Kentucky Ballistics Shoots an EF5 Tornado Shelter to Find Its Breaking Point

Scott from Kentucky Ballistics gets his hands on an 8,000-pound EF5-rated tornado shelter and spends the video finding out exactly how much lead it takes to defeat four inches of rebar-reinforced concrete. He starts small with .22 LR and works his way up through handgun calibers before bringing out the shotguns, rifles, and eventually an anti-tank gun.

Snapshot

The shelter shrugs off .22 LR, 9mm, .32 ACP and .45 ACP with only surface dings, but things change fast once Scott moves into magnum handgun territory. By the time he reaches 500 Bushwhacker and the promised 20mm Solothurn, the shelter is taking hits that blow concrete clean off the opposite wall.

Key points

• Small calibers barely scratch it: .22 LR, 9mm, .32 ACP and .45 ACP leave shallow craters and chipped concrete but never threaten to get through the 4-inch walls.
• 10mm and .357 punch surprisingly deep: Scott notes the 10mm Glock 40 round hits a seam and carves a noticeably deep hole, with .357 Magnum from a Smith & Wesson 686 doing comparable damage.
• Magnum handguns start cracking the far side: 44 Magnum, 454 Casull and 500 Smith & Wesson Magnum each gouge bigger craters, and by 454 Casull, Scott finds concrete knocked loose on the inside wall.
• 500 Bushwhacker fully penetrates: the 400-grain brass solid from this T2 Armory round, which Scott calls basically a rifle round, blows straight through both walls of the shelter.
• Rifles and the 20mm finish the job: a 12-gauge slug and 5.56 from an AR-15 dent the shelter without full penetration, setting up the bigger rifles, 50 BMG, and finally the 20mm Solothurn anti-tank rifle, which the brief confirms perforates both walls completely.

Quick take

This is a straightforward, entertaining stress test that shows just how much of a gap there is between handgun rounds and true anti-materiel firepower, with Scott's play-by-play making clear which calibers actually threaten hardened concrete and which just make noise.

Watch the full video: Kentucky Ballistics