system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How does hugging a bomb to one's body significantly reduce the bombs damage potential?

It seems like if a bomb or grenade had the power to significantly damage a large number of bodies originally, then having one of those bodies wrapped around it when it exploded wouldn't make such a big difference in the force it generated. How do the physics of this work?
gpt
It's about potential energy. Think of a pool table. Hit the cue ball down the table as hard as you can and it'll bounce back and forth a few times. 
Hit the same ball as hard as you can but put another ball in front of it and your ball will slow down quick after transferring the majority of its energy into the other ball. However it takes some energy to get it going from a stand still so that ball might bounce of two cushions if your lucky but no where near as far as the first time you hit the cue ball.

Wrapped in technically 2 bodies, all of the  concussive wave first has to go through them, liqifying their organs but having a lesser effect on the other bystanders as it has less potential energy.
Shrapnel also individually has fairly low energy so most will be stopped by their bodies. However the explosion would have disintegrated their bodies, effectively creating an organic Shrapnel but much less of it and traveling with less energy.