Questions tagged [weapons]
For questions about existing weapons or designing new ones.
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What would be the most effective real-world weapon againts intelligent hostile ants?
Inspired by this question, I want to know: what would be the best real weapons in a fight against ants?
All ants on Earth decide to exterminate all humans. Humans do not need to exterminate all ants, ...
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Is there a NON-CHEMICAL weapon that can target the central nervous and/or muscular system?
There is research on nerve agents and gases, but are there any man-portable weapons that may be able to harm the CNS without gas? Thanks.
AMENDED: Results in symptoms like shaking, tremors that are ...
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Modern era with magic that will stop gunpowder from igniting, what weapons are used instead?
One of the annoying problems with most urban fantasy series I've read is that they seem to mostly try to avoid discussing the fact that most of their fearsome magical foes could be felled with a ...
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What thickness of human flesh would have the same protective value as 100mm of RHA?
I'm trying to judge how much damage modern anti-tank weapons would deal to giants and I'm looking for a rough, order of magnitude estimate on how much protection layers of flesh would provide.
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How fast does a pineapple need to fly to kill?
Basically, spud guns use air pressure to shoot spuds. More air pressure, faster spud. How fast would a pineapple gun (ignore making it, say it just works) have to shoot the pineapple to be lethal?
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Can one get some partial ammo compatibility or tooling simplification by developing a few weapons of caliber ~80mm together?
For a few weapons there is something akin to sweet spot around caliber ~80mm:
Carl Gustaf 8.4 cm recoilless rifle (rifled)
81 mm mortar (smoothbore)
FIM-92 Stinger (72 mm) / 9K38 Igla (72 mm) (...
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Gravity-powered cannonballs for mountain dwellers
My mountain dwellers have endless patience. They spend their spare time fashioning spherical rock cannonballs of approximately equal size. This is in case of attack by enemies. Around their mountain ...
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Is there an existing name for this hook-sword-like shortsword design? [closed]
I was looking to add this premise of a weapon for a character I'm writing. I remembered this style existed in Breath of the Wild as an Eightfold Blade. While it does have a hilt, it is only a very ...
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What collateral damage would a mach 23 bullet cause?
In my sci-fi story there is a man-portable railgun. The gun fires a 4mm-wide tungsten bullet with a muzzle velocity of Mach 23.
The inventors of this weapon could have made the projectile faster but ...
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How fragile exactly are flint weapons? How much abuse can they take before breaking?
Obviously flint and similar stones are much more fragile than tool or weapon quality bronze and steel, but while writing I find I don't actually have any idea what this means in practice.
I use steel ...
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How would a primitive people recharge energy weapons in a hard science fiction setting?
In a hard science fiction setting, where things like glowing energy crystals or infinite batteries don't exist, how would a primitive aboriginal people recharge energy weapons they had traded for with ...
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Weapon damage assessment, or What hell have I unleashed?
In Weaponizing the return-energy channel of a one-way portal, I describe the function of a hermes portal, which are magical devices that, when activated by some command, create a connection to a ...
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Weaponizing the return-energy channel of a one-way portal
In my world, portals are magical devices that, when activated by some command, create a connection to a linked portal device. Portals allow objects to pass from the source (the portal device that was ...
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Goblins are Vulnerable to Fire and Light -- What Weapons Should we Use?
I’m doing a project about secret agents in the same vein as MIB but it’s set in the year 2050 and instead of aliens they deal with monsters similar to goblins.
The goblins evolve, growing from ...
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Boss attacks for a purple worm [closed]
I am making a boss fight themed quest in Dungeons and Dragons, and I am having trouble coming up with "Boss Attacks" that would be physically possible as well as add diversity to the purple ...
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How could a man-portable EMP shotgun generate a pulse?
The Story
(this starts playing) The reactor core room is coated in black inky sludge, dotted with glowing blotches of cyan, with black tendrils laced up the hydraulic shocks and all around the reactor ...
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Are we able to generate fusion by firing macroscopic particles really fast?
Big gun in space (let's not care about how the gun will work yet)
Pew pew,
If we fire fusion fuel,
Would we be able to cause a fusion reaction upon the particle's impact?
What speed would that take?
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Engineering considerations for a hand-held railgun carbine [closed]
The Design
The R-10 (1-2 decades pre-fall)
The SRDA's Terraforming and Colony-building Prospect is phase 2 of The Plan, started by the Theia, Tanu and the Aurea long-haul ships, which gave us access ...
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Slings for giant
What are giants
Giants are close cousin of humans, with only a few distinguishing features: first and foremost, their size. All of them are above 3 meters tall, with some nearing 4 meters - and with a ...
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What would be the next logical step after crossbows?
In this world I'm making, I'm trying to avoid firearms (to keep things like melee weapons more balanced), but also be more industrial. I'm justifying it by the simple idea of 'we never discovered ...
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Is a particle accelerator weapon feasible?
I am envisioning a weapon that operates similarly to a proton therapy machine, only with the aim of killing a person. Essentially, a beam of protons is launched towards the target. However, the proton ...
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Asymmetric Newton's Cradle as a 'rapidly' firing medieval weapon - Is it practical [closed]
I wish to project an iron or steel 'cannonball' at a fortification. I construct a Newton's Cradle but there is a very large ball at one end and a relatively small cannonball at the other.
NOTE - I use ...
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Could an electromagnetic pulse be made directional?
Reading about Non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse (NNEMP) weapons that generate high-intensity electromagnetic bursts to frazzle electronics.
Now, when other kinds of electromagnetic wave are generated (...
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What is good Armament and Protection for a Quadruped Mecha? [closed]
I have been looking for real robot models for a long time to create a realistic mecha for my story.
I decided to model Peace Walker from Metal Gear and a quadruped robot with wheels that I found on ...
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Necessities for a handheld electron beam weapon
So, since practically every science fiction writer under the sun has imagined some manner of handheld laser beam, I have been exploring alternatives for energy/particle weapons, one of which is an ...
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How can I make my Slashing/cutting weapons not get stuck in meat and bone?
The myth of katanas being folded 10 thousand times making them so sharp they can cut through time and space is over(hopefully)
But are there any weapons that easily slash through meat and bone without ...
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Possible mechanism for telescoping barrels
Is it a good idea?
No. A very definitive no.
However, that's not stopping a young aristocratic terrestrial cuttlefish (long story) that lives on this world's equivalent of a highly mountainous and ...
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Could a sun gun work from the surface?
The concept of a sun gun is of a parabolic reflector, placed it orbit around a planet, which focuses sunlight as a deadly beam on a specific point of the surface.
What I want to know is this: what if, ...
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Weapon building in post apocalyptic situation? [closed]
Let's suppose that some part of population survives an almost massive extinction event that also destroys most of the planet's infrastructure (nuclear war, whatever) but still preserving some of ...
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How Nazi Germany should use it's new Nukes to quickly and efficiently conquer the entire world [closed]
The premise is thus;
A neo-nazi time traveler with a ton of money to throw around who's also done a ton of research into the manufacturing, mechanisms, and uses of nukes, brings a few construction ...
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How could I justify use of swords, bows, and similar in a technological setting? [duplicate]
First, a quick explanation of the world's functioning.
It was home to nature-worshipping tribes, which had such a strong connection to the goddesses that developed to be like super-humans (longevity, ...
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Sci fi setting: Are smaller and faster bullets automatically better?
I’m building a world where two civilizations are meeting, and both have fairly different design philosophies with weapons and armor, and the easiest way to sum it up is think Mass Effect without the ...
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Would my particle cloud shield be effective in limiting the use of combined arms/maneuver warfare operations? [closed]
Since I have particle shields in my setting for my armored vehicles, my military forces have also decided to try and extend that technology to the larger battlefield. One of the issues plaguing my ...
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What kind of arrow would knock someone over?
Tods Workshop on youtube did a video showing that real arrows would not knock someone off their feet.
Imagine a knight in armor is charging on foot at an archer. He wears a breastplate sufficient to ...
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What are limitations of using the same vehicle to carry both SAM and rocket artillery?
Theoretically it should be feasible - one end up with a tracked or wheeled vehicle with rockets strapped to top of it and it shouldn't be a big deal whether they are designed to hit land/sea or air ...
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Speaker-Powered Directed Blast Weapon
So, in order to defeat a bulletproof enemy that has genetically engineered osteodermic plates like a rhino all over his body that can stop very powerful rounds, the protagonist put her brains to work ...
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Excuse for plasma, projectile, laser, and particle-beam weaponry to coexist?
My (science-based but certainly not hard sci-fi) world is basically a large island run by a couple of mad billionares. They have each built an army of aircraft armed with cliche "futuristic" ...
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Can stone weaponry be sharpened?
Is there a way to sharpen stone weapons?
In a society with no metals whatsoever, which is therefore using stone for their weapons, can the cutting edges of those weapons be sharpened?
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How much electric power would instantly kill a person (volts, amps, etc.)?
Context:
It is a near-future sci-fi and they adopted electrolasers as main weapons, because you wouldn't need to worry about propellant, ammo etc. "Just" battery and fuel.
An electrolaser is ...
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Would Iridium be a good metal for crafting muskets and cannons?
Iridium is a metal discovered in 1803 that is quite dense and is very resistant against corrosion.
Let's say that in the year 1600, every musket and cannon on Earth has their metal components ...
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Are 60000 RPM electric motors enough to a tennis launcher-like weapon to launch a bullet at same speeds as conventional rifles?
Well, I've made this question before, but it wasn't well written, so I deleted it. I think this time is good enough?
Context:
Semi-futuristic scenario where instead of gunpowder, they use weapons ...
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Would Tungsten be a useful material for medieval armor and weapons?
Tungsten is a very dense and robust metal that has the highest melting point and boiling point of any metal. This makes it very resilient in certain situations but also makes it hard to craft stuff ...
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Methods to reverse engineer black powder
In this scenario a kingdom that has not yet invented black powder has been invaded by an enemy that possess cannons and matchlocks. Since the invaders are few in number the defenders managed to beat ...
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What are the ideal features for an aircraft to fight flying monsters?
In the real world, combat aircraft are generally classified into two main groups; ground attack planes, which deploy weapons against land targets, and fighter planes, which are meant to destroy other ...
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How can I get a high-quality blue-colored alloy?
I'm working on a setting in which exists this cabbal of forgers that can work metal with the power of their mind in secret rituals that no man outside their circle can even imagine. They are known for ...
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Is it possible to make a concealable firearm that is undetectable to metal detectors? [closed]
In Die Hard 2, there is an infamous scene where the protagonist talks about the fictional Glock 7 that was used against him. Apparently, it was a porcelain gun made in Austria Germany that didn't ...
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If people in medieval times had access to osmium, would it be used? [closed]
Let's say that in 1,200 AD, aliens secretly come to Earth and drop off tons of Osmium in various places.The aliens then leave and humans discover this new metal.
By the late medieval era, forges ...
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What is the largest possible gun a man with super strength can use? [closed]
To make a long story short, my world has a variety of individuals of varying talents, and along with that, malevolent monsters of the large and dangerous variety, who these people are often employed ...
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Healing gunshot wounds in microgravity
In my setting, kinetic firearms are the handheld weaponry of choice for most people, despite centuries of technological advancement (and stagnation, somewhat). These range from chemical-propelled guns ...
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Would a prison based on an extreme pressure chamber function well? [closed]
I recently read about an oil rig accident where the workers who were put into a pressure chamber over a course of a few months (about 9 atmospheres) to deal with decompression sickness were ...
