Helmet

A fairly simple helmet used during the Boshin Wars

A Helmet is a variety of hat which is designed to protect the wearer's head not just from cold and wetness, but also from external damage from blows.

Reasons for wearing a Helmet

• Sport Safety (Hockey, American Football, Lacrosse)
• Vehicular safety (motorcylcing, bicycling)
• Workplace Safety
• Extra Vehicular Activity
• Hazmat Work
• Entering a Combat Situation

Materials to make a helmet out of

• Wood, if you have trees but metal is scarce or you are really primitive
• Wool, if you have sheep but metal is scarce or you are really primitive, this applies to other textiles as well
• Leather, if you have large animals but metal is scarce, you are really primitive or are at the bottom of the social ladder
• Bronze, if you are living in the bronze age
• Steel, if your society has mastered iron working and does not want to put up with importing tin and/or copper
• Plastics
• Ceramics and ballistic textiles, if you are in the modern age and want to stop shrapnel and pistol rounds out of your brain
• Tinfoil, to keep out the FBI/CIA/NSA/MI6/CSIS/Russian/European Union/Chinese/Indian/Templar/Google/Scientologist/Vatican/Wold Bank/NWO/MIB/Moon Nazi/Mars Soviet/Mercury Empire of Japan/Asteroid Belt Napoleonic Empire/Lizard Men/Pinniped mind control rays.

Some types of helmets

• Boar Tusk Helmet: From Mycenaean Greece (1600 BCE to 1200 BCE), it was made by making a leather hat and sewing onto it slices of boar tusks. Making such a helmet required hunting down and killing something like 40 boars.
• Corinthian: Most popular variety of ancient (800 BCE to 0) Greek Hoplite Helmet, made of bronze, a single piece affair with built in cheek guards and nose guard (known as a nasal). Often had a horse hair/plumed crest.
• Galea: The Helmet worn by Roman legionaries, made out of several pieces of bronze or steel. Had cheek guards on hinges and a back guard to protect the neck.
• Spangenhelm: A dark age (5th to 9th century) helmet made of bits of iron forged riveted onto a frame. An easier form to forge than an iron bowl for unskilled smiths. Sometimes had a nasal or cheek guards attached.
• Cervelliere: A dark age/medieval helmet composed of a single steel dome. It might come with a nasal.
• Kettle Hat: A steel dome with a wide brim around it.
• Maille Coif: To better protect people's heads, they often wore hoods made of chainmail. This practice was common across Europe, the middle east and asia.
• Greathelm: A steel bucket with eyeholes wore by knights.
• Sallet: A type of steel helmet from the late middle ages. It's main component covered cheeks and had a lock neckguard in the back. To protect the face it would have a face guard bolted on, which could be raised or lowered.
• Morion: A type of helmet similar to a Kettle hat, but with a top part which came to a ridge and dipped down on the sides to cover the ears. Often morions would have cheek guards.
• Kanabo: Japanese Samurai helmets, have a dome part as well as a back made of laminar protecting the neck and cheeks. For facial protection they had a mempo, a stylized mask.
• Jingasa: Japanese Ashigaru Helmet, these were usually cone shaped (though latter ones bore a resemblance to Morions and kettle hats) and made of steel or lacquered wood.
• Adrian Helmet: Helmets fell out of fashion starting around the 18th century as they were often not much use against firearms and were deemed to be dead weight and unnecessary expense by the armies of Europe. This changed during the Great War, artillery shells would splinter into fragments when they exploded, these fragments could be stopped by a simple steel helmet. The French found this out first and in 1915 first made the Adrian Helmet out of stamped steel and reduced shrapnel casualties significantly. It had a brim which was more prominant in the front.
• Brodie Helmet: The British thought the french were onto a good idea with their Adrian helmets and designed their own. The Brodie Helmets were based off Kettle Hats. Used by troops across the British Empire during both world wars and by US troops during the Great War.
• Stahlhelm:The Germans thought the french were onto a good idea with their Adrian helmets and designed their own. The Stahlhelm was based off the Sallet. It is considered to be the best helmet of the lot as it protected the neck and ears. It became commonly associated with the nazis.

Helmets and Faces

Imperial Stormtroopers have full body armor, including helmets which conceal their faces. This tells the audience that it is alright for our heroes to gun them down en masse.

Helmets are the most common type of combat armor employed in History. Helmets protect your brain, your most important organ, from damage. Some also protect some combination of the eyes, ears, nose, and mouth, all of which are nearly as vital. When compared to a breastplate or other such article of torso armor, helmets are fairly easy and inexpensive to make, while being easy and unobtrusive to wear. If you had to have just one bit of armor, you got a helmet. Helmets came in many shapes and sizes. Even a re-purposed cooking pot will do in a pinch. Covering as much of the head as possible often improved a helmet's performance in a purely functional-as-armor sense. However, if your entire head is sheathed in vision-obstructing, hearing-distorting, badly-ventilated metal with a few small holes to look and breathe out of, you clearly have some disadvantages over a fellow wearing one of its skimpier but less-obstructive counterparts.

However, for visual fiction, full-face helmets can be problematic as they hide the faces of the character and as such, limit what emotions and features can be shown to the audience, as well as concealing his his/her identity and making them less relatable, ironically serving the opposite function of all other varieties of hats. For this reason, full head helmets are usually reserved for faceless enemies employed by the enemy to be killed with a minimum of audience empathy while heroes wear helmets which leave their faces exposed, or simply go helmetless into combat situations. The most common exception to this rule is to conceal the fact that the wearer is female, as so she can prove her martial skills to the surrounding characters who hold to pre-modern prejudices about gender and shock them by the fact that this was done by a female.

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