Ancient weapons..

[pred]

Surely they would be better off getting a bit of uranium, forming it into a perfect sphere, placing detonators at equi distance around its outer shell, the trick is getting the detonators to explode at the exact same nano second then they would have something to fight back with...

 

[Sombrero]

Surely they would be better off getting a bit of uranium, forming it into a perfect sphere, placing detonators at equi distance around its outer shell, the trick is getting the detonators to explode at the exact same nano second then they would have something to fight back with...

versus taking a branch from a willow, bending it with string and sharpening arrows...? you taking the pish or what? lol is it really this difficult to have a reasonable debate on here on a Sunday night? !!!!

Anyone else care to help me understand why bows don't feature in current newsreels of unrest in war torn areas?

 

[LastMagicBean]

so it begs the question "are they effective?"

Unless you create a fold-up pocket version, with fold-up retractable/retrievable arrows...........NO

Mr Bean you're missing the point of my question then, because their more affluent brothers have AK47s which aren't foldable pocket versions... and i'm not on about an afternoons riot, but any conflict where it would be feasible to make a bow... including long term military disputes between government forces and militants !!?

If the militants took a couple of minutes to knock their heads together, they would come up with hundreds of effective and realistic ways of killing the opposition. Longbows not being one of them.

 

[pred]

Trap them in enclosed spaces, start a fire and burn loads of polistyrene..

 

[Sombrero]

so it begs the question "are they effective?"

Unless you create a fold-up pocket version, with fold-up retractable/retrievable arrows...........NO

Mr Bean you're missing the point of my question then, because their more affluent brothers have AK47s which aren't foldable pocket versions... and i'm not on about an afternoons riot, but any conflict where it would be feasible to make a bow... including long term military disputes between government forces and militants !!?

If the militants took a couple of minutes to knock their heads together, they would come up with hundreds of effective and realistic ways of killing the opposition. Longbows not being one of them.

Care to take that condescending approach and apply it to pred's suggestion of a nuclear warhead?

In the meantime ANYONE ELSE care to comment? ;o)

 

[ladylola]

To be fair LMB isn't really being condesending. Making a longbow or crossbow does take a considerable amount of time and effort and you do need the right materials (willow isn't suitable for a bow). Probably better to string a wire across a road , behead the opposition on his motorbike and pinch his AK.Plus most of the film of recent troubles have been in the middle east and north africa which don't have great plantations of bow wood trees growing there, one of the reasons those areas tended towards comosite bows of wood , horn and sinew.In those countries slings have been used extensively for centuries so the culture is there. A further point is that bows are rare where there isn't any real use for them in peacetime. In Britain and a lot of europe hunting with a bow is illegal and they are only really used for pleasure.We also don't have a slingshot culture or heritage which would explain why you didn't see any on the film of the roits the other year.

 

[JBR]

versus taking a branch from a willow, bending it with string and sharpening arrows...?

Willow? I think you're confusing bows with cricket bats! You mean yew.

Then again, we haven't talked about cricket bats used as a weapon yet, have we?

 

[Sombrero]

My apologies to LMB, and many thanks to LadyLola... exactly the explanation i was after.... consider this post closed for my part !