Could medieval technology/materials take advantage of superhuman strength for muscle-powered weaponry?

Question

Could muscle-powered weapons be made to take advantage of superhuman strength, or Would material limitations get in the way?

Assuming:

• a Viking Age (say 800-1000AD) level of technology
• materials available in RL medieval Europe
• strength about 6x the upper end of the practical human range. This is maybe a bit harder to define, but basically I am talking about overall upper body strength, not just one measure e.g. the bench press... What I have in mind are near-humans who are larger and more robust than RL humans, so both greater muscle mass and proportions that increase upper body strength at the expense of e.g. running endurance.

How much of this additional strength would the materials and technology allow taking advantage of? Could real-world wood make, say, 500-pound-draw-weight bows (without complex compound-bow mechanisms beyond this tech level)? Could Viking Age metallurgy and swordsmithing make swords that could stand the full impact of being swung by someone with this level of strength? If not, would axes or maces be better?

Answer 1

For ranged weapons

The quality of steel in the 800-1000AD range was generally not good enough to make an arbalest, and designing a longbow able to take much more than a 100lb draw is not easy (see comments for more details). Multi-arm or slat laminated arm crossbows have also been suggested, but are grossly unreliable and not invented until after 1000AD.

That said, even if you could use an arbalest or or multi-arm crossbow, there was one weapon that already existed by 800AD which could outperform either weapon by a large margin: the manuballista. Manuballistas were small enough to be hand-portable but were very front heavy and weighed about 100lb making them impractical to be hand-fired by a person of normal strength. But, with super strength a person could use a manuballista as though it were a hand drawn crossbow. Manuballista used torsion coils instead of tension arms to accelerate their missiles, and as a result had ranges and speeds much greater than any historical bow or crossbow design. Their projectile speeds were more similar to modern fiberglass compound crossbows, and they had massive stopping power from the weight of its missiles. So, while the arbalest and longbow beat out the manuballista in our own history thanks to their portability, the manuballista is a much more powerful weapon than either and the technology can be scaled up to much greater damage potential using the same quality of materials.

For melee weapons

The limitations of steel apply here too, but not nearly as much. When you look at sword fighting manuscripts prior to the introduction of the finery forge, most defensive sword maneuvers were deflective or hilt guards and most strikes were draw cuts. These techniques are designed to limit how much strain you are putting on your blade which suggests that 1x human strength was enough to bend or break these swords if not used wisely. The introduction of better steels in the 1200s came with the introduction of many new block guards and more acute weapon tips for thrusting when steel weapons started to become stronger than humans could reasonably break. We also have plenty of literary records from civilizations all across Europe of wooden handles and spear shafts snapping in combat.

This is all to say the 1x human strength was already pushing the available materials to their limits.

So, a super strong human would not benefit a whole lot from using actual viking weapons, but unlike wooden bows, metal technology could be expanded to make bigger heavier weapons for your super strong humans. So, instead of a typical viking sword which would be about 2-3lb with a blade profile of ~ 3 x 50 x 750 mm, you could give them a much chunkier 1-handed sword with a blade profile more like ~ 7.3 x 120 x 750 mm weighing in at 12-18lb, and still maneuver it with almost the same dexterity.

More strength though does still have its limits here. One limit is that your sword may be 6 times as heavy, but it won't be 6 times as lethal. the thicker you make the blade, the more cut resistance it will have. The edge will also still deform at the same acuity as a normal sword, so you will need to make it duller to survive an impact at full force. Lastly, you may be 6x as strong but your body still has the same inertia; so, fast complex maneuvers with overweight weapons may still throw off your balance.

So yes... a bladed weapon with 6x the cross-section would be more lethal than a normal one, but not by as much as you would think. Instead, I would probably suggest a solid steel mace or war pick instead since they would be less affected by edge limitations and benefit more from greater strength. Basically, picture what a 12-18 lb sledge hammer can do to solid concrete, then imagine what it would do if it could be wielded 1-handed with the dexterity of a ballpein hammer and you are looking at a very devastating weapon.

For Armor

This is actually where super-strength would be the most helpful. Preindustrial soldiers would often carry up to 70lb of armor pushing their bodies to the limits of what they could carry and fight in. But with 6x strength, your warriors could now carry hundreds of pounds of armor and still remain relatively unencumbered. Furthermore, a really heavy suit of armor could add inertia to your warrior allowing him to wield really heavy weapons without loosing his balance.

Answer 2

With the weapons of the period I think the most immediate benefit would be removing one the biggest shortcomings of crossbows, putting them on the same level with bows when it comes to cadence of fire:

Later crossbows (sometimes referred to as arbalests), utilizing all-steel prods, were able to achieve power close (and sometime superior) to longbows, but were more expensive to produce and slower to reload because they required the aid of mechanical devices such as the cranequin or windlass to draw back their extremely heavy bows. Usually these could only shoot two bolts per minute versus twelve or more with a skilled archer

With 6x the strenght of a normal human, the superstrenght would be right on spot to level the cadence.

If you pair this with the advantage of crossbow over bows, being that it required a shorter training to be used, you are significantly shifting the power balance between armies, because a killed archer is more expensive to replace than a killed crossbowman.

Answer 3

I point out that elephants are a lot stronger than 6 times human strength, and in Asia war elephants have been fitted with blades attached to their tusks.

War elephants have also been trained to use w swords with their trunks.

And some war elephants have been trained to pick up large iron chains and swing them at enemy soldiers.

So if versions of hand weapons strong enough to be used by elephants without breaking could be made, I guess that versions of hand weapons strong enough to be used by people with merely six times human strength without breaking could also be made.

Answer 4

Your Super-Soldiers would have a powerful advantage in cheap and plentiful and effective, if very unsexy, thrown weapons in the form of rocks.

A typical adult male human can throw a .45 kg rock at 36 m/s. Your super-soldiers can either throw the same rock much faster or heavier rocks just as fast or some combination in between. Throw in the mechanical multiplier of an Atala-like tool such as a sling staff and your super-soldier is a walking siege engine.

I agree that the quality of steel was poor in your selected time frame, but iron was good enough. A long thick iron sword would be very effective in combat since the targets are not wearing steel armor. Weapons like Broad Swords used their mass to inflict damage, and not the cutting edge; the heavier and faster the weapon moves the more damage it causes.

I'd think something like a flail, another very unsexy weapon, would be the best suited to your super-soldiers' strength. It has a long shaft that can be used for defense -- blocking attacks -- and its swivel head flaily part would deliver a tremendous force multiplier.

Similarly, pole arms like a halberd would significantly more dangerous in his hands since they could be longer than normal, with heavier axe-bits, and still be wieldy in their hands. The weapon's shaft would be the limiting factor on the weapon's length and mass, since you can't really make it thick as you want since the super-soldier still needs to grip it with their normal sized hands.