So I don't know if this is the right place to discuss this, but here I go anyways.
A group of friend and I were discussing warfare in a Post-apocalyptic world. We reached an Impasse when discussing what types of weapons and gears they would be using, I and a few others said Guns, artillery, and armored vehicles in small quantity, while a few others insist that Bows, swords, etc, etc would make a resurgence.
A third group said it would be a mixture of both.
Who would be correct in the scenario?
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IEDs. Lots of IEDs
I depends on whatever post-apocalyptic faction has in the sense of technology and knowledge. tho that have the ability to be industrial will be the ones to use weapons and vehicles and just like the reverse those who don't will use bows and melee weapons.
fpbp, + chemicals
Look at third world countries now and you will have your answer. Only "sword" usage going on is machetes hacking up villagers. Bows and swords require more training and skill than firearms. The only weapon of that caliber I could see coming back is a spear but only in the most dirt shit places.
Second group would be the most likely scenario. Swords and bows are easier and more simpler to make than guns and armored vehicles. Besides bows and sword requires skill which would give then an edge over those who prefer guns.
They require more skill to use, which means more training time. If there's no training, a bullet's going to bring them down. Skill doesn't mean shit if the enemy has equipment literally hundreds of years more advanced than yours.
you haven't seen the last samurai have you?
The question is, is it better to watch everything you love either die of starvation or from being shot or stabbed. America without rule of law would be really violent.
>Besides bows and sword requires skill which would give then an edge over those who prefer guns.
>Not the partisan Spears and Clubs
>This is a really long sharp stick and you stab those bad people far and as hard as you can
>This is a wooden/metal stick with a big part at the end and you smack the bad men over there as hard as you can
Sword, you need to train so you don't smack the guy with the flat side of the blade, you need to cut correctly and consistently
Bows, you need to learn how to shoot one, crossbows are viable to arm people cheaply and quickly though see
>An Army with Insufficient munitions, insufficient gas, and insufficient resources can beat an Army using the old methods.
Are gunfags always this delusional?
why_not_both.jpg
If humanity gets its shit together pretty quickly than group 1 is probably right. If we don't then we will slowly devolve, some groups faster than others.
Example group:
Generations 1/2 would use scavenged old guns and ammo, make reloads as needed, but eventually they run out of pre-made materials for this. Since they never made it themselves smokeless powder dies with them. If they're lucky they had a guy or two who knew how to make black powder and found need to pass this craft on.
Next few generations use black powder guns and ammo, until whatever natural resource in the area they're using to make the powder dries up. Since there is no immediate use for it anymore the secret of black powder dies with them
Eventually anything that requires a resource that isn't easily renewable or practically inexhaustible in the area will be lost, and we'll have to restart civilization in the practically biblical era.
Can't we use Mercury fulminate? It was once used for guns once, can't they be used now?
I am nogunz, but guns either way the people with the guns would absolutely destroy or scare off a group of people with sticks and swords, it's like in I Am Alive where you can hold up a group of people by bluffing that you have a loaded gun
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Reread my post though, swords are just too complex to make and would take too much time to arm people to defend themselves, it's not like you can use a bic lighter to forge a sword
They can try tho lmaooo
how many people do you know who know not only how to make it, but how to readily produce nitric acid, mercury, and ethanol from non-industrial resources? It might hold off the groups decent for another couple of generations, but in the end it just delays the inevitable once those supplies and knowledge dries up.
God I miss the pacific northwest soo fucking much.
>Couple generations
By this point any leader worth their title would have expanded to meet demands. I can probably think of two cities that can become city-states or Quasi nation Chicago, and Detroit.
>black powder
>pass this craft on
lol it will never die, easiest shit ever to make. cannons, bp guns, hell just pack it into any soup can or random pipe and you have a bomb.
FPBP
not saying it isn't useful when you can make it, but when you're living day to day why would you teach somebody about some random ass powder you haven't had the stuff to make in years?
> can probably think of two cities that can become city-states or Quasi nation Chicago, and Detroit.
No. Cities will become gigantic killing fields once the food runs out, it will take years for us to start re-inhabiting old cities, let alone making them centers of power. There won't be any use for miles and miles of concrete and glass when fertile soil will be worth its weight in gold.
>fertile soil will be worth its weight in gold
This fucking meme...
>it will take years for us to start re-inhabiting old cities
Yeah, because as we all know, the first town ever was Chicago, founded in 1932. Prior to that human civilization had no concept of town or city, and had no reasons for having them. Everyone lived in villages.
Are you an Idiot?
Illinois climate and varied soil types enable farmers to grow and raise many other agricultural commodities, including cattle, wheat, oats, sorghum, hay, sheep, poultry, fruits and vegetables.
Chicago just has to expand towards the Farmlands and protect them from marauders and warlords and they are Golden, I can even imagine them being some sort of economical powerhouse due to the river trade.
>This fucking meme...
Do you think food will materialize out of thin air?
Ethanol is piss easy to make. Nitric acid is doable. Both can be obtained anywhere.
Mercury could be a problem. There are no real sources of natural mercury anywhere near me, for like two thousand kilometres.
Do you think farming is some sort of an occult mystery?
>Eventually anything that requires a resource that isn't easily renewable or practically inexhaustible in the area will be lost, and we'll have to restart civilization in the practically biblical era.
Try supporting a modern large city's population without agri-chemicals, fuel for farm machinery and transport infrastructure. Then remember that most modern high yield crops are from hybrids manufactured by the industrial agri-chem giants and usually produce sterile or less viable seeds, since their business model is based on annual sales of seeds to the actual farmers.
There's a reason there were very few large cities before the Agricultural Revolution, and the later development of reliable, and rapid, mass transport from the Industrial Revolution.
Add in the need to maintain essential infrastructure like water and sewage treatment systems, those cities won't last long when the luxury imports (alcohol, tobacco, confectionery, etc) run low thanks to the "just in time" distribution networks falling apart , causing the welfare classes to riot.
>Post-apocalyptic world
>modern large city's population
>without agri-chemicals
Rome had a population that is estimated to be from 500k to a million.
>are from hybrids
Sorry user but modern wheat is not triticale. You're mixing up your middle-school biology.
> manufactured by the industrial agri-chem giants and usually produce sterile or less viable seeds
That is the model for middle-to-small scale farmers IN US, which account for less than 3% of global harvests. Most used strains worldwide are perfectly reseedable, although repeated reseeding decreases the strain's quality somewhat.
>There's a reason there were very few large cities before... the Industrial Revolution.
I want you to re-read this sentence until you realize what a retard you are.
>Add in the need to maintain essential infrastructure like water
You can go fill the buckets in the river, you useless nigger.
>and sewage
I'll assume you've never been to India.
> those cities won't last long when the luxury imports (alcohol, tobacco, confectionery, etc) run low thanks to the "just in time" distribution networks falling apart , causing the welfare classes to riot
>"welfare classes" riot due to shortages of tobacco and alcohol"
I have no more questions. You are the dumbest cretin on Jow Forums today.
You and your friends are sort of both right, but you're thinking too tactically when the deciding factor would be economics - and I don't mean good boy's pocket money to buy weeb toys to cum all over, i'm talking about the available man hours to throw at supplying and maintaining the manufacturing capacity to supply yourselves. Tactically you'd work with whatever you have on hand. If you have guns and artillery you'd use guns and artillery until it all breaks and you run out of ammunition. If you can find the right tools to maintain your firearms and make new ammo and you have the free man hours around to do it you'll continue to be able to use your guns and artillery.
What a lot of people miss about "apocalypse" scenarios is that if you're trying to keep things grounded they'd very quickly become non-apocalypse scenarios. Teamwork is real overpowered irl and as soon as you have a small community of a dozen or so people you start having a shitload of free community man hours to throw at industry, construction and agriculture.
You're going to find it hard to beat a spear or crossbow for low weight, low maintenance defence and hunting if you're wandering the forests in a group of 2 or 3, but if you're talking about a Syria scenario of small groups of friends and family in places with some semblance of previous industry you're going to scrape together whatever resources and skills you have and try and maintain as effective a militia as you can - which means firearms, artillery and technicals.
I think what a lot of people miss though is that drones will be more valuable than gold in the post apocalypse. Cheap, almost maintenance free, can be charged from solar and allows you to scout with very little risk to yourself.
>almost maintenance free
...oh my sweet summer child.
>Look at third world countries now and you will have your answer. Only "sword" usage going on is machetes hacking up villagers. Bows and swords require more training and skill than firearms. The only weapon of that caliber I could see coming back is a spear but only in the most dirt shit places.
I'd say that crossbows, spears and swords would make a comeback fairly rapidly as would crude cannon, we'd be back roughly in the 15/16 century
>we'd be back roughly in the 15/16 century
How deep inside your ass did you have to reach to pull that out?
>A group of friend and I were discussing warfare in a Post-apocalyptic world.
GAMER!
>I think what a lot of people miss though is that drones will be more valuable than gold in the post apocalypse
So you can make lithium ion batteries with infinite cell life and recharge cycles?
If they were used daily they would last a year. Maybe.
>How deep inside your ass did you have to reach to pull that out?
O the part of my ass where completely arbitrary definitions of post apocalyptic scenarios exist. Aren't you an edgy little zit popper?
>If they were used daily they would last a year
Propeller strain damage will kill it way earlier.
There are enough firearms and ammunition in circulation to last a thousand years.
>how many people do you know who know not only how to make it
Lots.
>how to readily produce nitric acid
With air, water, and the shittiest electrical arc you can get.
>and ethanol
Holy shit that's some advanced dumbass. Literally "what is brewing".
>Mercury could be a problem. There are no real sources of natural mercury anywhere near me, for like two thousand kilometres.
>"What is cinnabar?"
It's fucking omnipresent. The only way you can be more than 2000km from the nearest cinnabar vein is if you are posting from high orbit.
how would one go about finding cinnabar veins?
I agree longevity of batteries are a problem in a decades long scenario if noone in the country surivives that knows anything about battery tech and recycling, along with any of the electronics if they break - but I don't see why props and frame parts wouldn't be easily formed from leftover industry. I can think of 5 places within 10 miles of me right now where I could go and have a decent shot at fabricating a bunch of props.
Compare that to trying to keep a modern internal combustion engine vehicle happy with no access to modern fuel and lubricant infrastructure and you'll see what i'm getting at.
You:
A. Reopen one of current or recently closed mercury mines in US. There's a plenty.
B. Go to (Yourstate) Geological Survey and ask them for survey data on local mercury deposits, or, in case it doesn't happen to be in a working order, loot their archives for a copy.
C. Find a dude with a geologist education and take him for a hike.
I'm from UK but option A helped find a dozen on the other side of the country, thank you user, now I can keep as future reference 'just in case'
>on the other side of the country
Cinnabar is much more widespread than that - it's just that modern mines are built where it's profitable to extract it on industrial scale. I could find you region's geological survey on nearly any kind of useful mineral, if I didn't feel too tired to go shuffling through Springer via sci-hub right now. Or you could just contact the... oh well, lookey here:
mapapps2.bgs.ac.uk
not him, but also from the UK. Didn't realise we had such a fuckload of coal still knocking about. neat.
Domestic raw resource production rarely dies out due to said resource running dry - it usually does so due to imports becoming vastly cheaper.
You might enjoy reading some of G.R. Carter's Fortress Farm series. Some interesting ideas along these lines.
Yeah, I know; this isn't the literary board.
Glad someone had the balls to tell the truth. Swords and bows were always better
>this
Every small town with nurseries or farms become al-bubba strongholds
Yes because it’s not like there is a group of people who already are violent and destructive in Chicago (and Detroit) or anything like that. I’m sure that even if a group of people like that existed, during a civilizational collapse they would remain calm, group together, develop industry, and certainly not become more violent than normal.
You mention niggers, living like india, and not rioting and then call someone else retarded? Bold move cotton
>Niggers are the only ones violent in a post-apocalyptic world.
You ain't going to survive long with that mentality.
Probably some combination. I'm thinking of The last of us. 20 years later ammo would be scarce so you would have alot of people running around with like 10 bullets total and a baseball bat with nails in it or some shit and everything would be more up close and personal. The bow and arrow would also make a fierce comeback. Guns would still be the game changer but I doubt you would still see people spraying and praying at silhouettes in the distance with the little ammo they have left.
I’m far from any concentration of niggers so I’ll be fine. There was no mention of demographics or what survived, so I assumed based on how people in that area currently act there would be a massive chimp out and the city and surrounding suburbs would get pretty wrecked. Given the normal inhabitants failure to contain the problem, I wasn’t assuming they would have the fortitude to fix it right after a collapse. If in your scenario they did, then it would be a different story and my original point holds a lot less weight.
There is likely close to a billion guns in the US. Guns will outlive humans.
Jesus, everyone in this thread is fucking retarded except me. Just be strong. The strong survive while the weak perish. It's a tale as old as time.
>This fucking meme
Do you plan on growing crops out of the fucking asphalt?
Never said the soil outside Chicago wasn't good, but the city itself will become even more of a shithole than it currently is, groups there will have trouble protecting themselves from marauders, let alone farmers miles away.
Tell me, if you don't have the materials to make something, why the fuck would you teach other people, who also don't have the materials, how to make it? To them it's just a waste of time.
>You can go fill the buckets in the river, you useless nigger.
How far is the center of Chicago from the nearest river? You're going to walk all that way through a hellhole just for a fucking bucket of water every day?
>There is likely close to a billion guns in the US. Guns will outlive humans.
Most of those guns aren't properly stored for long term, they'll rust faster than you think
>How far is the center of Chicago from the nearest river?
user, I.......
every road is packed with IEDs and any vehicle might be rigged to go off.
Then tell us, shitlord, how does one make nitric acid without the use of other complicated chemicals such as sulfuric acid?
You're kidding me, right? You're going to drink straight from lake Michigan? good luck with that shit. Even if you are that dumb, that's still a helluva walk from the far side of the city to the other.
>Swords are better than guns
>Trust me I watch anime
lmao fag
You're kidding me, right? Swords and Bows are easier to make and aren't complicated as guns let alone armored vehicles. Hell even a Simple Spear is better than guns simply due to how easy it is to make them.
Except that on day 1 of SHTF, everyone in the country would become an instant ammo hoarder. It would become a prime bartering good and those who had a good amount of it would not be casually sharing. Within a year you'd be hard put to find any for sale. Of course, petrol and antibiotics would be gone a lot faster.
Stop talking about swords. The art of sword fighting is a challenging one and a SHTF scenario does not offer time to train that could be used on farming, gathering and rebuilding. Start talking about machetes because they WILL have a role to fulfill as work tool and emergency self defense. Anyone prancing into the future thinking they are King Arthur will die as a pillock.
Also, the whole bow thing fails by the same argument. It would be for the few who already know the art. For the average Joe a crossbow would make far more sense. Takes a fraction of the time to learn, easily made in any garage even without access to power tools, sturdier than a bow, and you don't need half the strength to wield it.
I just love all these morons saying swords are easy to make. I wonder if they can point to their nearest metalshop.
In the meantime everyone else has duct taped a kitchen knife to a broom in 30 seconds and has a spear that can effectively outperform a sword for survival purposes anyway.
A machete is easy to make. No heat is required, just a bit of heavy metal, a couple of files and a hacksaw. I literally have all the necessary tools and meter within 20 feet. But I also have an actual machete already.
I like spears. But exactly who do you propose to use it at? Tethered and penned animals yes sure, but most humans will move out of reach then grab for a rock at the very least.
Cases in point: every violent conflict the last 100 years. Not even the hutus slaughtering tutsis bothered with swords. Their machetes did the job just fine.
'bothered with spears', sorry.
Just ask the Chinese, Indians, Japanese, Native Americans, Maori, Aborigines, Zulu, etc just how well swords, spears, and bows work against guns.
Swords were hard to make in antiquity and the middle ages because decent steel was so hard to come by. That is definitely no longer the case.
I wonder what it's like to be this stupid
user said that swords would be easier to make than guns and vehicles, not that swords are the best apocalyptic weapon
Spears work best in formations, it's a group fighting weapon at best because one guy can parry a poke with whatever he has in his hands, sort of like how bayonets in WWI were useless in trench warfare, but if you had a wall of guys with spears, they could be an effective little defense or offense
You can defend with a wall of spears. But against what? 20 guys with spears will be defeated if just ONE of the opposing force has a rifle. Or a crossbow made from modern materials and a stack of bolts. Spears are a weapon with a very narrow window of opportunity.
A lot of you guys are saying guns and ammo would be gone in 20-30 years....I disagree entirely.
There would of course be enclaves of highly advanced civilization scattered across the United States. We have numerous military bases and facilities built into the mountains underground with tech and machinery to sustain themselves for decades. All you would need to do is roll out with your small group of heavily armed troops and either make allies with or force the surrounding towns and villages to work with you to restart raw matierials production. North America is insanely rich with natural resources including oil.
Definitely. There would certainly be no one left with any real power, who would think of securing key assets.
Coming in late, I think that in places like the US, guns would still be a commodity, and the common man would be able to access firearms, but due to the scarcity of ammunition, ammunition would be valuable (it wouldn't become currency, but it would have a high trading value). Hunting and such would probably be done with bows and crossbows, but combat would still stay with rifles and firearms.
In places like britain or other parts of the world, bows and large melee weapons would probably make a resurgence for civilian factions and such, but people with the guns would be the deadliest people on the battlefield, and the only people that would have them would be those with the smarts to keep them.
Given how much the AR-15 Jams as well as the M-16 Rifle? I doubt it.
Yes, but there are a LOT of people in the U.S who know how to make primers and propellant.
Expect many areas to, at a minimum, have percussion firearms as a baseline.
I’d have to imagine that divide in disarmed nationstates is not nearly as big as you think. A firearm is not hardly as complicated as you think. A firearm is basically just a tube covered at one end with gunpowder and projectile, with some sort of ignition system. Ian made a video on improvised weapons a while back that demonstrates my point decently, and anyone with a decent idea of machining, and a decent tool shed could potentially make one, albeit one that is going to make a Darra Adam Khel look like Holland and Holland.
>those pipe shotguns
pretty close, yeah
There is enough ammunition and firearms around to last us multiple generations.
I highly doubt we’d ever see any instance of a happening that could completely destroy and chance of groups banding together into small towns within the first generation post happening, if not complete unions and small scale countries.
Given enough people life would continue to happen, school would be taught, the end isn’t the end.
Tbqh, the metro’s about the lowest tech and societal level we could realistically revert to.
Firearms and ammunition, even smokeless powder aren’t that hard to synthesize, and there are even repeating arms that can run off black powder for short periods of time (AKs have done this).
You have to remember that we started experimenting with semi and fully automatic arms about a decade or more before smokeless powder was invented, and that’s not even getting into simple repeating arms like revolvers and leverguns.
The hardest part will be the new manufacture of casings to the proper specs, and even that will happen given a small union of communities dedicated to the procurement of modern arms.
It will not die.
Humans are war.
We are very good at making things to kill eachother.
Whatever people can get their hands on and maintain duh
Lots of small arms and improvised explosives is what it would probably boil down to.
You're implying a City-state would have sufficient Ammunition to attain that same results when they don't. Swords and Bows all the way.
Go outside
>more simpler
>Swords
The only thing that makes any sense is Spears, polearms, staffs, aside from that shit like knives and machetes - relatively easy to master.
Still irrelevant - anybody smart enough has reloading gear and Black Powder isn't hard to make
Any repeating arm can technically function as at least a manual repeater with black powder - powder fouling is real though, bolt actions and lever guns will have less of an issue
Are you denying Simple facts?
Definitely, one guy with an AR-15 or any gun for the matter would scare off guys with spears
Unless the guys with spears are a cult or are very very devoted to their community they'd probably charge the guys with the automatics if they had no choice
>Do you plan on growing crops out of the fucking asphalt?
Because 99% of US is covered in asphalt, sure.
>but the city itself will become even more of a shithole than it currently is
Holy shit! Who could ever CONCEIVE that an APOCALYPTIC SCENARIO would reflect NEGATIVELY on the citie's population, infrastructure and level of life?! WHAT A DISCOVERY!
>groups there will have trouble protecting themselves from marauders
What marauders? Have you been playing Fallout 3 all night again? Are they eating asphalt too?
>Tell me, if you don't have the materials to make something, why the fuck would you teach other people, who also don't have the materials, how to make it? To them it's just a waste of time.
Your entire concept of social collapse is retarded. Materials can be obtained - in smaller quantities, with lower labor efficiency, but most of the shit from even the early XX century can be obtained. They can be refined and used in production of proven stuffs - again, in smaller quantities, with low quality, but still. Because the efficiency of said products is already tested. It's all tech that is entirely proven. Every guy who saw a modern firearm on TV realizes perfectly how much of an advantage they give to an army. Nothing to say of any leadership of any post-apocalyptic community. In your model 15th-16th century society would never develop into what it is today, since back then it had far, far less opportunities for development than a post-apocalyptic society would have. They had to fucking DISCOVER fucking rifled artillery, steam engine and oil wells - and they still fucking did it.
Your model is the one where where munitions-starved Cossacks did not learn to produce shitty knock-off Mosins and shittier 7.62×54mmR cartridges ENTIRELY OUT OF RAW RESOURCES during Russian Civil War, while in reality they did. It's the one where China, driven through a literal local apocalyptic event in the first half of XX century (tens of millions dead included) rolls into medieval instead of rapidly industrializing and becoming the world's largest economy in the next 50 years. Because news flash - tech is not a waste of time for people who can measure it's value. And measuring the value of technology that was already discovered and refined is extremely easy - "make smokeless gunpowder and halfway-decent steel --> become the most dangerous community around".
Your idea is entirely wrong, because it refuses to consider anything beyond an isolated individual.
>You're going to walk all that way through a hellhole just for a fucking bucket of water every day?
Siege of Leningrad. Water piping goes out in the second month of siege. During winter, populace waked up to 8 miles daily to Neva to get water. Never mind that small elephant of a Great Lake in the room.
Have you ever heard the word "nitrate"?
> You're going to drink straight from lake Michigan? good luck with that shit.
People still drink from Ganges. No, don't google it, I don't think you'll be able to sleep at night.
Kortez had 500 hundred men and whatever they managed to fit on 11 shitty wooden ships. Yermak Timofeyevich didn't have even a half of that. I suppose you can google whatever happened next if you don't know.
*5 hundred men
obv.
Yeah, this. Have these faggots never met anyone from Eastern Europe, especially some of the Balkan states? The USSR collapsed and a lot of those places were bad yeah - but not the kind of "bad" they're worried about. Local gangs, mafia, rogue police and military rapidly set up as warlords, and in some cases made the leap to real governments. People start to barter, drug dealers and smugglers just start carrying food etc too. Sure it's a shit fest of price gouging and there's more occasional cannibalism than one would like until supply chains are reestablished. Order & even civilisation of a kind is restored fairly rapidly, if brutally though.
What would Jow Forums do with women they found alone.
tell them to eat all the eggs.
>Kortez had 500 hundred men and whatever they managed to fit on 11 shitty wooden ships.
He also had thousands of Indians allies to his disposal.
You mean the single shot musket rifles versus the mass of trained men on home ground?
The fact that if the riflemen did not charge it would not have worked out even half way good for the sword kids.
When rifles hit the battlefields swords and arrows faded out, when smie autos and full autos came out the single shot and bolt guns faded out.
You can make a slam fire shotgun or low caliber pistol slam fire in an hour.
Also good luck getting enough people willing to charge into a hail of bullets with swords and spears.
Its gonna be guns and and shitty guns
>Also good luck getting enough people willing to charge into a hail of bullets with swords and spears.
This desu, unless they're cultists or on drugs, they'll probably run away from gunfire if all they are armed with are spears and other melee weapons