Before I get going, I want to add my own voice to the long chorus arguing that the "dramatic" final duels are retarded. In fact, I often skip forward through them on my Tivo to get to the results of the simulation.
Marcus Aurelius wrote:ComradeClaus wrote:
And do you believe their assesment that slings aren't lethal? A lot of armies used them for a long time. I doubt they would if they were really that useless.
Slings are definitely potentially lethal, but much less so than bows or throwing spears. I don't know how one could conclude that slings are not potentially lethal, and I don't watch that show. On the other hand, in order to be lethal they pretty much require a hit to the head, so metal helmets provided a fairly good protection against sling shots. This does not mean that hits to the other parts of the body were useless, but they were much less likely to be lethal. Serious bruises do tend to reduce the effectiveness of fighting men, and sling shot hits could probably even break ribs if the victim had no rigid armor.
[snip]
I don't think the show argues that slings aren't even
potentially lethal, but certainly the myth of David has considerably exaggerated their effectiveness, and the show demonstrates that. The Zande v. Aztec episode, for instance, showed that the sling was capable of fracturing a human femur and a skull at 20 meters, demonstrating that the weapon can be lethal if placed properly. In fact, Roman writers talked about the sling as being more dangerous than bows that they observed, since it was capable of injuring soldiers through their helmets. However, against a compound bow, or the English longbow, the sling is at a substantial disadvantage in terms of lethality, and the development of such powerful bows effectively ended the sling as a serious battlefield weapon.
Thrown spears, axes, and knives should be much more lethal than the sling, but with the disadvantage of having significantly reduced range. (The interesting one here was the atlatl from the Aztec v Zande episode--according to Spanish conquistadors it was capable of penetrating their cuirasses at 10 meters).
ComradeClaus wrote:And I hate rthe balistic gel, since it doesn't behave like living tissue when it's cut. In gel, a cut propogates with nothing to stop it, whils tissue has criscrossing fibers, ligaments, tendons, bones, cartilage. And how often do they sho wether the bladed weapon aftually cuts THROUGH the pig carcases bones rather than between them.
The doctor does frequently talk about how sword cuts have gone through bones. I won't say he's 100% consistent about it, but it is frequently mentioned which bones it's cutting through.
And a further point is that the pig's ribs aren't substantially more diffuse than human ribs, so if the sword is consistently sliding between pig ribs then it'll be able to get between a rack of human babybacks.
Also, how do the weapons compare to the originals in material quality? WAS that bronze cannon made w/ a log in the barrel like they claimed the real ones were? Was the impenetrable Spartan Armor made of the same bronze alloy that you'd find circa "300" BC (The mythbusters would've tested that armor until they found what it would take to punch a hole in it. then blown it up w/ ANFO or C4
) or a modern mixture?
They definitely need to talk about their metallurgy more.
Plus they cop out all the time w/ weapons.
Totally agreed.
& I noticed that the GSG9 guys took too damn long clearing that house & they didn't have a german designed shotgun rather than an old american one. (though I can't find any companies over there that do) & they gave the SWAT a powerful 6.8mm while GSG9 got the weakass 5.56mm even though converting one caliber to the other isn't that hard. just a larger barrel & different bolt. The magazines are even the same STANAG. The sting grenade is also more versatile than the taser shockwave.
Wait, why does GSG9 have to use a German shotgun? All those guys buy weapons for their effectiveness; not because of their place of manufacture.
And WTF on the SS armament? As Hitlers preferred force, they'd get first pick on the best weapons, they still won surprisingly.
How was the SS an elite German force, now? They were basically MP's or gendarmes.
wautd wrote:I loved when they were comparing swords. "OK, Napoleon's sabre did win the test we just shown a minute ago, but in an actuel duel on foot, Washington's sword would be better therefore Washington takes this round".
Wait, how did the saber beat the colichemarde in the test, now? I didn't see that at all. In fact, I was completely disappointed in the cavalry saber. Yeah, it's lethal, but it doesn't do anything like the spectacular damage that we've seen from other swords (compare the gashes it caused to the pig flesh--which didn't even seem to get all the way through a side of pork--with the
bifurcated pig in the kilij test). And the saber had the horse behind it, too. Not that I'd like to be hit by a saber, mind you, but the colichemarde was obviously lethal on every strike, and was demonstrably faster. I'm not even sure that the sabre did more damage than the xiphos from the Spartan v. Ninja test per slash (although it's obviously better because it provides a huge reach advantage).
The colichemarde also won the simulation, slightly, so their "expert's" intuition (which is frequently wrong because they don't know what the fuck they're talking about) bore up in that analysis, too.
IMO, the colichemarde was definitely the better weapon, and that came through in the tests, as well. Both on horseback and on foot, the saber is at a disadvantage.
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- PeZook
