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PittTheElder posted:Between the nuclear exchange, societal collapse, and climate effects, it would still kill nearly every human on the planet though. Eh, we've survived worse. quote:That's not to say you can't build bombs that would render the earth uninhabitable for a long rear end time though. That's what salted bombs are for. HEY GAIL posted:moreover, while a period bullet starts out fast(ish), it loses velocity far more rapidly than its modern counterpart. i don't know much about medicine--what kind of wound will a fat, heavy, soft, slow missile make, as opposed to one that's smaller but much faster? i mean, i had always heard that minne balls leave larger holes as well, but once you get to modern velocities won't the shockwave tear holes through flesh?  but if the musket ball hits a bone, the limb gets amputated at that point, because 3/4" or more of bone just disappears.
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Jan 13, 2017 07:25
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Bad Angus! Bad!
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OwlFancier posted:There's a difference between your enemy dealing with wounded being useful and actually centering your strategy around it which is very rarely practical. Trying to design a wounding only bullet is silly but if you have enemy wounded on the field after a battle then sending a dude specifically to go round and stab them all is... kind of a weird idea. It doesn't really give you an advantage. Unless you have some kind of cultural affinity for stabbing people. Sure your enemy can elect not to deal with their wounded, in which case they die anyway, and it probably doesn't do the enemy morale any good, in either case having a regimental casualty-stabber is probably not a thing you're going to bother with. I completely agree that sending a person out to specifically kill the enemy wounded is something almost all commanders didn't bother with, but I'm pretty sure the reasons for doing so have little to do with burdening the enemy with wounded soldiers because of the number of better reasons for not doing it. Such as, some of the ones you and above posters have already listed. As for mass killings on battlefields I'll simply say that I believe this has more to do with organization and commanders having more authority coupled with the ability to exercise that authority than with bullets, but I have very little to back this up with. Other than, there are periods where we also see mass battlefield death and gunpowder weapons are absent. Out of curiosity, what OIF and OEF look like it terms of the amount of casualties in battles? edit: for the nuke chat, as a chemist, I would like to point out there is a common misconception that short-decay fission products are more dangerous than long-decay products. Generally speaking, when scientists talk about radioactive isotopes that are dangerous they mean something like Sr-90. Sr-90 is a major problem because it has a half-life of about thirty years which means that once you leave enough of it to contaminate an area you'll still half of it there after thirty years. And then in another thirty years half of that will be gone and so on. To make matters worse it also acts somewhat like calcium in reactions so even a small amount in your environment is extremely dangerous to any animal with bones (you). Ithle01 fucked around with this message at 07:45 on Jan 13, 2017 |
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Jan 13, 2017 07:32
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It's certainly likely humans would survive in small pockets. Just not many, and almost certainly no modern organized society could withstand the shock. My money would be on Polynesians; far removed from likely target areas, plentiful maritime resources. PittTheElder fucked around with this message at 07:37 on Jan 13, 2017 |
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Jan 13, 2017 07:34
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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How do people survive getting shoy by rifles these days...
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Jan 13, 2017 08:30
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Good medical care. Unless you get holed in a vital organ, bleed out, or die of shock before a doctor gets to work, they have a pretty good success rate. Even way back in the 17th and 18th centuries they could do a lot to mitigate the physical damage, they just couldn't do much about infection or blood loss.
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Jan 13, 2017 09:32
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You just reminded me of one of my favourite videos, where an unwitting marine gets a Fast1 needle demonstrated on him. The Fast1 is a needle designed to pump enough fluid into someone who just lost 3 or 4 limbs, and the look on the marines face when what such a needle looks like is priceless. (don't watch if you don't like needles, obviously)
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Jan 13, 2017 11:09
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That is a scary needle.
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Jan 13, 2017 13:57
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glynnenstein posted:I took a folklore class that examined storytelling among first-responders and it was fascinating. Every field has it's workers bonding over "war stories" about the crazy poo poo they've seen; it's a very simple interaction that everyone has to reinforce in-groups who share status. In the context of EMTs who deal with deeply terrible poo poo, it's also a way to share your trauma with other people who understand in a socially accepted way, a bit like therapy except it's contextualized as bragging so it doesn't seem weak, which is important in the world of police, EMTs, and firefighters. The guys who had stories about responding to plane crashes apparently tended to have the highest status because in those crashes they would see the worst traumas (evidently a lot of decapitations). It also went over how quickly folks working in cities where you deal with tons of traumatic violence have short careers because there are limits to coping with that in normal ways. In the military it's called 'decompression'. The thing about PTSD is that it ultimately comes down to an inability to process and 'encode' a memory, so the brain gets stuck in stress mode. Just being able to talk though a memory is an incredibly important element of preventing/reducing PTSD because it reduces suppression. Case study: in the aftermath of the Falklands war the rate of PTSD and suicide among veterans was way higher amongst those who were flown back as a priority and went straight to their families than amongst those who spent 2-3 weeks on a boat sailing back. The reason? The guys on the boats spent that time talking to each other about what they'd seen and done. The guys who got the 'preferential' treatment never got that chance.
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Jan 13, 2017 13:58
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golden bubble posted:What he means is that major battles in the Franco-Prussian war and the Eastern front of the American Civil war had about the same number of casualties. But in the ACW, the side with 100,000 troops in the battle had a major numerical advantage. In the Franco-Prussian war, the side 100,000 troops in the battle had a major numerical disadvantage. So, the ACW had a higher percentage of casualties in the big battles. Show me some data on this, I'm curious.
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Jan 13, 2017 14:10
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JcDent posted:How do people survive getting shoy by rifles these days... Along with medical care, first world armies like to issue good body armor to their soldiers. If you're armored up, you can take a .30 caliber rifle round straight to the chest and keep on truckin'. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQi7iknSKy0
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Jan 13, 2017 14:27
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Splode posted:That is a scary needle. I'll talk! Whatever you want, just get that thing away from me Going back to nukes for a second; I promise I'm not asking this as a politically loaded question, I mean it solely as a military one: is there, in the year 2017, any real benefit for the USA or Russia to build any more nukes? My armchair understanding is that our (America) current nuclear arsenal is big enough to destroy the world on its own in the event of full scale nuclear war; I'm having a hard time figuring out the benefit of "we should build more". If there is a full scale nuclear war, I feel like "we didn't have enough nukes" would be low on the scale of problems in the post mortem, which would be conducted by ghouls from fallout
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Jan 13, 2017 16:40
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Ainsley McTree posted:I'll talk! Whatever you want, just get that thing away from me There is no benefit except if you are talking about building 'tactical' nuclear weapons that you intend to actually start chucking around, because you are a moron that doesn't see how terrible an idea that is.
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Jan 13, 2017 16:46
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Missiles have a lifespan. They also tend to be quite costly to maintain. Modern delivery systems pack more warheads into each missile and are better at defeating countermeasures, which means you need fewer of them. Fewer missiles/warheads results in less risk of proliferation. The world is safer if Nuclear powers use their replacement cycle to draw down into a reliable and effective second-strike capability.
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Jan 13, 2017 16:54
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Realistically, is there anything stopping the president from ordering the use of nuclear weapons? I don't mean like in a cuban missile crisis scenario, where world tensions are on the brink and oh god early warning systems just detected a billion Russkie nukes inbound. But if the president decided to use a tactical nuclear weapon on the battlefield or something, That just ...happens right?
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Jan 13, 2017 16:54
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Saint Celestine posted:Realistically, is there anything stopping the president from ordering the use of nuclear weapons? In theory, the President has unrestricted ability to call down a nuclear strike whenever he wants. While there are safeguards to confirm the identity of the issuer, there are no "Should we really launch a nuke?" safeguards except for the people in the chain of command rebelling and refusing to launch under direct orders.
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Jan 13, 2017 16:59
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Ainsley McTree posted:I'll talk! Whatever you want, just get that thing away from me I think your factoid is fairly out of date; the US nuclear arsenal peaked in 1970. The Soviet nuclear arsenal peaked at 45,000 warheads in the late 1980s. That was probably enough to wipe out the entire world; a bomb per so much of the global population. That said, there's two issues going on for America: 1. Trump tweeting the hottest take he has at any given moment off the top of his brainpan. Trump's tweets have *way* less meaning than pretty much any form of presidential communication, so don't mistake actual policy directions for them. Trump also knows pretty much nothing about the military. One hot one discussed in the cold war thread was Trump saying he wanted to reactivate the Iowa class battleships - which was seen as "almost literally impossible" by the thread, aside from being utterly wasteful. Trump's nuclear tweets are pretty much in the same vein: he wants to say that "I'M GONNA MAKE AMERICA STRONG" without any understanding as to how to accomplish that. 2. The other issue is the renewal of America's nuclear arsenal. This is actually fairly important if you want deterrence to work, and spending has already been started by Obama's administration. This doesn't involve building more warheads, but does involve spending billions on modernization for various systems. This, however, is a fairly deep and nuanced area; not exactly the sort of thing the Trumpentweet is about. Saint Celestine posted:Realistically, is there anything stopping the president from ordering the use of nuclear weapons? This blog is great in general, and the author of it just did a series of posts on this question if you want to know more. Long story short: the system focuses on certain things (reaction speed, proper authorization) and not others. e2: Oh, sorry, misunderstood. America right now has a official stated policy of only using any sort of nuclear bomb as a last resort. As America is a big winner in the whole "nuclear taboo" thing, any attempt to "normalize" the use of nuclear weapons would be met by very stiff institutional resistance. Nebakenezzer fucked around with this message at 17:10 on Jan 13, 2017 |
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Jan 13, 2017 17:04
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HEY GAIL posted:moreover, while a period bullet starts out fast(ish), it loses velocity far more rapidly than its modern counterpart. i don't know much about medicine--what kind of wound will a fat, heavy, soft, slow missile make, as opposed to one that's smaller but much faster? i mean, i had always heard that minne balls leave larger holes as well, but once you get to modern velocities won't the shockwave tear holes through flesh? No, not really. The shockwave creates what's known as the temporary or secondary cavity, but it doesn't really matter much for soft tissue. Muscle is elastic, it just snaps back again and that cavity closes up; you'll get some bruising but that's about it. Most things aren't bothered by this, with the exception of more rigid organs like the liver, gall bladder, and kidneys; gall bladder removal is a pretty common aftermath of non-fatal shootings. The path of tissue actually cut and crushed by the bullet itself is called the permanent or primary cavity. If you take a look at any of the hundreds of ballistic gelatin videos on Youtube you can see the difference in slow-motion. A modern rifle bullet certainly has the capability to shatter bone, but a minie ball or Lorenz bullet or something like that will shatter the bone and keep right on trucking. Here's a 2009 article from Military Medicine comparing Civil War vs. Spanish-American war injuries: http://militarymedicine.amsus.org/doi/pdf/10.7205/MILMED-D-02-2307 quote:The late nineteenth century saw the development of a “full metal jacketed bullet” as a means to improve military firearms by increasing the range and accuracy over solid lead bullets. The changes in bullet design were also thought to have an effect on the types of wounds seen with battle casualties. When comparing casualties from the American Civil War to the Spanish-American War, observers noted less severe wounds. Borden also noted a decreased reported mortality among hospitalized patients with extremity wounds: from 13.8% to 1.6% (lower extremity) and 6.5% to 0.2% (upper extremity) when comparing casualty statistics of the Civil War to those of the Spanish-American War. The article does a bunch of comparisons of minie ball vs. .30 Krag: quote:Muzzle velocities of the rifled musket were significantly less when compared with the Krag-Jorgenson rifle, averaging 944 fps (±116; range, 809–1085) vs. 1852 fps (± 22.5; range, 1820–1878), respectively ( p < 0.001). Maximum permanent tract diameters in the first 15 cm of the musket wound track were significantly greater than the rifle, averaging 16.3 mm (±2.6, range, 14–20) vs. 9.2 mm (±3.2; range, 7.5–15), respectively ( p = 0.005). Maximum temporary cavities within the first 15 cm of gelatin were also significantly larger, averaging 121 mm (±5.4; range, 115–130) vs. 38.6mm (± 8.8; range, 30–53) ( p < 0.001). Bullet weights were also significantly larger, totaling 29.7 grams (±1.3; range 28.2–31.5) vs. 14.18 grams (±0.01; range 14.17–14.19) ( p < 0.01). Using grains, bullet weights were 458.3 grains (±20 grains; range 435.2–486.1) vs. 218.8 grains (±0.15; range 218.7–219). Friend of mine just wrote a pretty good primer on the current state of terminal ballistics, if people want I can ask him if I can repost it here.
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Jan 13, 2017 17:07
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MikeCrotch posted:You just reminded me of one of my favourite videos, where an unwitting marine gets a Fast1 needle demonstrated on him. The Fast1 is a needle designed to pump enough fluid into someone who just lost 3 or 4 limbs, and the look on the marines face when what such a needle looks like is priceless. Can soldiers put some writing on file to the effect of if it's between me dying or having that needle used on me just fuckin let me die? Because gently caress everything about that needle.
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Jan 13, 2017 17:11
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I imagine you'd be having other difficulties more immediate than "oh no a lot of needles".
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Jan 13, 2017 17:19
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aphid_licker posted:Can soldiers put some writing on file to the effect of if it's between me dying or having that needle used on me just fuckin let me die? Because gently caress everything about that needle. It seemed like everything was pretty normal for a needle until he pumped air through it to start. That looked like it took the soul out of his body.
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Jan 13, 2017 17:20
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chitoryu12 posted:Along with medical care, first world armies like to issue good body armor to their soldiers. If you're armored up, you can take a .30 caliber rifle round straight to the chest and keep on truckin'. Ugh, that video title is just a wonderful example of how much 'Hero' is overused.
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Jan 13, 2017 17:31
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Where does that... put the fluids? Like, they stab it through your loving sternum but where does it go on the other end? Surely not your heart?
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Jan 13, 2017 17:36
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Boiled Water posted:I imagine you'd be having other difficulties more immediate than "oh no a lot of needles". I'll deal with my bleeding the way god intended, namely by running out of blood aphid_licker fucked around with this message at 18:33 on Jan 13, 2017 |
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Jan 13, 2017 17:54
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OwlFancier posted:Where does that... put the fluids? Your bones are actually porous, so they are the best place to put fluids if you are in a situation where you don't have access to a suitable vein e.g. you just got half or more of your limbs blown off by an IED and are going into hypovolemic shock.
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Jan 13, 2017 18:00
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Huh. Doesn't that gently caress up the marrow?
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Jan 13, 2017 18:02
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Phanatic posted:A modern rifle bullet certainly has the capability to shatter bone, but a minie ball or Lorenz bullet or something like that will shatter the bone and keep right on trucking. I like to think of the shattered remains of the bullet cutting a rather impressive little jig with the shattered bones and organs of that poor bastard 19th century soldier.
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Jan 13, 2017 18:15
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OwlFancier posted:Huh.
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Jan 13, 2017 18:44
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Nine of Eight posted:the marrow just gets pushed aside, which is the painful bit of the video. The needle insertion isn't very painful per se. Yeah, that's where they pump air through the needle and the guy looks like he's contemplating immediate suicide.
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Jan 13, 2017 19:07
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aphid_licker posted:Can soldiers put some writing on file to the effect of if it's between me dying or having that needle used on me just fuckin let me die? Because gently caress everything about that needle. Just close your loving eyes. You'd be amazed how easy and painless needles become when you don't see them coming. Something that size is still gonna hurt, but not nearly as badly as you build it up in your head.
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Jan 13, 2017 19:10
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aphid_licker posted:I'll deal with my bleeding the way god intended, namely by running out of blood "Hey dude, you're missing an arm and a leg, I can save you with this needle!" ... "This is fine"
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Jan 13, 2017 19:13
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OwlFancier posted:Where does that... put the fluids? That isn't quite where the heart is and those needles aren't long enough to touch it even if it was, there's basically a plate of bone/cartilage there which is what the needles are going in to. Like the pointy end isn't going through the bone, just into it. The sternum (the plate of bone and cartilage) is the poo poo that gets all hosed up when someone does CPR because they need to flex the whole chest enough to physically massage the heart.
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Jan 13, 2017 19:15
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PittTheElder posted:Just close your loving eyes. You'd be amazed how easy and painless needles become when you don't see them coming. Something that size is still gonna hurt, but not nearly as badly as you build it up in your head. It's not bad putting the needle in, but it hurts like gently caress when they pump air through it. Unless they knock you out first, you're gonna feel it. The other reason for using a FAST1 is that it can deliver medicine to the heart incredibly fast; their website brags vascular access within 10 seconds and medicine in the heart within 30 seconds if you have a trained operator.
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Jan 13, 2017 19:27
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Isn't having sizable amounts of air in your blood really really bad for you?
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Jan 13, 2017 19:44
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Why did it take until the ACW for rifles barrels to become standard issue for infantry? They'd been around for a couple of hundred years at that point, right?
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Jan 13, 2017 19:45
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zoux posted:Why did it take until the ACW for rifles barrels to become standard issue for infantry? They'd been around for a couple of hundred years at that point, right? A rifled barrel is a bitch to reload through the muzzle, and the grooves get fouled up by combustion products. So you really want quality powder and a reliable breech loading mechanism before you start mass fielding rifles.
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Jan 13, 2017 19:52
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PittTheElder posted:Just close your loving eyes. You'd be amazed how easy and painless needles become when you don't see them coming. Something that size is still gonna hurt, but not nearly as badly as you build it up in your head. I have a phobia of needles to a point where when getting poked I can pass out while lying down and I have to lie down even just thinking about them when a couple key trigger stimuli are hit. It's not about the pain and closing my eyes will definitely do nothing. I won't bore you with the list of stimuli. The original post was meant as a throwaway joke and I'm really really sorry that it devolved into this boring derail, I will use better posting discipline going forward. aphid_licker fucked around with this message at 19:58 on Jan 13, 2017 |
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Jan 13, 2017 19:56
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zoux posted:Why did it take until the ACW for rifles barrels to become standard issue for infantry? They'd been around for a couple of hundred years at that point, right? ease of loading--in almost all cases a bullet for a rifled musket has to fit closer than for a smoothbored musket, so you'd have to really force it down there and if the barrel gets fouled you'd have problems, etc. one exception to this is the minie bullet, which does not need to fit super closely before it has been fired because it expands into the lands and grooves during firing. and that was invented in the '40s or '50s.
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Jan 13, 2017 20:00
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zoux posted:Why did it take until the ACW for rifles barrels to become standard issue for infantry? They'd been around for a couple of hundred years at that point, right? The big problem is reloading. Black powder always causes tons of fouling, to the point where just a few shots can make tightly fitting bullets unable to fit down the barrel. You got around this with smoothbore muskets by using undersized balls (hey-o!) that would be easy to shove down a barrel full of soot at the cost of very poor accuracy, which you compensated for by gathering dozens or hundreds of people to just fire en masse. Rifles need that tight fit for accuracy. For the whole history of rifles up to the mid-19th century, rifles needed to be carefully swabbed between shots and have a properly sized bullet tightly fitting in the barrel. It was impossible to get a high rate of fire for military work, relegating rifles to civilian usage and snipers. This all changed with the invention of the Minié bullet (usually just called the "Minie ball" in America) in 1849. The bullet has a hollow base, originally fitted with a wooden plug before it was realized that this was unnecessary. The bullet was smaller than the bore diameter so it would easily fit a muzzle loader, but the base would expand under the pressure of firing and grip the rifling. This allowed for rifles to become just as fast and easy to load as muskets before manufacturing tolerances and metallurgy evolved to the point where breech-loading was cheap and practical.
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Jan 13, 2017 20:09
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Another issue is smoke. Visibility on the battlefield basically disappears after a few volleys with black powder guns. This means that the main advantage of rifles - accuracy - is difficult to realise for rank and file troops in a real battle. It was therefore not a big priority for armies.
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Jan 13, 2017 20:23
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Fangz posted:Another issue is smoke. Visibility on the battlefield basically disappears after a few volleys with black powder guns. This means that the main advantage of rifles - accuracy - is difficult to realise for rank and file troops in a real battle. Black powder was still being used in the ACW with Minie balls and rifles. One of the reasons credited for the incredibly high casualties (which was brought up recently here) was the continued efforts to use 18th century tactics designed for soldiers armed with inaccurate muskets against lines of men with extremely accurate rifles. When your bullet isn't going to fly off in some random direction and miss at 100 yards, lining everyone up in an orderly fashion is a really great way to get torn to shreds. But this was all in spite of black powder smoke, rather than without it. It would be over a decade after the war ended for smokeless powder to become common.
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Jan 13, 2017 20:26
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