Tensegrity suit

The tensegrity suit in That Which Binds Us is a form of modern armor that protects them from blunt force trauma. After all, that spandex suit superheroes are wearing can’t just be all for show. I dreamed up this piece of sci-fi technology based on anatomy and how the human body deals with force. Read on to find out more, you nerds.

Tensegrity

Tensegrity comes from combining the words “tensional integrity”. It is a structural system that is also referred to as floating compression. If you look up pictures of tensegrity structures, you’ll see some really cool gravity-defying structures. Or at least, they look like they’re gravity-defying. In reality, they work by perfectly balanced tension between supporting cables.

Fascial models

It’s common in fascial models for the human body (or any fascia I guess) to speculate that they are arranged in a type of tensegrity structure. This means that force is distributed evenly through the entire structure. So if you push through your right foot, the force is transmitted (at least partially) up through the myofascial line, maybe as far as the head. Pretty cool, right?

It doesn’t actually work nearly as efficiently as that, but it’s still an interesting idea. And the tensegrity suits are artificial so maybe they could have much better tensioning. Wait, what am I talking about, I invented them. Yes, they work perfectly and distribute force just as advertised.

Spicule system

They mention in the book that simply distributing the force isn’t good enough. If you get hit with a sledgehammer, distributing that over your body is still going to do some damage. So I added in the spicule system. Ok, this one is really cool.

In the bones of our spine (the vertebrae, specifically the end plates), the bone appears like it cobwebs throughout. These small little connections are actually meant to be broken. When the little parts of the bones break, they absorb force going through the spine. When we rest, our body then rebuilds this and we regenerate some of our shock absorbing ability.

Crumpling

I just copied this idea and applied it to the suit. So the layers of the suit have microscopic weak electronic bonds that are meant to be broken. When force is imparted on the suit, some of these bonds break, absorbing the force and protecting the user. This is described as crumpling – like when a car crumples so that the shell absorbs the impact of a collision instead of the passengers.

The bonds can then be reformed by charging the suit, thus restoring the force absorption of the suit. Does this make any sense? No, probably not. That’s why it’s science fiction. But still, pretty awesome if it did, right? Also if this becomes a real thing, then you heard it here first.

The tensegrity suit

Putting it all together, the suit is 3D printed to fit each person exactly. Each layer of the suit is tensioned in a tensegrity structure to distribute force. The layers are then connected via millions of weak electronic bonds to absorb that force.

I had another idea to make the suits even cooler that introduced a semi-recharging option in the field. I won’t say it here since I still might make it a thing for later books. But I’ll say if I do make it a thing, it will be awesome. Like someone’s suit is depleted and they just hit the button and it snaps back up to half-full.