Metzger MeisterIt Gets Worsebefore it gets any better.Registered Userregular
Maybe someone can answer this for me; I know that lots of examples exist of what are essentially slings for grenades, especially during the era of trench warfare. Do any earlier examples exist? Specifically, I'm wondering if anyone had the idea to lob those big heavy cartoonish early grenades. You know, the round ones with the big fuse!
Cuz it seems like a good idea to me.
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ThomamelasOnly one man can kill this many Russians. Bring his guitar to me! Registered Userregular
Maybe someone can answer this for me; I know that lots of examples exist of what are essentially slings for grenades, especially during the era of trench warfare. Do any earlier examples exist? Specifically, I'm wondering if anyone had the idea to lob those big heavy cartoonish early grenades. You know, the round ones with the big fuse!
Cuz it seems like a good idea to me.
The Byzantines had slingers who used small pots of Greek Fire. There were some 19th century grenades that were grenades on a rope, so you make the sling motion and just let the whole thing fly.
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knitdanIn ur baseKillin ur guysRegistered Userregular
As someone who's tried making many a sling for water balloons you'd need lots of testing with non-live grenades first because I have a feeling anything otherwise would end in disaster.
“I was quick when I came in here, I’m twice as quick now”
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
Maybe someone can answer this for me; I know that lots of examples exist of what are essentially slings for grenades, especially during the era of trench warfare. Do any earlier examples exist? Specifically, I'm wondering if anyone had the idea to lob those big heavy cartoonish early grenades. You know, the round ones with the big fuse!
Cuz it seems like a good idea to me.
They had this:
A Napoleonic hand-mortar. The first hand-mortars were developed during the 17th century: It was notoriously unreliable (and when a grenade is fizzing in the barrel you really don't want a misfire), but still popular during field battles and closing phases of siege warfare.
Before that we had the Fustibalus, or staff sling.
The Fustibalus is a really really old weapon, it's been used since prehistoric times and used to throw fist-sized rocks (mostly during sieges). The byzantines (and turks) used it to throw various chemical concoctions, including greek fire and later explosive bombs.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
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Metzger MeisterIt Gets Worsebefore it gets any better.Registered Userregular
How much kick did one of those mortars have? Firing a mortar 100 meters or more by hand is awesome but if it cracks your collar bone or dislocates your shoulder that is less awesome.
How much kick did one of those mortars have? Firing a mortar 100 meters or more by hand is awesome but if it cracks your collar bone or dislocates your shoulder that is less awesome.
Actually not that much. The charge is really low, and the grenade is only supposed to fly 50-75 meters or so.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
yeah the distances involved in battles in that era were kind of laughably short by mid-20th century standards; that 'mortar' would probably only have been used to fling an explosive over a close fortification, or into the next trench/earthwork/etc, which often enough might have been within a good throwing distance anyway.
ed: like if you've ever been to gettysburg, one of the most striking things is how small the entire battlefield is, given the scale of the killing that took place. And civil war weaponry was a good half-century more advanced than anything napoleonic troops would've had.
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
yeah the distances involved in battles in that era were kind of laughably short by mid-20th century standards; that 'mortar' would probably only have been used to fling an explosive over a close fortification, or into the next trench/earthwork/etc, which often enough might have been within a good throwing distance anyway.
ed: like if you've ever been to gettysburg, one of the most striking things is how small the entire battlefield is, given the scale of the killing that took place. And civil war weaponry was a good half-century more advanced than anything napoleonic troops would've had.
It's kinda why it was a slaughter. They were using mostly Napoleonic tactics in an environment when everyone was equipped with rifled muskets (and rifles) that used percussion caps and minieballs.
They have comparable rate of fire, but while a musket has an effective range of about 75 meters the rifled musket can hit targets up to 600 meters in the hands of a good marksman. Over a kilometer if you consider a scoped whitworth rifle.
Then on top of that both sides had not only the best smoothbore cannon ever made (the 12-pounder napoleon) but also shitloads of rifled cannons, which can fire impacted fused shells at longer ranges for even more slaughter.
At least by gettysburg they had taken some lessons from the french zouave infantry. Ie, reload lying down, fire from a prone position, move fast if you're going to move and don't slowly march up towards the enemy.
The "fight in a dispersed formation". Not so much.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
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MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
So a while back I had mentioned some toy chariots among other things dating back to the Bronze Age. Some more were discovered recently and this time they provided pictures:
(I'm a bit skeptical about the supposed age claimed in the article, doubt it's actually 5000 years old since horses had barely been domesticated at that point, but still, Bronze Age toy chariot.)
I've read a lot of interesting theories about why the Civil War was such a blood bath, such as black power limiting the effective range of rifles when used mass.
I've read a lot of interesting theories about why the Civil War was such a blood bath, such as black power limiting the effective range of rifles when used mass.
I've read a lot of interesting theories about why the Civil War was such a blood bath, such as black power limiting the effective range of rifles when used mass.
I figure it was less about the limitations of weaponry in the 1860s and more about the limitations of medical care during the same time period. Joseph Lister was doing his thing at around the same time, if the Civil War had happened a few decades later I think casualty counts would have been significantly lower.
I've read a lot of interesting theories about why the Civil War was such a blood bath, such as black power limiting the effective range of rifles when used mass.
I figure it was less about the limitations of weaponry in the 1860s and more about the limitations of medical care during the same time period. Joseph Lister was doing his thing at around the same time, if the Civil War had happened a few decades later I think casualty counts would have been significantly lower.
Not necessarily.
There are three inventions that have vastly reduced battlefield casualties:
1.The use of antiseptics
2. The use of anasthesia
3.The use of antibiotics
Civil war doctors used Antiseptics (iodine, bromine, sunlight, boiling bandages and sterlizing surgical tools).
Almost all surgeries were performed with the aid of anasthesia (chloroform or ether)
Antibiotics weren't discovered until after WWI.
The other great factor is simply medical experience, and a lot of advances in military medicine (in terms of administration, techniques etc) was due to the civil war.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
So a while back I had mentioned some toy chariots among other things dating back to the Bronze Age. Some more were discovered recently and this time they provided pictures:
(I'm a bit skeptical about the supposed age claimed in the article, doubt it's actually 5000 years old since horses had barely been domesticated at that point, but still, Bronze Age toy chariot.)
There are things from then we have No idea about
It's a mammoth
A fishing lure
There is one they have no idea what it was or when it's from as they have a vague idea
It was found in a peat bog in Russia it's a long wooden totem they can guess it's over 10 thousand years old at most?
It was 17.5M long but sadly now due to theft it's only 3.2M long
I've read a lot of interesting theories about why the Civil War was such a blood bath, such as black power limiting the effective range of rifles when used mass.
God, if only.
Black powder produces a lot of smoke. Black powder rifles used in massed formations would probably blind everyone after a few volleys.
I've read a lot of interesting theories about why the Civil War was such a blood bath, such as black power limiting the effective range of rifles when used mass.
God, if only.
Black powder produces a lot of smoke. Black powder rifles used in massed formations would probably blind everyone after a few volleys.
Sling bullets found in various Greek and Roman sites were found to be covered in tiny carvings of smack talk, like "Take This" and "Here It Comes, You Assh_le".
One I like from the Napoleonic wars is British sailors writing "Post Paid" on cannonballs.
It is, of course, a capital crime to stop his majesty's mail, and anyone who stops a cannonball is similarly sentenced to death.
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
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FairchildRabbit used short words that were easy to understand, like "Hello Pooh, how about Lunch ?"Registered Userregular
I've read a lot of interesting theories about why the Civil War was such a blood bath, such as black power limiting the effective range of rifles when used mass.
God, if only.
Black powder produces a lot of smoke. Black powder rifles used in massed formations would probably blind everyone after a few volleys.
The fog was accounted for as a tactic :rotate:
Confederate General Richard Ewell was wounded at the Second Battle of Bull Run when he dismounted and knelt down to try to see under the smoke cloud on the firing line.
I've read a lot of interesting theories about why the Civil War was such a blood bath, such as black power limiting the effective range of rifles when used mass.
I figure it was less about the limitations of weaponry in the 1860s and more about the limitations of medical care during the same time period. Joseph Lister was doing his thing at around the same time, if the Civil War had happened a few decades later I think casualty counts would have been significantly lower.
Not necessarily.
There are three inventions that have vastly reduced battlefield casualties:
1.The use of antiseptics
2. The use of anasthesia
3.The use of antibiotics
Civil war doctors used Antiseptics (iodine, bromine, sunlight, boiling bandages and sterlizing surgical tools).
Almost all surgeries were performed with the aid of anasthesia (chloroform or ether)
Antibiotics weren't discovered until after WWI.
The other great factor is simply medical experience, and a lot of advances in military medicine (in terms of administration, techniques etc) was due to the civil war.
I am pretty sure someone here has posted the numbers before, but I think WW2 was the first time deaths due to combat overcame deaths due to infection or disease. Or maybe it was the first one, cannot quite remember.
I read something once a while back that heavily implied that surgical procedures in the Civil War were basically "If you're shot in the torso we dig the ball out, sew you up, and cross our fingers, and if you are shot in an extremity we pretty much don't even bother and skip straight to the emergency amputation", but I will admit that I am not an expert on the subject.
I've read a lot of interesting theories about why the Civil War was such a blood bath, such as black power limiting the effective range of rifles when used mass.
I figure it was less about the limitations of weaponry in the 1860s and more about the limitations of medical care during the same time period. Joseph Lister was doing his thing at around the same time, if the Civil War had happened a few decades later I think casualty counts would have been significantly lower.
Not necessarily.
There are three inventions that have vastly reduced battlefield casualties:
1.The use of antiseptics
2. The use of anasthesia
3.The use of antibiotics
Civil war doctors used Antiseptics (iodine, bromine, sunlight, boiling bandages and sterlizing surgical tools).
Almost all surgeries were performed with the aid of anasthesia (chloroform or ether)
Antibiotics weren't discovered until after WWI.
The other great factor is simply medical experience, and a lot of advances in military medicine (in terms of administration, techniques etc) was due to the civil war.
I am pretty sure someone here has posted the numbers before, but I think WW2 was the first time deaths due to combat overcame deaths due to infection or disease. Or maybe it was the first one, cannot quite remember.
Depends on the side. Some nations in WWI suffered fewer deaths from disease than from battle, but in many cases disease was still the big killer. The US expeditionary corp had 50/50 deaths from disease/battle, primarily from pneumonia and measles.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
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L Ron HowardThe duckMinnesotaRegistered Userregular
And wasn't there also the Spanish/Italian/whatever-racist flu going around that got quite a few people during WW2 as well?
But I think the point is that when you get shot, it wasn't as likely to get infected, and wasn't as likely to become diseased, so if you were shot, but not critically (for some definition) there was a good chance you'd survive.
And wasn't there also the Spanish/Italian/whatever-racist flu going around that got quite a few people during WW2 as well?
But I think the point is that when you get shot, it wasn't as likely to get infected, and wasn't as likely to become diseased, so if you were shot, but not critically (for some definition) there was a good chance you'd survive.
You'd have to wait for WWII for "All your major organs are intact and you get to the hospital with the bleeding under control. You'll be fine (for some definition of fine)". I'll save talking about WWI medical experimentation for the "totally uncool things from history" thread. Antibiotics is a helluva thing.
It wasn't until Vietnam (with educated combat medics, "within the hour" medevac and other advances) where you actually had a higher chance of surviving getting your guts shot out in the battlefield than say...surviving after having a major traffic accident in your home town.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
And wasn't there also the Spanish/Italian/whatever-racist flu going around that got quite a few people during WW2 as well?
But I think the point is that when you get shot, it wasn't as likely to get infected, and wasn't as likely to become diseased, so if you were shot, but not critically (for some definition) there was a good chance you'd survive.
The Spanish Flu came right after WWI.
Fuck off and die.
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L Ron HowardThe duckMinnesotaRegistered Userregular
And wasn't there also the Spanish/Italian/whatever-racist flu going around that got quite a few people during WW2 as well?
But I think the point is that when you get shot, it wasn't as likely to get infected, and wasn't as likely to become diseased, so if you were shot, but not critically (for some definition) there was a good chance you'd survive.
The Spanish Flu came right after WWI.
This is what I get for not searching before posting.
I can't find it right now, but I swear I've read about another flu pandemic that happened in Europe during the second world war. Not the 1918 Flu Pandemic, but another one. Something that messed up a lot of people.
And wasn't there also the Spanish/Italian/whatever-racist flu going around that got quite a few people during WW2 as well?
But I think the point is that when you get shot, it wasn't as likely to get infected, and wasn't as likely to become diseased, so if you were shot, but not critically (for some definition) there was a good chance you'd survive.
The Spanish Flu came right after WWI.
No. It came in the end phase of WWI, and hit the americans especially hard. 80% of US casualties due to disease were due to pneumonia (about 50,000) and at least 30,000 of them were the result of the Spanish Flu.
Meningitis was the second largest cause of death by disease, and spanish flu has been implicated in that as well (although a fair amount of those were most likely due to measles). During the spring of 1918 at least 300,000 American Expeditionary force soldiers were hospitalized by the spanish flu, more than by every other cause combined (including combat).
It's called the spanish flu because Spain was a neutral country, and as such not subject to wartime news censorship. To newspaper readers, spain seemed to have been hit especially hard. Hence "spanish flu".
Fiendishrabbit on
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
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ThomamelasOnly one man can kill this many Russians. Bring his guitar to me! Registered Userregular
Somethings to keep in mind when you start looking at combat casualties and medical treatment. Speed is important. At the start of the Civil War, you have surgeons who have access to antiseptics and some modern surgical ideas. However, there is a big problem with the application of them in that getting the patients to them was a massive clusterfuck. Hospitals tended to be a good distance behind the lines. And going into the war, access to wagons to act as ambulances is limited. The ambulances they have tend to be wagons the Quartermaster Corps felt they could live without, and the ambulance staff are civilians acting under contract to the Quartermaster Corps. Which is a nice way of saying that they were often in really poor repair or were ill suited for the terrain. And if the Quartermaster Corps felt moving cargo was more important, the wagons moved cargo. So access is limited.
When the Civil War breaks out, you start seeing the medical director for the Army of the Potomac Charles Tripler trying to create an ambulance corps under the medical department. This ran into a couple of issues. The first was political. The Surgeon General, Clement Finley, didn't like Tripler. And was frankly a hell of a lot better at playing politics. When Finley was replaced with William Hammond the political issues lessened but didn't go away. The second and bigger issue is that medical supplies just weren't a priority for the Quartermaster Corps.
The person who becomes a champion for this idea is General McClellan. After the Secetary of War shot down Tripler's plan again, McClellan just gives Tripler's replacement, Jonathan Letterman, permission to do it for the Army of the Potomac. All good except for some reorganization of units under Pope and McCellan's commands leading to the units who were trained on this being fragmented. Finally after Antietam the Surgeon General gives permission to stop fucking around and half-assing it and we start seeing something more akin to what we understand as battlefield medicine today.
Ambulances belonging to Medical departments. Soldiers on the battlefield being brought to aid stations where you start seeing triage applied by a surgeon and surgeon's assistants. The critical wounded who could be saved would be sent to regimental hospitals close by. Those who were wounded but in stable condition went to general hospitals further back from the front. Those needing first aid would be given it and sent back to their units.
The other Union Armies tend to develop the same ideas and by 1864 this becomes standard operating procedure across all Union Armies. This is really where the Civil War medicine differs from the Crimean War where medical care was more of a clusterfuck.
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KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
edited January 2018
Buh lemme tell you about this here true medical marvel called the Gatlin’ gun.
Does the work of fifty men so they don’t have to get so close together and spread that there disease and the like.
By the time the first cases of "Spanish flu" arrived in Wisconsin, state residents had followed news reports of its devastating progress around the world for months. Wisconsin's first six cases were reported in Milwaukee on September 26, and the disease spread rapidly inland from Lake Michigan port cities. Milwaukee's first four deaths were recorded on October 2; on October 7 there were 256 new cases and nine more deaths in Milwaukee alone.
While the flu's impact was debilitating when it finally arrived, 40 years of government attention to public health bolstered Wisconsin's response. In 1876 the Wisconsin legislature had created the State Board of Health and granted it broad authority “for guarding against the introduction of contagious disease into the state, [and] for the control and suppression thereof within the state.”
Poster put out detailing the ways people in Wisconsin died in 1912, with Influenza resulting in 255 deaths and Pneumonia in 2,066 deaths. "Spanish Flu" killed 8,459 in Wisconsin in 1918, for a little over 400% increase. Also, note that the 4th leading cause of death was still births, at 1,685 deaths, and the 6th leading cause of death was the nebulous "Accidents at Birth", at 1,582 deaths.
In 1918, the State Health Officer was Dr. Cornelius A. Harper. Appointed in 1902 by his friend Governor Robert M. La Follette, Sr., Harper was steeped in the Progressive tradition of activist state government. When the highly contagious, airborne epidemic arrived in Wisconsin, Harper was prepared to use the extraordinary powers of his office to blunt its impact.
One such power was the age-old practice of quarantining goods, animals, or people believed to be carrying contagious diseases. With no medical treatment yet available for influenza, identifying and isolating infected people was one of the few effective public health measures. Wisconsin Health officials posted signs like the one at left on buildings occupied by quarantined influenza victims in 1918.
Amid rising infection rates and death tolls, Dr. Harper took the unprecedented step on October 10, 1918 of ordering all public institutions in Wisconsin closed. This included all schools, theaters, saloons, churches, and places of public amusement statewide - virtually every public venue other than factories, offices, and workplaces. In no other state was such a comprehensive order issued, and it stayed in effect until the epidemic burned itself out in late December.
Harper's order was facilitated by a statewide system of local health officers. In 1883, the legislature had required every Wisconsin village, city and town to appoint a local public health officer and board of health, to inform the State Board and carry out its orders locally. In 1918, there were 1,685 local boards in place to implement Harper's orders. In Milwaukee, the state's largest and most crowded city, several decades of committed work by reformers and socialist politicians had created an enviable public health system supported by the public and business interests alike.
The support of business leaders, as it turned out, was crucial in making Harper's orders stick. With only a few exceptions, compliance with Harper's measures was extraordinary, as was the level of voluntarism displayed by citizens willing to risk their health for the benefit of others. In Milwaukee, idled teachers conducted a house-by-house canvass, providing health information to the sick and collecting infection statistics. In Wausau, the Federated Charities helped recruit volunteers to help with the domestic chores of stricken households. Across the state citizens stepped forward to establish makeshift hospitals, work on educational campaigns, and spell exhausted doctors and nurses.
The public's strong support of prevention and relief efforts can be attributed to several factors. First, advance awareness of the epidemic's arrival and likely severity; second, an existing ethos of self-sacrifice generated by the ongoing war effort; and third, Wisconsin's Progressive Era faith in the ability – indeed the responsibility – of government to act assertively in the civic interest.
Wisconsin's swift, comprehensive response to limit the transmission of influenza certainly saved lives. The state death rate, among the lowest in the country, was 2.91 per thousand inhabitants, compared to a national average of 4.39. Although Wisconsin's death rate was highest in rural areas (which often lacked adequate health care and volunteer resources) and in crowded urban areas, Milwaukee had one of the lowest rates for any city its size.
Today it is virtually inconceivable that public activities throughout an entire state could be shut down for several months on the word of a single unelected bureaucrat. Nevertheless, in the fall of 1918 most Wisconsin citizens endorsed and selflessly supported such a measure.
I would rant about the current state of affairs, about the GOP, about glorifying ignorance and how the rise of government distrust will be our downfall, but most everyone here already knows and read it all already.
Veevee on
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KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
I wonder if they get blacklisted in any way. The Lincoln Brigade were considered communist sympathizers (something like half were) and lots of them were denied opportunities in the armed forces in WW2 and when they got back home.
The Lincoln Brigade is rad, but in fairness to the US government (ugh), they were veterans of a war where the side they fight for was supplied with weapons by the Soviet Union exclusively, and the Soviet Union was an Axis power initially.
Errr Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy were supplying and directly helping the other side.
Yes, but Spain as a whole was used as a proxy battle for both sides. Germany’s relationship with the USSR started because Weimar Germany had no friends and neither did communist Russia. That is what helped lead relations that led to the non-agression pact between both when Weimar Germany went all goose-steppy. Communism and facism are directly opposed, and the US was never too keen on communism.
At the time, the US was split on fascism, but knew that it hated communism more. Remember, Communism (the classic kind, not the Leninist kind) was an (ethnic) Jewish invention, and the height of anti-semitism boiled the most in the mid victorian era to even the late 1940s. I’m thinking of Dreyfuss and such.
Also, I don’t think this is a controversial stance to anyone but Tankies, Leninist style communism and is successors in Maoism and Stalinism was pretty fucking terrible. It is definitely a thing I could see the US wanting to stop (besides the obvious imperialist greedy racist reasons) and not have its citizens be a part of.
Nu'uanu Pali is the site of a battle King Kamehameha fought in unifying the Hawaiian islands under his rule. The battle saw hundreds of warriors pushed over the side of a cliff. Kamehameha's success in the war is ascribed in part to his acquirement of guns and a cannon as well as Oahu having just gone through a civil war that weakened their army.
I took a friend to Pali lookout in Hawaii to see the view and was reminded that Hawaiians are awesome and don't sugarcoat their history. Below is art that is prominently displayed on one of the informational plaques:
Everyone sugarcoats (makes it more palatable to their cultural sensibilities) their history, I have yet to find a nation/culture that doesn't. The difference is in what way, depending on what the culture views as proper.
Note how Kamehamas warriors have been given helmets restyled to look like phrygian helmets (thereby drawing parallells to greek warriors through their formation and equipment). The truth is that Hawaiian pikemen weren't drawn from the nobility or the Koa (the elite warrior class) and as such would have been generally unarmored, wearing neither mahiole (the feathered helmet of the nobility, almost always combined with a colourful cloak) or the woven helmets worn by some Koa (the two guys stabbing&bashing dudes in the foreground are wearing the traditional garb of a Koa warrior).
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
So a while back I had mentioned some toy chariots among other things dating back to the Bronze Age. Some more were discovered recently and this time they provided pictures:
(I'm a bit skeptical about the supposed age claimed in the article, doubt it's actually 5000 years old since horses had barely been domesticated at that point, but still, Bronze Age toy chariot.)
I was curious about the age listed as well. 3000 BCE would be absurdly early for chariots anywhere. But at a site that far south is downright crazy.
So following through the articles linking to other articles arrives at the phrase:
We have so far obtained important findings in the excavation field. In a tomb in the necropolis area we found an earthenware toy horse carriage and its wheels. The toy dates back to the Bronze Age and is thought to have been produced for the children of kings or administrators in the city. It shows us the sense of art and children’s sense of play 5,000 years ago. This finding is very important to us and will be displayed at Turkey’s largest museum complex, the Şanlıurfa Archaeology Museum. We think we will get more important findings as long as the excavations continue,
So the "bronze age" in that area lasted up until around 1200 BCE (or 3200 years ago). And we know for sure there was extensive use of chariots in the middle and late bronze age. Though this toy model is a cart with 4 solid wheels not really a "chariot" which is typified by having 2 spoked wheels on a single axle. I wonder what made them decide this must have been a horse drawn vehicle rather than an ox cart (horse drawn vehicles were very limited in weight until the invention of the horse collar in the medieval period).
Attacked by tweeeeeeees!
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Zavianuniversal peace sounds better than forever warRegistered Userregular
edited January 2018
Just finished watching the first season of Britannia on Amazon Prime. I quite enjoyed it, they had enough of a budget to do the time period justice. It's based on the historical invasion of Britannia by emperor Claudius in the year 43 AD; the characters are largely fictional aside from the Roman general but do rather accurately portray Romanization strategy in practice. I was a bit let down that we didn't get Caratacus , but I hope there's future seasons that cover him and Queen Boudicca https://youtu.be/u49QAwGcQF4
I'm in feather fluff because they were like "remember that time in Cairo when...?" and I was like motherfucker do you see many Fatimids running around because it seems like seven hundred years too early for that.
Posts
Cuz it seems like a good idea to me.
The Byzantines had slingers who used small pots of Greek Fire. There were some 19th century grenades that were grenades on a rope, so you make the sling motion and just let the whole thing fly.
-Indiana Solo, runner of blades
They had this:
A Napoleonic hand-mortar. The first hand-mortars were developed during the 17th century: It was notoriously unreliable (and when a grenade is fizzing in the barrel you really don't want a misfire), but still popular during field battles and closing phases of siege warfare.
Before that we had the Fustibalus, or staff sling.
The Fustibalus is a really really old weapon, it's been used since prehistoric times and used to throw fist-sized rocks (mostly during sieges). The byzantines (and turks) used it to throw various chemical concoctions, including greek fire and later explosive bombs.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
PSN:Furlion
Actually not that much. The charge is really low, and the grenade is only supposed to fly 50-75 meters or so.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
ed: like if you've ever been to gettysburg, one of the most striking things is how small the entire battlefield is, given the scale of the killing that took place. And civil war weaponry was a good half-century more advanced than anything napoleonic troops would've had.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
It's kinda why it was a slaughter. They were using mostly Napoleonic tactics in an environment when everyone was equipped with rifled muskets (and rifles) that used percussion caps and minieballs.
They have comparable rate of fire, but while a musket has an effective range of about 75 meters the rifled musket can hit targets up to 600 meters in the hands of a good marksman. Over a kilometer if you consider a scoped whitworth rifle.
Then on top of that both sides had not only the best smoothbore cannon ever made (the 12-pounder napoleon) but also shitloads of rifled cannons, which can fire impacted fused shells at longer ranges for even more slaughter.
At least by gettysburg they had taken some lessons from the french zouave infantry. Ie, reload lying down, fire from a prone position, move fast if you're going to move and don't slowly march up towards the enemy.
The "fight in a dispersed formation". Not so much.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
(I'm a bit skeptical about the supposed age claimed in the article, doubt it's actually 5000 years old since horses had barely been domesticated at that point, but still, Bronze Age toy chariot.)
God, if only.
I figure it was less about the limitations of weaponry in the 1860s and more about the limitations of medical care during the same time period. Joseph Lister was doing his thing at around the same time, if the Civil War had happened a few decades later I think casualty counts would have been significantly lower.
Not necessarily.
There are three inventions that have vastly reduced battlefield casualties:
1.The use of antiseptics
2. The use of anasthesia
3.The use of antibiotics
Civil war doctors used Antiseptics (iodine, bromine, sunlight, boiling bandages and sterlizing surgical tools).
Almost all surgeries were performed with the aid of anasthesia (chloroform or ether)
Antibiotics weren't discovered until after WWI.
The other great factor is simply medical experience, and a lot of advances in military medicine (in terms of administration, techniques etc) was due to the civil war.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
There are things from then we have No idea about
It's a mammoth
A fishing lure
There is one they have no idea what it was or when it's from as they have a vague idea
It was found in a peat bog in Russia it's a long wooden totem they can guess it's over 10 thousand years old at most?
It was 17.5M long but sadly now due to theft it's only 3.2M long
Black powder produces a lot of smoke. Black powder rifles used in massed formations would probably blind everyone after a few volleys.
The fog was accounted for as a tactic :rotate:
One I like from the Napoleonic wars is British sailors writing "Post Paid" on cannonballs.
It is, of course, a capital crime to stop his majesty's mail, and anyone who stops a cannonball is similarly sentenced to death.
Confederate General Richard Ewell was wounded at the Second Battle of Bull Run when he dismounted and knelt down to try to see under the smoke cloud on the firing line.
I am pretty sure someone here has posted the numbers before, but I think WW2 was the first time deaths due to combat overcame deaths due to infection or disease. Or maybe it was the first one, cannot quite remember.
PSN:Furlion
Depends on the side. Some nations in WWI suffered fewer deaths from disease than from battle, but in many cases disease was still the big killer. The US expeditionary corp had 50/50 deaths from disease/battle, primarily from pneumonia and measles.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
But I think the point is that when you get shot, it wasn't as likely to get infected, and wasn't as likely to become diseased, so if you were shot, but not critically (for some definition) there was a good chance you'd survive.
You'd have to wait for WWII for "All your major organs are intact and you get to the hospital with the bleeding under control. You'll be fine (for some definition of fine)". I'll save talking about WWI medical experimentation for the "totally uncool things from history" thread. Antibiotics is a helluva thing.
It wasn't until Vietnam (with educated combat medics, "within the hour" medevac and other advances) where you actually had a higher chance of surviving getting your guts shot out in the battlefield than say...surviving after having a major traffic accident in your home town.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
The Spanish Flu came right after WWI.
This is what I get for not searching before posting.
I can't find it right now, but I swear I've read about another flu pandemic that happened in Europe during the second world war. Not the 1918 Flu Pandemic, but another one. Something that messed up a lot of people.
No. It came in the end phase of WWI, and hit the americans especially hard. 80% of US casualties due to disease were due to pneumonia (about 50,000) and at least 30,000 of them were the result of the Spanish Flu.
Meningitis was the second largest cause of death by disease, and spanish flu has been implicated in that as well (although a fair amount of those were most likely due to measles). During the spring of 1918 at least 300,000 American Expeditionary force soldiers were hospitalized by the spanish flu, more than by every other cause combined (including combat).
It's called the spanish flu because Spain was a neutral country, and as such not subject to wartime news censorship. To newspaper readers, spain seemed to have been hit especially hard. Hence "spanish flu".
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
When the Civil War breaks out, you start seeing the medical director for the Army of the Potomac Charles Tripler trying to create an ambulance corps under the medical department. This ran into a couple of issues. The first was political. The Surgeon General, Clement Finley, didn't like Tripler. And was frankly a hell of a lot better at playing politics. When Finley was replaced with William Hammond the political issues lessened but didn't go away. The second and bigger issue is that medical supplies just weren't a priority for the Quartermaster Corps.
The person who becomes a champion for this idea is General McClellan. After the Secetary of War shot down Tripler's plan again, McClellan just gives Tripler's replacement, Jonathan Letterman, permission to do it for the Army of the Potomac. All good except for some reorganization of units under Pope and McCellan's commands leading to the units who were trained on this being fragmented. Finally after Antietam the Surgeon General gives permission to stop fucking around and half-assing it and we start seeing something more akin to what we understand as battlefield medicine today.
Ambulances belonging to Medical departments. Soldiers on the battlefield being brought to aid stations where you start seeing triage applied by a surgeon and surgeon's assistants. The critical wounded who could be saved would be sent to regimental hospitals close by. Those who were wounded but in stable condition went to general hospitals further back from the front. Those needing first aid would be given it and sent back to their units.
The other Union Armies tend to develop the same ideas and by 1864 this becomes standard operating procedure across all Union Armies. This is really where the Civil War medicine differs from the Crimean War where medical care was more of a clusterfuck.
Does the work of fifty men so they don’t have to get so close together and spread that there disease and the like.
May darn tootin’ end war as we know it.
Poster put out detailing the ways people in Wisconsin died in 1912, with Influenza resulting in 255 deaths and Pneumonia in 2,066 deaths. "Spanish Flu" killed 8,459 in Wisconsin in 1918, for a little over 400% increase. Also, note that the 4th leading cause of death was still births, at 1,685 deaths, and the 6th leading cause of death was the nebulous "Accidents at Birth", at 1,582 deaths.
I would rant about the current state of affairs, about the GOP, about glorifying ignorance and how the rise of government distrust will be our downfall, but most everyone here already knows and read it all already.
From the middle east thread:
Yes, but Spain as a whole was used as a proxy battle for both sides. Germany’s relationship with the USSR started because Weimar Germany had no friends and neither did communist Russia. That is what helped lead relations that led to the non-agression pact between both when Weimar Germany went all goose-steppy. Communism and facism are directly opposed, and the US was never too keen on communism.
At the time, the US was split on fascism, but knew that it hated communism more. Remember, Communism (the classic kind, not the Leninist kind) was an (ethnic) Jewish invention, and the height of anti-semitism boiled the most in the mid victorian era to even the late 1940s. I’m thinking of Dreyfuss and such.
Also, I don’t think this is a controversial stance to anyone but Tankies, Leninist style communism and is successors in Maoism and Stalinism was pretty fucking terrible. It is definitely a thing I could see the US wanting to stop (besides the obvious imperialist greedy racist reasons) and not have its citizens be a part of.
I took a friend to Pali lookout in Hawaii to see the view and was reminded that Hawaiians are awesome and don't sugarcoat their history. Below is art that is prominently displayed on one of the informational plaques:
Art by Herbert Kane.
Hawaiians are metal as fuck.
Feral cats are an endemic species and can be found pretty much everywhere. There are similar problems with chickens and pigs.
No one's particularly happy about it. It's what happens when species are introduced to a place that has no natural predators to keep them in check.
Note how Kamehamas warriors have been given helmets restyled to look like phrygian helmets (thereby drawing parallells to greek warriors through their formation and equipment). The truth is that Hawaiian pikemen weren't drawn from the nobility or the Koa (the elite warrior class) and as such would have been generally unarmored, wearing neither mahiole (the feathered helmet of the nobility, almost always combined with a colourful cloak) or the woven helmets worn by some Koa (the two guys stabbing&bashing dudes in the foreground are wearing the traditional garb of a Koa warrior).
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
I was curious about the age listed as well. 3000 BCE would be absurdly early for chariots anywhere. But at a site that far south is downright crazy.
So following through the articles linking to other articles arrives at the phrase:
So the "bronze age" in that area lasted up until around 1200 BCE (or 3200 years ago). And we know for sure there was extensive use of chariots in the middle and late bronze age. Though this toy model is a cart with 4 solid wheels not really a "chariot" which is typified by having 2 spoked wheels on a single axle. I wonder what made them decide this must have been a horse drawn vehicle rather than an ox cart (horse drawn vehicles were very limited in weight until the invention of the horse collar in the medieval period).
But that's a nitpick. I really like the show.