Given how many times he has been in the ER, it is impressive it he hasn’t gone into the chair and pipe phase sooner. Also impressive that none of his injuries are swordsmanship related. He got hit by a car once, pulled something another time and rubber Warhammered a guy in the nuts.
The human arm is uniquely evolved to be able to throw things. The ability to use ranged weaponry is basically one of mankind's evolutionary superpowers. That we as a species would keep developing our ranged weaponry feels quite inevitable.
Our brains are also super good at tracking and calculating trajectories. Plus it makes sense for hunting, even a rabbit can cause a deep wound if you get too close to melee kill it, that wound could lead to a fatal infection, so killing from range gives you an evolutionary edge in survival and a greater likelihood of getting it in the first place as it has less chance to spot you coming.
@@littlekong7685 >Our brains are also super good at tracking and calculating trajectories. Have you heard of the ACR program? For me, it put to bed the myth of human ballistic accuracy. Reality is we can't hit _shit_ under stress. But as a possibly moot positive, we didn't just evolve for throwing things. The enormous range of motion our joints provide is great for swinging clubs, which extends reach and multiplies force. I believe we're more evolved for clubbing things than we are for throwing objects at them, I think the latter capability developed from the former.
From what I've heard from primatologists the human arm evolved the way it is because our ancestors were tree dwelling. The same motion used in swing from branch to branch translates well into clubbing and throwing. Technology is both our superpower and what kills us the most nowadays.
@acem82 Said 'targets' _want_ to be 'hit' in that context and it's still difficult and that's why you celebrate. Shooting is different in that respect and in others. Throwing skills are not transferrable to shooting skills, at all. The average person cannot comprehend the velocity of a rifle, I have on many occasions had to explain to people on the internet what supersonic actually means. You can't just eyeball artillery like tossing a grenade either. Re: The ACR program. It was heavily publicised and some of the vidocs are still on youtube like 'Advanced Combat Rifle (1991)'. Some of the articles and vids you'll see in a quick google search aren't so good, they miss the lesson entirely, blame the rifles and bemoan the money spent. Reality is ACR failed because humans failed, our guns are already more accurate than we are and throwing money at better rifles will not improve our ability to aim them. If you want more things to look into we also have hit percentage data from every conflict from WW2 to the GWOT, but that counts rounds consumed in suppression fire, so makes accuracy look even worse than it is. But poor marksmanship and high ammo demand for suppression were both good reasons to adopt lighter cartridges, which is how we ended up with 30 round rifle mags and 200 round machine-gun belts as the modern standards.
Actually chimps do use "spear" to hunt bushbabies. In reality it's just a somewhat sharpened stick but I think we have our answer. A spear is too easy to make to not happen.
Everybody says "Dune shields would bring back swords!" but nah, large-scale warfare would still be fought mostly at range, just with artillery designed to kill with indirect effects like gas or shockwaves. It's not just the shields that limit the Duniverse to melee, it's also all the political restrictions on how wars are fought and all the stuff you're not allowed to do. Everybody in the Duniverse already knows that nukes are the obvious way to win a total war, that's the whole reason you're not allowed to use them.
Artillery is a result of fortification. The moment someone starts hiding behind rocks and fallen trees systematically, the development of long range destructive capability is just a matter of time and technology.
@@alexeydolzhenkov7424, already the Romans had siege artillery (onagers) and field artillery (ballistae), when you invent one, the other seem to follow suit promptly.
@@TheManOfTwistsAndTurns agree if i saw a thumbnail with this question and skall witha pipe i'd be more likely to click than the yt sword head thumbnail
Hunter gatherers definitely fought over hunting territories. Australian aboriginals typically lived in small bands of a dozen people but would gather into tribal alliances of hundreds even thousands for war. Nomadic bands are often egalitarian, but where fertile rivers and fishing grounds allowed permanent hunter gatherer villages to grow hierarchies did form.
I was about to say, we also aren't the only ones to wage war, so even in the case of humans not evolving that's still not the case as chimpanzee's are a particularly notable example. (Where they preemptively attack and seek vengeance, two notably human traits when it comes to warfare.) Then there are ants, termites and wasps, the former wage war on a similar scale of millions of units in something similar to pitched battles, while the latter will raid and exterminate hives of other wasps and bees nearby preemptively. If hive insects evolved into larger creatures instead of mammals, say the size of a dog or person, we could see conflicts between hives that would rival the size and scope of two city states fighting one another.
I think you've hit it here! It's not farming that causes hierarchies, it's *surplus* *food* ... it just happens that farming is a heckuva a good way to generate surplus. Surplus leads to specialization, and that leads to hierarchy. Now, we're an inventive and quarrelsome bunch; I'm sure you can find hunter-gatherer types who come up with hierarchies for cultural reasons, even in straitened circumstances.
Heck, all kinds of anmimals occupy and defend territories in the size necessary to sustain them. Just because you move between different places in your territory doesn´t mean you don´t lay claim and defend it. Chimps even wage long drawn out conflicts up to the total destruction of one group. It would be surprising if humans were that much different.
@@hoi-polloi1863 "food surplus" is a phrase often in these discussions. But I think it is a bit misleading as primitive farmers are usually more malnourished, it is more that they concentrated in permanent settlements with larger populations that makes the easier to fleece. Grain also stores and transports a lot easier than other foods making it easier to tax and barter.
Being able to hit an enemy who can't hit back is just such a massive advantage for such a simple concept. I think we're only ever going to see advancements in warfare push combatants physically further away from each other, there's little obvious reason to go back to large-scale hand-to-hand combat aside from "man it'd be cool"
The one way I can see that happening is through extreme body modification. Like a power armour exoskeleton that allows you to move at extremely high speeds and with high precision. If something like that appeared before a form of ranged weapons that could reliably counter it or be used while wearing it, I could definitely see melee weapons making a return. But yeah, otherwise, not really.
The war between Russia and Ukraine has proven that trench warfare hasn’t been left to history. Urban warfare is still fraught with hand-to-hand combat. As long as war exists, there will be hand-to-hand fighting.
I could see it for urben type environments where you have sufficiently limited sitelines, and their is armor good enough to make a pistol stop working. That or for personal guards in an environment where guns are an inate risk, but at that point you also have the question of "why not kill everyone?"
The Mongols used grenades during the first Mongol invasion of Japan in 1274: gunpowder in ceramic pots & jars with scrap metal placed inside. Along with weapons possibly (contemporary descriptions are unclear) similar to medeival european Hand-gonnes. Europe being so disconnected from eastern Asia, yet coming up with the same or similar weapon designs many years later when given, roughly, the same materials suggests that firearm development may be an invevitability in any culture experiencing warfare.
I think its more about what stuff they in the first place: if you get handguns you'd obivously build something similar like an arquebus, and even in China you had breech-loaded guns instead of western guns. In Korea they focused on rocketry like the hwacha, and metal rockets that were shot from tubes were common. They were reasonably effective in the imijin war too. Indian rockets also were a thing in the 19th century.
they also had kind of like portable cannons at that time. when i saw those in ghost of tsushima i was like wait were these a thing at this time? looked it up and turns out it was. mongolians conquering half the world not only with bows but with boom sticks
I feel like the only way to make Ranged Weapons/Guns irrelevant would be if somehow body armor became completely immune to projectiles but wasn't immune to melee weapons. And even then probably not
Body armor or shields. If you remember the rolling war droids from Star Wars they had a shield that could stop most blaster bolts or light sabers. One suspects they would last much less time against a warrior in armor with a personal shield generator charging them with a sledge hammer.
In Metal Gear Rising, the justification for using swords when guns are available is that cyborg bodies are so durable that small arms fire basically do no damage, but blades can be enhanced to cut through it. Why this blade enhancement technology was never applied to guns is never explained, considering there are throwing knives with similar enhancement...
@@ArifRWinandar Bullets are smaller than throwing knives. Less room for the tech. And if you make a bullet start vibrating in the barrel, that probably screws up accuracy. And possibly the gun. And maybe your hand.
Meanwhile, in a parallel universe, Skallagrim and Gandalf smoke they favorite Southfarthing Leaf... "I wonder if the invention and development of magic was inevitable".... puff puff... "Probably. Who wants to fight orcs in melee, after all?"
Meanwhile hundreds of miles away Sauron sits grumpily in a cave going "The fall of Barad-Dûr was the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the third age... Just you wait"
War is not something that was invented after agriculture or property. A bar fight doesn't have anything to do with either of those. People have different viewpoints, they might disagree with eachother, they might get angry, and become violent. Their family backs them up and the violence could escalate. If you're a tribal society, that means war. If two tribes are trying to hunt in the same creek, they might have a dispute over who caught a certain deer that has two different arrows in it. That could turn into a war over resources. You might feel cheated after bartering for some pottery and it breaks way too easily. You go to the other tribe to complain about it, and they get offended and kill you. Your family avenges you. War. War is just a violent conflict, and conflicts between people are inevitable.
There is a difference between a couple of fights, namely a skirmish, and a war. What you are describing are small scale battles that happen all the time throughout history. Usually short clashes, and the losing side retreats. They have limited societal impact, and come and go as the situation changes. A war is far more organised, with leaders and longer goals. They can however arrise from skirmishes as the root cause. It can be argued that a war is a form of diplomcay, where instead deals are made on basis of natural and local recourses, deals are made from the recources of manpower.
What I was describing is how small conflicts can seamlessly escalate to military conflicts between entire tribes. Which would be how wars started in pre-state societies. I deliberately didn't say how far those wars would escalate, because that was not the point. Such things would largely depend on local culture. The point is that in such conditions, wars between tribes could break out. And to deny that... you're blindly trying to force ancient conflicts to fit in the mould of a shallow, modern conception of what war is. You're not really achieving anything. "Oh, those tribes might have gathered their warriors and met in battle, but they didn't have an officer corps or supply lines so that's not a war"
In "Legend of the Galactic Heroes" there's a decent justification for melee weapons. They're usually used during boarding actions after a gas is released that would risk blowing up the spaceship if a laser weapon is fired or when fighting in areas where a misfire could cause serious problems (like the bridge)
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That of course ignores guns that would be safe even in those conditions, like less-than-lethal beanbag rounds fired from pneumatic gun, or crossbow with a magazine and integrated cocking lever.
@@Michael-jx9bhIn Dune this was somewhat accounted for because if any house let that happen, the whole house would be wiped out by the empire. So each house was motivated to limit shields and lasers to their own people and to indoctrinate everyone under their control. (lasers make big boom when hitting a shield)
Even for something like Dune, where a shield made guns useless, I highly doubt it would stay that way for long, realistically speaking. The ranged weapon makers would have adopted and tried to develop NEW ranged weapons that could bypass or pierce through that shield. And if they succeed, then the ranged weapons will be back on the menu, including guns. Then things would just devolve back into "arms vs armor" arms race, while never truly putting ranged weapons out for good. I mean, the advantage of shooting your foe from range, and putting them out of commission before they can even touch you, is simply too good to give up.
The problem in Dune is that when energy beams hit an energy shield, the result is basically a nuclear explosion. There are slow projectiles that can penetrate shields; they're useful for assassins, but not very practical as weapons of war. Now, if they could find a reliable way to disable shield generators, that would bring ranged weapons back.
Dune shields work well against "dumb" munitions but, even within Dune, there are "smart" projectiles. What is a hunter-seeker after all? Can't it be programmed to attack slowly enough to penetrate a shield? They can be attuned to attack a specific person after all. It always annoyed me that Herbert got the name wrong. To hunt and to seek are basically the same thing. I think hunter-killer, like the submarine, is what to call them.
@@ArkadiBolschek Sure, but I still doubt that'll just be the be-all end-all thing. Human beings can be really crafty and smart. Who says someone can't come up with a NEW energy weapon that doesn't cause a nuclear explosion? Maybe the writer might not allow it for the story, but if something like Dune was the reality, then I wouldn't be surprised if someone comes up with a way to bypass that weakness.
We have documented instances of chimp bands going to war. Hunter-gatherers often defend their territory against rival tribes, and young guys go raiding the neighbours. As for firearms I can imagine a future where they’re kinda obsolete. Still around for nostalgics and special use cases, but no longer the cutting edge of interpersonal violence. Swarms of drones (or clouds of nanotechnology) that’d make holding a gun, in your hand, kinda irrelevant. According to Stephenson.
Certain Polynesian cultures, particularly Hawaii, which was at the time the most *warlike* of the Polynesian countries, people made swords out of *billfish bills* ; in Hawaii, they were called *Pahi-kuah* , & were typically made out of *Swordfish* bills. I wanted to point that out because it proves you don't *have* to have metal to make swords. Also, in *tropical island* cultures like those of many parts of Polynesia, the heat, humidity, & deep ocean water would be so *constant* of threats smart people would rightly conclude that armor would be too big a risk of heatstroke & drowning to be worth the protection. So I don't think armor's an *inevitability* depending on your environment. The reason *desert* cultures could get away with it in spite of the heat is because deserts are also very *dry* . Tropical islands are extremely *humid* , & humidity *amplifies* heats effects. I've lived in humid subtropical Tennessee my entire life, so I know that for *sure* .
Point taken, but we'd still need metal to make swords in most parts of the world. And I have doubts about the effectivenes or at least the durability of fish-swords even compared to a stone-axe. The thing about heat in armor is also a good one, but I wonder if they still used partial armor, like helmets.
@@michaeljfoley1 Black powder is actually pretty easy to make just need some horse urine (primarily for quantity produced, human urine can work in a pinch though) in a grass compost pile to create a niter bed to produce some saltpeter. Chances are you could find old barns full of the stuff already, just waiting to be processed. Sulfur isn't too hard to source typically, especially if there's some volcanic activity in the area, ie hot springs. Charcoal is the final ingredient and that should be easy enough to produce sufficient quantities. There should never be a shortage of readily available metals to turn into bullets or blunderbuss shrapnel so we're good there too.
@michaeljfoley1 ammunition is still very easy to mass produce, especially in it's most basic form. The most Basic Gunpowder is simply 2 easily acquired ingredient chemicals. Charcoal and Potasium Nitrate.
@@Beuwen_The_DragonWhat you're missing is the fact that you have to produce weapons that can use those types of blackpowder and gunpowder. The people who know how to is far fewer.
The entire inevitability of weapons exists because *someone*, not naming any names here, Crom, decided his own teeth and nails weren't good enough. Thinks he's better than us. Don't you Crom? Mister Big Shot with a Rock. Sixty five million years of tradition, all down the tube because Crom had to throw a rock.
One thing I think is worth keeping on mind wrt. the inevitability of various weapons: gunpowder was never actually invented. It was discovered, once, and gradually spread from its point of discovery. It doesn't seem that it was ever discovered independently in any other cases elsewhere. In a world where gunpowder hadn't been accidentally discovered at that point, it *probably* wouldn't have been discovered until the advent of modern chemistry. So, in other possible histories, we might not have seen any explosive-powered projectiles until the 19th century or so, when we first started discovering other sorts of explosives through systematic exploration of chemistry. In which case, we might have seen very different sorts of weaponry as metallurgy and craftsmanship advanced in the absence of explosives.
Ooh neat thats something ive thought quite a lot about myself and the answer is yes if you ask me Imo weapon development/design throughout history has been dictated by two things: the biomechanical realities of the human body and advancements in material science By biomechanical realities i mean the fact that every weapon humans designed in history was designed to be used by humans. Thats why all weapons (at least those for personal use) fall into a pretty tight span of weights and sizes and are designed in such a way that they can be operated with 1-2 hands. These specific requirements of human biology are the reason why weapons from all over the world, designed by different cultures at different times are all relatively similar. The other factor, advancement in material science is also an inevitable consequence of other technological development/experimentation. Metallurgy for example is an accidental byproduct of using fire etc. I also think that weapon development in general is inevitable since conflict naturally arises as a consequence of resource scarcity
I could see alternate developments only if the natural resources were significantly different. Like, if we had no (tough) metals available, the firearms within personal use weight class would be either miniature mortars or rockets, neither of which are too accurate at range. At least until modern electronics for projectile guidance or some composite materials for longer barrels were developed. Archery would stay relevant until modern era, I suppose. If on the other hand, massive deforestation caused us to lack wood, that'd make things very interesting, since even spears would be difficult to produce. I'd love to imagine what wacky ways people would come up with trying to develop a pointy stick without access to a stick. Perhaps some bones tied together with cloth and glue? And of course, metals would eventually solve that issue if available. But yes, as long as there are humans who feel like benefitting from force-multiplier, there'd be weapons of some sort.
Hmm, first of all a wonderful video. I do think it is possible sword could be skipped if somehow we never (or too late) discovered metals which could be reliably sharpened. Perhaps say some modern polymers are invented first. They are not hard enough to do edges, but perhaps are robust enough to do modern like bows and spear handles etc.
They still didnt have 1 tribe dominate the world .. well now they do and look what happened, humanity was better back then and smaller tribes were kept in check
I don't think it's fair to call them "extremely violent", not at all. They certainly knew violence, but they also knew trade, intermarriage, what we might today call diplomacy, etc... And they had little to no incentives to kill or worse, compared to societies with private property, money, slavery, etc...
@@WhenDoesTheVideoActuallyStart Depends on how you describe large scale violence, we've have documentation in chimps where hierarchy disputes escalate to total rival extermination.
even if we experienced some sort an apocalyptic event that modern smokeless powder would become nearly impossible to produce people would just revert back to blackpowder and simple flintlock and matchlock designs that can be made without industrial machines
The myth that hunter/gatherers did not have war, is just that, a myth. Bride wars, and such did happen, to keep the bloodlines from stagnating. They would raid, and even have short term wars to get captive women, and in some cultures men, so they could break them down and convert them into their cultures. Humans have had some sort of warfare from the start. I like C.W. Cowpler's history of warfare, in that his progression from rock, sticks, and throwing sticks, to various weapons is a great theory.
I find more recently informed theories on the history of war hold more water. and I contend that conflict is not war. Even in desperstion of bridal anxiety. although such uh. that very much seems to be an expression of highly misogynistic cultures. Especially given well actual human biology. A 7% average overall fitness difference for any given equal envroment is a diffrence sure. but. Not enough to even want to raid and capture.. you would require an level of underlying misgivings toward women to hamper thier growth and proper nutrition before that could be a possibility at all. (7% is from military reaserch compleated and published in 2006. Also.. not all of that 7% comes from lessor strength development some areas its greater, but having the majority of human reporoductive parts to upkeep is a drain on ahtletic growth) No I follow that it must start at war. War begins after we stagnated, after we expanded as far and as densely as we could with the technology we had discovered at the time and could teach. Then times get hard. They have food, your children are hungry, and the elders have already given their meat, thier lives and thier meat to the food pot. Then... Its war. Raid the food stores. Eleminate the other hunters. The begs and pleas for life breed the misogany as the former neighbours offer all they can, bodies included, to save thier children. It was suprise that won the conflict but you have to justify in your mind why you did it. They where weak you decide. And slavery, war, and misogony where invented. Shortly after Kingdoms come. Not to defend against the agressor but to keep the slave in check. A generation later and narcissism and classes are born. This follows what we now know about human mental oatterns in general and human biology better. We have an instinct to try and uh... Have sex to get out of difficult intersocial issues before looking for violence. But if you yeild to violence with sex, it breeds contempt in the mind.
Guns can be very tricky weapons in enclosed space vessels if you need to avoid ruining the shell or critical structures with your weapon. There's a reason flame-throwers and grenades are less common weapons when it comes to robberies
Nope, because any hull that can withstand micrometeorites can withstand heavy gunfire. And even if you breached the hull it would lead to a slow decompression over hours, easily fixed with a patch job by the victor after the fight is over. If you do worry about damage, less than lethal rounds are very viable against the rugged interior of a realistic spaceship. As for flamethrowers and grenades, the reasons are very different. Flamethrowers are cumbersome, robberies generally care for speed and some level on concealability. A flamethrower fails on both. Grenades on the other hand are to escalatory to be viable. They either horrifically maim or do nothing. You need a more refined escalation to threaten.
The last common ancestor we have with something is Chimps Gorillas came after, but when we look at chimps they do some seriously horrible sh*t in the name of territory or hierarchy so it's not hard to imagine war being a natural course. Also, when we were hunter gatherers we less went to war and more committed extreme assault night raids so fight so an even Battle or war-scale fight was not really common until we had communities enough to form fighting forces. That being said, I think that all weapons we have are inevitable. Find out packing down a powder and lighting it explodes you get grenades and guns. Find out you can make a rock more deadly by making it sharper, you have your way to almost every weapon that exists for close combat.
Melee weapons won't be main stream (again) until we have a shield that nullifies ranged weapons. But weapons always progresses faster/better than armor.
you'd probably at least have people making bows or crossbows. a bit of wood working knowledge and a knife can let you make a crossbow out of some backyard tree branch.
@@michaeljfoley1 Most likely a long term post-apocalyptic scenario is setting tech back to the 1500s-1700s in terms of firearms, so mele weapons would make a comeback, but only as backups for single shot firearms.
@@michaeljfoley1 It would need to be one _horrific_ post-apocalyptic world. One in which modern civilization has all but collapsed, and between 80 to 90% of the global population has perished, with the survivors eking out a truly wretched existence as nomadic hunter-gatherers in the few areas that aren't too heavily polluted or irradiated to support human life.
As the title of the video: "Were Certain Weapon Developments Inevitable?" Yes. Range is king. Not being within striking distance of your foe is tantamount to survival.
That's true on the battlefield, but in civilian life your attacker could be standing within arms reach before you ever realize they have hostile intentions. That's why hand to hand training is still demonstrably useful, and short weapons haven't gone away in that context. Actually, they haven't completely disappeared from war either, because they can come in handy during urban warfare where troops are entering buildings and trenches, and even the sight of affixed bayonets gives you an additional thing to think about should you be thinking about closing distance with the enemy. Also, they are used in crowd control by the military, as a good old fashioned pike formation is a massive deterrent that means you don't have to shoot anyone.
@@formlessone8246 The firearm is still king in self defense as well. It requires far less training to become competent, and negates any size or strength advantages of your attacker.
@@Devin_Stromgren except for the fact that you need to justify using lethal force before you can go for a gun. In contrast, I can pull pepper spray and threaten an aggressor long before they actually commit battery against me and be legally justified (at least where I live). I know because I have done it before (long story). Many self defense situations involve no weapons at all, but the physically weaker person is still in grave danger. Guns are fantastic IF you see the threat coming, the threat is a lethal threat, and you have the reactionary gap in your favor. Since self defense is a legal defense for your actions, there can be no one best tool to answer all threats. I may carry pepper spray for walking the streets, but since I live in a place with a rather generous version of Castle Doctrine, it's not my go to for home defense. There's nuance here, and that's why even the cops carry a half dozen different tools plus some basic hand to hand training, not just their pistols.
@Devin_Stromgren that is strictly untrue, and if you sincerely believe that, you are liable to end up in jail someday for doing something absolutely stupid. I bet you also like to quote the pointless truism that it's better to be judged by twelve than carried by six?
I can't imagine a non-magical reason we'd go back to melee weapons as primary weapons. On the contrary, weaponry is evolving to reach always farther away, with guns, missiles, and now drones (and drone-launched missiles). Aside, of course, of resources required to make firearms becoming so scarce guns and the likes are o longer an option; although I'm sure we'll run out of food before that happens.
I don't see many mentioning it but "Dune" type shields would be one major way for melee weapons to return. Eventually I feel that guns would supercede the melee weapon again (as they already did) but I see shields like Dunes being one way that melee weapons like knives or short sword could become necessary for a time.
i wonder if its explained in dune lore but what about flamethrowers? flamethrowers are not crazy high pressure so the fuel doesnt go very fast, so i imagine it could be an option to fight those dune style shields
6:56 resources aren't the deciding factor, in my opinion. The precolumbian natives developed a sword using wood and obsidian blades; the Macahuitl. This argument DOES depend on your definition of "sword", but I count it. edit...7:53 fair enough 😁. Thanks for the video and the discussion!
The world builder in me likes thinking about how technology might develop in a completely different environment. Like, take an aquatic species that lives its entire life underwater. Combustion is basically impossible and metallurgy if it even arises would have completely different development. Slashing or bludgeoning weapons are much less effective because of water resistance, but narrow piercing weapons are extremely good. Ranged weapons past a certain distance are unfeasible unless you can find a way to make them self-propelling.
Super difficult to start metallurgy underwater, if you were even lucky enough to have hands or sufficiently coordinated tentacles etc. There's an Isaac Arthur episode on how being an underwater species would act as a hurdle to becoming a space faring species, if that strikes your fancy. I agree with your point (pun unintended) about spears working better, I'll throw in though that perhaps bladed weapons would exist just with more hydrodynamic shapes. Could be neat to design some.
combustion under water IS possible, many guns will shoot under water. but its quite hard to imagine how you develop such chemisty without a reliable source of heat - fire - in the first place.
Well, there are guns operating on compressed air, hell, many were used during secession war, it's just that you had to pump the air back every few shots and they were expensive as hell and slower to produce. Still, this devil is long out of the box.
I have played with the idea of some kind of electron inertia field to disable firearms by reducing chemical reactivity, but it would probably also shut down all functions of life, so...
@@NotMeButAnother Pull a Dr.Who, they had fields that expanded copper (brass, lead, etc) so even if a round went off, the casing would blow open leaving no force for the projectile, or jam the bullet itself, and you couldn't get the shot off (or had a catastrophic failure).
A couple of things: Firearms vs melee being practical tends to come down to relative levels of protection/defense vs the power/technology of the firearm. Think about how early firearms struggled to peice high quality plate. Melee will almost always be the prefered choice if ranged weapons start to struggle as there is almost always a way to acheive some kind of advantage in close that lets you defeat an opponent so it is really a question of if you can cocentrate enough force into your projectile to make it practical versus the defences available. In reality currently it seems as though physics is firmly in favor of firearms but it's not impossible to imagine a world where either though new super special alloys or some sort of energy field you could create something tough enough, manuverable enough and numerous enough that projectile weapons start to become impractical. I'm not sure that balance would last for long however as if you could do that you could also probably take heavier weapons with equivilent units, but if some technology significantly improves the total defensive capability per unit of mass then you might see projectile weapons start to struggle again if the same technology cannot be easilly used to improve firearms. Secondly regarding weapons or any other technologies being 'inevitable' to develop research suggests basically yes, at some point, if we don't make wildly different base assumptions. This is helped by the fact that there are a *ton* of technologies that were totally independantly discovered and re-discovered throughout history. It seems pretty likely that without a very fundamentally different type of existance that you're going to at least discover the same type of technological possibilities even if you don't actually make/build all of them in large numbers
The logistics needed for guns is higher than that for swords because petersalt and brimstone aren't nearly as overtly useful as metals like copper and iron are. Also reactive stuff is usually harder to obtain/purify.
To that first question: We're kind of seeing a return to body armor effectiveness against small arms like rifles in recent years. Still a far cry from the olden days of of pre-gunpowder warfare, but hey, progress.
Ants have wars so there will be war. As for things like shields in Dune humans constantly seek methods to defeat armor and I doubt that personal shields would be an exception. Frank Herbert just wanted a cheap excuse to have knife fights by large groups of combatants
Boarding space vessels is the most plausible no-firearms combat I can think of. But not because everyone would get sucked out through a bullet hole. That's myth. More likely it would be that no one wants to risk damaging the life-support or propulsion systems if the vessel is needed intact. Actually, I guess you don't need to be in space for that.
Just use things like bean bags, biological weapons, maybe even other ranged form of retrainment. Melee weapons just stopped making sense without additional constraints. Honestly hollow points, bean bags, buckshot, there numerous munitions that are relatively safe for internal systems.
I think if you're going to do more of this laid back rambling (which I definitely enjoy), you should definitely collab with Lloyd on the Lindeybeige channel. I'd love to watch you guys pick each others' brains about the hypotheticals of history.
Great video! I tend to take a bit more of a holistic view of the development of weaponry - I think you're right in that ranged weapons were inevitable given the advantages of the human organism. I will disagree somewhat about warfare coming about as a result of the transition to agriculture, although it likely did so as a result of its incidents, namely, a stabilizing effect on group population. Hunter-gatherer societies very much still had disputes over territory and culture - it was often simply a question of their means to prosecute conflict without inflicting undue damage on their own population, behaviours which are still evident in apex predators in the wild today. I do agree that firearms were likely "inevitable" in the sense that, eventually, chemistry would enable such reactions, but I don't see them as inherently tied to the progress of ranged weapons technology. Siege machines in the medieval era were increasing in complexity and design, and one wonders if avenues like the further development of combustible and chemical weaponry (Greek Fire) would have been pursued where, in history, they were largely abandoned due to the relative ease of gunpowder. On the topic of speculation, I do love Dune, but it's very much a product of its time, and, to a lesser extent, our current era. We always imagine the future as preserving aspects of our present that we shouldn't necessarily take for granted - the Holtzman effect is great against projectiles and mutually dangerous to light-based weaponry, but even today militaries are researching directed-energy weapons like microwaves that wouldn't necessarily be stopped by such a device, were we to discover one. Speculation is, however, outside of my professional scope as a historian, I will admit.
The pipe is a good look for you, sir. Also, given that black powder seems to have been a case of Daoist sages almost literally throwing shit at the wall, I think it is a sort of monkeys and typewriters case where, regardless of how history plays out, someone somewhere is eventually going to invent the funny kaboom dust
When it comes to any technology it's important to remember Columbus's Egg. It's easy to say something is obvious and inevitable once someone has shown you how to do it. The Minie ball was incredibly simple and could have been introduced centuries earlier (all it would have taken were slightly more complex molds) but it wasn't until the 1800's someone actually came up with the idea.
I think the more interesting question is: what if metals were 10 or 100 or 1000 times more common and available in workable surface deposits? Would hand protection ever become part of sword/weapon development if it was incredibly cheap and easy to produce gauntlets or full plate? Would there have been armies of tens of thousands of full plated conscript levies wielding pollaxes and heavy crossbows in the 10th century? Would cavalry be fighting on draft horses in full plate barding? Would we have build iron-shod castles? Houses? What impact might there have been on the industrial revolution? Would it happen a thousand years earlier? Would we live in a weird steampunk reality with brass top hats and shit? Would the hyper availability of metals limit the accessibility of fossil fuels like coal? Would Europe have ever been able to colonize the rest of the world (sorry guys?)? Very fun to tweak a (relatively) narrow parameter and imagine the consequences. And excellent fodder for fantasy/sci-fi stories.
@@kinguin7 This, we're already at a point where manpower is more expensive than materials which is why making things in china and burning fuel to ship them all over the world is still financially cheaper than making them locally. We're not quite post-scarcity but we're so close that it makes me wonder who's holding us up.
But anyway for the first question, guantlets and armour in general fell out of popularity as guns rose and that's the era where more hand protection was added to swords. It wasn't the cost of the gauntlets, it was the weight and the tactile/ergonomic dowsides that became unappealing.
"They had a structure so it was genetic" No, it was most likely cultural, and such culture came into being because it makes sense. It's like incest, tribes that ban incest thrive more than the ones that don't, so that becomes a rule. But it's not genetic. It simply makes sense to have the more talented, hard-working and experienced people take the lead when the others are unsure on what to do. But such an individual is still merely a primus inter pares, not a "King".
You made me think of something. It "makes sense" to them because the brain tells them it does, and genetics have a lot to do with how the brain makes us act. How much does genetics play into how culture forms around the world🤔? Thank you.
To the idea of noble savage: No, I believe savages really did tear each other's faces off over a piece of land, access to a creek, et cetera. The blessing of prehistoric people was that they had a very hard time maintaining control over it, as no country today control all of the Earth. I think they tried anyway.
@@cal2127perhaps, but it also expanded it's scope beyond anything one would have imagined, and a scale completely untenable to Hunter gatherers - and the survivable injuries became much worse. Even ignoring things like chemical weapons and the horrors of nuclear blasts (Read The Antwalkers of Hiroshima and Nagasaki for some nightmare fuel) it became much worse in scale and overall humanitarian suffering. More civilians died in WW2 than combatants. By some 2:1.
He already said violence is NOT the same as War. And I will explain to you why, War is between States, it is the extension of politics by other (i.e. violent) means. It has qualitatively very little in common except for violence.
@@ImXs1p3r yes, violence is exactly the same thing as war. Just on a larger scale. With a larger scale comes the need for more sound justification, thus war is rarely as psychotic as some bursts of violence, but it all boils down to the same bloody syrup: striking stick is an argument, when no alternative to be found, it is used to its fullest potential to make the weak cry and spread, to make strong dead, to turn monuments into dust, grab the gold and GTFO.
On if sword will make a come back. My take on it is yes only if we make body armor that would make handheld gun worthless. Just like in dune like he said but we are in a weird place with that. It will not be a force field any time soon . It will take on the shape of body armor, very light and tough. The sword will be back as a sidearm. most due to other weapons becoming more common place to fill the hole gun can't any more.
Some culture not developing swords has nothing to do with access to resources; there are tin and copper and iron deposits on every continent. The reason some society never got swords (or metallurgy in general) is that some people never made it out of the stone ages.
8:50 no. Even just throwing a rock, you have the most primitive form of ranged weapon. It also doesn't take much to go from throwing a rock with one's hand to tossing it with a sling.
The development of weapons goes Melee->Firearms->Drones The only way we go back to melee is if we get some kind of forcefield (or apocalypse) Nowadays the only melee weapon people carry is a knife, in the same way in the future the only ranged weapon soldiers will carry is a pistol everything else will be drones
Eh. I think drones are over rated. Looking at the ukrain war they don't seem like the inevitable future of warfare everyone seemed to think. If I'm not mistaken they've both sent hundreds of drones at each other and they more or less get yeeted left and right.
@vorpalblades it would still be more than enough to breathe new life into the value of melee weapons. Melee weapons were the main weapon of choice for armies up until the invention of guns, of course, even when all of those weapons you listed were in existence.
@@AdamantLightLP doesn't need to be complete it just needs to be low enough that the likelihood of hand to hand combat increases enough to justify melee weapons. For example a large war where ammo resupply becomes difficult soldiers would rather have a long sword than a combat knife especially if the enemy has longer reach melee weapons. In civilian life if bullets become too expensive due to shortages even criminals might resort to stabbing people than shooting them. That would make older forms of blade proof armor more attractive for everyday protection
Ranged weapons significantly contributed to what could be classified as a mass extinction for megafauna. Hunting becomes so much easier if you can hurt things from a distance where they can do nothing to you in return. Especially animals that evolved over millions of years to expect predators that attack up close. And the larger an animal is, the easier it is to hit, and the harder it is for the animal to run and hide. That doesn't only go for animals that are large on their own, but also herds. A spear thrown at a mass of targets is pretty much guaranteed to hit something. Seriously, afaik the disappearance of most of the huge land animals falls shortly after humans first appeared in those regions. And the only continent that still has a significant number of those is Africa, where they evolved alongside humans.
I don't think ranged weapons will ever fall out of favor. It just unfortunatelly seems that the future belongs to robots and I am honestly scared what that brings.
In Raymond E. Feist's Riftwar Saga, there's a world called Kelewan, a world without any metal. Quote: "the inhabitants use lacquer covered cured hides and wooden weapons which have roughly the same strength of their metal counterparts but are easier to manufacture on the world." So, I can see how, even if humans did not had access to metals - we would find a way to make blades, one way or another :-)
Hmm, it's more likely that if humans didn't have access to metals, they'd make bladed implements out of stone, animal teeth, shells... just like we've seen both early hominids and some indigenous tribes doing prior to learning metal smelting or trading for metal implements with people from civilisations that did master smelting metal. That, and they'd also make heavy use of blunt weapons.
If they didn’t invent bows and guns and swords they’d be trying to invent something like them. And the early versions of them are relatively simple and obvious.
Less of our troops have to actually be put into actually fights & usually just act as spotters for longer ranged attacks from things like airplanes, ground armor, or drones. Basically the fighting is all about being able to keep the farthest distance from your enemy & still be effective. Drone strikes seem to be a cheap & easily deployable way to do this. It keeps people safe while letting then spot the enemy with a drone, then we can either shoot them or fire a missle at them, all while never having to actually engage them with a solider.
On the "Swords are inevitable", absolutely true, and metal isn't even required. My own people, we did not have metal, but we have durable wooden swords that can chop, like a cleaver. People often call the Taiaha a spear, but they've only seen pictures, and have never held one or trained in Mau Rakau. There are some techniques (varying by region) where you do jab at the opponent, either with the "pommel"/tongue or with the blade (the part most people think is the spear shaft is actually mostly a blade), but all of the actual strikes are cuts, and you need to train in Edge Alignment as a result.
It takes a few cycles of reinventing the wheel with a fresh coat of paint and a new set of optimization. Range combat was always a thing from slings and spears to bows and arrows then to guns and artillery. Armor in all its forms is still a slate of material that's cut, bent, and shaped to protect an objective weather that be a person, an animal, or an object like an engine. Sure we got kevillar and grade 4 plates and adbrams tank armor but ultimately again is just sitting there waiting to be hit.
You don't have to overthink this really. The first melee weapon was a stick.A sword is just a more efficient stick. The first projectile was a stone being thrown. A firearm is just a more efficient way of throwing a stone. Great video and excellently chilled delivery. Thanks Skal.
Didn't know Skall was a fellow pipe smoker. No better combo of relaxation than than a pipe, good quality natural tobacco, a porch, a rocking chair, and a cool day.
Mêlée weapons would only come back after a civilizatory breakdown when ammo plants do not exist any more. Re explosives: They reach back almost 2.000 years; but using it in a ranged weapon happened only about 1.000 years ago.
I figure for the purpose of scifi and fantasy worldbuilding, my take on it is one probably would expect some familiar elements so long as the physics are the same and the species doing the fighting is close enough to human in body mechanics (you wouldn't expect dragons to develop the phalanx for example), but it can absolutely vary how prolific a given technology is and the details can certainly vary too. Not having mass proliferation of gunpowder weapons in a setting that has powerful combat spells, or defensive magic that can make a formation hardy enough to shrug off a volley of arquebus fire, would be quite easy to justify (you'd also want the defensive magic explanation if you still want to have formation warfare in a setting with powerful combat magic, I should add). But gunpowder weapons still existing would be perfectly reasonable even in such a setting. :D
Nanomachines son! The ultimate distance weapon that will make war obsolete. Might also make us permanently obsolete if only by a simple mistake in the code. But imagine not being able to see something that can travel around the world and it either disintegrates the tank, plane or ship you're inn and make more of itself. Or even more terrifying eats away at the soft fleshy beings inside. What's left behind being a some goop where people once existed. Would make nuclear war seem like a more humane alternative.
I think Warhammer does the concept of future melee combat correctly. It could possibly make a comeback, but tons of resources would need to be poured into making just 1 soldier with enough armor and hax to walk through the enemy. The way things are now, soldiers are trying to get as far away from “the front” as possible with drones and long range artillery.
Regarding what gets developed... I'd argue the following are guaranteed to be developed: The Knife, which becomes the axe and at some point the sword. The axe because 'better knife designed for hacking' and the sword because 'better knife meant to stab and slice scary things outside of claw/knife range'. The Spear because it merges 'long range knife', 'something to stop charging scary things further away'. Eventually it becomes the pike, sarissa, and polearm because 'stopping charging thing at greater distance', 'keeping the enemy further away' and 'stop charging thing then have other attack types than stab in case stab doesn't work' are quite sensible. The Bow, because 'long range spear which means very long range knife' as that aids in taking down prey and scary things safely, with the crossbow replacing the bow at a later stage for any entity which can't do the throwing posture needed for a normal bow. The club, which means various maces, warhammers and the like because 'hurt scary thing through armour or do deep tissue/bone damage' is quite sensible for keeping yourself alive. The 'propelled dart thrower', which we know of as the gun, because even if gunpowder or other explosives don't work, someone, somewhere is going to work out a way of making a more powerful repeating crossbow or compact heavy crossbow and 'use something other than muscle fibre to propel the dart' is quite sensible as a development of 'poke holes in enemy at greater ranges through greater defences at higher velocities', all that is in question is how safe is the propellant, how easy to produce and how much force can the propellant output. Finally, you have the bomb. Which eventually becomes the grenade and the rocket. Because a lot of things explode through natural methods (if nothing else, lightning striking a tree or something with a high water content), shrapnel is dangerous and so it makes sense to look into 'what if I have something explode on purpose and/or a canister break which contains a dangerous substance' with the latter being things like incendiaries, gasses, poisons and more. The grenade just being 'make this hand portable' and the rocket being 'attach some form of propulsion to the bomb so I don't need to carry it all the way to the target'. Well, and then there's armour and shields. Which are all going to be invented because 'protect myself from things trying to hurt me' is a very solid survival tip. The shield just being armour with adjustable positioning so an attacker can't easily predict where your armour will not keep you safe. Admittedly, the exact form all the above takes can be different depending on species as things without independent hands are more likely to have a 'lance' rather than a spear, and something with natural talons is going to have 'better talon over my talons so they don't get harmed and I cut better' replacing the traditional knife. But there's a reason behind what weapons and defences have been invented and so long as that reason doesn't exploit a complicated bit of physics, they always will be invented in some form. With those using complicated physics just needing to find a replacement bit of whatever is the local reality's version of physics to exploit.
dealing damage means putting energy into the material until it breaks apart, which is usually done by concentrating kinetic energy using points and edges. Projectiles are always the best at giving you the most desirable trait a weapon can have: Reach. One sided battles are always better afterall. You obviously need a energy source. Bows allow to store muscle energy and release it quickly, but the human body is limited in terms of power output and energy storage. using external energy sources also reduces the amount of strenght needed, allows the fighter to fight for longer and move quicker. Chemical reactions are far the most powerful and densest forms of energy storage that don't require complex machinery to make use of. there are several methods to convert the chemical energy into usable energy (kinetic, electric, light), but the simplest is to turn it into a heated gas. this heated gas can then create force via pressure to accelerate the projectile. So I believe that it is inevitable that firearms would be invented, regardless of place, time and species. I also believe that ranged weapons will evolve as soon as better energy sources are developed that are trivial enough to use in a simple mechanism and can be stored inexpensively. Lasers aren't unlikely and have some advantages, especially if used in a vacuum (greater reach, maximal speed, pefectly straight trajectory), but they will never beat firearms in terms of penetration. Will there ever be more modern forms of melee weapons? Part of the definition of a melee weapon is that the user uses their muscles to wield it, which inherently limits energy and power, and thus damage output. Does a rocket powered hammer count as a melee weapon? Sort of, but a shotgun loaded with the right ammo would do a better job, would be lighter and less cumbersome. Exoskeletons might cause a brief revival of melee weapons, but only in tight spaces where projectile weapons are out of the question, which inherently favors short blades, hammers and picks.
I like the Legend of Galactic Heroes reason for melee combat. Armour has advanced to the point that any small arms that can penetrate it risk damaging the ship you are on and killing everyone. So you have to use axes which inevitably ends in the scenario of two squads in massive armour wielding axes charging at each other.
I think 40k also has a good example as to why melee weapons can be prevalent again, that being armour itself becomes sufficient to stop most conventional munitions (along with taking the dune funne shields in some cases). We did see this sort of, in europe between armour, and both the hand and ranged arms at the time. Though we have greatly slowed down on our armour innovation, it is still going along and if we create or discover some new materials, we will see another line of advancements i believe.
A big thing I would say with range weapons in general, it's both good for getting food and removing threats. I would also add is that it is generally relatively safer to use range weapons against threats than it is to run up and stab something. Long as that is the case, fire arms and whatever range weapons come after will always be in favor over melee options. Probably even if we create melee weapons that can kill instantly upon touch(that somehow can't be used on a gun) we'd rather shoot thousands of bullets to avoid getting closer than take the chance of going in close.
My theory is that maybe through materials technology development, a new kind of armor is invented that is virtually impervious to any hand-held randged weapon. Maybe then, a soldier would have no choice but to get up close and personal to thrust melee weapons into gaps in the armor. This wouldn't render all ranged attacks from any weapon obsolete, of course, but it could give new value to melee weapons.
An important thing to remember is that the earliest projectile weapons likely predate us. We are evolved to have an inherent understanding of throwing and trajectories. Basically any person can get a projectile within the ballpark of their target without any training whatsoever, so long as they have the physical capacity for the range. Anyone can lob a paper ball at a trashcan and get close to it on instinct alone. It only takes a little practice and refinement to make that into a useful skill.
A couple of things: I do think that weapons (and thus war) are inevitable, since humans are hunters without natural weapons. We had to develop weapons to survive against nature, and from there it's not much of a stretch to turn those weapons on other humans. I also think that melee weapons could make a comeback if a rapid delivery method for infantry is developed, or if fighting becomes very close quarters again. Melee weapons saw a resurgence in the First World War, and would again if fighting aboard spaceships or in underground facilities becomes the norm.
in space you have the biggest motivation of all - not letting the air out or damaging the essential life support/propulsion stuff should you miss or over penetrate - Neither the raider or defender wants to destroy the cargo, ruin the ship etc by accident so while they may well carry a projectile weapon the use of them even with low power 'non-lethal' shot is a risk you probably don't want to run.
If you want to know more about the messy and surprising history of human hierarchy, I highly recommend a book called The Dawn of Everything. Co-written by an anthropologist and an archaeologist, It tells of hierarchical hunter gatherers and egalitarian cities, among other things. It's the closest I've seen a non-fiction book get to an fantasy epic.
Interesting speculations, thank you for the video! May I respectfully suggest you are thinking inside a box that doesn’t notice an elephant in the room, AI. The advantage of ranged weapons is that they can damage an enemy while being out of the enemy’s reach, unless the enemy also has a ranged weapon. A machine that can fight for you extends that formula of damage without risk. For example, there has been a debate regarding armored warfare as to whether one should lead an assault with tanks or infantry. In WW2 the answer was tanks. Today, with antitank weapons, the answer is often firepower and infantry. In the future I expect the answer to be firepower and drones, both flying and ground based. For personal defense and attack imagine an AI that doesn’t just walk beside you, but also one you can wear. Just some thoughts. Thank you again for an interesting video!
An interesting what if i often think about is how would the world change if gunpowder wasn't invented when it was and we utilized oil for weaponry, would we be fighting with flamethrower instead of guns? Would we just jump from launching tar covered boulders to mortars and missiles? How would that affect armor?
![SahBabii - Viking [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/D37cL92JX0I/mqdefault.jpg)
Skall has finally reached the "chair and pipe" phase of his career.
Just make sure you get off his lawn!
🤌🔥🔥🔥
Wait until he starts making smoke rings
@@ArkadiBolschek That'll be the day!
Given how many times he has been in the ER, it is impressive it he hasn’t gone into the chair and pipe phase sooner. Also impressive that none of his injuries are swordsmanship related. He got hit by a car once, pulled something another time and rubber Warhammered a guy in the nuts.
The human arm is uniquely evolved to be able to throw things. The ability to use ranged weaponry is basically one of mankind's evolutionary superpowers. That we as a species would keep developing our ranged weaponry feels quite inevitable.
Our brains are also super good at tracking and calculating trajectories. Plus it makes sense for hunting, even a rabbit can cause a deep wound if you get too close to melee kill it, that wound could lead to a fatal infection, so killing from range gives you an evolutionary edge in survival and a greater likelihood of getting it in the first place as it has less chance to spot you coming.
@@littlekong7685 >Our brains are also super good at tracking and calculating trajectories.
Have you heard of the ACR program? For me, it put to bed the myth of human ballistic accuracy. Reality is we can't hit _shit_ under stress.
But as a possibly moot positive, we didn't just evolve for throwing things. The enormous range of motion our joints provide is great for swinging clubs, which extends reach and multiplies force. I believe we're more evolved for clubbing things than we are for throwing objects at them, I think the latter capability developed from the former.
@@agentoranj5858 ...Press X to doubt. Quarterbacks hit moving targets all the time, and we still celebrate them.
From what I've heard from primatologists the human arm evolved the way it is because our ancestors were tree dwelling. The same motion used in swing from branch to branch translates well into clubbing and throwing. Technology is both our superpower and what kills us the most nowadays.
@acem82 Said 'targets' _want_ to be 'hit' in that context and it's still difficult and that's why you celebrate. Shooting is different in that respect and in others. Throwing skills are not transferrable to shooting skills, at all. The average person cannot comprehend the velocity of a rifle, I have on many occasions had to explain to people on the internet what supersonic actually means. You can't just eyeball artillery like tossing a grenade either.
Re: The ACR program. It was heavily publicised and some of the vidocs are still on youtube like 'Advanced Combat Rifle (1991)'. Some of the articles and vids you'll see in a quick google search aren't so good, they miss the lesson entirely, blame the rifles and bemoan the money spent. Reality is ACR failed because humans failed, our guns are already more accurate than we are and throwing money at better rifles will not improve our ability to aim them.
If you want more things to look into we also have hit percentage data from every conflict from WW2 to the GWOT, but that counts rounds consumed in suppression fire, so makes accuracy look even worse than it is. But poor marksmanship and high ammo demand for suppression were both good reasons to adopt lighter cartridges, which is how we ended up with 30 round rifle mags and 200 round machine-gun belts as the modern standards.
Actually chimps do use "spear" to hunt bushbabies. In reality it's just a somewhat sharpened stick but I think we have our answer.
A spear is too easy to make to not happen.
and used. A great swordsman would still have a hard time fighting 3 dudes with a spear with minimal training.
Ahhh, out in the Shire with Skall. The thing I didn't know I needed this holiday season.
Everybody says "Dune shields would bring back swords!" but nah, large-scale warfare would still be fought mostly at range, just with artillery designed to kill with indirect effects like gas or shockwaves. It's not just the shields that limit the Duniverse to melee, it's also all the political restrictions on how wars are fought and all the stuff you're not allowed to do. Everybody in the Duniverse already knows that nukes are the obvious way to win a total war, that's the whole reason you're not allowed to use them.
Also artillery is very mich a thing in Dune too. But since you can't carry artillery in person, they have bladed weapons for that.
Artillery is a result of fortification. The moment someone starts hiding behind rocks and fallen trees systematically, the development of long range destructive capability is just a matter of time and technology.
@@p.bckman2997 Well there is also field artillery but it is a later thing than siege artillery.
@@alexeydolzhenkov7424, already the Romans had siege artillery (onagers) and field artillery (ballistae), when you invent one, the other seem to follow suit promptly.
I mean... There are other reasons to not use nukes too, lol.
you know what, more episodes like this would be awesome. just sit down and talk to the camera about weapon stuff. heck yeah.
and the thumbnail should be made to reflect it
where’s my skal love ❤️
@@TheManOfTwistsAndTurns agree if i saw a thumbnail with this question and skall witha pipe i'd be more likely to click than the yt sword head thumbnail
So LindyBeige?
@@TonyOstrich Before he went off and stopped making content like this.
Hunter gatherers definitely fought over hunting territories. Australian aboriginals typically lived in small bands of a dozen people but would gather into tribal alliances of hundreds even thousands for war. Nomadic bands are often egalitarian, but where fertile rivers and fishing grounds allowed permanent hunter gatherer villages to grow hierarchies did form.
I was about to say, we also aren't the only ones to wage war, so even in the case of humans not evolving that's still not the case as chimpanzee's are a particularly notable example. (Where they preemptively attack and seek vengeance, two notably human traits when it comes to warfare.) Then there are ants, termites and wasps, the former wage war on a similar scale of millions of units in something similar to pitched battles, while the latter will raid and exterminate hives of other wasps and bees nearby preemptively. If hive insects evolved into larger creatures instead of mammals, say the size of a dog or person, we could see conflicts between hives that would rival the size and scope of two city states fighting one another.
I think you've hit it here! It's not farming that causes hierarchies, it's *surplus* *food* ... it just happens that farming is a heckuva a good way to generate surplus. Surplus leads to specialization, and that leads to hierarchy. Now, we're an inventive and quarrelsome bunch; I'm sure you can find hunter-gatherer types who come up with hierarchies for cultural reasons, even in straitened circumstances.
They still do that now up north
Heck, all kinds of anmimals occupy and defend territories in the size necessary to sustain them. Just because you move between different places in your territory doesn´t mean you don´t lay claim and defend it.
Chimps even wage long drawn out conflicts up to the total destruction of one group. It would be surprising if humans were that much different.
@@hoi-polloi1863 "food surplus" is a phrase often in these discussions. But I think it is a bit misleading as primitive farmers are usually more malnourished, it is more that they concentrated in permanent settlements with larger populations that makes the easier to fleece. Grain also stores and transports a lot easier than other foods making it easier to tax and barter.
Being able to hit an enemy who can't hit back is just such a massive advantage for such a simple concept.
I think we're only ever going to see advancements in warfare push combatants physically further away from each other, there's little obvious reason to go back to large-scale hand-to-hand combat aside from "man it'd be cool"
There are three fundamental principles in warfare:
• Power.
• Speed.
• Range.
The one way I can see that happening is through extreme body modification. Like a power armour exoskeleton that allows you to move at extremely high speeds and with high precision. If something like that appeared before a form of ranged weapons that could reliably counter it or be used while wearing it, I could definitely see melee weapons making a return.
But yeah, otherwise, not really.
The war between Russia and Ukraine has proven that trench warfare hasn’t been left to history. Urban warfare is still fraught with hand-to-hand combat. As long as war exists, there will be hand-to-hand fighting.
Yeah, pretty much the only time a melee option would be chosen is if every ranged option was disqualified for one reason or another.
I could see it for urben type environments where you have sufficiently limited sitelines, and their is armor good enough to make a pistol stop working.
That or for personal guards in an environment where guns are an inate risk, but at that point you also have the question of "why not kill everyone?"
The Mongols used grenades during the first Mongol invasion of Japan in 1274: gunpowder in ceramic pots & jars with scrap metal placed inside. Along with weapons possibly (contemporary descriptions are unclear) similar to medeival european Hand-gonnes.
Europe being so disconnected from eastern Asia, yet coming up with the same or similar weapon designs many years later when given, roughly, the same materials suggests that firearm development may be an invevitability in any culture experiencing warfare.
I think its more about what stuff they in the first place: if you get handguns you'd obivously build something similar like an arquebus, and even in China you had breech-loaded guns instead of western guns. In Korea they focused on rocketry like the hwacha, and metal rockets that were shot from tubes were common. They were reasonably effective in the imijin war too. Indian rockets also were a thing in the 19th century.
they also had kind of like portable cannons at that time. when i saw those in ghost of tsushima i was like wait were these a thing at this time? looked it up and turns out it was. mongolians conquering half the world not only with bows but with boom sticks
I feel like the only way to make Ranged Weapons/Guns irrelevant would be if somehow body armor became completely immune to projectiles but wasn't immune to melee weapons. And even then probably not
That's basically what happened in _Dune_
Body armor or shields. If you remember the rolling war droids from Star Wars they had a shield that could stop most blaster bolts or light sabers. One suspects they would last much less time against a warrior in armor with a personal shield generator charging them with a sledge hammer.
In Metal Gear Rising, the justification for using swords when guns are available is that cyborg bodies are so durable that small arms fire basically do no damage, but blades can be enhanced to cut through it. Why this blade enhancement technology was never applied to guns is never explained, considering there are throwing knives with similar enhancement...
@@ArifRWinandar Bullets are smaller than throwing knives. Less room for the tech. And if you make a bullet start vibrating in the barrel, that probably screws up accuracy. And possibly the gun. And maybe your hand.
@@EGRJ what I'm saying is, just make guns that shoot knives
Meanwhile, in a parallel universe, Skallagrim and Gandalf smoke they favorite Southfarthing Leaf... "I wonder if the invention and development of magic was inevitable".... puff puff... "Probably. Who wants to fight orcs in melee, after all?"
Meanwhile hundreds of miles away Sauron sits grumpily in a cave going "The fall of Barad-Dûr was the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the third age... Just you wait"
Sauron "sauriversity"brooks @@moritamikamikara3879
More Chair and Pipe discussions on this channel!
I second this motion.
@@CreepyMFThirded.
Maybe indoors beside a fireplace as winter progresses though…
minus the pipe, he should really get off that stuff
More chair and pipe
I don't have a fireplace here, otherwise I totally would.
War is not something that was invented after agriculture or property.
A bar fight doesn't have anything to do with either of those. People have different viewpoints, they might disagree with eachother, they might get angry, and become violent. Their family backs them up and the violence could escalate. If you're a tribal society, that means war.
If two tribes are trying to hunt in the same creek, they might have a dispute over who caught a certain deer that has two different arrows in it. That could turn into a war over resources.
You might feel cheated after bartering for some pottery and it breaks way too easily. You go to the other tribe to complain about it, and they get offended and kill you. Your family avenges you. War.
War is just a violent conflict, and conflicts between people are inevitable.
No War is a violent conflict between STATES not people.
It is qualitatively different.
States did not exist.
There is a difference between a couple of fights, namely a skirmish, and a war. What you are describing are small scale battles that happen all the time throughout history. Usually short clashes, and the losing side retreats. They have limited societal impact, and come and go as the situation changes.
A war is far more organised, with leaders and longer goals. They can however arrise from skirmishes as the root cause. It can be argued that a war is a form of diplomcay, where instead deals are made on basis of natural and local recourses, deals are made from the recources of manpower.
If you consider a fight or even a grudge to be a war, then sure, but that's not normally what we mean when we say "war".
What I was describing is how small conflicts can seamlessly escalate to military conflicts between entire tribes. Which would be how wars started in pre-state societies.
I deliberately didn't say how far those wars would escalate, because that was not the point. Such things would largely depend on local culture. The point is that in such conditions, wars between tribes could break out.
And to deny that... you're blindly trying to force ancient conflicts to fit in the mould of a shallow, modern conception of what war is. You're not really achieving anything.
"Oh, those tribes might have gathered their warriors and met in battle, but they didn't have an officer corps or supply lines so that's not a war"
You only need to go as far back as the middle ages to see wars that both started and ended with one battle.
In "Legend of the Galactic Heroes" there's a decent justification for melee weapons. They're usually used during boarding actions after a gas is released that would risk blowing up the spaceship if a laser weapon is fired or when fighting in areas where a misfire could cause serious problems (like the bridge)
That of course ignores guns that would be safe even in those conditions, like less-than-lethal beanbag rounds fired from pneumatic gun, or crossbow with a magazine and integrated cocking lever.
Vibrobayonets
Who carries a limited-use second gun?
I can see such a thing as an underbarrel mount, though
Eh, some guy would say "I don't care! I won't be a prisoner or killed by a sword, I'll shoot!"
@@Michael-jx9bhIn Dune this was somewhat accounted for because if any house let that happen, the whole house would be wiped out by the empire. So each house was motivated to limit shields and lasers to their own people and to indoctrinate everyone under their control. (lasers make big boom when hitting a shield)
Even for something like Dune, where a shield made guns useless, I highly doubt it would stay that way for long, realistically speaking. The ranged weapon makers would have adopted and tried to develop NEW ranged weapons that could bypass or pierce through that shield. And if they succeed, then the ranged weapons will be back on the menu, including guns. Then things would just devolve back into "arms vs armor" arms race, while never truly putting ranged weapons out for good. I mean, the advantage of shooting your foe from range, and putting them out of commission before they can even touch you, is simply too good to give up.
The problem in Dune is that when energy beams hit an energy shield, the result is basically a nuclear explosion. There are slow projectiles that can penetrate shields; they're useful for assassins, but not very practical as weapons of war. Now, if they could find a reliable way to disable shield generators, that would bring ranged weapons back.
In the setting, they did. They had slow pellets and darts with poison, and poison gas sprayers and stuff.
Dune shields work well against "dumb" munitions but, even within Dune, there are "smart" projectiles. What is a hunter-seeker after all? Can't it be programmed to attack slowly enough to penetrate a shield? They can be attuned to attack a specific person after all. It always annoyed me that Herbert got the name wrong. To hunt and to seek are basically the same thing. I think hunter-killer, like the submarine, is what to call them.
@@ArkadiBolschek Sure, but I still doubt that'll just be the be-all end-all thing. Human beings can be really crafty and smart. Who says someone can't come up with a NEW energy weapon that doesn't cause a nuclear explosion? Maybe the writer might not allow it for the story, but if something like Dune was the reality, then I wouldn't be surprised if someone comes up with a way to bypass that weakness.
With enough momentum, the person would not survive even with that type of "shield ".
We have documented instances of chimp bands going to war. Hunter-gatherers often defend their territory against rival tribes, and young guys go raiding the neighbours.
As for firearms I can imagine a future where they’re kinda obsolete. Still around for nostalgics and special use cases, but no longer the cutting edge of interpersonal violence.
Swarms of drones (or clouds of nanotechnology) that’d make holding a gun, in your hand, kinda irrelevant. According to Stephenson.
Yes, but that's another ranged weapon, not mele.
@ Absolutely. I’m not saying melee weapons would make a comeback. Just that the point-and-shoot firearms we use today might become obsolete too.
The wars of the future will be fought by nerds typing on their keyboards
@ …to an even greater extent than modern wars.
chimp bands don't go to war, war is between states. Chimps don't form states. Chimps fight each other, doesn't make it a war.
SKALLS FOR THE SKALLTHRONE
RAH
BLUNT FOR THE BLUNT FORCE
Certain Polynesian cultures, particularly Hawaii, which was at the time the most *warlike* of the Polynesian countries, people made swords out of *billfish bills* ; in Hawaii, they were called *Pahi-kuah* , & were typically made out of *Swordfish* bills.
I wanted to point that out because it proves you don't *have* to have metal to make swords.
Also, in *tropical island* cultures like those of many parts of Polynesia, the heat, humidity, & deep ocean water would be so *constant* of threats smart people would rightly conclude that armor would be too big a risk of heatstroke & drowning to be worth the protection. So I don't think armor's an *inevitability* depending on your environment. The reason *desert* cultures could get away with it in spite of the heat is because deserts are also very *dry* . Tropical islands are extremely *humid* , & humidity *amplifies* heats effects. I've lived in humid subtropical Tennessee my entire life, so I know that for *sure* .
Point taken, but we'd still need metal to make swords in most parts of the world. And I have doubts about the effectivenes or at least the durability of fish-swords even compared to a stone-axe.
The thing about heat in armor is also a good one, but I wonder if they still used partial armor, like helmets.
I like to think of guns as the ultimate evolution of throwing rocks...
I could only see melee weapons coming back in a Dune-like scenario, too.
Post-apocalyptic scenario too. Guns would still be around, but perhaps access to them, and ammunition, would be less reliable.
Melee is still superior in close combat situations. That's why we still teach soldiers how to grapple and fight with a knife effectively.
@@michaeljfoley1 Black powder is actually pretty easy to make just need some horse urine (primarily for quantity produced, human urine can work in a pinch though) in a grass compost pile to create a niter bed to produce some saltpeter. Chances are you could find old barns full of the stuff already, just waiting to be processed. Sulfur isn't too hard to source typically, especially if there's some volcanic activity in the area, ie hot springs. Charcoal is the final ingredient and that should be easy enough to produce sufficient quantities.
There should never be a shortage of readily available metals to turn into bullets or blunderbuss shrapnel so we're good there too.
@michaeljfoley1 ammunition is still very easy to mass produce, especially in it's most basic form. The most Basic Gunpowder is simply 2 easily acquired ingredient chemicals. Charcoal and Potasium Nitrate.
@@Beuwen_The_DragonWhat you're missing is the fact that you have to produce weapons that can use those types of blackpowder and gunpowder. The people who know how to is far fewer.
The entire inevitability of weapons exists because *someone*, not naming any names here, Crom, decided his own teeth and nails weren't good enough. Thinks he's better than us. Don't you Crom? Mister Big Shot with a Rock. Sixty five million years of tradition, all down the tube because Crom had to throw a rock.
crom gives a man a will to survive and not much else. best you not catch his gaze.
One thing I think is worth keeping on mind wrt. the inevitability of various weapons: gunpowder was never actually invented. It was discovered, once, and gradually spread from its point of discovery. It doesn't seem that it was ever discovered independently in any other cases elsewhere. In a world where gunpowder hadn't been accidentally discovered at that point, it *probably* wouldn't have been discovered until the advent of modern chemistry. So, in other possible histories, we might not have seen any explosive-powered projectiles until the 19th century or so, when we first started discovering other sorts of explosives through systematic exploration of chemistry. In which case, we might have seen very different sorts of weaponry as metallurgy and craftsmanship advanced in the absence of explosives.
Ooh neat thats something ive thought quite a lot about myself and the answer is yes if you ask me
Imo weapon development/design throughout history has been dictated by two things: the biomechanical realities of the human body and advancements in material science
By biomechanical realities i mean the fact that every weapon humans designed in history was designed to be used by humans. Thats why all weapons (at least those for personal use) fall into a pretty tight span of weights and sizes and are designed in such a way that they can be operated with 1-2 hands. These specific requirements of human biology are the reason why weapons from all over the world, designed by different cultures at different times are all relatively similar.
The other factor, advancement in material science is also an inevitable consequence of other technological development/experimentation. Metallurgy for example is an accidental byproduct of using fire etc.
I also think that weapon development in general is inevitable since conflict naturally arises as a consequence of resource scarcity
I could see alternate developments only if the natural resources were significantly different. Like, if we had no (tough) metals available, the firearms within personal use weight class would be either miniature mortars or rockets, neither of which are too accurate at range. At least until modern electronics for projectile guidance or some composite materials for longer barrels were developed. Archery would stay relevant until modern era, I suppose.
If on the other hand, massive deforestation caused us to lack wood, that'd make things very interesting, since even spears would be difficult to produce. I'd love to imagine what wacky ways people would come up with trying to develop a pointy stick without access to a stick. Perhaps some bones tied together with cloth and glue? And of course, metals would eventually solve that issue if available.
But yes, as long as there are humans who feel like benefitting from force-multiplier, there'd be weapons of some sort.
Hmm, first of all a wonderful video.
I do think it is possible sword could be skipped if somehow we never (or too late) discovered metals which could be reliably sharpened. Perhaps say some modern polymers are invented first. They are not hard enough to do edges, but perhaps are robust enough to do modern like bows and spear handles etc.
I'm reasonably certain you can't make modern polymers without metal machinery.
I mean melee weapons are still a thing. Some military forces still issue bayonets and most will train soldiers in knife combat.
Most hunter gatherers/semi-agrarian/pastorialist were extremely violent but the scale was smaller but violence was more endemic.
They still didnt have 1 tribe dominate the world .. well now they do and look what happened, humanity was better back then and smaller tribes were kept in check
I don't think it's fair to call them "extremely violent", not at all. They certainly knew violence, but they also knew trade, intermarriage, what we might today call diplomacy, etc... And they had little to no incentives to kill or worse, compared to societies with private property, money, slavery, etc...
@@WhenDoesTheVideoActuallyStart Depends on how you describe large scale violence, we've have documentation in chimps where hierarchy disputes escalate to total rival extermination.
War is not the same as violence though.
War is the extension of politics by other (i.e. violent) means. It is a political act between States.
I swordfight because it brings me joy, not because it's going to be a realistic means of defending myself.
unless it somehow becomes impossible to make gunpowder, guns are here to stay.
hmm i don't even think that is an issue. ever heard of air?
@@skeletalfluorosis Any method of generating or releasing compressed gasses really, air is just a simple example.
even if we experienced some sort an apocalyptic event that modern smokeless powder would become nearly impossible to produce people would just revert back to blackpowder and simple flintlock and matchlock designs that can be made without industrial machines
They haven't used gunpowder in years, almost a century in fact.
*railgun intensifies*
Man, this channel has been KILLING IT the last few months!
The myth that hunter/gatherers did not have war, is just that, a myth. Bride wars, and such did happen, to keep the bloodlines from stagnating. They would raid, and even have short term wars to get captive women, and in some cultures men, so they could break them down and convert them into their cultures. Humans have had some sort of warfare from the start. I like C.W. Cowpler's history of warfare, in that his progression from rock, sticks, and throwing sticks, to various weapons is a great theory.
Skall did say they did fight, he was talking more about large-scale conflict, at least that is what I understood
Do chimps having territorial conflicts count?
I find more recently informed theories on the history of war hold more water.
and I contend that conflict is not war. Even in desperstion of bridal anxiety. although such uh. that very much seems to be an expression of highly misogynistic cultures.
Especially given well actual human biology. A 7% average overall fitness difference for any given equal envroment is a diffrence sure. but. Not enough to even want to raid and capture.. you would require an level of underlying misgivings toward women to hamper thier growth and proper nutrition before that could be a possibility at all.
(7% is from military reaserch compleated and published in 2006. Also.. not all of that 7% comes from lessor strength development some areas its greater, but having the majority of human reporoductive parts to upkeep is a drain on ahtletic growth)
No I follow that it must start at war.
War begins after we stagnated, after we expanded as far and as densely as we could with the technology we had discovered at the time and could teach. Then times get hard. They have food, your children are hungry, and the elders have already given their meat, thier lives and thier meat to the food pot.
Then... Its war. Raid the food stores. Eleminate the other hunters.
The begs and pleas for life breed the misogany as the former neighbours offer all they can, bodies included, to save thier children.
It was suprise that won the conflict but you have to justify in your mind why you did it.
They where weak you decide.
And slavery, war, and misogony where invented.
Shortly after Kingdoms come. Not to defend against the agressor but to keep the slave in check.
A generation later and narcissism and classes are born.
This follows what we now know about human mental oatterns in general and human biology better. We have an instinct to try and
uh...
Have sex to get out of difficult intersocial issues before looking for violence.
But if you yeild to violence with sex, it breeds contempt in the mind.
they are also not egalitarian, and they are not nomadic. they have territories and fight over them.
Even animals that have some kind of organization when a conflict happen it inevitably turned to war. Just look at ants and chimpanzees.
Undoubtedly, my favourite type of Skall video.
Guns can be very tricky weapons in enclosed space vessels if you need to avoid ruining the shell or critical structures with your weapon. There's a reason flame-throwers and grenades are less common weapons when it comes to robberies
Nope, because any hull that can withstand micrometeorites can withstand heavy gunfire. And even if you breached the hull it would lead to a slow decompression over hours, easily fixed with a patch job by the victor after the fight is over. If you do worry about damage, less than lethal rounds are very viable against the rugged interior of a realistic spaceship.
As for flamethrowers and grenades, the reasons are very different. Flamethrowers are cumbersome, robberies generally care for speed and some level on concealability. A flamethrower fails on both. Grenades on the other hand are to escalatory to be viable. They either horrifically maim or do nothing. You need a more refined escalation to threaten.
You would need something like the kinetic shields from Mass Effect to get melee back in style.
Funnily enough even in Mass Effect melee weapons have a secondary role at best.
@Skallagrim That's very true. There's also other alternatives besides melee like area effect weapons that use heat, explosions, or chemicals.
@@Skallagrim skall please please please make a video on the LK Chen Mongol saber !
The last common ancestor we have with something is Chimps Gorillas came after, but when we look at chimps they do some seriously horrible sh*t in the name of territory or hierarchy so it's not hard to imagine war being a natural course. Also, when we were hunter gatherers we less went to war and more committed extreme assault night raids so fight so an even Battle or war-scale fight was not really common until we had communities enough to form fighting forces.
That being said, I think that all weapons we have are inevitable. Find out packing down a powder and lighting it explodes you get grenades and guns. Find out you can make a rock more deadly by making it sharper, you have your way to almost every weapon that exists for close combat.
Melee weapons won't be main stream (again) until we have a shield that nullifies ranged weapons. But weapons always progresses faster/better than armor.
Perhaps in a post-apocalyptic world, melee weapons could become more prominent.
@michaeljfoley1 not while ANY guns & ammo were still around & people would STILL be trying to make basic guns again
you'd probably at least have people making bows or crossbows. a bit of wood working knowledge and a knife can let you make a crossbow out of some backyard tree branch.
@@michaeljfoley1 Most likely a long term post-apocalyptic scenario is setting tech back to the 1500s-1700s in terms of firearms, so mele weapons would make a comeback, but only as backups for single shot firearms.
@@michaeljfoley1 It would need to be one _horrific_ post-apocalyptic world. One in which modern civilization has all but collapsed, and between 80 to 90% of the global population has perished, with the survivors eking out a truly wretched existence as nomadic hunter-gatherers in the few areas that aren't too heavily polluted or irradiated to support human life.
As the title of the video: "Were Certain Weapon Developments Inevitable?"
Yes. Range is king. Not being within striking distance of your foe is tantamount to survival.
That's true on the battlefield, but in civilian life your attacker could be standing within arms reach before you ever realize they have hostile intentions. That's why hand to hand training is still demonstrably useful, and short weapons haven't gone away in that context. Actually, they haven't completely disappeared from war either, because they can come in handy during urban warfare where troops are entering buildings and trenches, and even the sight of affixed bayonets gives you an additional thing to think about should you be thinking about closing distance with the enemy. Also, they are used in crowd control by the military, as a good old fashioned pike formation is a massive deterrent that means you don't have to shoot anyone.
@@formlessone8246 The firearm is still king in self defense as well. It requires far less training to become competent, and negates any size or strength advantages of your attacker.
@@Devin_Stromgren except for the fact that you need to justify using lethal force before you can go for a gun. In contrast, I can pull pepper spray and threaten an aggressor long before they actually commit battery against me and be legally justified (at least where I live). I know because I have done it before (long story). Many self defense situations involve no weapons at all, but the physically weaker person is still in grave danger. Guns are fantastic IF you see the threat coming, the threat is a lethal threat, and you have the reactionary gap in your favor. Since self defense is a legal defense for your actions, there can be no one best tool to answer all threats. I may carry pepper spray for walking the streets, but since I live in a place with a rather generous version of Castle Doctrine, it's not my go to for home defense. There's nuance here, and that's why even the cops carry a half dozen different tools plus some basic hand to hand training, not just their pistols.
@@formlessone8246 ALL threats are lethal threats until proven otherwise. That is the justification for going for the gun when threatened.
@Devin_Stromgren that is strictly untrue, and if you sincerely believe that, you are liable to end up in jail someday for doing something absolutely stupid. I bet you also like to quote the pointless truism that it's better to be judged by twelve than carried by six?
I can't imagine a non-magical reason we'd go back to melee weapons as primary weapons. On the contrary, weaponry is evolving to reach always farther away, with guns, missiles, and now drones (and drone-launched missiles). Aside, of course, of resources required to make firearms becoming so scarce guns and the likes are o longer an option; although I'm sure we'll run out of food before that happens.
I don't see many mentioning it but "Dune" type shields would be one major way for melee weapons to return. Eventually I feel that guns would supercede the melee weapon again (as they already did) but I see shields like Dunes being one way that melee weapons like knives or short sword could become necessary for a time.
i wonder if its explained in dune lore but what about flamethrowers?
flamethrowers are not crazy high pressure so the fuel doesnt go very fast, so i imagine it could be an option to fight those dune style shields
@lefunnyN1 Well, they did use them in the second movie and it was nasty...
@TheLazyFinn yeah but not against shields
@@lefunnyN1 Hmm, could be, don't remember it that well
6:56 resources aren't the deciding factor, in my opinion. The precolumbian natives developed a sword using wood and obsidian blades; the Macahuitl. This argument DOES depend on your definition of "sword", but I count it.
edit...7:53 fair enough 😁. Thanks for the video and the discussion!
The world builder in me likes thinking about how technology might develop in a completely different environment. Like, take an aquatic species that lives its entire life underwater. Combustion is basically impossible and metallurgy if it even arises would have completely different development. Slashing or bludgeoning weapons are much less effective because of water resistance, but narrow piercing weapons are extremely good. Ranged weapons past a certain distance are unfeasible unless you can find a way to make them self-propelling.
Super difficult to start metallurgy underwater, if you were even lucky enough to have hands or sufficiently coordinated tentacles etc. There's an Isaac Arthur episode on how being an underwater species would act as a hurdle to becoming a space faring species, if that strikes your fancy.
I agree with your point (pun unintended) about spears working better, I'll throw in though that perhaps bladed weapons would exist just with more hydrodynamic shapes. Could be neat to design some.
combustion under water IS possible, many guns will shoot under water. but its quite hard to imagine how you develop such chemisty without a reliable source of heat - fire - in the first place.
Unless physics changes to make combustion impossible, then no. The firearm mister isn't going anywhere.
Well, there are guns operating on compressed air, hell, many were used during secession war, it's just that you had to pump the air back every few shots and they were expensive as hell and slower to produce.
Still, this devil is long out of the box.
Projectiles can be launched without combustion now.
@@vorpalblades Yes but not with much force outside of a rail gun...which isn't exactly portable
I have played with the idea of some kind of electron inertia field to disable firearms by reducing chemical reactivity, but it would probably also shut down all functions of life, so...
@@NotMeButAnother Pull a Dr.Who, they had fields that expanded copper (brass, lead, etc) so even if a round went off, the casing would blow open leaving no force for the projectile, or jam the bullet itself, and you couldn't get the shot off (or had a catastrophic failure).
A couple of things: Firearms vs melee being practical tends to come down to relative levels of protection/defense vs the power/technology of the firearm. Think about how early firearms struggled to peice high quality plate. Melee will almost always be the prefered choice if ranged weapons start to struggle as there is almost always a way to acheive some kind of advantage in close that lets you defeat an opponent so it is really a question of if you can cocentrate enough force into your projectile to make it practical versus the defences available. In reality currently it seems as though physics is firmly in favor of firearms but it's not impossible to imagine a world where either though new super special alloys or some sort of energy field you could create something tough enough, manuverable enough and numerous enough that projectile weapons start to become impractical. I'm not sure that balance would last for long however as if you could do that you could also probably take heavier weapons with equivilent units, but if some technology significantly improves the total defensive capability per unit of mass then you might see projectile weapons start to struggle again if the same technology cannot be easilly used to improve firearms.
Secondly regarding weapons or any other technologies being 'inevitable' to develop research suggests basically yes, at some point, if we don't make wildly different base assumptions. This is helped by the fact that there are a *ton* of technologies that were totally independantly discovered and re-discovered throughout history. It seems pretty likely that without a very fundamentally different type of existance that you're going to at least discover the same type of technological possibilities even if you don't actually make/build all of them in large numbers
The logistics needed for guns is higher than that for swords because petersalt and brimstone aren't nearly as overtly useful as metals like copper and iron are. Also reactive stuff is usually harder to obtain/purify.
Any compressed gas can be utilized to create a "gun".
crossbows are fairly simple to make with a bit of wood working knowledge.
@@corwinhyatt519 pressure cooker backpack guns?
To that first question: We're kind of seeing a return to body armor effectiveness against small arms like rifles in recent years. Still a far cry from the olden days of of pre-gunpowder warfare, but hey, progress.
Ants have wars so there will be war. As for things like shields in Dune humans constantly seek methods to defeat armor and I doubt that personal shields would be an exception. Frank Herbert just wanted a cheap excuse to have knife fights by large groups of combatants
Boarding space vessels is the most plausible no-firearms combat I can think of. But not because everyone would get sucked out through a bullet hole. That's myth. More likely it would be that no one wants to risk damaging the life-support or propulsion systems if the vessel is needed intact. Actually, I guess you don't need to be in space for that.
In Babylon 5, Earthforce used PPGs (phased plasma guns) on space stations and spacecraft to limit damage to vital systems.
Just use things like bean bags, biological weapons, maybe even other ranged form of retrainment. Melee weapons just stopped making sense without additional constraints. Honestly hollow points, bean bags, buckshot, there numerous munitions that are relatively safe for internal systems.
I think if you're going to do more of this laid back rambling (which I definitely enjoy), you should definitely collab with Lloyd on the Lindeybeige channel. I'd love to watch you guys pick each others' brains about the hypotheticals of history.
I don't know why, but I expected soap bubbles to come out of the end of that pipe.
I expected rings and/or sailing ships but alas, it was probably too windy and too non-magical for them.
Great video! I tend to take a bit more of a holistic view of the development of weaponry - I think you're right in that ranged weapons were inevitable given the advantages of the human organism. I will disagree somewhat about warfare coming about as a result of the transition to agriculture, although it likely did so as a result of its incidents, namely, a stabilizing effect on group population. Hunter-gatherer societies very much still had disputes over territory and culture - it was often simply a question of their means to prosecute conflict without inflicting undue damage on their own population, behaviours which are still evident in apex predators in the wild today.
I do agree that firearms were likely "inevitable" in the sense that, eventually, chemistry would enable such reactions, but I don't see them as inherently tied to the progress of ranged weapons technology. Siege machines in the medieval era were increasing in complexity and design, and one wonders if avenues like the further development of combustible and chemical weaponry (Greek Fire) would have been pursued where, in history, they were largely abandoned due to the relative ease of gunpowder.
On the topic of speculation, I do love Dune, but it's very much a product of its time, and, to a lesser extent, our current era. We always imagine the future as preserving aspects of our present that we shouldn't necessarily take for granted - the Holtzman effect is great against projectiles and mutually dangerous to light-based weaponry, but even today militaries are researching directed-energy weapons like microwaves that wouldn't necessarily be stopped by such a device, were we to discover one. Speculation is, however, outside of my professional scope as a historian, I will admit.
so its official. Goodbye young Skall and welcome old man Skall :)
The pipe is a good look for you, sir. Also, given that black powder seems to have been a case of Daoist sages almost literally throwing shit at the wall, I think it is a sort of monkeys and typewriters case where, regardless of how history plays out, someone somewhere is eventually going to invent the funny kaboom dust
A world without weapons would mean no Skall as we know him.
When it comes to any technology it's important to remember Columbus's Egg. It's easy to say something is obvious and inevitable once someone has shown you how to do it. The Minie ball was incredibly simple and could have been introduced centuries earlier (all it would have taken were slightly more complex molds) but it wasn't until the 1800's someone actually came up with the idea.
I think the more interesting question is: what if metals were 10 or 100 or 1000 times more common and available in workable surface deposits?
Would hand protection ever become part of sword/weapon development if it was incredibly cheap and easy to produce gauntlets or full plate?
Would there have been armies of tens of thousands of full plated conscript levies wielding pollaxes and heavy crossbows in the 10th century?
Would cavalry be fighting on draft horses in full plate barding?
Would we have build iron-shod castles? Houses?
What impact might there have been on the industrial revolution? Would it happen a thousand years earlier? Would we live in a weird steampunk reality with brass top hats and shit? Would the hyper availability of metals limit the accessibility of fossil fuels like coal?
Would Europe have ever been able to colonize the rest of the world (sorry guys?)?
Very fun to tweak a (relatively) narrow parameter and imagine the consequences. And excellent fodder for fantasy/sci-fi stories.
I'll point out that when buying a knife right now, the materials are only (something like) 20% of the cost.
@@kinguin7 This, we're already at a point where manpower is more expensive than materials which is why making things in china and burning fuel to ship them all over the world is still financially cheaper than making them locally. We're not quite post-scarcity but we're so close that it makes me wonder who's holding us up.
But anyway for the first question, guantlets and armour in general fell out of popularity as guns rose and that's the era where more hand protection was added to swords. It wasn't the cost of the gauntlets, it was the weight and the tactile/ergonomic dowsides that became unappealing.
@@agentoranj5858 labor and luxuries. Post-scarcity isn't going to happen unless AI takes over everything.
Skall with a Marstar toque and Missouri Meerchaum pipe... Be still my beating heart 😂
To supplement your theory, even hunter-gatherer tribes had leaders, top hunters, etc. Structure like that IS definitely genetic😎
Structure yeah but maybe not hierarchy
"They had a structure so it was genetic" No, it was most likely cultural, and such culture came into being because it makes sense.
It's like incest, tribes that ban incest thrive more than the ones that don't, so that becomes a rule. But it's not genetic.
It simply makes sense to have the more talented, hard-working and experienced people take the lead when the others are unsure on what to do. But such an individual is still merely a primus inter pares, not a "King".
You made me think of something. It "makes sense" to them because the brain tells them it does, and genetics have a lot to do with how the brain makes us act. How much does genetics play into how culture forms around the world🤔? Thank you.
@gangrenousgandalf2102 putting anyone is charge constitutes hierarchy as per the literal definition.
@@gangrenousgandalf2102 love your name btw. Very metal
Ok, I LOVE this chair and pipe setting!
To the idea of noble savage:
No, I believe savages really did tear each other's faces off over a piece of land, access to a creek, et cetera. The blessing of prehistoric people was that they had a very hard time maintaining control over it, as no country today control all of the Earth. I think they tried anyway.
shit the native americans were killing each other with wooden clubs and stone tomahawks. if anything tech has made warfare more humane
@@cal2127perhaps, but it also expanded it's scope beyond anything one would have imagined, and a scale completely untenable to Hunter gatherers - and the survivable injuries became much worse. Even ignoring things like chemical weapons and the horrors of nuclear blasts (Read The Antwalkers of Hiroshima and Nagasaki for some nightmare fuel) it became much worse in scale and overall humanitarian suffering. More civilians died in WW2 than combatants. By some 2:1.
He already said violence is NOT the same as War.
And I will explain to you why,
War is between States, it is the extension of politics by other (i.e. violent) means.
It has qualitatively very little in common except for violence.
@@ImXs1p3r yes, violence is exactly the same thing as war. Just on a larger scale.
With a larger scale comes the need for more sound justification, thus war is rarely as psychotic as some bursts of violence, but it all boils down to the same bloody syrup: striking stick is an argument, when no alternative to be found, it is used to its fullest potential to make the weak cry and spread, to make strong dead, to turn monuments into dust, grab the gold and GTFO.
@@ImXs1p3r Tribes are states and have politics.
On if sword will make a come back. My take on it is yes only if we make body armor that would make handheld gun worthless. Just like in dune like he said but we are in a weird place with that.
It will not be a force field any time soon . It will take on the shape of body armor, very light and tough. The sword will be back as a sidearm. most due to other weapons becoming more common place to fill the hole gun can't any more.
Some culture not developing swords has nothing to do with access to resources; there are tin and copper and iron deposits on every continent. The reason some society never got swords (or metallurgy in general) is that some people never made it out of the stone ages.
Exactly. I guess it would be considered "racist" to say so... LOL
Take a look at how the Maori tiaha is used. Although technically described as a long club it has edges and is effectively used as a wooden longsword.
8:50 no. Even just throwing a rock, you have the most primitive form of ranged weapon. It also doesn't take much to go from throwing a rock with one's hand to tossing it with a sling.
The development of weapons goes Melee->Firearms->Drones
The only way we go back to melee is if we get some kind of forcefield (or apocalypse)
Nowadays the only melee weapon people carry is a knife, in the same way in the future the only ranged weapon soldiers will carry is a pistol everything else will be drones
Eh. I think drones are over rated. Looking at the ukrain war they don't seem like the inevitable future of warfare everyone seemed to think. If I'm not mistaken they've both sent hundreds of drones at each other and they more or less get yeeted left and right.
Ahhh, hes brought the "Old Toby" out...
"A Skall is never late ! He posts exactly when he means to"
I think a global ammo shortage might bring back melee weapons for a while
There's still arrows, slings, crossbows, slingshot, etc.
@vorpalblades it would still be more than enough to breathe new life into the value of melee weapons. Melee weapons were the main weapon of choice for armies up until the invention of guns, of course, even when all of those weapons you listed were in existence.
There will never be a complete shortage.
@@AdamantLightLP doesn't need to be complete it just needs to be low enough that the likelihood of hand to hand combat increases enough to justify melee weapons. For example a large war where ammo resupply becomes difficult soldiers would rather have a long sword than a combat knife especially if the enemy has longer reach melee weapons. In civilian life if bullets become too expensive due to shortages even criminals might resort to stabbing people than shooting them. That would make older forms of blade proof armor more attractive for everyday protection
"Armor . . . is a no-brainer." Nope. It's a keep-brainer.
You're infused with historical materialism.
A relaxing talk, followed by make it bigger.
This was quite enjoyable.
First comment lets go!!
Ranged weapons significantly contributed to what could be classified as a mass extinction for megafauna. Hunting becomes so much easier if you can hurt things from a distance where they can do nothing to you in return. Especially animals that evolved over millions of years to expect predators that attack up close. And the larger an animal is, the easier it is to hit, and the harder it is for the animal to run and hide. That doesn't only go for animals that are large on their own, but also herds. A spear thrown at a mass of targets is pretty much guaranteed to hit something.
Seriously, afaik the disappearance of most of the huge land animals falls shortly after humans first appeared in those regions. And the only continent that still has a significant number of those is Africa, where they evolved alongside humans.
I don't think ranged weapons will ever fall out of favor. It just unfortunatelly seems that the future belongs to robots and I am honestly scared what that brings.
Here's the usual full support for channel growth.
In Raymond E. Feist's Riftwar Saga, there's a world called Kelewan, a world without any metal. Quote: "the inhabitants use lacquer covered cured hides and wooden weapons which have roughly the same strength of their metal counterparts but are easier to manufacture on the world."
So, I can see how, even if humans did not had access to metals - we would find a way to make blades, one way or another :-)
Hmm, it's more likely that if humans didn't have access to metals, they'd make bladed implements out of stone, animal teeth, shells... just like we've seen both early hominids and some indigenous tribes doing prior to learning metal smelting or trading for metal implements with people from civilisations that did master smelting metal.
That, and they'd also make heavy use of blunt weapons.
I quite enjoyed this new Chair and Pipe feel. Great way to discuss all sorts of topics.
Holy shit I love this format and your takes on contextualizing history.
If they didn’t invent bows and guns and swords they’d be trying to invent something like them. And the early versions of them are relatively simple and obvious.
Less of our troops have to actually be put into actually fights & usually just act as spotters for longer ranged attacks from things like airplanes, ground armor, or drones.
Basically the fighting is all about being able to keep the farthest distance from your enemy & still be effective. Drone strikes seem to be a cheap & easily deployable way to do this.
It keeps people safe while letting then spot the enemy with a drone, then we can either shoot them or fire a missle at them, all while never having to actually engage them with a solider.
On the "Swords are inevitable", absolutely true, and metal isn't even required.
My own people, we did not have metal, but we have durable wooden swords that can chop, like a cleaver. People often call the Taiaha a spear, but they've only seen pictures, and have never held one or trained in Mau Rakau.
There are some techniques (varying by region) where you do jab at the opponent, either with the "pommel"/tongue or with the blade (the part most people think is the spear shaft is actually mostly a blade), but all of the actual strikes are cuts, and you need to train in Edge Alignment as a result.
It takes a few cycles of reinventing the wheel with a fresh coat of paint and a new set of optimization.
Range combat was always a thing from slings and spears to bows and arrows then to guns and artillery.
Armor in all its forms is still a slate of material that's cut, bent, and shaped to protect an objective weather that be a person, an animal, or an object like an engine. Sure we got kevillar and grade 4 plates and adbrams tank armor but ultimately again is just sitting there waiting to be hit.
You don't have to overthink this really. The first melee weapon was a stick.A sword is just a more efficient stick. The first projectile was a stone being thrown. A firearm is just a more efficient way of throwing a stone. Great video and excellently chilled delivery. Thanks Skal.
Sounds like some Historical Materialism might be up your alley :)
Didn't know Skall was a fellow pipe smoker. No better combo of relaxation than than a pipe, good quality natural tobacco, a porch, a rocking chair, and a cool day.
Awesome vid bro 👍
Mêlée weapons would only come back after a civilizatory breakdown when ammo plants do not exist any more. Re explosives: They reach back almost 2.000 years; but using it in a ranged weapon happened only about 1.000 years ago.
I like pipeagrim we need more
I say knives, spears, bow & arrow, axes, cannons, muskets, rifles, machine guns, tanks, rocket launchers, and bombs fall into this.
Short answer, yes, probably. Long answer, watch, you will enjoy it.
I figure for the purpose of scifi and fantasy worldbuilding, my take on it is one probably would expect some familiar elements so long as the physics are the same and the species doing the fighting is close enough to human in body mechanics (you wouldn't expect dragons to develop the phalanx for example), but it can absolutely vary how prolific a given technology is and the details can certainly vary too.
Not having mass proliferation of gunpowder weapons in a setting that has powerful combat spells, or defensive magic that can make a formation hardy enough to shrug off a volley of arquebus fire, would be quite easy to justify (you'd also want the defensive magic explanation if you still want to have formation warfare in a setting with powerful combat magic, I should add). But gunpowder weapons still existing would be perfectly reasonable even in such a setting. :D
Nanomachines son! The ultimate distance weapon that will make war obsolete. Might also make us permanently obsolete if only by a simple mistake in the code. But imagine not being able to see something that can travel around the world and it either disintegrates the tank, plane or ship you're inn and make more of itself. Or even more terrifying eats away at the soft fleshy beings inside. What's left behind being a some goop where people once existed. Would make nuclear war seem like a more humane alternative.
I think Warhammer does the concept of future melee combat correctly. It could possibly make a comeback, but tons of resources would need to be poured into making just 1 soldier with enough armor and hax to walk through the enemy. The way things are now, soldiers are trying to get as far away from “the front” as possible with drones and long range artillery.
Regarding what gets developed... I'd argue the following are guaranteed to be developed:
The Knife, which becomes the axe and at some point the sword. The axe because 'better knife designed for hacking' and the sword because 'better knife meant to stab and slice scary things outside of claw/knife range'.
The Spear because it merges 'long range knife', 'something to stop charging scary things further away'. Eventually it becomes the pike, sarissa, and polearm because 'stopping charging thing at greater distance', 'keeping the enemy further away' and 'stop charging thing then have other attack types than stab in case stab doesn't work' are quite sensible.
The Bow, because 'long range spear which means very long range knife' as that aids in taking down prey and scary things safely, with the crossbow replacing the bow at a later stage for any entity which can't do the throwing posture needed for a normal bow.
The club, which means various maces, warhammers and the like because 'hurt scary thing through armour or do deep tissue/bone damage' is quite sensible for keeping yourself alive.
The 'propelled dart thrower', which we know of as the gun, because even if gunpowder or other explosives don't work, someone, somewhere is going to work out a way of making a more powerful repeating crossbow or compact heavy crossbow and 'use something other than muscle fibre to propel the dart' is quite sensible as a development of 'poke holes in enemy at greater ranges through greater defences at higher velocities', all that is in question is how safe is the propellant, how easy to produce and how much force can the propellant output.
Finally, you have the bomb. Which eventually becomes the grenade and the rocket. Because a lot of things explode through natural methods (if nothing else, lightning striking a tree or something with a high water content), shrapnel is dangerous and so it makes sense to look into 'what if I have something explode on purpose and/or a canister break which contains a dangerous substance' with the latter being things like incendiaries, gasses, poisons and more. The grenade just being 'make this hand portable' and the rocket being 'attach some form of propulsion to the bomb so I don't need to carry it all the way to the target'.
Well, and then there's armour and shields. Which are all going to be invented because 'protect myself from things trying to hurt me' is a very solid survival tip. The shield just being armour with adjustable positioning so an attacker can't easily predict where your armour will not keep you safe.
Admittedly, the exact form all the above takes can be different depending on species as things without independent hands are more likely to have a 'lance' rather than a spear, and something with natural talons is going to have 'better talon over my talons so they don't get harmed and I cut better' replacing the traditional knife. But there's a reason behind what weapons and defences have been invented and so long as that reason doesn't exploit a complicated bit of physics, they always will be invented in some form. With those using complicated physics just needing to find a replacement bit of whatever is the local reality's version of physics to exploit.
dealing damage means putting energy into the material until it breaks apart, which is usually done by concentrating kinetic energy using points and edges.
Projectiles are always the best at giving you the most desirable trait a weapon can have: Reach. One sided battles are always better afterall.
You obviously need a energy source. Bows allow to store muscle energy and release it quickly, but the human body is limited in terms of power output and energy storage.
using external energy sources also reduces the amount of strenght needed, allows the fighter to fight for longer and move quicker.
Chemical reactions are far the most powerful and densest forms of energy storage that don't require complex machinery to make use of.
there are several methods to convert the chemical energy into usable energy (kinetic, electric, light), but the simplest is to turn it into a heated gas.
this heated gas can then create force via pressure to accelerate the projectile.
So I believe that it is inevitable that firearms would be invented, regardless of place, time and species.
I also believe that ranged weapons will evolve as soon as better energy sources are developed that are trivial enough to use in a simple mechanism and can be stored inexpensively.
Lasers aren't unlikely and have some advantages, especially if used in a vacuum (greater reach, maximal speed, pefectly straight trajectory), but they will never beat firearms in terms of penetration.
Will there ever be more modern forms of melee weapons?
Part of the definition of a melee weapon is that the user uses their muscles to wield it, which inherently limits energy and power, and thus damage output.
Does a rocket powered hammer count as a melee weapon? Sort of, but a shotgun loaded with the right ammo would do a better job, would be lighter and less cumbersome.
Exoskeletons might cause a brief revival of melee weapons, but only in tight spaces where projectile weapons are out of the question, which inherently favors short blades, hammers and picks.
I like the Legend of Galactic Heroes reason for melee combat. Armour has advanced to the point that any small arms that can penetrate it risk damaging the ship you are on and killing everyone. So you have to use axes which inevitably ends in the scenario of two squads in massive armour wielding axes charging at each other.
I think 40k also has a good example as to why melee weapons can be prevalent again, that being armour itself becomes sufficient to stop most conventional munitions (along with taking the dune funne shields in some cases). We did see this sort of, in europe between armour, and both the hand and ranged arms at the time. Though we have greatly slowed down on our armour innovation, it is still going along and if we create or discover some new materials, we will see another line of advancements i believe.
A big thing I would say with range weapons in general, it's both good for getting food and removing threats. I would also add is that it is generally relatively safer to use range weapons against threats than it is to run up and stab something. Long as that is the case, fire arms and whatever range weapons come after will always be in favor over melee options. Probably even if we create melee weapons that can kill instantly upon touch(that somehow can't be used on a gun) we'd rather shoot thousands of bullets to avoid getting closer than take the chance of going in close.
My theory is that maybe through materials technology development, a new kind of armor is invented that is virtually impervious to any hand-held randged weapon.
Maybe then, a soldier would have no choice but to get up close and personal to thrust melee weapons into gaps in the armor.
This wouldn't render all ranged attacks from any weapon obsolete, of course, but it could give new value to melee weapons.
An important thing to remember is that the earliest projectile weapons likely predate us.
We are evolved to have an inherent understanding of throwing and trajectories.
Basically any person can get a projectile within the ballpark of their target without any training whatsoever, so long as they have the physical capacity for the range.
Anyone can lob a paper ball at a trashcan and get close to it on instinct alone.
It only takes a little practice and refinement to make that into a useful skill.
Reed Raymond E Feist he has a race that uses hardened wood with resin and lacker for swords an armor
A couple of things: I do think that weapons (and thus war) are inevitable, since humans are hunters without natural weapons. We had to develop weapons to survive against nature, and from there it's not much of a stretch to turn those weapons on other humans.
I also think that melee weapons could make a comeback if a rapid delivery method for infantry is developed, or if fighting becomes very close quarters again. Melee weapons saw a resurgence in the First World War, and would again if fighting aboard spaceships or in underground facilities becomes the norm.
in space you have the biggest motivation of all - not letting the air out or damaging the essential life support/propulsion stuff should you miss or over penetrate - Neither the raider or defender wants to destroy the cargo, ruin the ship etc by accident so while they may well carry a projectile weapon the use of them even with low power 'non-lethal' shot is a risk you probably don't want to run.
If you want to know more about the messy and surprising history of human hierarchy, I highly recommend a book called The Dawn of Everything. Co-written by an anthropologist and an archaeologist, It tells of hierarchical hunter gatherers and egalitarian cities, among other things. It's the closest I've seen a non-fiction book get to an fantasy epic.
Interesting speculations, thank you for the video! May I respectfully suggest you are thinking inside a box that doesn’t notice an elephant in the room, AI. The advantage of ranged weapons is that they can damage an enemy while being out of the enemy’s reach, unless the enemy also has a ranged weapon. A machine that can fight for you extends that formula of damage without risk. For example, there has been a debate regarding armored warfare as to whether one should lead an assault with tanks or infantry. In WW2 the answer was tanks. Today, with antitank weapons, the answer is often firepower and infantry. In the future I expect the answer to be firepower and drones, both flying and ground based. For personal defense and attack imagine an AI that doesn’t just walk beside you, but also one you can wear. Just some thoughts. Thank you again for an interesting video!
An interesting what if i often think about is how would the world change if gunpowder wasn't invented when it was and we utilized oil for weaponry, would we be fighting with flamethrower instead of guns? Would we just jump from launching tar covered boulders to mortars and missiles? How would that affect armor?