system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5 - How are airplane black boxes made “crash proof”

Pretty much title. I’ve always wondered how those things can withstand massive crashes and explosions and still be reliable to retrieve recordings from.
gpt
Metal box, fireproof, waterproof, installed in the tail of the plane. The tail does already survive the majority of impacts. You can’t crash tail first AND going fast. The plane even if loses control entirely, flies like a dart, and crashes nose first. If it goes on flat spin it crashes flat, and that reduced the terminal velocity anyway, so it’s not fast enough to smash the box.

So it’s both construction and positioning.