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As a result of a controversy in role-playing games, my group did not raise the question of whether it would be possible to shoot a bow while in a wheelchair. what do you think?
IIrc, there's also a thing in some media where "only bad guys use guns." Like, it's not everywhere, but a lot of super hero comics had a "don't make guns cool to children" thing for awhile, so you had heroes using archery and throwing weapons vs. bad guys with tommy guns and stuff.
This is absolutely true. How much more effective would Batman be if he augmented his approach and techniques with firearms? Batman is a good example too because he could literally be trained in anything as he's a billionaire.
@@CoffeeFiend1 He did use guns early in his run in the 40's in a western "shoot the gun out of their hands" style but as the original poster said they decided to go more kids friendly. I believe it's explained as him having a psychological trauma from seeing his parents shot and can't handle one beyond disarming an opponent.
@@silverjohn6037 I, personally, believe that the Batman can easily use that gun beyond that capacity, but he doesn't because he views human life as sacred. I've never liked the idea of the slippery slope on someone as well-disciplined as him.
@@lemagicbaguette1917 That's fair enough. I would say I've always liked the Batman Beyond animated series for the reason it provided as to why Batman retired. He gets in a fight but, because he's getting older, is losing when he grabs a gun and points it at the crook. He doesn't pull the trigger but is horrified by what he nearly did and realizes the time has come to hang up the cape.
For sci-fi dystopian settings, you could see analogue weapons like bows and daggers as being preferable to something more traceable by an omniscient government.
Plus, as stated, ammo is easier to make. People would take note of someone making powder, because they'd hear the explosions as you worked out the right mix. Or hear you shooting. You whittling away at some wood might just you being bored
Or to stick to the sci-fi setting, maybe have even heavier bows that can only be drawn with exoskeletons that the characters use to deal greater damage
There's also the point of magic when it comes to bows vs guns within fantasy: Enchantments. It's probably relatively easy to enchant a bow - it's made to store and release energy, so just make it better at doing just that. You could also enchant the arrows themselves, they're basically just tiny wands, after all. Guns are a bit trickier. Enchanting the gun itself might not even do much, since it doesn't actually accelerate anything - it's the gunpowder that "shoots" the bullet, after all, not the gun. And gunpowder is one-use only - just like the bullet, which will no doubt deform upon impact, so no luck there either. So if were to equip my soldiers in a fantasy setting, I'd much rather spend my budget on 100 magical bows than 100 magical bullets (Also consider that pyromancers might be able to simply blow up your gun by igniting the powder inside, which is obviously not good for morale - no one likes soldiers who are afraid of their own weapon)
Inversely there might be some kind of "anti-combustion field" spell that effectively renders gunpowder inert, but no equivalent that can make mechanical tension stop working like it should.
it sort of depends on the setting all in all, like for instance theres one setting i know where they used magic gunpowder which gave various effects to their shots like scatter shot or homing, theres also settings where ranged weapons cant be enchanted at all so everyone goes to using a sword, it all just depends on the setting and its magic system
@@Candlemancer you could have a spell that disrupts tension and elasticity enough to render bows useless, but I think you’d be more concerned about your muscles being torn apart from the most minute effort, or your skin being petrified like setting concrete.
I think the main factor in sci-fi post apocalypse or similar setting is for sure ammunition. It's not easy to make ammunitions for guns from scratch. While making arrows is not rocket science. Sure, it won't be very good arrows. But you can still kill with it. And the risk to be hurt by a self made arrow is way lower than the risk of putting a self made bullet into your gun 😅.
"...bows identify your character not only as someone distinctive, but as someone with a hell of a lot of skill." That's the most unassuming way for you to describe yourself!
There's an additional point I'd like to bring up about fantasy and sci-fi settings. Since how capable of a bow you can use depends on the strength with which you can draw it, characters with access to enhanced or assisted strength could conceivably shoot heavier arrows faster from far more powerful bows. To take that concept to its logical extreme, all we have to do is look at Warframe. The bows in that are really hefty metal things shooting incredibly sturdy arrows that will happily sail through multiple enemy troops and pin them to a wall fifty metres behind them. Because they're being wielded by living metal warriors with levels of physical strength ranging between "tear their extremely resilient enemies to pieces with their bare hands" (physically weak frames) and "destroy an asteroid probably tens of kilometres across with a single punch" (the physically strongest frame). When you have the strength to rapid-fire the equivalent of an especially powerful ballista with consistently good aim, why wouldn't you?
i mean the same thing could be applied to guns, if you have the strength (and i would assume the associated density and weight) to fire a crazy heavy draw bow, you can also probably handle a mad minute with an elephant rifle.
@@Xtorin_Housecat_Ohern Fair, aye, and Warframes do handle some pretty ridiculous guns and melee weapons too. I just think it's neat that when designing stuff the Devs keep in mind just how strong the wielders really are. :3
Aye a Warframe player! It's always fun to see what weird weapons they come up with with this game. I'd love to see this guys reaction to the proboscis cernos 😂
@@marocat4749 ...monster hunter still has rudimentary firearms, i'd say the reason for there not being any super high powered guns in that setting is that they just don't fit in lore.
around 8:43 ish, it's a common misconception that guns wouldn't work in space/without oxygen - but in fact, gunpowder (at least modern gunpowder) is self-oxidizing! (think about it - how else could the propellant combust in the fairly small enclosed space of the cartridge?)
I think you're ignoring the larger problem of guns being a really bad idea around vacuum sealing walls. I still remember the ridiculous conversation friends in college had of sci fi making shooting in the air to quiet a crowd not a trope anymore, because you couldn't safely shoot a gun in a spaceship. Lower energy projectile weapons that could hurt people but not walls would make more sense, and be more realistic than "energy" weapons that magically do the same thing without explanation.
The powder would work but I've heard some people argue that mechanical actions might have an issue with no atmosphere as they wouldn't have the few molecules of air separating one piece from the other and they wouldn't cycle as a result. I'd say that was overstated and, even if true, a small amount of graphite powder for a lubricant would fix the problem.
@@kobaltkween They make frangible rounds that won't penetrate the walls of an airplane, they'd be decently safe to use inside a spaceship. You lose a lot of penetration but they still mess up meat. Though the real question is why you let somebody you feel the need to shoot onto your spaceship in the first place.
Honestly, I think Newton's third law would be the biggest problem. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. In a vacuum, there would be no resistance. You fire that gun and you're going to be launched backwards as well.
Something to touch on for trick shots is that bows and arrows reward the narrative/visual structure of anticipation and payoff. Whilst in sci-fi or fantasy there's no reason that you couldn't imagine that the technology or enchantment packed into an arrowhead couldn't also be shot out of a suitably sci-fi/fantasy firearm, you'll rarely see the special bullet specifically loaded into the gun, and once its loaded and ready to shoot to do its special thing it becomes hidden from the viewer. A trick arrow is nocked and drawn entirely visibly all the way from the inception of the idea to do a trick shot, whilst its being aimed and as it is fired. It creates the anticipation for its own payoff naturally, whilst the gun obscures its anticipation. Trick shots can and do work for guns, but visually we just get more out of seeing some bizarre or powerful arrowhead attachment sticking out from the front of the bow than we do seeing a gun with a special bullet inside.
Mourn with me friends! Once my dad went to visit his side of the family out of state and somehow my passing interest in archery came up. My grandpa, who I'd only met maybe 6 times and not in at least 8 years, said "she likes archery?" And stood up, went to his garage, and gave my dad a bow to bring home to me. Unfortunately that bow was sold at a garage sale when we moved 4 years ago. My grandpa i never really got to know died three years ago. I wish I still had the bow he gave me.
I know it's outside of the scope or purpose of this video, but I do think it's important to mention the existence of slings when you are talking about the history of bows/projectile weapons. Slings are probably at least as ancient as bows and used in military contexts throughout the entire period bows were, and have several advantages over bows, including performing better in adverse weather and a sling and bullets being much less bulky than a bow and arrows.
Much easier to find ammunition with a sling, as you can (potentially, with enough skill) repurpose any suitably sized object into ammunition, whereas arrows may be harder to craft
6:28 for someone who gave a disclaimer about probably getting things wrong about guns, you make a very astute point here. "Silencers" or more accurately "suppressors" don't make guns quiet to any reasonable degree. Sure, the good ones make it difficult to pinpoint a shooter's location from a long distance. But really the only meaningful effect is that it reduces the sound from literally deafening levels to just at/under the threshold of pain, still as loud as a jackhammer. Good representation overall.
It depends on the suppressor design, firearm design, and the cartridge. Subsonic rounds out of an integrally suppressed .22 or even 9mm firearm could be as quiet as running the action manually; a hearing-safe clack of metal on metal that most people wouldn't register as a gunshot. But you're correct in most cases, suppressors generally only make things marginally less loud, hence why in a number of places outside the US they're not regulated as anything other than hearing safety devices.
@@reachandler3655 Not to any significant degree, at least not when being compared to a bow. Real life isn't a video game. Within 100 yards an integrally suppressed pistol caliber carbine or SMG will be perfectly serviceable and provide you tens of rounds on tap in a compact package you can use jammed up against a wall or prone. Beyond say, 300 yards, even supersonic rifle rounds are useful in a suppressed rifle, because the issue of locating the shooter becomes the main concern. You're just hearing snaps over your head, and adding features like trees, hills, or dense buildings can make the sound of the actual rifle firing even harder to locate. In fact, sound is pretty important to how firearms are used in a combat situation. Rounds snapping overhead, rifle fire echoing off the hills around you, that's a significant emotional event; suppression can pin an enemy down and deny ground even if you miss. Bows were used in mass as volley weapons for much of the same reason: area denial. The goal is to rout the enemy, killing them is a useful side effect.
Not entirely true. Subsonic ammunition being fired from a suppressed single shot weapon would be extremely quiet. Think something like the welrod pistol or the "hush-puppy." Suppressed supersonic ammo makes it more difficult to pinpoint a shooter's location, but a silenced single-shot pistol wouldn't be much louder than the "pew" sound you hear in movies when they fire a suppressed gun. The part that movies get wrong is that it takes a specialty weapon with specialty ammo to actually be that quiet, and just slapping a suppressor on any gun wouldn't work the same way.
@@reachandler3655 No, it can actually do the opposite since it technically increases the barrel length. The only real problem with suppressors is that it make the gun longer(harder to maneuver) and heats up really fast since it traps the gas.
Its weird how at the same time people are wildly resistant to change while also wildly dismissive of old weaponry. Archery, Muzzleloaders and Horses for example are all shown as obsolete even in their own period in modern media as if the invention of their successor were some "smoking gun" that instantly brought the change.
People like to forget that real societal change doesn't come from today's technological breakthroughs. It comes from yesterday's breakthroughs becoming more widespread.
All inventions rely on previous ones to some extent, coupled with the need to accomplish something more efficiently or in a different way. Looking back at stuff like muzzle loaded guns now is probably how people one hundred or two hundred years from now will look back at our weapons today, even though to us we can barely fathom them getting more efficient. For a quick modern example, just look at how far computer tech as come in the past thirty years, with each newer iteration outclassing previous ones significantly at times, and yet when they were originally released they were considered the pinnacle of technological advancement. While it's often stated by people to showcase this point, it is still worth restating, that the average cheap flip cellphone you can buy in a store for a few bucks has more processing power and memory than the entire room full of computers NASA used to help land people on the moon. Just because older tech is inferior in modern day, doesn't mean it was bad at the time. It also doesn't mean that it's any less effective than it was back then, just that our standards for "effectiveness" have changed.
@@Gamer3427 "one hundred or two hundred years from now will look back at our weapons today, even though to us we can barely fathom them getting more efficient." Might not take that long, with how quickly the use of drones has been spreading. I wouldn't be shocked if they one day supplanted artillery for indirect fire.
There's a cool old videogame called Gun, where you play as a guy in the old west who had both guns and a bow, and let me tell you, you rarely have much use for the bow, but when you unlock dynamite arrows (Literally arrows with a stick of dynamite tied to them) that's the most fun weapon in the game.
It's a spiritual predecessor to Red Dead, highly recommend, though the game's treatment of native Americans is a pretty solid example of how old the game is
Shotguns are very easy to find in the UK. If you find yourself in a post-apocalyptic Britain, just head for the countryside and you'll find a few shotguns and plenty of cartridges at every farm. He specified rifles - the rules are much stricter for rifles, so those are much harder to find.
Came here to say this too - the more electronics & tech start getting put in firearms & targeting technology, the more susceptible they'll be to attack
This touches on a pet peeve of mine, poor cybersecurity in sci-fi. You might be able to crack encryption or circumvent firewalls, but there are other measures that are harder to circumvent. If an important piece of equipment like a weapon doesn't need to be networked, don't network it. It can still use non-networked computers. If it does need data straight from other computers for some reason, keep it wired only, and/or restrict the types of inputs it accepts from external sources, and/or include manual overrides- a compromised computer that's not plugged in to an output or power source isn't a threat.
One of my favorite examples of bows vs guns in a fantasy setting actually came from a game I didn't play a whole lot (and has since been shut down) called Dragalia Lost. It was your standard fantasy thoroughfare with swords, bows, magic, and the like, but at some point weapons called 'manacasters' were added, which were basically various types of guns. The conflict comes from a character named Joe, who is your standard sharpshooter archer, but was eventually given a manacaster to try out. While he finds great success with it initially, he eventually claims that it's too easy and it's draining the sense of accomplishment out of battles. However, he's not worried about his own lack of thrills - he's worried about what'll happen when people who don't have the training and weapon discipline get their hands on that kind of easy power and start to underestimate the real dangers of combat. He plans on returning the weapon and going back to his bow, but after a duel with an opponent who was also armed with a manacaster, he decides that he could find his own reason for wanting to use one and improve with it. I thought it was an interesting story, and it works because in the context of the setting, guns are only starting to be introduced to the world. Were it an already established world where both bows and guns were in use, I think it'd be trickier to justify having a character with a concern like Joe's.
omg dragalia lost mention in 2024!!! I never read that character story bc the game shut down before I could get too far into it but that's such a good take on the introduction of guns in a world of bows and swords :0
Oxygen isn’t the issue but an atmosphere does help with getting rid of heat. As an aside, it’d be interesting to see atlatls thrown into the comparison for both contemporary as well as speculative fiction settings.
Another niche use in sci-fi settings that I've seen a couple of times is that lower velocity or physical projectile weapons have fallen so out of use that protective measures against them have become neglected, such as a shield that only works against energy weapons, or that only activates against projectiles moving at higher speeds, (usually with the excuse of conserving energy instead of activating every time a fly or something lands on you). Because like was mentioned regarding plate armor falling out of style as guns were able to rip through it, in a futuristic setting, it's not hard to buy that defensive measures would become more specialized when everyone is only using certain types of weapons, leaving enemies more vulnerable to more traditional niche means of attack.
Mass Effect has something like that, where acid, poison or melee attacks just ignore shields (which are kinetic barriers that only block high speed things).
That last point about different ammunition types using a single weapon is always the coolest aspect of bows in fantasy or scifi settings to me. There's an online game called Warframe, which is about playing biomechanical robots with superpowers in space, and one of those is a model called Ivara who's a stealth character focused on archery, one of her skills being cycling between different arrow types for utility - cloak arrows that create an invisibility field on impact, noise arrows that attract enemy attention to different spots, sleep arrows that put enemies in an small area to sleep and rope arrows that create a zipline for you to walk across environments. It's one of the coolest thematic abilities in the game in my opinion.
@@benleague3115 wait until you found out there are superhuman teenagers with reality-bending powers inside and pilot those biomechanical armors and they have to fight against a literal Cosmic God
I think this is where it becomes important to remember weapons are still lethal even if they've been around for millennia, and the knowledge of warfare and skill of tacticians is paramount. There are plenty of examples of invaders with firearms throughout history being driven out by so-called "primitive" cultures with less efficient weaponry, but we don't even need to go back as far as conquistadors to see this in action. When Indonesia invaded Papua New Guinea the locals were essentially an uncontacted tribe who were now facing a military with modern armored vehicles, tanks and firearms with their bows and spears, and they did a fine job of it. Indonesia has a close relationship with an arms manufacturer while the New Guineans procured their firearms from battles they won against the military with those bows and spears. It's not even exclusive to just handheld weaponry, Syrian rebels as recently as 2013 crafted and used the superior siege weapon, the trebuchet. There are videos of rebels operating them in combat and firing on government positions. This is during the Syrian Civil War, a still ongoing conflict. Sometimes what works just works, even if it's not as prevalent after centuries or tens of millennia, or if it's outpaced by more modern and ever-adapting weaponry.
The New Guinea situation is still a thing. Sure, they have more access to firearms now than back then from all the loot they've procured after battles, but there are still instances of spears and bows being used there.
War never changes. A bow is in principle a very long spear. A gun is in principle an even longer spear. Be it spear, bow, or gun, the supreme goal is to put a hole your enemy, and that is unchanging. When the goal is payloads sent flying through the air at your enemy, within the right circumstances, a trebuchet is as viable as a cannon.
I remember someone testing that. The sand flattens the bullet, and, the faster it goes, the more damage to the bullet, and less it penetrates. The arrows just treat it like sand...
Another advantage is projectile drop. While that's usually a downside due to accuracy, it also allows you to shoot for more cover if you know where the person you're shooting is because you can shoot up and over. You don't even need to use your bow like artillery for that
Have to note that while a bike is indeed more practical in a post-apoc than a muscle car, it still has several disadvantages. One is that, just like a bow, it relies on your muscle strength, which, if you're injured, sick, tired or hungry will prevent you from using it effectively. Second, if you're in a zombie-apocalypse, having a bike is problematic, because it's easier for zombies to grab you, and harder for you to run them over. Cool video though, you make good points.
The car is eventually going to become a permanently stationary object though. Gasoline inventories are very, very limited nearly everywhere. There simply won't be any fuel. With a bicycle you mostly have to worry about parts wearing out, most especially the tires. Which will also be an issue for cars even if you have plentiful fuel. In World War II gasoline was strictly rationed, but that wasn't primarily to save gasoline supplies. America had plenty of its own crude oil at the time and could make all the gasoline it needed. It was the tires that relied on imports to manufacture, and which were difficult to get with the war in the Pacific. But with a bicycle you could probably come up with some alternative to pneumatic tires if you needed to. The ride would be a lot less comfortable, but it would still work.
A bike is silent, there is a scene in WWZ in which they try to reach the plane quickly and silently using bikes (big fail because of the phone but worth trying.
@@Scario45 another benefit of bikes is tires can be made of more than rubber Won't be as much fun to ride, but, replace the tyre with a wagon type wheel
The part where he mentioned that as people stopped using heavy armor since it didn't work on guns, bows also became more effective reminds me of the Star Wars universe where normal projectile guns were replaced with blasters, which were more effective. However, a lightsaber can be used to block/redirect blaster bullets, so the Jedi don't have to wear any armor to defend against blasters, other lightsabers, and most physical weapons. Unfortunately for them, lightsabers aren't very useful against projectile guns, since if you try to block/redirect a physical bullet it will explode into a bunch of tiny shrapnel that will continue moving towards you, so now you have a bunch of tiny bullet holes in your body instead of one big one. This advantage was used by the Mandalorians during their war with the Jedi.
I was waiting for him to mention that Katniss simply didn't have access to firearms in 12 but easy access to the bow her father made and he did not disappoint
I still like that when she first finally picks up a capitol bow it's a point of tension that she's used exactly one now before and has to figure out the feel of the other one fast
On the sci fi thing- the oxygen point doesn't hold up super well unfortunately, guns tend to carry their own oxidizer in the propelllant so they work absolutely fine in low oxygen/underwater environments- at least in terms of getting the bullet out of the muzzle. Once it's out though, new problems become apparent, and this is where bows would have some advantage. For space, guns generate a lot of heat and so need specialist cooling systems to work for long periods, and are easy to find on scanners because heat doesn't dissapate well in space. Bows avoid these problems- firing them doesn't create much heat, so it's a lot easier to stay hidden, and you don't need to carry bulky or expensive cooling units with them. One of the Avatar (blue people version) comics has some of the N'avi conducting a space operation using bows this way. Additionally, underwater, bullets don't travel very far because water provides a lot of resistance and bullets are relatively wide compared to their length. You can avoid getting shot by just diving to the bottom of a swimming pool if you need to. Arrows don't have this problem- they keep going for ages, so someone conducting an underwater operation might want to bring a streamlined bow with them for increased range underwater. Fantastic video- love you work!
Underwater you won't be using a bullet gun. Ballistic properties of a bullet are rotten in water. You'd want something with much more mass and momentum, like a harpoon. Or better still, a torpedo.
Someone mentioned home defense, and that brings up another great point: if someone takes your gun from you, they can easily just turn it around and shoot you with it. If someone takes your bow, they will probably just make a fool of themselves
All I gotta say, is if someone is able to take your firearm away from you and shoot you with it in a home defense situation…you probably shouldn’t have a firearm. Gotta be disciplined and have a plan. Also don’t let people get close, and if they try then you’ve got your excuse to fire.
In my opinion the best way is to not choose. Bows and arrows require lots of training, same as learning how to throw axes, knives or shurikens (throwing stars or spikes), while on the other side learning how to use a gun requires a bit less training. You have a very good video about it on T-Rex Arms channel, a japanese airsoft player visiting a real gun range in Texas. The guy has never shot a real pistol or a real AR-15 in his entire life (very restrictive laws about firearms in Japan), but in Japan they are extremely good at making airsoft replicas (Tokyo Marui for example). So this japanese man has several years of drills (how to reload, check a rifle after a jam etc.), the only thing he doesn't know is how to manage the recoil on a real gun. After only a few hours of training he was showing the efficiency of someone with months of training. Learning how to use a real gun is important but you can manage to learn 90% of everything with an airsoft replica, it's cheaper, easier to buy and use. Fairly enough to learn how to use a gun in a tactical scenario. Personally I have a FNS9 replica (9mm pistol), with tactical holster and 3 magazines, enough to learn how to hold it properly, reload, check the chamber, move in a building, draw quickly in different ways etc. I know how to use a gun AND a bow at the same time, I'll obviously prefer diplomatie, cooperation with neighborhood and having my own kitchen garden in a post apo scenario ('cause in reality, survive is about cooperation and becoming useful to people around you). But If I find myself in a difficult situation I'll use any weapon available to survive, without having to choose between I will know how to use them all. A gun require 2h of training every months, a bow it's 1h30 every week. Throwing weapons, 45 minutes every weeks (fairly enough to keep muscle memory) For the choice of the bow I've literally tested all of them, every traditions and every techniques ever recorded on internet and books. The one technique that appeared to me as the only viable option in reality is obviously the very last bow that has resisted to firearms until the very end. The Comanche Short Bow. This bow is short, very fast to use from the hip, no anchor point, silent, fast, the arrows are shorts. Easy to carry in a backpack, allows you to carry firearms with it. And if you watch the videos about Lars Andersen and Mead Longbows using Comanche bows and technique you'll see that it is really a viable option. As long as you have the advantage of surprise or stealth on the ennemy. Obviously you don't bring a bow to a gunfight, but you can prevent the gunfight from happening if you have the initiative.
Honestly, bows in a setting where guns are prevalent is cool for the same reason that a gun in a setting where guns are unheard of is. Just, the prior you gotta get creative in terms of how it can stay competitive narratively, while in the latter it's more a chance to introduce some challenges to a character to allow them to maintain their edge.
8:45 Gunpowder actually supplies it's own oxygen with saltpetre, aka potassium nitrate, which is why it's possible for guns to be fired in oxygen-free environments or even underwater (provided that the powder is dry).
To be honest, the last point of being able to launch different things also goes for guns. The US Navy uses M14s to launch ropes between ships while underway in order to pull heavier ropes and cables across during resupply. Also, many countries have used rifle propelled grenades. They pretty much use the force of the projectile to launch the grenade. As for the different positives and negatives between bows and guns in certain scenerios- It can take only a few weeks to become good at constructing bows but years of practice to become proficient at using them. A gun only takes a few weeks to become proficient at but takes years of experience to become a good gunsmith. An interesting thing that I have read about and watched videos on is that a lot of the best gunsmiths and innovators started out as watch and clock makers in the 1900s.
I think years of cartoons, tv, and movies have given the false perspective that arrows are more of a 'non-lethal' option compared to guns, even though both can wound or kill depending on where a shot lands, how deep it goes, if it hits vital organs etc... So when a character is dropping enemies with individual arrows or bullets, unless expressly stated most would assume the arrow'd characters passed out or otherwise subdued while the bullet'd ones dead or dying.
Yes, I am proof any idiot can use a crossbow. The first (and only) time I ever picked up a crossbow I got a bullseye. No way was I ever going to use one again and spoil that record.
Also in a post-apocalyptic scenario where you're foraging for ammunition, there are so many calibres out there that the chances of finding something that fits in your firearm, rather than something that doesn't, is diminished, even if you've got one in a popular and practical calibre like 9mm or .45ACP rather than something stupid like a .50AE Desert Eagle. Even if you're carrying both a .45ACP and a 9mm pistol and an assortment of rifles in popular hunting and military calibres (say .30-'06, .308/7.62x51, .223/5.56x45 - assuming you have weapons that can safely use alternative calibres - and 7.62x39), there's still a good chance you're going to find large amounts of ammo of "less popular" calibres that you can't use, because there's such a wide variety out there. And it's not like DOOM where you can carry an entire arsenal of different weapons you've found just so you can use any of the ammo lying around...
I'd just like to thank you for making these videos. I'm working on a story about a monster hunter who uses a bow and arrow, and these videos are really helping with my research.
THG really has the best explanation. Katniss learnt how to use bows bacause she hunted with her father. it would've been impossible to acquire a fireweapon but she was able to make herself bows and arrows. And then, in the later books, since she was the "face" of the revolution, the people behind the scenes wanted people to recognize her, so, again: bow and arrow.
I feel like the biggest issue for firearms in any setting is that it requires a fairly significant industry to manufacture and maintain both the weapons and the ammunition. The moment a setting creates barriers between a character and the products of that industry, firearm use is going to notably decrease. Barriers can be things like government control and regulation, problems with trade and supply chains, or damage to the industry itself. Even if the firearm is simple enough that a local machinist can maintain it, the chemistry knowledge needed to produce both gunpowder and primer is significantly more niche. That being said, training with a bow is still one of the biggest barriers for a return of widespread bow use in a setting. If you can manufacture a bow, how much more difficult is it to manufacture a crossbow? This especially holds true if a character is using a compound bow. The requirements for the string and cams (even if you're not using composites in the construction) could also be applied for crossbows.
Your passion for archery are infectious. I learn so much and I actually want to start archery. Specifically with traditional African style bows and arrows.
Bows have actually been used in modern military operations. Specifically crossbows, I assume due to the easier ability to adapt extensive firearm training and less space required to fire them. These have been used on a few occasions when a silent weapon has been needed for a covert operation, fired once if at all then abandoned. It's admittedly niche, but it is still a real world application one could work from if writing a more grounded fiction piece.
Huge fan of your channel, and when you asked for polite corrections you activated my gun nut brain, so I'm happy to provide! You did incredibly well honestly, genuinely impressive for someone without a firearm background, just some minor mistakes and one fairly big one. So first off, guns can be made very very silent, look to the Stechkin revolver and the DeLisle for examples of guns potentially equal to a bow in volume. They're rare guns however and the Stechkin used proprietary ammo so running them would be a bit impractical. I'd also wager a good bow would be more deadly as truly silent guns sacrifice a lot of what makes guns better. Gadget bullets are also possible specifically with shotguns. It won't be as versatile as a bow but your example of explosive shots brings to mind the AA-12, which is an automatic shotgun that came paired with high accuracy slugs and grenade rounds. The major mistake is the no oxygen comment. A little over a hundred years ago, we switched from black powder to smokeless powder. Smokeless powder has its own oxidiser, it doesn't need oxygen to fire. Smokeless powder firearms have been used without issue by divers, and the soviets tested firing a gun in space to make absolutely sure it would work, and it did. Now I wanna add some sci-fi advantages you didn't mention for bows because I like sci-fi. Dune started a trend of making force fields weak to low velocity attacks to make guns less powerful than melee, but has anyone ever considered using this to make bows a shield piercing weapon? How about in the hands of a superhuman, where their muscles can outperform a firearm (granted they could just use a bigger gun with more recoil but maybe they're not as durable as they are strong). Also unrelated trivia, look up Mad Jack Churchill if you dont know of him already, he served in WW2 while refusing to use a gun, instead wielding grenades, a bow, and a sword.
You talking about using a bow for stealth and then using it for more niche scenarios just reminds me of Crysis 3’s bow and how technologically advanced it showed it to be with its on the fly draw weight changes and near instant arrowhead changes for different armored enemies, vehicles, and situations.
Very easy to make a bow non-metallic so it is harder to detect in transport. Does not punch holes in the spaceship in which you are fignting. Does not pollute your limited air-supply like explosive propulsion in guns. Some kinds of armour may be more vulnerable to slow sharp things than fast blunt things.
@@ramboturkey1926 The sort of powerful laser that could kill someone would vapourise a lot of flesh, clothing and armour. All that vapourised material now contaminates your air supply.
It's pretty easy to make non-metallic guns too, even at current tech level; also most guns are far easier to conceal than a bow & quiver. If your spaceship hull is penetrated by soft lead bullets, you wouldn't survive your first micrometeorite encounter anyway; and even if your ships are low-tech enough where that is a concern, they already make non-penetrating rounds. Air pollution: I guess so? But assuming your ships have any sort of atmospheric scrubbers I can't imagine a little gunfire being a significant challenge unless you're using black powder for some reason. I mean compared to the number of shows where characters smoke on spaceships... LOL. Valid point about *some* types of armor, but it's not hard to make armor that protects against both so that's a narrative thing rather than a likely technological thing IMO.
Here's a thought I had watching this that I wonder why I haven't had before. I once wrote a vampire character who made use of the supernatural strength vampirism gave her to use a custom-made bow with a really high draw weight (like low-ball crossbow range, but on a recurve). You could do something similar with any source of superhuman strength, be it fantasy or scifi (Shardbows in The Stormlight Archive are an actually published example). That much had occurred to me before, but when you shot that rope arrow, something else occurred to me: if you had an archer with superhuman strength and a custom-made bow with an obscene draw weight, that thick grapple rope could work so much better. A lot of the downsides of trick arrows that you discussed in the video about them had to do with putting extra mass on the arrow, and one way to solve it would be putting extra power in the bow. Yes, some of the extra mass allowance of that stronger bow would be spent in making arrows that can actually leave the bow without shattering, but not all of it. You do need a special bowstring material too though, unless you want it to be super thick (to be fair, you might want it thick if your character doesn't also have fingers made of steel lol)
A science fantasy setting I'm working on has bows, crossbows and a form of energy weapon forming a sort of trifecta as the energy weapon has a really short range, so you have trade offs where these basically laser muskets are easy to use and very fast to shoot but you need to be very close to use them, crossbows trade the speed for greater range and bows give you speed and range but require a lot of training. Bows and crossbows then only begin to phase out once projectile launching firearms are developed
I've thought of one other useful characteristic of bows for a certain kind of character: Forensic ballistics, or the lack thereof. Bows don't have serial numbers and you can't match an arrow to the bow that shot it. Between that and the lack of noise, bows could be quite useful for an assassin.
A certain sci-fi text-only game i can't mention makes arrows pass through a common technology, personal energy shields only trigger at certain speeds, so arrows are slow enough to not trigger them, making them useful against enemies that heavily rely on their energy shield.
I think bows could also be used to hit a target behind cover by doing a parabolic shot and some arrows might pierce regular bulletproof vest. Of course those advantages only work because in normal scenarios people don't usually face bows in combat, if bows were common people would take them into consideration as well.
Fun advantage: bows have more non-combat use. Imagine one of those typical "self destruct timer is running, have to press button to stop it, cannot get there in time" scenes; a well aimed arrow can push the button to stop the self destruct sequence, while a firearm would only make things worse. Plus with a bow one technically can hit the button from above even if standing three floors lower.
7:33 While this is mostly true, it is also almost scarily easy to fashion a simple open-bolt SMG. Just look up the Luty for proof of that. Ammo, though ... yeah, that's a whole other issue. Sure, you literally can make a Luty out of random stuff from the hardware store and readily-available tools, but unless you're a chemistry major with access to precision equipment/ingredients I doubt you'll be making the smokeless powder ammunition you need for it.
And while it's certainly possible to make firearms in a shed, making them reliable and safe to fire repeatedly, potentially in combat situations or after they've been covered in dirt, is a different matter.
Perhaps surprisingly, the last time human-powered projectile weapons were issued to combat troops as standard weapons was in the mid-to-late 20th century. The Vietcong used crossbows in jungle warfare during the Vietnam War (1955 - 1975). Not only were they cheaper to provide and maintain than firearms, they were also quieter (though crossbows are not as silent as they're portrayed in many films). Most Vietcong were issued with firearms of course and crossbows were not the majority weapon, but they weren't just reserved for specialist troops either.
There are people who are good at telling in an interesting way about stuff, and people eho can't... This guy is definitely good at it.. Just nice and relaxing to listen about a subject I don't know anything about and wasn't planning on learning about
I think part of it's tactile. while holding a gun might be more dangerous, there's _literal_ tension in holding a bow with the string pulled back. I think part of it is also that, _because_ a bow is harder to learn to use than a gun, in shows the character has invested more time and effort into learning the skill.
Part of what I like in pathfinder is that the rules for guns and bows work out to these advantages. Bullets are expensive, guns are loud, and guns can fail in a lot more ways than a bow. But guns also have a lot more power, so you can just straight up ignore armor (if you’re close enough) and when they crit it’s usually a x4 multiplier.
Where the bow beats a gun is in the fact that you can always make more ammo. Guns without ammo are paperweights. Arrows can be made in the wild and bullets cant. Once you run out of ammo you have no weapon.
I am also rather fond of the ability to choose how far back you want to draw your bow. I don't know how many scenarios it would come up in, but they certainly would be cool.
As far as bows being able to deliver different payloads, there are firearms that can do that as well. Shotguns can use all different kinds of ammo types, buckshot, birdshot, beanbags, flachettes, even mini-grenades. There are entire channels on youtube dedicated to making and testing different materials and ammo for shotgun cartridges (sometimes silly stuff, sometimes stuff that turns out surprisingly good). A shotgun is also relatively easy to make. The pressure produced by them isn't that high, and really don't require much more than a pipe, a nail, and a hacksaw to make something that will fire. One of the advantages of bows over rifles is indirect fire. If you have a force of bow users behind cover they can shoot over their cover easily in a parabolic arc without exposing themselves to danger. This means that a bow user can shoot over things like hills that would be an impediment to a gun. Obviously this would be highly inaccurate, and would only make sense if you have a group of bow users rather than just one person.
Bows are my go to in warframe, a third person sci-fi game. There’s one bow in the game with some flavor text that mentions that it’s not just a bow, but also helps propel the arrows even faster via electromagnets. No trick arrows, but I think a bow that works like a railgun in addition to its normal function is just neat.
What I'm missing from most scifi stories is upgrading bows with new technologies. Like miniature particle accelerators creating a micro black hole, that speeds up the arrow and collapses before getting hit. The arrow keeps flying, until it hits the target (not my idea, it's from a book)
For me that's the point. Tech gives you the advantage. The character with the ancient weapon becomes the underdog making their victory more impressive.
You almost mentioned this, but combining the lack of sound and anti-magic that you did, one advantage of a bow in a sci-fi setting is the lack of technology. If a laser gun shoots a bright beam of energy it is very visual, playing harder on this, the laser beam could leave a radiation trace, or the beam or weapon could set off sensors that cover the area, a bow would be complete stealth, which then links back to the "underdog takes on the evil empire" idea you also mentioned
In post-apocalyptic settings it makes sense for ammunition and reparability, those are more difficult to come by for guns without industrial support. Though something that is a lot more rare in media and would make a lot of sense long term for something like a zombie apocalypse is slings.
Slings are hugely under-represented. Easy to carry, easy to find ammo for, and devastating in trained hands. The skill is not that hard to pick up, but it is quite difficult to become really good.
@@AJPemberton While we're on zombie apocalypse weaponry: spears and big ol' quaterstaffs. Easy to make and maintain, useful for things besides fighting zombies, reach that makes them much better than the melee weapons you see usually. Criminally underused. Like in Walking Dead, been a while since I last watched that, but the longest melee weapon I remember seeing was a sword. So many fights against slow zombies would be a lot easier if they just got a big stick to keep their distance, and a horde pushing on a fence would be more manageable if you thinned them out at your leisure by sticking heads with a spear.
@@cathsaigh2197a big stick is really useful. A big pointy stick is even more so! :-) Classical zombies are not really a threat to realistic humans. Sure, the last pandemic may have proven that an outbreak would spread rapidly via stupid people. But they'd also be the first to die. The smart ones left would only need to wait a few months for the zombies to rot, while avoiding close contact with any 'undead' without good body armour. Things get a bit more interesting if we imagine more probable scenarios such as a huge solar flare taking out all our electric networks, computers and satellites. Or just running out of oil. CItes would empty, society would drop back to some earlier stage. Depending on how bad that is, a big stick could make a reappearance as the fashion accessory of choice.
@@AJPemberton Yeah, in more realistic slow zombie apocalypse scenarios the real threat of violence is always other humans. And long term I'd be equally worried about food and clean water supplies.
There are plenty of people who load their own ammunition simply because it's cheap. Pick up your brass to reuse it. It's not terribly difficult, probably not much harder than making a *good* arrow. Tho the equipment isn't easily portable, so if your character is on the move a lot that's less helpful.
Consideration for futuristic settings: since the main restrictions on a bow's capabilities are material and human strength, it is conceivable that there is a combination of highly elastic materials (bow), extremely dense materials (ammo), and cybernetic enhancements that would allow a bow-user to vastly outperform any reasonably-sized firearm -- at least in the realm of sniping/penetration. Obviously, from a practical standpoint it would make more sense to just make a crossbow that does the same thing, and you're removing a lot of the cool factor by eliminating human power, but it's something that could possibly happen in the real world if materials science advances far enough (though it seems improbable that the necessary materials are actually physically possible). (Also, there might be some limiting factor around the practical length of a bow and a theoretical ceiling of force that it can impart that I'm unaware of that makes this more than just unlikely in the real world -- if anyone knows feel free to respond)
Correction on low atmosphere use: this is not an advantage for the bow. Firearm ammunition is oxidized (even black powder!), so it carries its own oxygen and requires none. Guns made today (or a century ago) work just fine in space. On the other hand, in a very dense atmosphere (eg. water), bullets can't travel very far without breaking up due to friction. Due to their very high inertia, arrows would fair better (though spearguns and the like are still perfectly fine). In very very cold environments (not space), a cold atmosphere will likely rob some of the combustion energy of the firearm cartridge and make autoloading firearms less reliable unless specifically tuned to operate in that environment. In general, a bow will work in more environments but it just so happens that space is one of the environments where guns work fine. As a gun person, I'm glad to see your presentation from the other angle even if you're a bit biased :)
I've also heard of the idea that in a trans-humanist setting augmented arms could negate the limitations of human strength. This allows bows to evolve into weapons with absurd power and draw weight.
I have experience as a military small arms operator. In a fight the bow loses. It has some options though. Signaling whistle /fire arrows, hunting food in stealth and saving firearm ammo, puncturing sandbags/soft armor, can wrap arrows in your sent to throw dogs off your trail, and they may spook horses less than gunfire.
As an addendum to your point about bows having a much higher payload potential, I think it's also important to point out (especially in a scifi/fantasy setting with mythical materials) that as a result, certain bow and arrow combinations outperform certain guns in their capacity for piercing armor. While the best AP rounds today are certainly outperforming the best bows and arrows for the same task, that was untrue for much of the history of firearms, and even today, a war bow with specialized tips designed for piercing armor is still going to have more armor-piercing capability than many of the low-caliber firearms that would be most readily available to most potential wielders. It's *totally* feasible for a setting with fantastical materials to have circumstances where a small set of arrows with rarer unobtanium tips (that could be reused) could be more accessible and effective than firearms, particularly in a setting where armor tech outpaces gun tech or otherwise favors bows in effectiveness relative to accessibility.
Jack Churchill didn't think bows were useless in modern warfare. Hard to argue with a man that used to fight Nazis by playing Scotland the Brave on the bagpipes while firing a longbow and throwing grenades all at the same time.
I always loved archers as my trpg characters (though I barely practice archery irl lmao). Recently I've been looking into a Cyberpunk setting that provides bows as an option and wondered whether it would be realistic, so thanks so much for this video!
I'd love if Cyberpunk 2077 had bows a weapon option. Considering how prevalent melee weapons already are and the "style over substance" mentality that leads to that, I'm imagining a recurve bow with special alloy limbs and a 1000lb+ draw-weight punches through armor and pins people to walls, you just need gorilla arms or other heavy augmentations to use it.
One of the supplements for Cyberpunk 2020 (the TTRPG that's the basis for the Cyberpunk 2077 videogame) had a section on futuristic bows and their ammunition. It was either one of the Chromebooks (gear supplements) or possibly Solo of Fortune 2 (character and gear options for combatant characters).
Guidance kits for bullets need large caliber projectiles and are expensive due to the stress of being explosively launched, forced down a metal tube, and spin stabilized by screw threads inside the barrel. An arrow or dart can be given a cheaper less robust guidance kit and still have space in the warhead for an efp.
Correct me if I’m wrong but an actual historical example of an advantage bows had over guns specifically during the colonization of the Americas, even if a relatively limited one, was that they were far more conducive to ambush and guerrilla tactics both due to their noise level and because they produce no smoke when black powder firearms put out a lot of the stuff and can give you away in the right conditions. I believe this was a factor in the encirclement of Custer’s troops at the Battle of Little Bighorn, he was granted wildly overextended and had totally exposed himself to attack because he was equal parts pompous and murderous, but when it came down to it many of the Lakota and Cheyenne warriors opposing him were able to obscure their locations and numbers over ridges during the initial encirclement before closing in by using their bows, with of course the additional benefit of not wasting as much of their undoubtedly limited supply of rifle ammunition. I could of course be COMPLETELY wrong about this but it’s something I recall at least vaguely.
Note: It's believed bows were used in Australia when the aboriginal people arrived, but fell out of use fairly early. No-one is entirely sure why, although I'm sure hypotheses abound. The migration sources of peoples were all believed to have used bows. Again, like 70kBCE Africa, it's hard to back this up.
8:40 "Low oxygen environments" Good thinking but modern bullets are sealed containers, ergo they will still combust underwater or even in the vacuum of space, though the other mechanical functions would require some tinkering to not jam. Still could be favored by explorers that want a weapon that works everywhere at once though.
An interesting comment I wana make is when superpowers are thrown in. So. In a V5 Vampire The Masquerade game I was in. I made a Banu Haquim who was basically a mix between Green Arrow, Jacket and The Punisher. [See. Banu consider themselves as guardians. Trying to keep a balance between Vampire and kine society] Robyen. [The Banu Haquim] had access to disciplines. (Basically. Vampire superpowers] Celerity. (Super speed) and obfuscate. (Invisibility) The bow was her choice of weapon since she preferred to be a ghost, using stealth to accomplish her objectives. She could easily keep up with the gun toting Torrador and the lethal in melee catiff. She even managed some impressive feats of Archery like sniping a guy with a bow.
It would have been better if he had used TH-cam's own system and provided his subtitles rather than the automated ones. That way, you could customise them or turn them off.
This reminds me of a way that Warhammer managed to make bow like weapons not only work but be really cool. Do note, I'm not sure if this is still canon, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. During the Great Crusade, Horus invaded the 'Interex' civilization, who were made up of humans and xenos that worked together. They saw what looked like centaurs or soldiers on horseback with bows and assumed they were gonna be easy to kill. Oh boy were they wrong. The 'horses' were in fact mobile weapon platforms to allow for rapid movements. And the 'bows' fired concentrated energy bolts that punched through Space Marine Armour like it was nothing. So there's a neat way to sci-fi up archers
Sci fi worlds with electrical nullifying agents abound might also feature protagonists appreciating long-range weapons that stay in commission despite any sparkly blue energy fields they may encounter.
Heres a sci-fi archery idea. A lot of man portable missiles use a light initial charge to send the missiles far enough away from the user that the rocket motor won't be dangerous when it ignites. You could have bow fired rockets or missiles in a sci-fi.
The first thing i thought about with a sci-fi setting is that strength/stamina augmentation and ocular targetting are often things, so an archer could work as a sniper from insanely long distances using incredibly heavy draw weight bows without getting tired while still being incredibly accurate, rapid, and silent.
5:58 I would possibly argue the case that an even earlier use of this by storytellers is in the Odyssey where Odysseus is holding off the entire party of suitors with a bow, his son and a few herdsmen. I only bring this up as the Robin Hood story you mentioned sorta reminds me of this. Would you agree? The story you used is perfectly fine for the point, it just reminded me of the case in the Odyssey
Remember that Penelope and Odysseus were perfectly suited to each other. Do you think those suitors had not been subtly poisoned for the last few months?
Before watching, I can think of a couple scenarios. It's really good for post apocalyptic because it's easier to make arrows than bullets. It's also quieter, so less likely to draw people or weird sci-fi monsters to you. There's also a possible scenario where guns are outlawed but bows aren't.
Things like this are so helpful and interesting. Thank you for using your skills and knowledge to help people! Also it probably doesn't need to be said, but your pole skills are amazing!
As an archer and a gun guy, I invite you to come to Texas. You can learn about both. Hunting is a big part of our state. Likely to find a a rifle and a bow in many homes.
7:40 you mention the difficulty of making a machinegun from scratch. Machineguns are actually one of the easiest guns to make. You essentially just make a normal gun but broken and with less parts. If the apocalypse did happen it is likely that most newly made guns would be crappy machineguns made in the sten, grease, or luty patterns. Moreover, while consistent nitrocellulose gunpowder would take a while to get consistent again, homemade black powder is always an option and not very hard with the right equipment. While it might be smoky, and have a shorter potential range, it’d still definitely work. Even in post apocalyptic Britain, muskets and slam fire shotguns made with plumbing blackpipe would probably be quite common.
Another thing to consider is shotguns. Some can be created out of metal tubes and garbage, and real world 'trick' shells can include; - Rubber pellet loads - Beanbag rounds - Dragon's Breath (sounds cool and fires flaming projectiles) - Sabot/rifled slugs - Salt shells (they just shoot salt) While also being among the cheapest and most reliable guns with very widespread ammunition. HOWEVER; - There's no way to make a 12g shotgun truly quiet - Hommade shotguns can and will end in horrific explosions that may harm the user - Still more than 2 parts - These are all still limited in compairison to what you can come up with for bows But, overall, you can still make them distinctive to a character with some creativity and a healthy disregard for practicality. This applies to most weapons- if it works right in the setting, why not add variety and characterization?
I've seen bows (ok crossbows) used to launch lines into trees so a climbing rope can be lifted into the tree and people are able to climb up into the canopy. Can't really do that without a heavily modified firearm
Some other decent ideas. Maybe the character was a competitive archer before the apocalypse. So training was already done. Also, historically, archers in warfare were shooting up potentially bypassing defensive walls on the way down. In a post apocalyptic setting, you might find guns, but finding mortar might be more of a stretch.
I'd never considered a few of these. In my writing, the rules of the setting just sort of made guns disadvantageous. Magic, in all my works, is much more powerful when channelled through an object (which is why magicians tend to carry swords or staffs; wands are outdated tools in my writings) and not only is it easier to channel magic through an arrow compared to a bullet, wood holds magic longer than metals do so the enchantment lasts longer, giving more effective range.
@@makarabaduk1754 That's a fair point actually, though I meant outdated to the point where it's difficult to find them. I will have to keep that in mind though.
Air rifles may be an interesting counterpoint there. They basically are muscle powered just like nerf guns, no combustion and thus no cleaning really necessary, and I guess if you want to combine them with an enchantment, it should be acceptable to enchant an entire tin of pellets (Gamo even makes gold plated ones, I heard gold is good to store magic). But at least by anime rules, a single pellet is small, and can only carry a limited amount of magic with it just due to there only being a certain area around it that one can use for purple glow or other typical effects. Also the pellet flies too fast to carry some physical objects with it such as a flame. An arrow OTOH can carry magic along its entire length, and is easy to combine with standard spells like fireballs and also has a velocity to easily allow carrying virtually anything.
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As a result of a controversy in role-playing games, my group did not raise the question of whether it would be possible to shoot a bow while in a wheelchair. what do you think?
@@otakuspor9549 No need to ask for blumineck's opinion on the matter. This is already a thing that people do.
@@otakuspor9549wheelchair archery is a whole sub-branch of the sport!
@@otakuspor9549 not having researched wheelchair archery, I'd imagine similar techniques as horseback archery should work?
IIrc, there's also a thing in some media where "only bad guys use guns." Like, it's not everywhere, but a lot of super hero comics had a "don't make guns cool to children" thing for awhile, so you had heroes using archery and throwing weapons vs. bad guys with tommy guns and stuff.
This is absolutely true. How much more effective would Batman be if he augmented his approach and techniques with firearms? Batman is a good example too because he could literally be trained in anything as he's a billionaire.
@@CoffeeFiend1 He did use guns early in his run in the 40's in a western "shoot the gun out of their hands" style but as the original poster said they decided to go more kids friendly. I believe it's explained as him having a psychological trauma from seeing his parents shot and can't handle one beyond disarming an opponent.
@@silverjohn6037 that's true but imagine...
"I became the thing I feared the most... GUNMAN!!!
@@silverjohn6037 I, personally, believe that the Batman can easily use that gun beyond that capacity, but he doesn't because he views human life as sacred. I've never liked the idea of the slippery slope on someone as well-disciplined as him.
@@lemagicbaguette1917 That's fair enough. I would say I've always liked the Batman Beyond animated series for the reason it provided as to why Batman retired. He gets in a fight but, because he's getting older, is losing when he grabs a gun and points it at the crook. He doesn't pull the trigger but is horrified by what he nearly did and realizes the time has come to hang up the cape.
For sci-fi dystopian settings, you could see analogue weapons like bows and daggers as being preferable to something more traceable by an omniscient government.
Plus, as stated, ammo is easier to make. People would take note of someone making powder, because they'd hear the explosions as you worked out the right mix. Or hear you shooting. You whittling away at some wood might just you being bored
Not to mention how you can't fantasy-hack or EMP something that doesn't even use electricity
You can't hack a bow and turn off its targeting
Or to stick to the sci-fi setting, maybe have even heavier bows that can only be drawn with exoskeletons that the characters use to deal greater damage
Or box cutters and kitchen knives... wait a minute...
There's also the point of magic when it comes to bows vs guns within fantasy: Enchantments.
It's probably relatively easy to enchant a bow - it's made to store and release energy, so just make it better at doing just that. You could also enchant the arrows themselves, they're basically just tiny wands, after all.
Guns are a bit trickier. Enchanting the gun itself might not even do much, since it doesn't actually accelerate anything - it's the gunpowder that "shoots" the bullet, after all, not the gun. And gunpowder is one-use only - just like the bullet, which will no doubt deform upon impact, so no luck there either.
So if were to equip my soldiers in a fantasy setting, I'd much rather spend my budget on 100 magical bows than 100 magical bullets
(Also consider that pyromancers might be able to simply blow up your gun by igniting the powder inside, which is obviously not good for morale - no one likes soldiers who are afraid of their own weapon)
Inversely there might be some kind of "anti-combustion field" spell that effectively renders gunpowder inert, but no equivalent that can make mechanical tension stop working like it should.
it sort of depends on the setting all in all, like for instance theres one setting i know where they used magic gunpowder which gave various effects to their shots like scatter shot or homing, theres also settings where ranged weapons cant be enchanted at all so everyone goes to using a sword, it all just depends on the setting and its magic system
@@Candlemancer you could have a spell that disrupts tension and elasticity enough to render bows useless, but I think you’d be more concerned about your muscles being torn apart from the most minute effort, or your skin being petrified like setting concrete.
You put a loaded AR-15 into D&D, it only takes one cast of Heat Metal to destroy it and the guy holding it.
@@TheEquestrianGallade then someone (coughartificercough) makes an all plastic/ceramic version, or the dm just gives all his goons magiplastic ar's
I think the main factor in sci-fi post apocalypse or similar setting is for sure ammunition. It's not easy to make ammunitions for guns from scratch. While making arrows is not rocket science. Sure, it won't be very good arrows. But you can still kill with it. And the risk to be hurt by a self made arrow is way lower than the risk of putting a self made bullet into your gun 😅.
"...bows identify your character not only as someone distinctive, but as someone with a hell of a lot of skill."
That's the most unassuming way for you to describe yourself!
There's an additional point I'd like to bring up about fantasy and sci-fi settings.
Since how capable of a bow you can use depends on the strength with which you can draw it, characters with access to enhanced or assisted strength could conceivably shoot heavier arrows faster from far more powerful bows.
To take that concept to its logical extreme, all we have to do is look at Warframe. The bows in that are really hefty metal things shooting incredibly sturdy arrows that will happily sail through multiple enemy troops and pin them to a wall fifty metres behind them.
Because they're being wielded by living metal warriors with levels of physical strength ranging between "tear their extremely resilient enemies to pieces with their bare hands" (physically weak frames) and "destroy an asteroid probably tens of kilometres across with a single punch" (the physically strongest frame).
When you have the strength to rapid-fire the equivalent of an especially powerful ballista with consistently good aim, why wouldn't you?
i mean the same thing could be applied to guns, if you have the strength (and i would assume the associated density and weight) to fire a crazy heavy draw bow, you can also probably handle a mad minute with an elephant rifle.
@@Xtorin_Housecat_Ohern Fair, aye, and Warframes do handle some pretty ridiculous guns and melee weapons too. I just think it's neat that when designing stuff the Devs keep in mind just how strong the wielders really are. :3
Aye a Warframe player! It's always fun to see what weird weapons they come up with with this game. I'd love to see this guys reaction to the proboscis cernos 😂
Or monsterhunter where there are just stronger humans and really strong materials that are better tan guns, becauese bods and arrows are tougher.
@@marocat4749 ...monster hunter still has rudimentary firearms, i'd say the reason for there not being any super high powered guns in that setting is that they just don't fit in lore.
around 8:43 ish, it's a common misconception that guns wouldn't work in space/without oxygen - but in fact, gunpowder (at least modern gunpowder) is self-oxidizing! (think about it - how else could the propellant combust in the fairly small enclosed space of the cartridge?)
But in really odd situations when the gun just doesn't want to fire, it's probably faster to just switch to a bow lol
I think you're ignoring the larger problem of guns being a really bad idea around vacuum sealing walls. I still remember the ridiculous conversation friends in college had of sci fi making shooting in the air to quiet a crowd not a trope anymore, because you couldn't safely shoot a gun in a spaceship. Lower energy projectile weapons that could hurt people but not walls would make more sense, and be more realistic than "energy" weapons that magically do the same thing without explanation.
The powder would work but I've heard some people argue that mechanical actions might have an issue with no atmosphere as they wouldn't have the few molecules of air separating one piece from the other and they wouldn't cycle as a result. I'd say that was overstated and, even if true, a small amount of graphite powder for a lubricant would fix the problem.
@@kobaltkween They make frangible rounds that won't penetrate the walls of an airplane, they'd be decently safe to use inside a spaceship. You lose a lot of penetration but they still mess up meat.
Though the real question is why you let somebody you feel the need to shoot onto your spaceship in the first place.
Honestly, I think Newton's third law would be the biggest problem. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. In a vacuum, there would be no resistance. You fire that gun and you're going to be launched backwards as well.
Something to touch on for trick shots is that bows and arrows reward the narrative/visual structure of anticipation and payoff. Whilst in sci-fi or fantasy there's no reason that you couldn't imagine that the technology or enchantment packed into an arrowhead couldn't also be shot out of a suitably sci-fi/fantasy firearm, you'll rarely see the special bullet specifically loaded into the gun, and once its loaded and ready to shoot to do its special thing it becomes hidden from the viewer.
A trick arrow is nocked and drawn entirely visibly all the way from the inception of the idea to do a trick shot, whilst its being aimed and as it is fired. It creates the anticipation for its own payoff naturally, whilst the gun obscures its anticipation. Trick shots can and do work for guns, but visually we just get more out of seeing some bizarre or powerful arrowhead attachment sticking out from the front of the bow than we do seeing a gun with a special bullet inside.
Mourn with me friends! Once my dad went to visit his side of the family out of state and somehow my passing interest in archery came up. My grandpa, who I'd only met maybe 6 times and not in at least 8 years, said "she likes archery?" And stood up, went to his garage, and gave my dad a bow to bring home to me.
Unfortunately that bow was sold at a garage sale when we moved 4 years ago. My grandpa i never really got to know died three years ago. I wish I still had the bow he gave me.
You can still shoot in his honor and collect your own bows to pass down to loved ones.
I know it's outside of the scope or purpose of this video, but I do think it's important to mention the existence of slings when you are talking about the history of bows/projectile weapons. Slings are probably at least as ancient as bows and used in military contexts throughout the entire period bows were, and have several advantages over bows, including performing better in adverse weather and a sling and bullets being much less bulky than a bow and arrows.
And it is easy to cast written insults in the lead slingshot.
Much easier to find ammunition with a sling, as you can (potentially, with enough skill) repurpose any suitably sized object into ammunition, whereas arrows may be harder to craft
Slings are also even easier than bows to make as well since all you really need is a few meters of cordage.
Slings aren't as prevalent in fiction, however.
@@StarshadowMelody Latro in Gene Wolfe's Soldier in the Mist used sling-shot metal to write his diary but I can't remember if he was a slinger.
6:28 for someone who gave a disclaimer about probably getting things wrong about guns, you make a very astute point here. "Silencers" or more accurately "suppressors" don't make guns quiet to any reasonable degree.
Sure, the good ones make it difficult to pinpoint a shooter's location from a long distance. But really the only meaningful effect is that it reduces the sound from literally deafening levels to just at/under the threshold of pain, still as loud as a jackhammer.
Good representation overall.
It depends on the suppressor design, firearm design, and the cartridge.
Subsonic rounds out of an integrally suppressed .22 or even 9mm firearm could be as quiet as running the action manually; a hearing-safe clack of metal on metal that most people wouldn't register as a gunshot.
But you're correct in most cases, suppressors generally only make things marginally less loud, hence why in a number of places outside the US they're not regulated as anything other than hearing safety devices.
Doesn't using a suppressor also reduce range/penetration?
@@reachandler3655 Not to any significant degree, at least not when being compared to a bow. Real life isn't a video game.
Within 100 yards an integrally suppressed pistol caliber carbine or SMG will be perfectly serviceable and provide you tens of rounds on tap in a compact package you can use jammed up against a wall or prone.
Beyond say, 300 yards, even supersonic rifle rounds are useful in a suppressed rifle, because the issue of locating the shooter becomes the main concern. You're just hearing snaps over your head, and adding features like trees, hills, or dense buildings can make the sound of the actual rifle firing even harder to locate.
In fact, sound is pretty important to how firearms are used in a combat situation. Rounds snapping overhead, rifle fire echoing off the hills around you, that's a significant emotional event; suppression can pin an enemy down and deny ground even if you miss. Bows were used in mass as volley weapons for much of the same reason: area denial. The goal is to rout the enemy, killing them is a useful side effect.
Not entirely true. Subsonic ammunition being fired from a suppressed single shot weapon would be extremely quiet. Think something like the welrod pistol or the "hush-puppy." Suppressed supersonic ammo makes it more difficult to pinpoint a shooter's location, but a silenced single-shot pistol wouldn't be much louder than the "pew" sound you hear in movies when they fire a suppressed gun. The part that movies get wrong is that it takes a specialty weapon with specialty ammo to actually be that quiet, and just slapping a suppressor on any gun wouldn't work the same way.
@@reachandler3655 No, it can actually do the opposite since it technically increases the barrel length. The only real problem with suppressors is that it make the gun longer(harder to maneuver) and heats up really fast since it traps the gas.
Its weird how at the same time people are wildly resistant to change while also wildly dismissive of old weaponry.
Archery, Muzzleloaders and Horses for example are all shown as obsolete even in their own period in modern media as if the invention of their successor were some "smoking gun" that instantly brought the change.
People like to forget that real societal change doesn't come from today's technological breakthroughs. It comes from yesterday's breakthroughs becoming more widespread.
All inventions rely on previous ones to some extent, coupled with the need to accomplish something more efficiently or in a different way. Looking back at stuff like muzzle loaded guns now is probably how people one hundred or two hundred years from now will look back at our weapons today, even though to us we can barely fathom them getting more efficient.
For a quick modern example, just look at how far computer tech as come in the past thirty years, with each newer iteration outclassing previous ones significantly at times, and yet when they were originally released they were considered the pinnacle of technological advancement. While it's often stated by people to showcase this point, it is still worth restating, that the average cheap flip cellphone you can buy in a store for a few bucks has more processing power and memory than the entire room full of computers NASA used to help land people on the moon.
Just because older tech is inferior in modern day, doesn't mean it was bad at the time. It also doesn't mean that it's any less effective than it was back then, just that our standards for "effectiveness" have changed.
@@Gamer3427 "one hundred or two hundred years from now will look back at our weapons today, even though to us we can barely fathom them getting more efficient."
Might not take that long, with how quickly the use of drones has been spreading. I wouldn't be shocked if they one day supplanted artillery for indirect fire.
There's a cool old videogame called Gun, where you play as a guy in the old west who had both guns and a bow, and let me tell you, you rarely have much use for the bow, but when you unlock dynamite arrows (Literally arrows with a stick of dynamite tied to them) that's the most fun weapon in the game.
I love the idea of not using a gun in a game called "Gun"
memory unlocked. i played that game it was insanely good. i had my character dressed as a native and using bows because i liked it more
I played that gun too! Truly loved it!
I remember the bow in Gun was also the best weapon for the hunting quests, as using a gun "damaged" the skull/hide of the animals you had to kill.
It's a spiritual predecessor to Red Dead, highly recommend, though the game's treatment of native Americans is a pretty solid example of how old the game is
8:00 glad that you specified British, because in America you can dig through a nursery and come out with a half dozen shotguns with boxes of ammo.
Shotguns are very easy to find in the UK. If you find yourself in a post-apocalyptic Britain, just head for the countryside and you'll find a few shotguns and plenty of cartridges at every farm. He specified rifles - the rules are much stricter for rifles, so those are much harder to find.
@@thomasdalton1508and in America riffles are very common. We often wade through the slag of crappy riffles.
@@timesthree5757lol
And handgun are basically everywhere XD
Depends on the state ,
Some states dont play well with citixens Rights
A point in favor of a bow in a futuristic sci-fi setting: it's low tech enough that hackers cannot disable it from further use
Came here to say this too - the more electronics & tech start getting put in firearms & targeting technology, the more susceptible they'll be to attack
This touches on a pet peeve of mine, poor cybersecurity in sci-fi. You might be able to crack encryption or circumvent firewalls, but there are other measures that are harder to circumvent.
If an important piece of equipment like a weapon doesn't need to be networked, don't network it. It can still use non-networked computers.
If it does need data straight from other computers for some reason, keep it wired only, and/or restrict the types of inputs it accepts from external sources, and/or include manual overrides- a compromised computer that's not plugged in to an output or power source isn't a threat.
Fair, tho if that's the concern a not-so-smart gun would have the same advantage.
@@scottfield5082 yep, though you then get the same problem of a gun being harder to source/make yourself than a bow
@@alexharrison2743OK but that's more of a post-apocalypse thing than a futuristic sci-fi thing.
One of my favorite examples of bows vs guns in a fantasy setting actually came from a game I didn't play a whole lot (and has since been shut down) called Dragalia Lost. It was your standard fantasy thoroughfare with swords, bows, magic, and the like, but at some point weapons called 'manacasters' were added, which were basically various types of guns. The conflict comes from a character named Joe, who is your standard sharpshooter archer, but was eventually given a manacaster to try out. While he finds great success with it initially, he eventually claims that it's too easy and it's draining the sense of accomplishment out of battles. However, he's not worried about his own lack of thrills - he's worried about what'll happen when people who don't have the training and weapon discipline get their hands on that kind of easy power and start to underestimate the real dangers of combat. He plans on returning the weapon and going back to his bow, but after a duel with an opponent who was also armed with a manacaster, he decides that he could find his own reason for wanting to use one and improve with it. I thought it was an interesting story, and it works because in the context of the setting, guns are only starting to be introduced to the world. Were it an already established world where both bows and guns were in use, I think it'd be trickier to justify having a character with a concern like Joe's.
omg dragalia lost mention in 2024!!! I never read that character story bc the game shut down before I could get too far into it but that's such a good take on the introduction of guns in a world of bows and swords :0
Oxygen isn’t the issue but an atmosphere does help with getting rid of heat. As an aside, it’d be interesting to see atlatls thrown into the comparison for both contemporary as well as speculative fiction settings.
Similarly to the woomera in Australia, which to my knowledge is likely the key reason the view never took off among our First Nation peoples
Another niche use in sci-fi settings that I've seen a couple of times is that lower velocity or physical projectile weapons have fallen so out of use that protective measures against them have become neglected, such as a shield that only works against energy weapons, or that only activates against projectiles moving at higher speeds, (usually with the excuse of conserving energy instead of activating every time a fly or something lands on you).
Because like was mentioned regarding plate armor falling out of style as guns were able to rip through it, in a futuristic setting, it's not hard to buy that defensive measures would become more specialized when everyone is only using certain types of weapons, leaving enemies more vulnerable to more traditional niche means of attack.
Mass Effect has something like that, where acid, poison or melee attacks just ignore shields (which are kinetic barriers that only block high speed things).
That last point about different ammunition types using a single weapon is always the coolest aspect of bows in fantasy or scifi settings to me. There's an online game called Warframe, which is about playing biomechanical robots with superpowers in space, and one of those is a model called Ivara who's a stealth character focused on archery, one of her skills being cycling between different arrow types for utility - cloak arrows that create an invisibility field on impact, noise arrows that attract enemy attention to different spots, sleep arrows that put enemies in an small area to sleep and rope arrows that create a zipline for you to walk across environments. It's one of the coolest thematic abilities in the game in my opinion.
"Biomechanical robots with superpowers in space" may be one of the coolest phrases I've ever heard!
@@benleague3115 wait until you found out there are superhuman teenagers with reality-bending powers inside and pilot those biomechanical armors and they have to fight against a literal Cosmic God
All made with and powered by emotional trauma.
I love your work! I'm a dancer, fighter, and nerd. You're what I aspire to be
Thank you!
Nice
Hawkeye grew up in a circus. Trickshots became his main act and why he favors the bow. He was also trained in sword fighting in the circus as well.
Agree
I think this is where it becomes important to remember weapons are still lethal even if they've been around for millennia, and the knowledge of warfare and skill of tacticians is paramount. There are plenty of examples of invaders with firearms throughout history being driven out by so-called "primitive" cultures with less efficient weaponry, but we don't even need to go back as far as conquistadors to see this in action. When Indonesia invaded Papua New Guinea the locals were essentially an uncontacted tribe who were now facing a military with modern armored vehicles, tanks and firearms with their bows and spears, and they did a fine job of it. Indonesia has a close relationship with an arms manufacturer while the New Guineans procured their firearms from battles they won against the military with those bows and spears.
It's not even exclusive to just handheld weaponry, Syrian rebels as recently as 2013 crafted and used the superior siege weapon, the trebuchet. There are videos of rebels operating them in combat and firing on government positions. This is during the Syrian Civil War, a still ongoing conflict. Sometimes what works just works, even if it's not as prevalent after centuries or tens of millennia, or if it's outpaced by more modern and ever-adapting weaponry.
The New Guinea situation is still a thing. Sure, they have more access to firearms now than back then from all the loot they've procured after battles, but there are still instances of spears and bows being used there.
War never changes. A bow is in principle a very long spear. A gun is in principle an even longer spear. Be it spear, bow, or gun, the supreme goal is to put a hole your enemy, and that is unchanging. When the goal is payloads sent flying through the air at your enemy, within the right circumstances, a trebuchet is as viable as a cannon.
@@lanternsoul8227 War absolutely changes, let's be real.
Arrows can penetrate sandbags more easily than guns.
Its a small niche benefit, but its there.
I remember someone testing that. The sand flattens the bullet, and, the faster it goes, the more damage to the bullet, and less it penetrates. The arrows just treat it like sand...
I bet you could increase sand penetration by making the arrows more flexible so they wiggle more when they hit.
they also go through some ballistic vests
@@ramboturkey1926 Ithink it is Soft armor they go through.
@@ramboturkey1926 Rifle plates are so ubiquitous these days that using a bow for its kevlar piercing capability would be a very niche application
Another advantage is projectile drop. While that's usually a downside due to accuracy, it also allows you to shoot for more cover if you know where the person you're shooting is because you can shoot up and over. You don't even need to use your bow like artillery for that
Have to note that while a bike is indeed more practical in a post-apoc than a muscle car, it still has several disadvantages. One is that, just like a bow, it relies on your muscle strength, which, if you're injured, sick, tired or hungry will prevent you from using it effectively. Second, if you're in a zombie-apocalypse, having a bike is problematic, because it's easier for zombies to grab you, and harder for you to run them over.
Cool video though, you make good points.
The car is eventually going to become a permanently stationary object though. Gasoline inventories are very, very limited nearly everywhere. There simply won't be any fuel.
With a bicycle you mostly have to worry about parts wearing out, most especially the tires. Which will also be an issue for cars even if you have plentiful fuel. In World War II gasoline was strictly rationed, but that wasn't primarily to save gasoline supplies. America had plenty of its own crude oil at the time and could make all the gasoline it needed. It was the tires that relied on imports to manufacture, and which were difficult to get with the war in the Pacific.
But with a bicycle you could probably come up with some alternative to pneumatic tires if you needed to. The ride would be a lot less comfortable, but it would still work.
A bike is silent, there is a scene in WWZ in which they try to reach the plane quickly and silently using bikes (big fail because of the phone but worth trying.
get an e-bike and a solar charging panel....the book "Wolf and Iron" did that, and had the MC get seriously hurt.
@@Scario45 another benefit of bikes is tires can be made of more than rubber Won't be as much fun to ride, but, replace the tyre with a wagon type wheel
There is an easy defence against zombies as they are portrayed in most stories: walking away. Bikes would be overkill :-)
The part where he mentioned that as people stopped using heavy armor since it didn't work on guns, bows also became more effective reminds me of the Star Wars universe where normal projectile guns were replaced with blasters, which were more effective. However, a lightsaber can be used to block/redirect blaster bullets, so the Jedi don't have to wear any armor to defend against blasters, other lightsabers, and most physical weapons. Unfortunately for them, lightsabers aren't very useful against projectile guns, since if you try to block/redirect a physical bullet it will explode into a bunch of tiny shrapnel that will continue moving towards you, so now you have a bunch of tiny bullet holes in your body instead of one big one. This advantage was used by the Mandalorians during their war with the Jedi.
I was waiting for him to mention that Katniss simply didn't have access to firearms in 12 but easy access to the bow her father made and he did not disappoint
I still like that when she first finally picks up a capitol bow it's a point of tension that she's used exactly one now before and has to figure out the feel of the other one fast
On the sci fi thing- the oxygen point doesn't hold up super well unfortunately, guns tend to carry their own oxidizer in the propelllant so they work absolutely fine in low oxygen/underwater environments- at least in terms of getting the bullet out of the muzzle. Once it's out though, new problems become apparent, and this is where bows would have some advantage.
For space, guns generate a lot of heat and so need specialist cooling systems to work for long periods, and are easy to find on scanners because heat doesn't dissapate well in space. Bows avoid these problems- firing them doesn't create much heat, so it's a lot easier to stay hidden, and you don't need to carry bulky or expensive cooling units with them. One of the Avatar (blue people version) comics has some of the N'avi conducting a space operation using bows this way.
Additionally, underwater, bullets don't travel very far because water provides a lot of resistance and bullets are relatively wide compared to their length. You can avoid getting shot by just diving to the bottom of a swimming pool if you need to. Arrows don't have this problem- they keep going for ages, so someone conducting an underwater operation might want to bring a streamlined bow with them for increased range underwater.
Fantastic video- love you work!
For underwater operations, a specialty underwater firearm would almost certainly be better. Not sure about shooting into the water though
Underwater you won't be using a bullet gun. Ballistic properties of a bullet are rotten in water. You'd want something with much more mass and momentum, like a harpoon.
Or better still, a torpedo.
The brass casing is a very effective method to dump heat, not going to do all the work but definitely helps a lot more than people realize.
@@AZSprockettorpedo/missile hybrid?
Someone mentioned home defense, and that brings up another great point: if someone takes your gun from you, they can easily just turn it around and shoot you with it. If someone takes your bow, they will probably just make a fool of themselves
I get your point, but if you're letting them get close enough to take your weapon, you're doing home defense wrong
If someone is strong enough to take your bow they're probably going to just beat you up not try and turn it around and fire it at you from 1 ft away.
All I gotta say, is if someone is able to take your firearm away from you and shoot you with it in a home defense situation…you probably shouldn’t have a firearm. Gotta be disciplined and have a plan. Also don’t let people get close, and if they try then you’ve got your excuse to fire.
In my opinion the best way is to not choose. Bows and arrows require lots of training, same as learning how to throw axes, knives or shurikens (throwing stars or spikes), while on the other side learning how to use a gun requires a bit less training.
You have a very good video about it on T-Rex Arms channel, a japanese airsoft player visiting a real gun range in Texas. The guy has never shot a real pistol or a real AR-15 in his entire life (very restrictive laws about firearms in Japan), but in Japan they are extremely good at making airsoft replicas (Tokyo Marui for example). So this japanese man has several years of drills (how to reload, check a rifle after a jam etc.), the only thing he doesn't know is how to manage the recoil on a real gun.
After only a few hours of training he was showing the efficiency of someone with months of training.
Learning how to use a real gun is important but you can manage to learn 90% of everything with an airsoft replica, it's cheaper, easier to buy and use. Fairly enough to learn how to use a gun in a tactical scenario.
Personally I have a FNS9 replica (9mm pistol), with tactical holster and 3 magazines, enough to learn how to hold it properly, reload, check the chamber, move in a building, draw quickly in different ways etc.
I know how to use a gun AND a bow at the same time, I'll obviously prefer diplomatie, cooperation with neighborhood and having my own kitchen garden in a post apo scenario ('cause in reality, survive is about cooperation and becoming useful to people around you). But If I find myself in a difficult situation I'll use any weapon available to survive, without having to choose between I will know how to use them all. A gun require 2h of training every months, a bow it's 1h30 every week. Throwing weapons, 45 minutes every weeks (fairly enough to keep muscle memory)
For the choice of the bow I've literally tested all of them, every traditions and every techniques ever recorded on internet and books. The one technique that appeared to me as the only viable option in reality is obviously the very last bow that has resisted to firearms until the very end. The Comanche Short Bow.
This bow is short, very fast to use from the hip, no anchor point, silent, fast, the arrows are shorts. Easy to carry in a backpack, allows you to carry firearms with it.
And if you watch the videos about Lars Andersen and Mead Longbows using Comanche bows and technique you'll see that it is really a viable option. As long as you have the advantage of surprise or stealth on the ennemy. Obviously you don't bring a bow to a gunfight, but you can prevent the gunfight from happening if you have the initiative.
I love the idea of somebody floating in space and shooting arrows at a gigantic spaceship
Honestly, bows in a setting where guns are prevalent is cool for the same reason that a gun in a setting where guns are unheard of is. Just, the prior you gotta get creative in terms of how it can stay competitive narratively, while in the latter it's more a chance to introduce some challenges to a character to allow them to maintain their edge.
8:45 Gunpowder actually supplies it's own oxygen with saltpetre, aka potassium nitrate, which is why it's possible for guns to be fired in oxygen-free environments or even underwater (provided that the powder is dry).
To be honest, the last point of being able to launch different things also goes for guns. The US Navy uses M14s to launch ropes between ships while underway in order to pull heavier ropes and cables across during resupply. Also, many countries have used rifle propelled grenades. They pretty much use the force of the projectile to launch the grenade.
As for the different positives and negatives between bows and guns in certain scenerios- It can take only a few weeks to become good at constructing bows but years of practice to become proficient at using them. A gun only takes a few weeks to become proficient at but takes years of experience to become a good gunsmith. An interesting thing that I have read about and watched videos on is that a lot of the best gunsmiths and innovators started out as watch and clock makers in the 1900s.
I think years of cartoons, tv, and movies have given the false perspective that arrows are more of a 'non-lethal' option compared to guns, even though both can wound or kill depending on where a shot lands, how deep it goes, if it hits vital organs etc... So when a character is dropping enemies with individual arrows or bullets, unless expressly stated most would assume the arrow'd characters passed out or otherwise subdued while the bullet'd ones dead or dying.
Yes, I am proof any idiot can use a crossbow. The first (and only) time I ever picked up a crossbow I got a bullseye. No way was I ever going to use one again and spoil that record.
Also in a post-apocalyptic scenario where you're foraging for ammunition, there are so many calibres out there that the chances of finding something that fits in your firearm, rather than something that doesn't, is diminished, even if you've got one in a popular and practical calibre like 9mm or .45ACP rather than something stupid like a .50AE Desert Eagle. Even if you're carrying both a .45ACP and a 9mm pistol and an assortment of rifles in popular hunting and military calibres (say .30-'06, .308/7.62x51, .223/5.56x45 - assuming you have weapons that can safely use alternative calibres - and 7.62x39), there's still a good chance you're going to find large amounts of ammo of "less popular" calibres that you can't use, because there's such a wide variety out there. And it's not like DOOM where you can carry an entire arsenal of different weapons you've found just so you can use any of the ammo lying around...
I'd just like to thank you for making these videos. I'm working on a story about a monster hunter who uses a bow and arrow, and these videos are really helping with my research.
THG really has the best explanation. Katniss learnt how to use bows bacause she hunted with her father. it would've been impossible to acquire a fireweapon but she was able to make herself bows and arrows. And then, in the later books, since she was the "face" of the revolution, the people behind the scenes wanted people to recognize her, so, again: bow and arrow.
I feel like the biggest issue for firearms in any setting is that it requires a fairly significant industry to manufacture and maintain both the weapons and the ammunition. The moment a setting creates barriers between a character and the products of that industry, firearm use is going to notably decrease. Barriers can be things like government control and regulation, problems with trade and supply chains, or damage to the industry itself. Even if the firearm is simple enough that a local machinist can maintain it, the chemistry knowledge needed to produce both gunpowder and primer is significantly more niche.
That being said, training with a bow is still one of the biggest barriers for a return of widespread bow use in a setting. If you can manufacture a bow, how much more difficult is it to manufacture a crossbow? This especially holds true if a character is using a compound bow. The requirements for the string and cams (even if you're not using composites in the construction) could also be applied for crossbows.
Your passion for archery are infectious. I learn so much and I actually want to start archery. Specifically with traditional African style bows and arrows.
Bows have actually been used in modern military operations. Specifically crossbows, I assume due to the easier ability to adapt extensive firearm training and less space required to fire them. These have been used on a few occasions when a silent weapon has been needed for a covert operation, fired once if at all then abandoned.
It's admittedly niche, but it is still a real world application one could work from if writing a more grounded fiction piece.
Huge fan of your channel, and when you asked for polite corrections you activated my gun nut brain, so I'm happy to provide!
You did incredibly well honestly, genuinely impressive for someone without a firearm background, just some minor mistakes and one fairly big one.
So first off, guns can be made very very silent, look to the Stechkin revolver and the DeLisle for examples of guns potentially equal to a bow in volume. They're rare guns however and the Stechkin used proprietary ammo so running them would be a bit impractical. I'd also wager a good bow would be more deadly as truly silent guns sacrifice a lot of what makes guns better.
Gadget bullets are also possible specifically with shotguns. It won't be as versatile as a bow but your example of explosive shots brings to mind the AA-12, which is an automatic shotgun that came paired with high accuracy slugs and grenade rounds.
The major mistake is the no oxygen comment. A little over a hundred years ago, we switched from black powder to smokeless powder. Smokeless powder has its own oxidiser, it doesn't need oxygen to fire. Smokeless powder firearms have been used without issue by divers, and the soviets tested firing a gun in space to make absolutely sure it would work, and it did.
Now I wanna add some sci-fi advantages you didn't mention for bows because I like sci-fi. Dune started a trend of making force fields weak to low velocity attacks to make guns less powerful than melee, but has anyone ever considered using this to make bows a shield piercing weapon? How about in the hands of a superhuman, where their muscles can outperform a firearm (granted they could just use a bigger gun with more recoil but maybe they're not as durable as they are strong).
Also unrelated trivia, look up Mad Jack Churchill if you dont know of him already, he served in WW2 while refusing to use a gun, instead wielding grenades, a bow, and a sword.
You talking about using a bow for stealth and then using it for more niche scenarios just reminds me of Crysis 3’s bow and how technologically advanced it showed it to be with its on the fly draw weight changes and near instant arrowhead changes for different armored enemies, vehicles, and situations.
Very easy to make a bow non-metallic so it is harder to detect in transport. Does not punch holes in the spaceship in which you are fignting. Does not pollute your limited air-supply like explosive propulsion in guns. Some kinds of armour may be more vulnerable to slow sharp things than fast blunt things.
or use a laser
@@ramboturkey1926 The sort of powerful laser that could kill someone would vapourise a lot of flesh, clothing and armour. All that vapourised material now contaminates your air supply.
It's pretty easy to make non-metallic guns too, even at current tech level; also most guns are far easier to conceal than a bow & quiver.
If your spaceship hull is penetrated by soft lead bullets, you wouldn't survive your first micrometeorite encounter anyway; and even if your ships are low-tech enough where that is a concern, they already make non-penetrating rounds.
Air pollution: I guess so? But assuming your ships have any sort of atmospheric scrubbers I can't imagine a little gunfire being a significant challenge unless you're using black powder for some reason. I mean compared to the number of shows where characters smoke on spaceships... LOL.
Valid point about *some* types of armor, but it's not hard to make armor that protects against both so that's a narrative thing rather than a likely technological thing IMO.
Here's a thought I had watching this that I wonder why I haven't had before. I once wrote a vampire character who made use of the supernatural strength vampirism gave her to use a custom-made bow with a really high draw weight (like low-ball crossbow range, but on a recurve). You could do something similar with any source of superhuman strength, be it fantasy or scifi (Shardbows in The Stormlight Archive are an actually published example). That much had occurred to me before, but when you shot that rope arrow, something else occurred to me: if you had an archer with superhuman strength and a custom-made bow with an obscene draw weight, that thick grapple rope could work so much better. A lot of the downsides of trick arrows that you discussed in the video about them had to do with putting extra mass on the arrow, and one way to solve it would be putting extra power in the bow. Yes, some of the extra mass allowance of that stronger bow would be spent in making arrows that can actually leave the bow without shattering, but not all of it.
You do need a special bowstring material too though, unless you want it to be super thick (to be fair, you might want it thick if your character doesn't also have fingers made of steel lol)
+1 for the Shardbow reference
Well done on making an ad spot fit so well into your style I enjoyed watching it instead of just skipping past
A science fantasy setting I'm working on has bows, crossbows and a form of energy weapon forming a sort of trifecta as the energy weapon has a really short range, so you have trade offs where these basically laser muskets are easy to use and very fast to shoot but you need to be very close to use them, crossbows trade the speed for greater range and bows give you speed and range but require a lot of training. Bows and crossbows then only begin to phase out once projectile launching firearms are developed
I've thought of one other useful characteristic of bows for a certain kind of character: Forensic ballistics, or the lack thereof. Bows don't have serial numbers and you can't match an arrow to the bow that shot it. Between that and the lack of noise, bows could be quite useful for an assassin.
A certain sci-fi text-only game i can't mention makes arrows pass through a common technology, personal energy shields only trigger at certain speeds, so arrows are slow enough to not trigger them, making them useful against enemies that heavily rely on their energy shield.
I think bows could also be used to hit a target behind cover by doing a parabolic shot and some arrows might pierce regular bulletproof vest. Of course those advantages only work because in normal scenarios people don't usually face bows in combat, if bows were common people would take them into consideration as well.
Fun advantage: bows have more non-combat use. Imagine one of those typical "self destruct timer is running, have to press button to stop it, cannot get there in time" scenes; a well aimed arrow can push the button to stop the self destruct sequence, while a firearm would only make things worse. Plus with a bow one technically can hit the button from above even if standing three floors lower.
7:33 While this is mostly true, it is also almost scarily easy to fashion a simple open-bolt SMG. Just look up the Luty for proof of that. Ammo, though ... yeah, that's a whole other issue. Sure, you literally can make a Luty out of random stuff from the hardware store and readily-available tools, but unless you're a chemistry major with access to precision equipment/ingredients I doubt you'll be making the smokeless powder ammunition you need for it.
And while it's certainly possible to make firearms in a shed, making them reliable and safe to fire repeatedly, potentially in combat situations or after they've been covered in dirt, is a different matter.
Perhaps surprisingly, the last time human-powered projectile weapons were issued to combat troops as standard weapons was in the mid-to-late 20th century. The Vietcong used crossbows in jungle warfare during the Vietnam War (1955 - 1975). Not only were they cheaper to provide and maintain than firearms, they were also quieter (though crossbows are not as silent as they're portrayed in many films). Most Vietcong were issued with firearms of course and crossbows were not the majority weapon, but they weren't just reserved for specialist troops either.
I think crossbows to this dsay are equipment optional for assasinations.
There are people who are good at telling in an interesting way about stuff, and people eho can't... This guy is definitely good at it.. Just nice and relaxing to listen about a subject I don't know anything about and wasn't planning on learning about
I think part of it's tactile. while holding a gun might be more dangerous, there's _literal_ tension in holding a bow with the string pulled back.
I think part of it is also that, _because_ a bow is harder to learn to use than a gun, in shows the character has invested more time and effort into learning the skill.
Part of what I like in pathfinder is that the rules for guns and bows work out to these advantages. Bullets are expensive, guns are loud, and guns can fail in a lot more ways than a bow. But guns also have a lot more power, so you can just straight up ignore armor (if you’re close enough) and when they crit it’s usually a x4 multiplier.
U forgot something, CSI: even if u dont retrive ur arrow, it much harder to pin it to U, will bultes gets marks from the firearms that they shot from
Where the bow beats a gun is in the fact that you can always make more ammo. Guns without ammo are paperweights. Arrows can be made in the wild and bullets cant. Once you run out of ammo you have no weapon.
I am also rather fond of the ability to choose how far back you want to draw your bow. I don't know how many scenarios it would come up in, but they certainly would be cool.
As far as bows being able to deliver different payloads, there are firearms that can do that as well. Shotguns can use all different kinds of ammo types, buckshot, birdshot, beanbags, flachettes, even mini-grenades. There are entire channels on youtube dedicated to making and testing different materials and ammo for shotgun cartridges (sometimes silly stuff, sometimes stuff that turns out surprisingly good). A shotgun is also relatively easy to make. The pressure produced by them isn't that high, and really don't require much more than a pipe, a nail, and a hacksaw to make something that will fire.
One of the advantages of bows over rifles is indirect fire. If you have a force of bow users behind cover they can shoot over their cover easily in a parabolic arc without exposing themselves to danger. This means that a bow user can shoot over things like hills that would be an impediment to a gun. Obviously this would be highly inaccurate, and would only make sense if you have a group of bow users rather than just one person.
Bows are my go to in warframe, a third person sci-fi game.
There’s one bow in the game with some flavor text that mentions that it’s not just a bow, but also helps propel the arrows even faster via electromagnets. No trick arrows, but I think a bow that works like a railgun in addition to its normal function is just neat.
What I'm missing from most scifi stories is upgrading bows with new technologies. Like miniature particle accelerators creating a micro black hole, that speeds up the arrow and collapses before getting hit. The arrow keeps flying, until it hits the target
(not my idea, it's from a book)
For me that's the point. Tech gives you the advantage. The character with the ancient weapon becomes the underdog making their victory more impressive.
You almost mentioned this, but combining the lack of sound and anti-magic that you did, one advantage of a bow in a sci-fi setting is the lack of technology. If a laser gun shoots a bright beam of energy it is very visual, playing harder on this, the laser beam could leave a radiation trace, or the beam or weapon could set off sensors that cover the area, a bow would be complete stealth, which then links back to the "underdog takes on the evil empire" idea you also mentioned
In post-apocalyptic settings it makes sense for ammunition and reparability, those are more difficult to come by for guns without industrial support. Though something that is a lot more rare in media and would make a lot of sense long term for something like a zombie apocalypse is slings.
Slings are hugely under-represented. Easy to carry, easy to find ammo for, and devastating in trained hands. The skill is not that hard to pick up, but it is quite difficult to become really good.
@@AJPemberton While we're on zombie apocalypse weaponry: spears and big ol' quaterstaffs. Easy to make and maintain, useful for things besides fighting zombies, reach that makes them much better than the melee weapons you see usually. Criminally underused.
Like in Walking Dead, been a while since I last watched that, but the longest melee weapon I remember seeing was a sword. So many fights against slow zombies would be a lot easier if they just got a big stick to keep their distance, and a horde pushing on a fence would be more manageable if you thinned them out at your leisure by sticking heads with a spear.
@@cathsaigh2197a big stick is really useful. A big pointy stick is even more so! :-)
Classical zombies are not really a threat to realistic humans. Sure, the last pandemic may have proven that an outbreak would spread rapidly via stupid people. But they'd also be the first to die. The smart ones left would only need to wait a few months for the zombies to rot, while avoiding close contact with any 'undead' without good body armour.
Things get a bit more interesting if we imagine more probable scenarios such as a huge solar flare taking out all our electric networks, computers and satellites. Or just running out of oil. CItes would empty, society would drop back to some earlier stage. Depending on how bad that is, a big stick could make a reappearance as the fashion accessory of choice.
@@AJPemberton Yeah, in more realistic slow zombie apocalypse scenarios the real threat of violence is always other humans. And long term I'd be equally worried about food and clean water supplies.
There are plenty of people who load their own ammunition simply because it's cheap. Pick up your brass to reuse it. It's not terribly difficult, probably not much harder than making a *good* arrow. Tho the equipment isn't easily portable, so if your character is on the move a lot that's less helpful.
Consideration for futuristic settings: since the main restrictions on a bow's capabilities are material and human strength, it is conceivable that there is a combination of highly elastic materials (bow), extremely dense materials (ammo), and cybernetic enhancements that would allow a bow-user to vastly outperform any reasonably-sized firearm -- at least in the realm of sniping/penetration.
Obviously, from a practical standpoint it would make more sense to just make a crossbow that does the same thing, and you're removing a lot of the cool factor by eliminating human power, but it's something that could possibly happen in the real world if materials science advances far enough (though it seems improbable that the necessary materials are actually physically possible).
(Also, there might be some limiting factor around the practical length of a bow and a theoretical ceiling of force that it can impart that I'm unaware of that makes this more than just unlikely in the real world -- if anyone knows feel free to respond)
Correction on low atmosphere use: this is not an advantage for the bow. Firearm ammunition is oxidized (even black powder!), so it carries its own oxygen and requires none. Guns made today (or a century ago) work just fine in space.
On the other hand, in a very dense atmosphere (eg. water), bullets can't travel very far without breaking up due to friction. Due to their very high inertia, arrows would fair better (though spearguns and the like are still perfectly fine).
In very very cold environments (not space), a cold atmosphere will likely rob some of the combustion energy of the firearm cartridge and make autoloading firearms less reliable unless specifically tuned to operate in that environment.
In general, a bow will work in more environments but it just so happens that space is one of the environments where guns work fine. As a gun person, I'm glad to see your presentation from the other angle even if you're a bit biased :)
I've also heard of the idea that in a trans-humanist setting augmented arms could negate the limitations of human strength. This allows bows to evolve into weapons with absurd power and draw weight.
I have experience as a military small arms operator. In a fight the bow loses. It has some options though. Signaling whistle /fire arrows, hunting food in stealth and saving firearm ammo, puncturing sandbags/soft armor, can wrap arrows in your sent to throw dogs off your trail, and they may spook horses less than gunfire.
As an addendum to your point about bows having a much higher payload potential, I think it's also important to point out (especially in a scifi/fantasy setting with mythical materials) that as a result, certain bow and arrow combinations outperform certain guns in their capacity for piercing armor. While the best AP rounds today are certainly outperforming the best bows and arrows for the same task, that was untrue for much of the history of firearms, and even today, a war bow with specialized tips designed for piercing armor is still going to have more armor-piercing capability than many of the low-caliber firearms that would be most readily available to most potential wielders.
It's *totally* feasible for a setting with fantastical materials to have circumstances where a small set of arrows with rarer unobtanium tips (that could be reused) could be more accessible and effective than firearms, particularly in a setting where armor tech outpaces gun tech or otherwise favors bows in effectiveness relative to accessibility.
Jack Churchill didn't think bows were useless in modern warfare. Hard to argue with a man that used to fight Nazis by playing Scotland the Brave on the bagpipes while firing a longbow and throwing grenades all at the same time.
Jack Churchill had the sense to carry a bow, pistol and sword, a loadout well sutied to commando tactics.
I always loved archers as my trpg characters (though I barely practice archery irl lmao). Recently I've been looking into a Cyberpunk setting that provides bows as an option and wondered whether it would be realistic, so thanks so much for this video!
You could use one to attach a locator beacon to a fleeing vehicle, patch into a data conduit, cut power to alarms, etc. and the classic poisons/drugs.
Don't forget that in a cyberpunk setting your characters can be augmented to be more accurate, stronger and faster than average people.
I'd love if Cyberpunk 2077 had bows a weapon option. Considering how prevalent melee weapons already are and the "style over substance" mentality that leads to that, I'm imagining a recurve bow with special alloy limbs and a 1000lb+ draw-weight punches through armor and pins people to walls, you just need gorilla arms or other heavy augmentations to use it.
@@drewrussell8531 I magine a bow that is just a spring-loaded tube with a handle.
One of the supplements for Cyberpunk 2020 (the TTRPG that's the basis for the Cyberpunk 2077 videogame) had a section on futuristic bows and their ammunition. It was either one of the Chromebooks (gear supplements) or possibly Solo of Fortune 2 (character and gear options for combatant characters).
Guidance kits for bullets need large caliber projectiles and are expensive due to the stress of being explosively launched, forced down a metal tube, and spin stabilized by screw threads inside the barrel. An arrow or dart can be given a cheaper less robust guidance kit and still have space in the warhead for an efp.
Thank you! It’s nice to see why this could actually have a basis in some real advantages.
Correct me if I’m wrong but an actual historical example of an advantage bows had over guns specifically during the colonization of the Americas, even if a relatively limited one, was that they were far more conducive to ambush and guerrilla tactics both due to their noise level and because they produce no smoke when black powder firearms put out a lot of the stuff and can give you away in the right conditions. I believe this was a factor in the encirclement of Custer’s troops at the Battle of Little Bighorn, he was granted wildly overextended and had totally exposed himself to attack because he was equal parts pompous and murderous, but when it came down to it many of the Lakota and Cheyenne warriors opposing him were able to obscure their locations and numbers over ridges during the initial encirclement before closing in by using their bows, with of course the additional benefit of not wasting as much of their undoubtedly limited supply of rifle ammunition. I could of course be COMPLETELY wrong about this but it’s something I recall at least vaguely.
Note: It's believed bows were used in Australia when the aboriginal people arrived, but fell out of use fairly early. No-one is entirely sure why, although I'm sure hypotheses abound. The migration sources of peoples were all believed to have used bows. Again, like 70kBCE Africa, it's hard to back this up.
8:40 "Low oxygen environments"
Good thinking but modern bullets are sealed containers, ergo they will still combust underwater or even in the vacuum of space, though the other mechanical functions would require some tinkering to not jam. Still could be favored by explorers that want a weapon that works everywhere at once though.
8:42 firearms (especially modern ones) contain their own oxidizer and can be fired perfectly fine without atmospheric oxygen
An interesting comment I wana make is when superpowers are thrown in.
So. In a V5 Vampire The Masquerade game I was in. I made a Banu Haquim who was basically a mix between Green Arrow, Jacket and The Punisher. [See. Banu consider themselves as guardians. Trying to keep a balance between Vampire and kine society]
Robyen. [The Banu Haquim] had access to disciplines. (Basically. Vampire superpowers] Celerity. (Super speed) and obfuscate. (Invisibility)
The bow was her choice of weapon since she preferred to be a ghost, using stealth to accomplish her objectives. She could easily keep up with the gun toting Torrador and the lethal in melee catiff. She even managed some impressive feats of Archery like sniping a guy with a bow.
I really appreciate the subtitles.
It would have been better if he had used TH-cam's own system and provided his subtitles rather than the automated ones. That way, you could customise them or turn them off.
This reminds me of a way that Warhammer managed to make bow like weapons not only work but be really cool. Do note, I'm not sure if this is still canon, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.
During the Great Crusade, Horus invaded the 'Interex' civilization, who were made up of humans and xenos that worked together. They saw what looked like centaurs or soldiers on horseback with bows and assumed they were gonna be easy to kill. Oh boy were they wrong. The 'horses' were in fact mobile weapon platforms to allow for rapid movements. And the 'bows' fired concentrated energy bolts that punched through Space Marine Armour like it was nothing.
So there's a neat way to sci-fi up archers
Sci fi worlds with electrical nullifying agents abound might also feature protagonists appreciating long-range weapons that stay in commission despite any sparkly blue energy fields they may encounter.
Heres a sci-fi archery idea. A lot of man portable missiles use a light initial charge to send the missiles far enough away from the user that the rocket motor won't be dangerous when it ignites.
You could have bow fired rockets or missiles in a sci-fi.
I’ve never thought about the use of a bow in space, but now I have and my day is better because of it.
The first thing i thought about with a sci-fi setting is that strength/stamina augmentation and ocular targetting are often things, so an archer could work as a sniper from insanely long distances using incredibly heavy draw weight bows without getting tired while still being incredibly accurate, rapid, and silent.
5:58 I would possibly argue the case that an even earlier use of this by storytellers is in the Odyssey where Odysseus is holding off the entire party of suitors with a bow, his son and a few herdsmen. I only bring this up as the Robin Hood story you mentioned sorta reminds me of this. Would you agree? The story you used is perfectly fine for the point, it just reminded me of the case in the Odyssey
Remember that Penelope and Odysseus were perfectly suited to each other. Do you think those suitors had not been subtly poisoned for the last few months?
@@pattheplanter lmao wouldn't surprise me from Penelope
Thanks, that was a fun & informative video. You have mad skills.
Bows have still been effective in modern history. The late great Mad Jack Churchill used his longbow in world war II to great effect
The pole dancing archer would DEFINITELY be an excellent DND character.
Before watching, I can think of a couple scenarios. It's really good for post apocalyptic because it's easier to make arrows than bullets. It's also quieter, so less likely to draw people or weird sci-fi monsters to you. There's also a possible scenario where guns are outlawed but bows aren't.
Things like this are so helpful and interesting. Thank you for using your skills and knowledge to help people! Also it probably doesn't need to be said, but your pole skills are amazing!
As an archer and a gun guy, I invite you to come to Texas. You can learn about both. Hunting is a big part of our state. Likely to find a a rifle and a bow in many homes.
bows are the coolest weapon in fantasy settings
7:40 you mention the difficulty of making a machinegun from scratch.
Machineguns are actually one of the easiest guns to make. You essentially just make a normal gun but broken and with less parts. If the apocalypse did happen it is likely that most newly made guns would be crappy machineguns made in the sten, grease, or luty patterns.
Moreover, while consistent nitrocellulose gunpowder would take a while to get consistent again, homemade black powder is always an option and not very hard with the right equipment. While it might be smoky, and have a shorter potential range, it’d still definitely work.
Even in post apocalyptic Britain, muskets and slam fire shotguns made with plumbing blackpipe would probably be quite common.
Another thing to consider is shotguns. Some can be created out of metal tubes and garbage, and real world 'trick' shells can include;
- Rubber pellet loads
- Beanbag rounds
- Dragon's Breath (sounds cool and fires flaming projectiles)
- Sabot/rifled slugs
- Salt shells (they just shoot salt)
While also being among the cheapest and most reliable guns with very widespread ammunition. HOWEVER;
- There's no way to make a 12g shotgun truly quiet
- Hommade shotguns can and will end in horrific explosions that may harm the user
- Still more than 2 parts
- These are all still limited in compairison to what you can come up with for bows
But, overall, you can still make them distinctive to a character with some creativity and a healthy disregard for practicality. This applies to most weapons- if it works right in the setting, why not add variety and characterization?
I've seen bows (ok crossbows) used to launch lines into trees so a climbing rope can be lifted into the tree and people are able to climb up into the canopy. Can't really do that without a heavily modified firearm
Some other decent ideas.
Maybe the character was a competitive archer before the apocalypse. So training was already done.
Also, historically, archers in warfare were shooting up potentially bypassing defensive walls on the way down. In a post apocalyptic setting, you might find guns, but finding mortar might be more of a stretch.
I'd never considered a few of these.
In my writing, the rules of the setting just sort of made guns disadvantageous.
Magic, in all my works, is much more powerful when channelled through an object (which is why magicians tend to carry swords or staffs; wands are outdated tools in my writings) and not only is it easier to channel magic through an arrow compared to a bullet, wood holds magic longer than metals do so the enchantment lasts longer, giving more effective range.
Also, the outdated wands can be used as arrows.
@@makarabaduk1754 That's a fair point actually, though I meant outdated to the point where it's difficult to find them.
I will have to keep that in mind though.
Air rifles may be an interesting counterpoint there. They basically are muscle powered just like nerf guns, no combustion and thus no cleaning really necessary, and I guess if you want to combine them with an enchantment, it should be acceptable to enchant an entire tin of pellets (Gamo even makes gold plated ones, I heard gold is good to store magic).
But at least by anime rules, a single pellet is small, and can only carry a limited amount of magic with it just due to there only being a certain area around it that one can use for purple glow or other typical effects. Also the pellet flies too fast to carry some physical objects with it such as a flame. An arrow OTOH can carry magic along its entire length, and is easy to combine with standard spells like fireballs and also has a velocity to easily allow carrying virtually anything.
Mai Zenin be like: 😑