bio-links and synthetic arteries could allow shared blood circulation, and the suit's muscle layer could provide both excellent protection from enemy fire and increased physical strength for the wearer.
A bio-armour carapace is expected to be semi-biological as well, possibly with an outer layer consisting of both artificial Kevlar and living muscle sinew. As well as providing protection from small arms fire, such armour could utilise an integrated artificial immune system and airtight construction to protect the wearer from biological and chemical weapons, as well as radioactive "dirty bombs". A possible self-contained air supply, inbuilt unisex valve toilet and ration pack could make it possible for future combatants to survive days of combat without ever having to remove the bio-armour. Integrated artificial intelligence, weapons systems and communications could also make appearances in future biological armour.
To combat biological armour, it is plausible that future opponents will try to develop advanced viral weapons systems to work alongside conventional weaponry. Such weapons may use specially cultivated, hyper-volatile synthetic viruses which can infect even the heavily protected and biologically shielded muscle skeletons of bio-armour, causing the armour to decay or attacking the wearer directly. Another potential (and probably more likely, at least to begin with) method of attacking it would be to use chemical weapons to poison it or using extremely corrosive acids to counteract any of the armor's self regenerative properties.
Fictional examples
In fiction, biological armour appears quite frequently. Examples of its use are:-
- In the fictional Warhammer 40,000 universe, the diseased Nurgle Chaos Space Marines are often depicted as wearing fully integrated daemonic living combat armour. This armour is made of various vile secretions of the marine and flesh that combined with the marine's existing power armour, resulting in a suit that is more resilient than most xeno-beasts. The standard issue armour is considerabily more durable than regular armour but higher champions have more gifts that mutate the armour further. In other cases the part viewed as "armour" may very well be the marine's flesh, having rotted away the ceramite plates. In addition to the benefits of traditional bio-armour, the plague marine's power armour also releases toxic gases and diseases as a means of biological warfare. The Tyranids also have an exoskeleton that resembles bio-armour, as it heals and strengthens with each blow. In addition all space marine have an organ directly under their skin known as the Black Carapace that links them to their power armour and provides some degree of protection.
- In the anime series Guyver, an alternate timeline is introduced where humans were bred as biological soldiers. One of the aliens' projects included a kind of biological armor which integrated internally with the host, endowing him or her with superhuman abilities.
- In the Peter F. Hamilton fiction book Fallen Dragon, the security troops of the interstellar company Zantiu-Braun are described as wearing biological "Skin" armour, combining computerized hypertechnology, an artificial blood supply, multiple integrated weapons systems and a biological muscle skeleton.
- In Marvel comics' Spider-Man comic book, Spider-Man was temporarily enhanced with a living symbiotic organism which could be described as armor. Besides strength enhancement, the suit could generate webbing, and shape-shift into anything Spider-Man imagined, which eliminated the need to change clothing. Spider-Man eventually discarded the suit, which later merged with Eddie Brock to become the villain Venom.
- The Valiant Comics series X-O Manowar features the protagonist Aric who dons a suit of living armour of alien origin that grants him extended life, flight, regeneration and energy blasts as well as being able to survive in the vacuum of space. He uses the armour to battle the alien race he calls 'spider-demons'.
- In Cthulhutech, symbiotic armor suits are known as "Tagers".
- The Crysis series feature a symbiotic exosuit called the Nanosuit 1.0 and it's successor the Nanosuit 2.0. Both allow the user to become stronger, faster, more resilient to damage and hazardous environments (temperatures under -200 degrees Celsius, underwater, and even environments without breathable air) and become invisible. The symbiotic nature of the suits caused anyone who would put them on would be unable to take it off ( which would cause death). The Nanosuit 2.0 has the ability to regenerate itself. It can heal the wearer (by growing in to the wounds) and revive him using a defibrilator, and process large amounts of alien substance in order to combat them.
See also