Eclectic Dreck said:
You are mistaken in every assumption about a blade. Without armor to protect it, flesh and bone is easly turned aside by even a crude blade. A simple cleaver can cut most of the way through a limb in a single chop - imagine what a heavier blade combined with a better edge and a faster swing can do. Or, if the trusting weapon is your thing, consider the small sword. A lunge (the most basic way to deliver such a weapon) delivers a blade with nearly 2000lbs of force behind it for the average man, when only a tiny fraction of this is required to drive the weapon through the body bones and all.
Sure a cleaver could -- if the limb in question is against a cutting board. In a real-life combat scenario? I find it very hard to believe, especially since no-one would be fighting without armor. I mean, come on, executioners with great big executioner axes sometimes had to hack multiple times (with a well-sharpened axe!) to sever a head off, and that was against a chopping block.
Eclectic Dreck said:
It all depends on the weapon in question really. A sword, in general, has FAR more energy behind it than a bullet. Even for all their speed, bullets are very light weight objects. An exceptinally heavy round such as the .50 BMG weighs in at a mere 2 ounces, and thanks to the simple fact that it travels at around 3,000 FPS it possesses more kinetic energy than a simple sword stroke. The difference between the weapons is simply a function of how said energy is delivered to the target - bullets are, in general, much more efficient about it, and thus why they can punch through armor that would turn any blade.
Nincompoop said:
No, bullets have more kinetic energy per volume (or how tha hell you phrase it). Overall, a sword will have much much much much more kinetic energy.
You both are correct, thank you. I didn't think about it like that, in terms of
overall force, which such a comparatively large object would have the advantage in. However, it remains true that at the
point of impact, a bullet will always have more kinetic energy. A NATO round carries about 1300 foot pounds of force -- a single sword strike has about 2000, like Eclectic said. The difference is that that NATO round is delivering all of that force in one tiny bundle, whereas the sword's energy is diffused all across the weapon. That's why axes or maces are much better at penetrating plate -- the striking area is diminished considerably, so all of the weapons' forces are exerted on a smaller point. So yes, overall, a sword would have more force, and I concede. But where it matters, it doesn't -- much as Eclectic Dreck said, the bullet is simply much more efficient at translating its energy to penetrating force.
Nincompoop said:
I am talking about a fantasy world where people's skin or armor might resist the kinetic energy per volume a bullet has. Then, a giant sword wielded by someone that obviously is seriously is strong, is much more effective as he would 'smash' his opponents.
Or are you saying that if someone that wouldn't get cut or pierced of any kind would get more of a push from a bullet than from a sword?
Yeah, I am saying that. If their skin can resist the kinetic energy of a bullet, a sword is going to be utterly ineffective. Go and shoot what a bullet can't penetrate, and then start wailing on it with the sword. Not worthwhile either way. Think about it -- if the
square inch or so of their body that's subjected to however-many-hundreds of foot-pounds of energy isn't going to be penetrated by a bullet, and they're not going to get the least bit of internal damage from it ... well, why would you take a baseball bat to someone like that? Most likely wouldn't work. Same rationale applies to a sword, since obviously the edge wouldn't be able to cut something like that.
Eclectic Dreck said:
Yes, a sword is a deadly weapon - make no mistake. But to wield a sword properly takes YEARS of training and even then a man with a few hours instruction with a firearm has already bested you on the battlefield. Unless the swordsman can guarntee (through magic perhaps) that they will only encounter a gunman well inside sword range then they're already dead before combat begins. To put this in proper perspective, the military considers close combat to be anything under 150m precisely because even a poorly trained rifleman can consistantly hit targets at this range. What's more, even if one fells one opponent using a sword, people often have armed friends - one of them will almost certainly do the job the first one failed at.
Yeah, that's what I was meaning to say. Absolutely no disagreement here. I don't mean to imply that a sword
isn't a deadly weapon -- clearly they can be, have been, and still are.
