system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: At the risk of seeming insensitive, if bombs are so powerful, how does one person hugging a suicide bomber save so many others?
gpt
The bombs that suicide bombers use can have shrapnel (like nails), to maximize the casualties - it's not just the shockwaves, it's the high speed bits of metal that gets you.

If one person gets in close, they absorb that shrapnel that would otherwise have gone out in an ever-increasing radius of destruction. They get super-dead, but the benefit is the lives of others.

If you look through Medal of Honor winners, you'll find soldiers that have thrown themselves on grenades, sacrificing themselves for the good of others. Same basic idea.