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S@tanicoaldo
2018-03-26, 10:04 AM
Working on an alternative universe scenario where gunpowder and guns in general has never been invented, looking for insights on how that would turn out to be.

What effects such change would have in history? Would we still be using swords and spears?

hymer
2018-03-26, 10:14 AM
What effects such change would have in history? Would we still be using swords and spears?
Well, let's be clear: Is it just gunpowder, or are other propellants also non-existent? IIRC, the first pneumatic guns were invented in the Renaissance, e.g.

S@tanicoaldo
2018-03-26, 10:16 AM
Well, let's be clear: Is it just gunpowder, or are other propellants also non-existent? IIRC, the first pneumatic guns were invented in the Renaissance, e.g.

No gunpowrder and no form of gun what so ever.

Eldan
2018-03-26, 10:17 AM
Yeah, that. No gunpowder, or just in general no projectiles beyond what can be powered by muscles and strings?

If the crossbow is the end-all of development for projectiles, armor would still rule the battlefields.

What would probably change even more things is fortresses. Cannon and artillery made fortresses ever more extreme, until the idea of a fortified position just became almost impossible. Without that, we'd still have walled cities, I'd expect. Which might actually severely limit the growth of said cities. We're back to long, costly sieges, which are mostly decided either by treachery, or either side running out of food and having to go home or surrender.

It leads to some strange questions, though. I mean, without gunpowder, does that also mean no bombs? No combustion engines? Without steam cannons, also no steam engines? No pneumatic cannons means no hydraulics?

We'd be stuck without any machinery beyond cranes, cogs and pulleys.

hymer
2018-03-26, 10:24 AM
Also, is a crossbow sort of a gun and should be excluded? It shares many characteristics, at least. What about a rocket? They could be used for artillery purposes, but may be too gun-like.

LibraryOgre
2018-03-26, 10:37 AM
So, where's the rest of your timeline? You're talking an AU with no firearms and, I guess, no explosives. Are they chemically impossible (i.e. if I summoned black powder from an alternate universe and set it on fire, it wouldn't significantly react), or just never invented? Are you trying to picture a 2018 CE without firearms, or a 1776 without firearms? What other conditions exist in the world (i.e. magic, extreme longevity, present and active deities, etc.)?

You can come up with a lot of scenarios, depending on how you want your branching points to go.

Lvl 2 Expert
2018-03-26, 10:43 AM
Rockets have been indeed around for centuries, similar to cannons. But I figure those are all out. What about powerful siege weapons powered by say steel springs? How about magnetic railguns (could have been a thing by now with no competition), or steam (pneumatic) powered cannons? Out as well? Those lasers they use to explode rockets in mid air? those sonic weapons they use to deter pirates? Molotov cocktails? High explosives (grenades, mines)? Chemical weapons? Nuclear weapons? Biological weapons? Details man, details.

If you forbid all tech that makes for potential better weapons than a sword then yes, swords would still be in use. As a side effect most civilian tech also wouldn't exist. No steam power for steam cannons is no steam trains. No gasoline for Molotov cocktails (or just giant armored gunless tanks which flatten everything) is no combustion engine. It takes a lot of productivity out of society and probably strands us somewhere halfway the industrial revolution. We might get the Eiffel tower if we're lucky, but even that would be hard to do without steam powered factories, not to mention no rail bridges to innovate the building techniques used. Going to the moon is right out.

If somehow only military applications of all of these technologies are impossible you get a modern world where people fight with medieval weapons, and inexplicably not with those huge SUV's they have, those diseases they cure or those fireworks they celebrate stuff with.

The Jack
2018-03-26, 10:51 AM
Flamethrowers, tazers, chemical weapons, fireworks?


I mean, maybe if it was a setting where god said "you can't use X, Y or Z" then it'd all be cool and we could work out a scenario. But if we just went with a setting where the idea of launching projectiles from tubes with explosives never took off... which is reasonable because early guns just were awful and many debated their use... We'd still have bombs and such... I guess the only change would be that spree shootings would be replaced by random 'nade tossings. Maybe Aircraft would've been more of a nightmare to fight in the earlier parts of this century.

Oh, america would've won vietnam. It'd be a lot harder to wage guerrilla war without fast firing firearms. Guns are a great equalizer.

S@tanicoaldo
2018-03-26, 11:12 AM
So, where's the rest of your timeline? You're talking an AU with no firearms and, I guess, no explosives. Are they chemically impossible (i.e. if I summoned black powder from an alternate universe and set it on fire, it wouldn't significantly react), or just never invented? Are you trying to picture a 2018 CE without firearms, or a 1776 without firearms? What other conditions exist in the world (i.e. magic, extreme longevity, present and active deities, etc.)?

You can come up with a lot of scenarios, depending on how you want your branching points to go.

Well I was being vague because I just wanted the broad strokes, if I added another variable(Magic) that would change the base image I'm trying to picture, but let's just say there is magic in the world, it's really rare and scarce, an epic wizard saw the future where guns would kill his loved one and used his own lifeforce to cast a spell that would force people to be unable to invent guns. It's an epic spell but no one is awere it exists.

2018 without firearms.

For the sake of argument let's say it's just like our world.


Rockets have been indeed around for centuries, similar to cannons. But I figure those are all out. What about powerful siege weapons powered by say steel springs? How about magnetic railguns (could have been a thing by now with no competition), or steam (pneumatic) powered cannons? Out as well? Those lasers they use to explode rockets in mid air? those sonic weapons they use to deter pirates? Molotov cocktails? High explosives (grenades, mines)? Chemical weapons? Nuclear weapons? Biological weapons? Details man, details.

If you forbid all tech that makes for potential better weapons than a sword then yes, swords would still be in use. As a side effect most civilian tech also wouldn't exist. No steam power for steam cannons is no steam trains. No gasoline for Molotov cocktails (or just giant armored gunless tanks which flatten everything) is no combustion engine. It takes a lot of productivity out of society and probably strands us somewhere halfway the industrial revolution. We might get the Eiffel tower if we're lucky, but even that would be hard to do without steam powered factories, not to mention no rail bridges to innovate the building techniques used. Going to the moon is right out.

If somehow only military applications of all of these technologies are impossible you get a modern world where people fight with medieval weapons, and inexplicably not with those huge SUV's they have, those diseases they cure or those fireworks they celebrate stuff with.

Only guns, all those forms of weapons in special explosives are ok.


Flamethrowers, tazers, chemical weapons, fireworks?

Fireworks use gunpowder no?

LibraryOgre
2018-03-26, 11:23 AM
Ok, well, with that, I think you wind up looking primarily at conflict and crime. What uses are firearms currently put to, and what would replace them?

For military purposes, I'd say you'd see a lot more focus on explosives. Since I can't spray an area with bullets, what if I spray an area with shrapnel?

For home defense, I'd lean towards variants on the crossbow... possibly something like an electric motor to easily **** a crossbow? Still low ROF, but easier to use?

Lvl 2 Expert
2018-03-26, 11:28 AM
Aaah, okay...

My first thought is that armor would be pretty dominant, as in tanks. They have the explosives to bust through them, but limited means of delivery. You can leave surprises mines, try to sneak up on them or drop bombs from the sky. The downside is that the guns on tanks are impossible as well, so maybe flamethrowers? Or powerful crossbows or catapults firing grenades? Some form of hydraulics powered and made using modern materials and designs of course, so not limited to medieval strength. Airburst grenades, frag grenades, cluster munitions...

Planes would also have an advantage for a while. Whoever invented the seeker missile is a filthy rich man in this universe. Radar guided munitions and stuff should bring planes back into check, except they might encourage our stealth craze even a bit more.

As for infantry weapons... Maybe they switched away from infantry more than we did? Maybe crossbows of some sort? Like those Chinese repeating crossbows/chu ko nu for the Age of Empires players, but with a pneumatic component that amplifies the power that can be put into it? Maybe the rate of fire as well, fully automatic crossbows style? Or does that fall under the spell? Maybe electric weapons, like tesla guns? Nah, too easy to armor against... Maybe flamethrowers and squirtguns loaded with chemical weapons? I figure modern wars would be fought with ranged weapons either way. There is no armoring a person against flame throwers or grenade slingers or napalm bombardments or stuff like that, so you have to engage at range.

I'm just not sure what Texans would all be crazy about in this world. Barbecued sausages? Show horses? Pickup trucks and things that are bigger in Texas? You know what? On second thought I figure they'll be fine.

Rhedyn
2018-03-26, 11:57 AM
Well without guns, the Natives would have done a lot better. Early guns were bad for morale, without them the Natives could have stopped the invasion of their lands even with disease still being present.

Now to not have guns you either need to limit combustion or metallurgy. Both of these can be done by removing fossil fuels. This easy source of energy was responsible for tough alloys needed for gun barrels. Even if you remove gunpowder, the presence of fossil fuels would still allow for guns.

Now this means a world without guns also lacks cars and would be much more dependent on green energy. We would be much farther behind in technology without that easy access of energy.

I don't think the world would be as unified. Consistent power grids would be difficult to run so society would be built around infrequent power / battery power during times of low wind or sunlight. Only cities near powerful falls or geothermal locations would have consistent electricity. Which would make those City states far stronger than anyone else.

Berenger
2018-03-26, 01:03 PM
Well without guns, the Natives would have done a lot better. Early guns were bad for morale, without them the Natives could have stopped the invasion of their lands even with disease still being present.

Steel armor, steel swords, steel crossbows, war horses, war dogs, weaponized diseases and liberal use of native allies / mercenaries on the part of the invaders would be more than enough advantages to ensure the same result for the Americas at least, I think.

The Jack
2018-03-26, 01:09 PM
[QUOTE=Rhedyn;22947403]Well without guns, the Natives would have done a lot better. Early guns were bad for morale, without them the Natives could have stopped the invasion of their lands even with disease still being present.

No, even without firearms europeans were leaps and bounds better off than americans (I assume you refer to them). They had better weapons, incomparably better armour (which they'd still be using and improving if they didn't get so good with guns), better construction techniques/fortifications and in general just better technology.

Maybe Australians would fair a little better, but I really mean "a little". Like "6%" instead of "3%" The Americans could've had such a boost, but there's little chance they'd stop the invasion.

S@tanicoaldo
2018-03-26, 01:13 PM
For home defense, I'd lean towards variants on the crossbow...

Sounds cool to me :smallbiggrin:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HWxBkuDFT8

Mastikator
2018-03-26, 01:26 PM
Well I was being vague because I just wanted the broad strokes, if I added another variable(Magic) that would change the base image I'm trying to picture, but let's just say there is magic in the world, it's really rare and scarce, an epic wizard saw the future where guns would kill his loved one and used his own lifeforce to cast a spell that would force people to be unable to invent guns. It's an epic spell but no one is awere it exists.

2018 without firearms.

For the sake of argument let's say it's just like our world.No gun related crimes. Nobody has guns. Wars are still fought with halberds and full body steel armor.

Then people would realize that there's a better way of killing people than holding a sharp metal object. It's driving a big metal object into people. Vehicles would probably be the main weapon, since chemically propelled metal balls are forbidden it would probably be spiked or something. Think Mad Max Fury Road but in good condition and done by sane civilized people.

There would also not be any cannons or artillery so castles are still effective, but with modern technology we can make big concrete walls around cities if we want. So all cities would have very tall big concrete walls surrounding them. Probably in layers since cities grow.

Borders between non-friendly nations would probably feature walls. I mean they already do, but a lot lot more.

Since using swords, knives and halberds to kill people is a lot more personal and difficult I would expect to see less violent crime and more collateral damage in war. War would drive soldiers to think raiding is okay more so than guns and artillery and airstrikes do, so collateral damage would be intentional rather than mostly accidental/negligent.

Rhedyn
2018-03-26, 01:58 PM
Steel armor, steel swords, steel crossbows, war horses, war dogs, weaponized diseases and liberal use of native allies / mercenaries on the part of the invaders would be more than enough advantages to ensure the same result for the Americas at least, I think.
Steel is probably far less common if you can't make gun barrels or lack combustion energy sources.

LordEntrails
2018-03-26, 02:11 PM
{{scrubbed}}

But, no guns but everything else? (Not sure how you would do that without removing certain key technologies, but...)

Chemical and biological weapons would be much more prominent and from a practical point would probably never have been outlawed in international treaties.

Nomadic tribes wouldn't really exist after ... 1800?

Criminal and criminal activity would change, the strong would prevail. Police would be less effective because criminals would always have to be subdued with force and not the threat of force.

Woman and social minorities would be more victimized than they are now without a means to defend themselves from more aggressive males or larger groups.

International politics would be vastly different. The United States and other military powers would not be able to project their will nearly as effectively as they do.Don't know if such might result in a more centralized international consensus, or less.

FreddyNoNose
2018-03-26, 02:27 PM
No gunpowrder and no form of gun what so ever.

so you have arrows?

If you recall history, canons and mortars ruined castles. Guns ruined armor. So without those, we would advance in those areas. castles armor and such.

There could be other improvements? How about steam engines/trains? Balloons? Mass production? Math, account, medicine, and etc. Your question is far too open ended.

S@tanicoaldo
2018-03-26, 02:33 PM
There could be other improvements? How about steam engines/trains? Balloons? Mass production? Math, account, medicine, and etc. Your question is far too open ended.

What does any of that has to do with the existence of guns? :smallconfused:

Sgt_Dubie
2018-03-26, 02:38 PM
I have to agree with the last post. Criminal activity would be worse, weak being more easily victimized. Mass killings wouldn’t stop, but the weapons would be swords or explosives. Wars would be longer, more drawn out. There would be a lot more persistent Cold War type atmosphere going one globally.

I also don’t see how to accomplish no guns but keep, say, the internal combustion engine... a piston is basically a bullet, fired down a barrel (cylinder) by a rapidly expanding gas created by burning a combustible (gasoline) set off by a primer (spark plug). The only thing really keeping the piston from going anywhere is the crankshaft.... this world would likely just shape up into something that resembles a more civilized but technology impaired medieval setting in 2018

Rhedyn
2018-03-26, 02:51 PM
What does any of that has to do with the existence of guns? :smallconfused:
What prevents guns from being a thing has consequences.

Unless the reason is a reality bending rule that "guns" simply aren't, then the consequences of no guns becomes less.

Tiadoppler
2018-03-26, 03:16 PM
Flamethrowers. Flamethrowers everywhere, attached to everything.

Aircraft would be supremely dominant until the invention of guided SAMs (assuming that explosives still work, but everyone just has a mental block re: guns). Without AA guns or effective (WWI/WWII era) fighter/interceptor weaponry, bombers would be even more effective and devastating.

Biological and chemical weapons might be much more common, and seen as a quick, decisive way to end a battle rather than a war crime.

Personal ranged weaponry would be relatively limited in kinetic energy and reload time, and so might rely more heavily on lethal electric shocks, poisons, acids, toxins, etc.

There would have been significantly more effective resistance to Europe's colonists around the world. A few ships full of crossbowmen do not have the same ability to project power as ships with a broadside of cannons and musketeers/riflemen. The world would not be nearly as influenced by European culture. The nations and borders of the world would be completely different. For example, the US would not exist, although Britain might have a few colonies on the east coast of North America.


Edit:
Perhaps, eventually, after rocketry has been invented and developed for a while, some combination of a crossbow and a Gyrojet gun would be developed, creating non-'firearm' personal ranged weaponry that shares many of the same characteristics as modern firearms.

FreddyNoNose
2018-03-26, 03:21 PM
What does any of that has to do with the existence of guns? :smallconfused:

I answered your question. Did you notice? Then I added more.

You asked what society would look like without them. Other areas would still advance.

Karl Aegis
2018-03-26, 03:24 PM
No skeet ranges. Doesn't really change society as a whole, but it limits forms of entertainment. No fireworks either. So less smuggling of fireworks, probably.

Luz
2018-03-26, 04:32 PM
No cowboys or western movies.

Blackhawk748
2018-03-26, 05:10 PM
You mentioned that there is magic (even though its rare) and with that and no guns im pretty sure the mages will wind up being in charge, simply because they could very well just destroy multiple individuals in full plate (which would continue to advance, though i have no idea how). With power like that people would flock to them.

LibraryOgre
2018-03-26, 05:57 PM
No cowboys or western movies.

Joe Abercrombe, The Red Country (https://amzn.to/2GtZqrt)

Brother Oni
2018-03-26, 06:27 PM
Just to be that guy, modern smokeless powders aren't the same thing as black powder (what's commonly called gunpowder); modern firearms don't use gunpowder any more as they've all been replaced by single/double/triple base powders which are a mix of nitrocellulose/nitroglycerin/nitroguanidine (although artillery are the only things that tend to use triple base powders).

It begs the question though, if black powder didn't exist, but explosives do, wouldn't people just use explosives as the propellent instead?

In terms of weaponry, much more development into DEWs although rail/coil guns seem to fall into the prohibited category. I wouldn't be surprised if battery technology was also more advanced and law enforcement/military had man sized pulsed energy projectiles (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulsed_energy_projectile).

Sgt_Dubie
2018-03-26, 06:54 PM
... modern firearms don't use gunpowder any more as they've all been replaced by single/double/triple base powders which are a mix of nitrocellulose/nitroglycerin/nitroguanidine (although artillery are the only things that tend to use triple base powders).

pulsed energy projectiles (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulsed_energy_projectile).

Just to be another ‘that guy’ I have more than one gun in my cabinet, manufactured in the 21st century, that uses black powder in either front stuffing methods or built cartridges....

S@tanicoaldo
2018-03-26, 07:02 PM
You mentioned that there is magic (even though its rare) and with that and no guns im pretty sure the mages will wind up being in charge, simply because they could very well just destroy multiple individuals in full plate (which would continue to advance, though i have no idea how). With power like that people would flock to them.

Yeah the whole setting is an entry for my game shop that is doing a world building contest, the idea is to subvert Medieval Stasis in fantasy.

I do love the idea of doing away with medieval stasis but I still want swords and armor to be a thing but I don't want to go full "Magitec" like most are doing.

So I wanted to keep the influence of magic in the plane very minimal but still I also wanted to deal with ecological and environmental topics because I think they are relevant and fun, it's like the moon from Zelda a treat that hangs in the horizon but no one really cares that much since it's so far away it won't affect their daily life for now.

So my idea was to keep things contemporary, not futuristic, medieval or magitec, and deal with ecological stuff.

My solution? Oil, that's a very contemporary element, everyone wants and needs, it literally powers our machines but what if instead of dinosaur remains oil is made of... DRAGONS!

In the prehistory we had dragons and eldritch abominations, but one day a dragon and an eldritch abomination copulated and that caused a new and powerful race to emerge, to end that threat the dragons used all their magic power to end all life on earth, but that was not enough so they had to seal the survivors away, froze them in the north and south poles and doomed earth to a terrible ice age.

The spell worked but it constantly remained draining the magical energies of the planet to keep the abominations frozen away.

Later on humans show up and after millennia they find out a oil with the power of the old dragons could be used to generate energy and power machines.

The problem is that every time this black magic energy is used it drains a little of the background magic field making the ice cages weaker, if that keeps going soon the abominations of the poles will be released and hell will follow.

This way we had imitated magic (If you use too much the ice will melt) so technology could be developed as it is now and not solve all problems and offer a risk and a price to the use and abuse of it.

A looming threat to make things interesting.

We have real life references.

The only problem were the guns, a hero with a gun don’t look as awesome as one with a sword, so I came up with this heavy handed excuse so we won’t have guns on my setting, anyone has a better idea on how to keep them away?

Aliquid
2018-03-26, 07:29 PM
Well I was being vague because I just wanted the broad strokes, if I added another variable(Magic) that would change the base image I'm trying to picture, but let's just say there is magic in the world, it's really rare and scarce, an epic wizard saw the future where guns would kill his loved one and used his own lifeforce to cast a spell that would force people to be unable to invent guns. It's an epic spell but no one is awere it exists.

2018 without firearms.This actually answers all the questions that keep on being asked.

The spell made it so that people were unable to invent guns. It didn't force people to be unable to invent hot air balloons, or internal combustion engines, or any other modern technology.

So, with that in mind... S@tanicoaldo, you said "no gunpowder", but that contradicts the above statement. I think that gunpowder and fireworks would be ok, as long as it doesn't lead to guns.


The challenging question is HOW would the magic make it "impossible for guns to be invented"? Yes, the obvious thing that people keep assuming is that it would stop specific things from being discovered that are required for guns to exist... and of course that has side-effects of stopping other inventions.

But how about this: It is magic, maybe it is some sort of "curse", that makes every attempt to invent a firearm to fail. Whenever someone tries to invent a gun, bad luck, accidents, and explosions happen. Eventually people just say "it can't be done", and occasionally someone says "sure it can", and tries but then gets hit by a bus or something. That way, we can say that there is no impact on other technology.

Goaty14
2018-03-26, 07:29 PM
Explosive = Gone, but steam still exists, yea?

I'm imagining a very steampunk sort of setting...


The only problem were the guns, a hero with a gun don’t look as awesome as one with a sword, so I came up with this heavy handed excuse so we won’t have guns on my setting, anyone has a better idea on how to keep them away?

Perhaps an incredibly thick atmosphere and gravity? Local persons are able to adapt to it easily, but anything fired/launched needs to get a TON of lift and negation of wind resistance to avoid dropping/stopping*. As a side effect, this stops bows/artillery/projectiles from going, but it works, I guess.

*On the flipside, anything that DOES overcome thing suddenly becomes very potent in destructiveness.

S@tanicoaldo
2018-03-26, 07:37 PM
This actually answers all the questions that keep on being asked.

The spell made it so that people were unable to invent guns. It didn't force people to be unable to invent hot air balloons, or internal combustion engines, or any other modern technology.

So, with that in mind... S@tanicoaldo, you said "no gunpowder", but that contradicts the above statement. I think that gunpowder and fireworks would be ok, as long as it doesn't lead to guns.


The challenging question is HOW would the magic make it "impossible for guns to be invented"? Yes, the obvious thing that people keep assuming is that it would stop specific things from being discovered that are required for guns to exist... and of course that has side-effects of stopping other inventions.

But how about this: It is magic, maybe it is some sort of "curse", that makes every attempt to invent a firearm to fail. Whenever someone tries to invent a gun, bad luck, accidents, and explosions happen. Eventually people just say "it can't be done", and occasionally someone says "sure it can", and tries but then gets hit by a bus or something. That way, we can say that there is no impact on other technology.

Thanks, I'm really exicted to work with this setting just so I can shout "OIL BUT IS MADE OF DRAGONS!!!" All the time :smallbiggrin:

Yeah I guess gunpowder is ok, it was an oversimplification.

I was going more like something.

"What if we created a weapon that shoot projectiles with the u--- *blink* Wait... What was I talking about?"

"I dunno, anyway how about a balloon but with hot water?"

"Interesting... Tell me more about it"

People just forget, snap out of the idea because of the spell.


Explosive = Gone, but steam still exists, yea?

I'm imagining a very steampunk sort of setting...

Explosives are ok, I really want to go with contemporary I rather not use any cliches such as steampunk. Don't get me wrong I looooove steampunk, I'm just looking for something more unique.

LordEntrails
2018-03-26, 09:12 PM
I don't know... I like the curse idea.

So, if no guns but explosives are ok, then you end up with grenades and (maybe?) rocket launchers. You still have tasers and modern crossbows. What about mortars? Landmines and AP mines you still have.

What about drones and satellites?

So, long range surveillance is prevent by nation states with no way to counter surveillance planes...

Anonymouswizard
2018-03-27, 07:15 AM
{{Scrubbed}}

Rhedyn
2018-03-27, 07:26 AM
{{Scrubbed}}

hymer
2018-03-27, 08:12 AM
{{Scrubbed}}

I'm likewise acutely aware that there are more Americans on this board than you'd think off-hand. But since OP seems to be from Australia, I don't think we need to be all that bothered with the peculiarly American view of guns.

Anonymouswizard
2018-03-27, 08:16 AM
{{Scrubbed}}


Anywho, in the reality bending version of no guns. Americans would have swords, knives, and crossbows. With the advances of technology, crossbows would be miniaturized to allow for concealed carry. Any small female truly worried about their safety would have something like a multi shot hand taser crossbow.

Places like the UK already have to register big knives so I don't foresee much change there.

This I think is a legitimate observation. Places which allow weaponry will start seeing more crossbow crimes (unless the victim is Welsh, it's after dark, and it happens within the bounds of York), while countries which restrict them will simply have similar restrictions to what they do now.

Lord Torath
2018-03-27, 08:23 AM
I'd argue that mortars and rocket launchers fall under the heading of "guns", and anyone trying to invent one would have their thoughts interrupted (or meet an untimely and unfortunate end). I think missiles and torpedoes would also fall under this category. I don't know about bombs. If they don't fall under the prohibited class, they could be lobbed via catapult. Depends on just how "guns" are defined by the curse/wish/magic.

Rockets would be fine, as long as nobody thought of mounting a weapon on the end. Once that thought occurred to them, they'd forget it, and decide to put a satellite or crew module on top instead.
{{Scrubbed}}

Rhedyn
2018-03-27, 08:25 AM
{{Scrubbed}}

S@tanicoaldo
2018-03-27, 08:31 AM
Ah! America and their love for weapons :D

Let's not dive in any further this is a very sensitive topic, guns are almost their secondary religion just like soccer for UK and Brazil and Vodka is for Russia.

I think it's funny how a wizard casted the spell because they wanted to end guns and the many detahs it would cause and people assume the spell would kill anyone who tries to make a gun, isn't that contradictory as hell?

Satinavian
2018-03-27, 08:32 AM
Military rockets would be more prevalent. That and other explosives like mines and bombs. Tanks would have been even more important in history without anti-tank guns and their might have been experiments with offensive variants of reactive armor. Fighter planes and FLAK would not have been nearly as viable and bombers would have been of bigger historical importance. But rocket based antitank weapons and anti-aircraft rockets that can actually change direction would have mitigated these effects once they became an option.

Mystral
2018-03-27, 08:37 AM
Working on an alternative universe scenario where gunpowder and guns in general has never been invented, looking for insights on how that would turn out to be.

What effects such change would have in history? Would we still be using swords and spears?

What's the tech level outside of ranged weapon technology?

Is there electricity? Antibiotics? Modern metallurgy? Plastics? Combustion engines?

The presence of absence of a single thing means little for society outside of the "killing each other" department. If everything were as it is today, then wars would propably be fought with lance riders on motorcycles, electricity-powered ballistas and shock-poleweapons.

Anonymouswizard
2018-03-27, 08:38 AM
Let's not dive in any further this is a very sensitive topic, guns are almost their secondary religion just like soccer for UK and Brazil and Vodka is for Russia.

I'm insulted. Britain has two primary religions, one of which is football. The other is cricket.

Mystral
2018-03-27, 08:42 AM
The only problem were the guns, a hero with a gun don’t look as awesome as one with a sword, so I came up with this heavy handed excuse so we won’t have guns on my setting, anyone has a better idea on how to keep them away?
Guns work by having a solid substance combust quickly to power the projectile. Just say that there aren't any substances like that in your universe, at least no naturally occuring ones.

Lvl 2 Expert
2018-03-27, 09:02 AM
Guns work by having a solid substance combust quickly to power the projectile. Just say that there aren't any substances like that in your universe, at least no naturally occuring ones.

Gunpowder isn't even an explosive, by saying that nothing reacting as explosively as it does exists you're banning a significant chunk of chemistry. You're also banning mines, grenades, bombs and all sorts of explosives which were confirmed to be in, plus rocket fuel, and with that probably all of our space programs (and maybe cars with nitro systems and/or a few industrial catalysts, but we'd have to get more specific on what part of gunpowder is banned). In the long run you're potentially banning interstellar travel by any means other than solar sails, which means science fiction could be radically different. You're not banning air powered rifles, railguns and other stuff that shoots projectiles out of a barrel, which were conformed to be out.

Either way, I don't think either idea will lead to a world where people use swords because it's practical. Ones you have vehicles with a certain loading weight you can make them armored beyond the ability of any sword wielder to do anything about it. At that point you will also have flame throwers, more often than not a dumb idea in our world, but that's because people can shoot you. Plus I can't not imagine pneumatic repeating crossbows and such. The wish would need to be broader than just about things that shoot projectiles out of barrels. But at the same time it has to avoid blocking other aspects of technology...

Aliquid
2018-03-27, 09:06 AM
I think it's funny how a wizard casted the spell because they wanted to end guns and the many detahs it would cause and people assume the spell would kill anyone who tries to make a gun, isn't that contradictory as hell?not sure where you got that idea...

first - I don’t think the wizard was aware or cares about her number of people who died. They were concerned with the death of a loved one.

Second - nobody said that the spell would kill everyone who tried to invent a gun.

CharonsHelper
2018-03-27, 09:06 AM
A world-building issues no one has touched yet.

There would probably be no democracies. They largely formed in the 18th-19th centuries when technology was such that numbers and morale were more important than having well equipped elite troops. If heavily armoured (and expensive) knights were never outmoded by massed cheap troops with muskets, the series of revolts (and threats/fears of the same) would likely have never really gotten rid of the aristocracy/nobility/feudalism.

Lvl 2 Expert
2018-03-27, 09:10 AM
A world-building issues no one has touched yet.

There would probably be no democracies. They largely formed in the 18th-19th centuries when technology was such that numbers and morale were more important than having well equipped elite troops. If heavily armoured (and expensive) knights were never outmoded by massed cheap troops with muskets, the series of revolts (and threats/fears of the same) would likely have never really gotten rid of the aristocracy/nobility/feudalism.

I don't know. Industrialization might have done the job anyway, or at least pushed up a new class of merchants and owners wielding economic power. Rising total productivity and standards of living could have had a big impact as well.

Not to mention the grenade slinging flame thrower wielding rebel movement.

Sinewmire
2018-03-27, 09:50 AM
Greek fire/flamethrowers.

Some of the stuff used in the Ottoman/Hospitalier siege of malta was really inventive use of gunpowder (there were early guns too).

Hula-hoop sized Catherine Wheels that were bowled into enemy lines and set peoples' clothes alight, for one.

Grenadiers, bombers. Day to day life probably not that much different - guns aren't really a thing in the UK.

Different computer games - no shoot 'em ups. Different films - Dambusters and Swords rather than Man With A Gun.

Interesting.

Satinavian
2018-03-27, 09:52 AM
A world-building issues no one has touched yet.

There would probably be no democracies. They largely formed in the 18th-19th centuries when technology was such that numbers and morale were more important than having well equipped elite troops. If heavily armoured (and expensive) knights were never outmoded by massed cheap troops with muskets, the series of revolts (and threats/fears of the same) would likely have never really gotten rid of the aristocracy/nobility/feudalism.

Numbers became already more important in the 15th-16th century before guns ruled the battlefield alone. Huge groups of armored infanterist with halbards and pikes etc. had already made the martial power of aristocracy near meaningless. When Swiss mercenaries were deemed one of the most searched after force in Europe, it was not because they were that impressive marksmen.

I don't think a lack of guns would have helped traditional knights to keep relevant. Or would have postponed democracies somehow.


Cannons might be a more relevant point as in Europe they certainly made towns stronger and people in castles weaker.

LordEntrails
2018-03-27, 11:08 AM
I was already chastised and given a formal warning once on this thread for making a political comment. Therefore I won't be responding to any of the American/UK/Australia/Gun Crazy comments. They all seem more political and against the forum rules than what I got in trouble for, but that's not my call.

Segev
2018-03-27, 11:39 AM
The trouble we run into, without defining what underlying factors lead to "no guns," is, "what is a gun?"

Is an airsoft rifle a "gun?"

Is a gauss rifle?

What about blow dart tubes?

Spring-loaded auto-fire turrets that say "I see you" and "Is anyone there?" and fire 60% more bullet per bullet by not causing the jacket to explode and launch the bullet out?

Lasers? Phasers? Magic missiles?

You can't even say, "rifles are a kind of gun," because the etymology there has to do with "rifling" (the spiral grooves that give bullets spin to improve distance), so if all you had were crossbows and trebuchets before somebody came up with the magnetically-impelled projectile, it'd be called a "magnetic crossbow" or something like that.

The concept of hurling projectiles increasingly fast to cause deadly harm at range is not unique to guns. The notion that there's a magical delineation between the crossbow and the "gun," but that we'd lump anything post-gunpowder-weapon that hurls projectiles into the "gun" category is entirely conceptual and somewhat arbitrary.


What, precisely, are you looking for in your changed world? Guns weren't actually what made armor less viable. Crossbows did that. Guns DID eventually make fortifications shift from solid stone to more earthworks, because the need to dissipate energy ablatively became far more important. So if you want to limit that, you go with imposing a maximum amount of momentum (speed * mass) a projectile can have in order to leave fortification or armor materials effective. Though the real defeat of walls as anything but civilian-level deterrents came from aircraft. Pointless to build a castle when people can fly bombers over it and drop paratroopers in. We still use fences, but they're mainly to impede non-military or small-team infiltration. The Great Wall of China wouldn't have been worth building if the Mongols had had griffons or pegasi instead of horses.

Is it ease-of-use you're concerned with? Do you want to represent a world where it takes more training to be truly deadly with weapons, rather than one where any 10-year-old who might get ahold of a revolver and seriously injure or kill even a grown man (let alone his kid sister) while playing with it? It's true that knives - which would be a ubiquitous self-defense weapon in a world where easily-carried guns or other projectile weapons were not - are a lot harder to accidentally hurt other people with (though they would still be prone to hurting themselves - watch any teen or 20-something who's decided that butterfly knives are the coolest thing ever to play with to see evidence of that). Reduced ease-of-use means you probably want to eliminate crossbows, too, since they're also point-and-click. It would mean that there is a much clearer divide in personal power between trained soldiers and those with more civilian occupations. As-is, such distinctions do exist, but as others have mentioned, guns are a great equalizer, and so, too, would crossbows be.

Is it ubiquity? You'd have to eliminate industrialization to prevent that. Assuming for a moment that any projectile weaponry using gunpowder or newer methods just never got invented, for some reason, you'd still see mass-produced crossbows, probably made of metal and with a lot more ingenuity in their launch mechanisms. I wouldn't be surprised if the string were eventually replaced with a spring, and we might even see rifling tubes with screw-enabled bolt-heads to impart a spin to the specialized bolts; they'd be one-shot rifles, and probably even called "rifles" due to the etymology.

Industrialization, more than gunpowder, defines the way weapons are produced and distributed in the world.

LibraryOgre
2018-03-27, 01:36 PM
The Mod Wonder: I am not closing the thread, but am reminding y'all to be careful. This topic brushes on a large number of political hot-buttons, but is not, itself, a political topic. Please be aware of that in your responses, and keep them narrowly focused towards the world the OP is discussing, not our own world and politics.

Segev
2018-03-27, 03:08 PM
Different computer games - no shoot 'em ups. Different films - Dambusters and Swords rather than Man With A Gun.


I doubt this, actually. They'd just feature crossbows or spring-loaded bolt-rifles (which would have evolved from crossbows). And because video games already utilize "crossbows" that auto-reload with no real time-lag, and infinite-ammo guns, the alt-world of no guns would also include infinite-ammo instant-reload crossbows and bolt-rifles. Shoot-em-ups would still be a thing.

Andor13
2018-03-27, 04:01 PM
It is pretty much impossible to actually model the world you want. Guns start shaping history 8 or 9 centuries back. 8 centuries of propagated change is completely arbitrary in how it turns out.

If you want swords and armour, but not Mad Max, then have that, and write the history to suit. If you want modern combat to be literal rocket-tag then have that. If you want the world powers to be the Ottomans, the Koreans, and the Iroquois-Aztec Alliance while Europe and China are both a mass of feuding princedoms and mercantile networks then have that too.

We can't even guess what the world would look like if Gavrilo Princep had missed Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo, to go back that far and make such a fundamental change? Go nuts, no one will have any real basis for arguing.

N810
2018-03-27, 04:07 PM
You get Giant Magic Powered Mecha. :elan:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight%27s_%26_Magic

vasilidor
2018-03-27, 05:34 PM
there are a number of differences for starters in japan they would still have the shoguns in charge as one very specific example. the gun is what also allowed the creation of the great British empire upon which the sun never sat. the american colonies would never have gotten off the ground and the tsar's would still run Russia, or whatever is was called. the creation of the gun is what caused the feudal systems of Europe to collapse, the french revolution, and enabled Napoleon.
In short a world that never had guns would never be recognizable even if the history leading up to its invention matched ours. and that is without examining the differences in tech that this would cause, because the political structure of this world would place different priorities on different developers, of which there would likely be fewer of because the world created by its invention enabled people to do so. furthermore with the creation of a world where individuals could benefit from their own work.
in short, without guns, and the further development of such weapons, we would not be capable of having this conversation (the internet was created as part of the chain fire arms race sparked by the invention of the gun).
Yes I am aware that what I say can be taken very politically, But I am just trying to examine the historical changes that would occur in such a world.
now, there are ways that some of the things we have may have come to pass without guns, but I am personally doubtful.

Mr Beer
2018-03-27, 09:10 PM
As above, what is and isn't a gun?

A weapon which rapid fire small, fast, fin-stabilised rockets.

A gas-powered, magazine fed spear-gun.

An electrically-winched, steel and carbon fibre, superdraw weight crossbow firing explosive-tipped bolts.

A directional grenade, like a small Claymore but with reinforcement protecting the wielder.

A rapid fire, small bore (e.g. 20mm) grenade launcher.

An RPG.

Karl Aegis
2018-03-27, 09:53 PM
Wait, plate armor? Wouldn't we still have bed liner as a pretty good armor?

vasilidor
2018-03-27, 10:18 PM
metal based armors fell out of use do to the fact that guns out paced them. now there are some modern armors that use metal that people can wear, but they often have Kevlar or similar materials as padding. in such a world where guns were never invented, such would still be in wide spread use among armed forces.

Mechalich
2018-03-27, 10:44 PM
It sounds like the idea is to have an arbitrary fiat banning - via a sort of worldwide epic spell - to eliminate a very specific suite of technologies. As others have noted, the key is to define exactly which technologies we're talking about, and then, if all other conditions remain the same, to extrapolate from there.

The general view seems to be that you are banning all personal projectile weaponry more technologically advanced than a crossbow and artillery more advanced than Medieval siege weapons. In this scenario, you can get your history all the way to somewhere in the mid 1200s CE without any divergence. The Chinese had weapons earlier, but they were of limited impact. After that, things are going to start to get weird.

The big issue is that you have essentially resolved the arms race between competing offensive and defensive technologies firmly in the advantage of the defense. Even advances in crossbow technology favor the defense - because they allow for extremely powerful fixed placement weapons that are too heavy to be used as a personal weapon. This has far-reaching consequences. You're basically eliminating bombardment as a strategy. Fortifications, once constructed (including militarized naval vessels) quickly become essentially impervious. They can be taken only by treachery, siege, or costly assaults. Even fairly primitive fortifications would be extremely difficult to take, and offensive technological advantage - which enabled colonialism - would effectively cease to exist. The ability to project military power beyond one's boarders or to mount a rapid military response would be drastically reduced, even once advanced transportation technologies allowed you to rapidly maneuver an army into position, you're still left trying to overrun or siege down even minor obstacles.

The ultimate outcome is surely varied, but this setup seems to support atomization. Since small states with massive fortifications would be able to resist attack easily it would be extremely hard for large nations or empires to form and relatively easy for them to fall apart, since the leader of a city could defect and easily hide behind his walls safe from all but a massive mobilization. When you upgrade to modern times you're looking at lots of city-states surrounded by extreme fortifications and probably divided internally to prevent access by paratroopers and other infiltration groups.

Fable Wright
2018-03-28, 12:47 AM
We have real life references.

The only problem were the guns, a hero with a gun don’t look as awesome as one with a sword, so I came up with this heavy handed excuse so we won’t have guns on my setting, anyone has a better idea on how to keep them away?

Simple—make guns less powerful than they would otherwise be.

Let's say that, for example, that all plastic and associated derivatives (due to being made from what essentially boils down to being manufactured magic) is essentially Kevlar.

Now you have random street civilians in anti-gun equipment due to how cheap it is to manufacture things like Nylon.

Just like a bow and arrow, or crossbow, guns can still kill people very easily. Just like a knife.

The world is shaped much as we know it now—plastics being relatively recent, the inequalities brought on by guns still have much the same propagated changes until the present day. Let's say that the magic anti-gun plastic was Polypropylene, made in the 1960s after the big world wars. It doesn't change the cold war too much, but it certainly does change the utility of guns afterwards. You can occasionally have John Wick-like masters of gun-fu, for the truly skilled; you can preserve the badass sniper archetype; but when a casual hoodie can do double duty as police riot gear, there's definitely room for melee to get involved.

Lvl 2 Expert
2018-03-28, 01:20 AM
Though the real defeat of walls as anything but civilian-level deterrents came from aircraft. Pointless to build a castle when people can fly bombers over it and drop paratroopers in.

Ground defenses became harder to use especially as a stand alone thing because of airplanes, but hardly pointless. Operation Market Garden involved over 40.000 airborne troops yet failed to cross a few rivers. Even the German forces in 1940 failed to achieve anything with their landing at The Hague while the water lines slowed their main forces down, and made them waste more of their own lives than the enemy's. Most of the really successful paratrooper/glider operations were performed on places with zero to very little anti-air defenses, like the landing at Fort Eben-Emael which took out an important piece of Belgian defenses. The main exception is probably D-Day, where some of the paratroopers managed to achieve their mission of taking out the coastal defenses, saving countless lives among the troops landing from the sea. But it would have been a worthless assault if not coupled to that very landing from the sea, it didn't work on all beaches and the troopers were still very vulnerable to counter measures, which is why misdirection was so important in that battle.

In today's situation you could argue bombers are the bane of ground fortifications, but at least at around WWII level I figure artillery had a bigger impact even if only because of how much easier it is to produce and use en masse, and even artillery failed to breach some fortifications. The concrete fortifications at the "Afsluitdijk", the large dam in the North of the Netherlands keeping the big lake a big lake rather than a small see, held for the duration of the German-Dutch fighting. That particular fight was ended with the bombing of Rotterdam by airplanes, but that particular fight was also against an army with way too few anti-air defenses. (This was noted before the war, and more orders were in fact placed, at German companies...) The Maginot line was not flown over, it was walked past. This had in fact been the French plan all along, force them to come the long way around and fight them where we have them in a pincer between French and English forces. They just overestimated their ability to take the fight in that terrain. Defending against paratroopers is a pest, because of how large an area they can strike at, but it doesn't require that much materiel per location. France used a whole bunch of WWI vintage Renault FT tanks for guarding objects such as airfields. Those things were useless against serious opposition, but with the weight restrictions paratroopers face they would have been an obstacle.

So it's really a mixed bag, is what I'm saying. Ground fortifications are not a good defense, but they can be part of a great defense. Paratroopers are one of the ways to combat them, but are themselves a flawed weapon system with exploitable weaknesses.

Mechalich
2018-03-28, 01:51 AM
On a more general note to the OP, as some have suggested this whole scenario is much easier if you just take the guns away later in some sort of mass catastrophe that also prevents new guns from being produced. That way you can have a world that is mostly similar to our own but that has sword fighting duels instead of guns.

It actually really sounds like what you want to do is use the universe of Into the Badlands (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3865236/?ref_=nv_sr_1). A post-apocalyptic dystopia that has access to technology that is at least mid-20th century - there are cars and x-ray machines but few if any computers - but everyone fights with swords and crossbows for some inexplicable reason. In that show it doesn't really matter why there are no guns, because the story is mostly a side effect of the show's central purpose, which is watching people have awesome and gratuitous sword fights. If you're just building a game world you really don't need to justify things much further.

Metahuman1
2018-03-28, 08:23 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycEZIbQqA8A


For starters, I think this is a good starting point.



A few other things I think would be noteworthy.


1: The Swiss would be a much bigger deal than they already are. There tradition of being both Undefeated and the absolute most sought after mercenary's in Europe only ended when firearms changed the game. If that didn't happen, I'm inclined to think all that would change is that 1: As mercenary's, they'd be the top Mercenaries globally now, and 2: they might have gotten more aggressive and expanded there boarders at some point. Might. Or hell, maybe the sweet Mercenary and Banking money would just have them buying a few miles every year in every direction over a couple of century's.



2: You'd probably not have seen it go out of fashion to carry a stout and sturdy walking stick/walking cain/walking staff, even if your only going a short distance and don't really need it as a walking aid. Related, you'd probably see it remain rather common to always have a knife on you, sort of like how most people today always have there wallet, keys and phone on them. Both of these would be for the same reason. They are your gold standard for personal self defense that isn't obtrusive and is in fact also useful in another capacity. They were for century's if you couldn't afford a sword + time to practice with a sword, which is widely considered harder to learn to a practical level, and if you weren't in a position to walk around with like, a Pole Arm or Crossbow, which most people were not.


3: Related to 2, you'd see it be considered practical and common to the point of it becoming regarded as negligent not to study some form of martial art. Stick and Knife fighting, Sword-fighting of some manner (Different swords work in different ways after all.) if you've the time and money, and various unarmed disciplines would be if not the most common then very, very common.

4: Dueling and violent crime likely becomes more common. There's a notable chunk of data that does suggest wide spread civilian firearm ownership does, statistically, have a deterrent effect on a number of methods of violent crime, if not actually, arguably, murder and manslaughter specifically.

This is a big part of why stick and knife and unarmed and sword fighting remains commonly practiced, and the times for 2-3 out of those things commonly carried on one's person and/or kept in the home.

And dueling, well, you've got enough people who want to settle disputes quickly, like the gratification of a win, and are spending a lot of time and effort to practice self defense and combat techniques as it's there only real recourse for personal safety anyway, even if it's not legal I expect fighting if not fighting to the death to settle a dispute to be vastly more common than it is today. And again, that's assuming at some point it still get's made Illegal to do it at all.

I do doubt that trial by combat in criminal cases would remain a thing if all that changes is no more guns.

Civil disputes on the other hand however.








Anyway, just some observations.

Segev
2018-03-28, 10:58 AM
To play devil's advocate, only a minority of people, even in America (where guns are a Constitutional right), actually carry guns. More people carry knives, and of those, most are intended as tools rather than weapons. So there's an interesting question to be asked: would a majority of people carry quarterstaves as "walking sticks" and self-defense knives if guns were not a thing? Or would modern society still be peaceable enough that people consider being armed to be unnecessary, by and large?

I actually think they would be more common, because guns are actually rather frightening self-defense weapons. They have no secondary purpose (like a knife or a "walking stick") and they can't be used in less-lethal ways. They maim and kill. Even a knife can be used to threaten with less risk of accidentally causing grievous harm.

So, I suspect that, because guns are scary to people in a way that other weapons are not, there would be a greater prevalence of personal sidearms for self-defense, because the threshold of socially-acceptable escalation would be higher. Guns push out to the next threshold beyond socially-acceptable escalation, because they are akin to Cyclops's eye beams (from the X-Men). Why would you bully the kid whose ruby lenses are the only things keeping him from turning you into a broken corpse? Because you know he has no means of fighting back that doesn't escalate to lethal levels, while your bullying is only a little beyond the official rules. It's well within "socially acceptable" escalation. "He said/she said" defenses can protect you, and even if you're found guilty by the authorities, it's a minor punishment that you don't actually find as bad as Cyclops finds your bullying.

If Cyclops had a power to cause you to have itchy rashes that made you look foolish and highly uncomfortable, he'd be far less likely to be bullied, because his power lies within acceptable levels of escalation. He gets in no more trouble for fighting back with it than you did for starting it. Maybe less, since his arguably has no permanent effect and is self-defense.

So, I think, if guns weren't the go-to self-defense weapon, more people would carry the go-to self-defense weapon, since they don't require escalating to lethal countermeasures. The deterrent effect is pretty strong, and probably contributes to far fewer people actually carrying such weapons for their own protection.

LordEntrails
2018-03-28, 12:55 PM
....
So, I think, if guns weren't the go-to self-defense weapon, more people would carry the go-to self-defense weapon, since they don't require escalating to lethal countermeasures. The deterrent effect is pretty strong, and probably contributes to far fewer people actually carrying such weapons for their own protection.
I think you contradict yourself here...

I agree with the first part of this conclusion, that more people would carry non-gun self defense weapons. But not the second, that the deterrent effect of non-gun self-defense would be stronger.

Taking your example, bullying Cyclops means if you push him too far means your death. To me, that's a pretty strong deterrent. Getting rashes? Not really.

Segev
2018-03-28, 01:43 PM
I think you contradict yourself here...

I agree with the first part of this conclusion, that more people would carry non-gun self defense weapons. But not the second, that the deterrent effect of non-gun self-defense would be stronger.

Taking your example, bullying Cyclops means if you push him too far means your death. To me, that's a pretty strong deterrent. Getting rashes? Not really.

I apparently failed to be clear, sorry. I meant that, IRL, as things stand, the deterrent effect of guns as the go-to self-defense weapons is such that fewer people carry any weapons at all. Fewer people want to have that level of escalation at their fingertips, and yet the threat of it makes us all safer for not wanting to carry "lesser" levels of escalation which might wind up trumped by Cyclops taking off his glasses.

...I fear that probably still doesn't make sense. Does that make sense? I know what I'm trying to say, but I keep finding myself bogging down in detail.

Anonymouswizard
2018-03-28, 02:56 PM
(Removed because I didn't like the wording, boiled down to 'unarmed police exist in the real world and aren't strictly less competent')

Now onto the issue of if police are armed, what would they be armed with? The obvious idea is swords and spears, but I don't think that's terribly likely if we're looking at a semi-modern police force. Truncheons work just as well in a world without guns, and so you'd likely see the primary police weapon being a club with shields and crossbows brought out for dangerous incidents. Tasers as well if they exist in the setting, if not likely the best reasonably cheap nonlethal weapon.

For really big things a police service probably has a couple of wands on standby.

We can go into more high tech ranged weapons that aren't firearms, gas propelled, guass, or directed energy, such as self-winching crossbows, but that's starting to violate the spirit a bit.

D+1
2018-03-28, 04:38 PM
My initial reaction is that I think crime would be more widespread and murders would be harder to solve. Anyone can shoot a gun, even if inaccurately (and even at short range), but it takes more strength and skill and deliberate action to effectively use a blade as a weapon. Even a simple Louisville Slugger takes some strength to do harsh damage beyond hitting someone in the head. Non-gun violence in the US is understandably lower than gun-related violence but not by as much as might be thought. All those crimes by gun would almost certainly be replaced by crimes with swords, clubs, non-gun projectiles and other weapons with the perpetrators tending to be physically stronger. Taking away the guns ability to project power at a distance doesn't change the nature of man. Maybe crimes of violence would be reduced, but I sincerely doubt it. They would simply take different forms or use different weapons.

I think warfare would be very, very medieval. By that I mean I think it would still use a huge amount of militia and not have come to rely predominantly on professional soldiers. Wars would last longer, involve vastly more common citizens as conscript troops, involve more massed battles, and consequently have much higher death tolls. Though infrastructure damage would be vastly less, the accompanying consequences to war of starvation, disease, and displacement in their wake might be even higher with higher male populations being depleted.

Finally, it occurs to me that drugs might be an even bigger concern with their use being employed by both criminals and military to attempt to bolster the physical qualities needed for brute combat.

I feel like there has to be a lot of alternative history fiction that has examined the basic idea here, but I've never been a big alternative history reader.

veti
2018-03-28, 04:53 PM
A world-building issues no one has touched yet.

There would probably be no democracies. They largely formed in the 18th-19th centuries when technology was such that numbers and morale were more important than having well equipped elite troops. If heavily armoured (and expensive) knights were never outmoded by massed cheap troops with muskets, the series of revolts (and threats/fears of the same) would likely have never really gotten rid of the aristocracy/nobility/feudalism.

I was thinking on these lines.

But... knights would still be outmoded, that's more a function of population density than military technology. It may have taken a bit longer, though. Railroads enable cities, and cities inevitably mean large-scale social structures, and the sidelining of the land-owning aristocracy. Democracy, capitalism, socialism would all still arrive.

And by this time, the military technology would be just as far beyond knights as what we know now. Swords? Bah. Think landmines, flamethrowers, napalm, gas, sonics, lasers. A lone grenadier could decimate a troop of knights in a matter of seconds. They'd carry a combat knife, not a sword. Swords are too big and cumbersome to carry around if they're not your primary weapon.

The big problem is trying to rewrite 7 centuries of history. Without guns, a lot of history works out very differently. Revolutions and wars either don't happen, or they end differently, or they happen at quite different times and between different combatants. The countries we know today - heck, even the very concept of what a "country" means - are probably quite different.

vasilidor
2018-03-28, 08:17 PM
you also have to remember that a lot of technologies were spurred on from the discovery of guns. I honestly believe that with out them a lot of what we now take for granted would not exist.

Metahuman1
2018-03-28, 10:39 PM
They'd carry a combat knife, not a sword. Swords are too big and cumbersome to carry around if they're not your primary weapon.



Except that there not.

Swords were in fact carried as a Side Arm.

Most persons who had a sword were starting with a Spear, a Halberd, A Pole Ax, A Dane Ax, A warhammer or battle ax or flail or scythe or Mace coupled with a shield. Later century's, a Pike or a Musket with a Bayonet. Or perhaps a crossbow or long bow.

The sword was the back up weapon in case they lost there primary weapon.



Very rarely in history was the Sword anyone's primary weapon in a battle field environment.


Especially if you weren't an officer after Gunpowder was introduced, and expected to really only fight other officers or emergency defense if things went south.

Swords excelled however as civilian defense weapons, and as mentioned, were very popular for dueling because, well, the nobles liked them and if you weren't a noble, odds were even if you had one, you weren't terribly good with it. And that was a big part of why Nobles liked them.

And again, there excellent civilian self defense weapons.

Lord Torath
2018-03-29, 08:40 AM
you also have to remember that a lot of technologies were spurred on from the discovery of guns. I honestly believe that with out them a lot of what we now take for granted would not exist.With the way the curse works (you instantly forget any idea for inventing a "Gun", and are instead redirected to something else) I really don't see this being an issue. You wouldn't come up with Bullet-proof vests (as bullets don't exist), but you could still come up with arrow-proof vests, or shrapnel-proof vests. The magic of the wish would let you jump past the gun directly to the following invention.

We still need a good definition of a "gun", though. Does a weaponized laser count? Does a spear gun (spring-loaded spear launcher) count? Or is it considered a form of crossbow? Does a rocket tipped with a warhead (whether explosive, gas, or bio-weapon) attached count? How did the Paladin who made the wish define a "gun" (assuming the wish grantor followed the paladin's intended wish)? Since the intent seems to be a world where swords and spears are viable weapons of war, I'd assume any man-portable ranged weapon more powerful than a heavy crossbow is off limits, as are any emplaced ranged weapons more powerful than a ballista or catapult. To me, that means no grenades, mortars, bombs, or cannons. But I'm not the one making the setting, so I don't know what she has in mind.

Aliquid
2018-03-29, 09:57 AM
you also have to remember that a lot of technologies were spurred on from the discovery of guns. I honestly believe that with out them a lot of what we now take for granted would not exist.And other things would have been invented because guns don't exist.... and things that were invented because of guns would have been invented anyway, but for other reasons.

There are plenty of real world examples of someone discovering something for one reason, and another person discovering the same thing... for a completely different reason. Doesn't happen as much these days with instant communication.

Segev
2018-03-29, 10:59 AM
Regarding swords as commonplace sidearms, I imagine they'd largely be more rapier-like than shortsword or broadsword like, if only because such are more easily concealed in canes. We may even see sword-umbrellas, to mix two impractical-to-carry items into one that has reason to be carried at all times so it's always available when either purpose is required.

LibraryOgre
2018-03-29, 12:19 PM
There would probably be no democracies. They largely formed in the 18th-19th centuries when technology was such that numbers and morale were more important than having well equipped elite troops. If heavily armoured (and expensive) knights were never outmoded by massed cheap troops with muskets, the series of revolts (and threats/fears of the same) would likely have never really gotten rid of the aristocracy/nobility/feudalism.

Greece, Rome, and Iceland would disagree.

Ancient Greece, of course, gave us the very word democracy.

Rome was a Republic for centuries.

Iceland, likewise, was a Republic before the Norwegians took over for a while.

Oh, and the Iroquois Confederacy, which was a Republic.

Segev
2018-03-29, 12:28 PM
Oh, and the Iroquois Confederacy, which was a Republic.

Ish. Each tribe had a seat on a ruling council, but the council's power was closer to that of the UN than, say, the US Senate. Additionally, the chiefs - who generally were the ones sitting in their tribes' council seats - were not necessarily elected. Though I believe the tribes were small enough that a certain level of popular support went into their selection.

It was closer to a tribal oligarchy.

Telonius
2018-03-29, 12:37 PM
Some early research into digestion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexis_St._Martin) would have been delayed. Or, depending on how the curse works and when it went into effect ... "He was injured by a ... huh, you know, I can't remember how it got there. Anyway, not important, the guy has a hole in his stomach and we can work with that."

TalonOfAnathrax
2018-03-29, 12:51 PM
You're imagining a world without Colonisation, you know. Or with very different international relations at least. Therefore you'd also have very different economic circumstances in whole areas of Africa/South America, different political alliances...

CharonsHelper
2018-03-29, 01:17 PM
Ancient Greece, of course, gave us the very word democracy.

Rome was a Republic for centuries.


Neither of those were anything like a modern democracy - despite being what inspired future ones.

Have you ever looked into what a mess Rome's republic was? There was a reason that the people welcomed it when Julius Caesar took over.

Only a small % of the populous got a real vote. There was a position that the plebeians got to vote in, but while it technically had power, for centuries it wasn't used significantly due to be strong-armed by the aristocracy. The first time it did? That was the first time all the senators got together with daggers and murdered someone at the Senate. (The Julius Caesar murder a few generations later was a repeat - and not the first repeat.)

LibraryOgre
2018-03-29, 01:27 PM
Neither of those were anything like a modern democracy - despite being what inspired future ones.

Have you ever looked into what a mess Rome's republic was? There was a reason that the people welcomed it when Julius Caesar took over.

Only a small % of the populous got a real vote. There was a position that the plebeians got to vote in, but while it technically had power, for centuries it wasn't used significantly due to be strong-armed by the aristocracy. The first time it did? That was the first time all the senators got together with daggers and murdered someone at the Senate. (The Julius Caesar murder a few generations later was a repeat - and not the first repeat.)

And yet, they were democracies and republics, even though they were broken. The concept did not flow from the barrel of a gun.

S@tanicoaldo
2018-03-29, 01:37 PM
And is not like our own democracies and republics aren't a huge mess of bureaucracy and corruption. c:

CharonsHelper
2018-03-29, 01:48 PM
And yet, they were democracies and republics, even though they were broken. The concept did not flow from the barrel of a gun.

Fair enough.

I should have initially said that there would probably be no "modern" democracies.

I still say that Rome was more like an oligarchy republic rather than a democratic republic based upon present definitions.

Lord Torath
2018-03-29, 01:59 PM
There doesn't really seem to be a correlation between gun ownership and democracy. Some democracies have high rates of individual gun ownership, while others have a very low rate. Same thing goes for authoritarian governments. Source: Small Arms Survey (http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/publications/by-type/yearbook/small-arms-survey-2007.html). Tunsia owns about 1 gun per 1000 people, and is democratic. North Korea has a similar rate of private gun ownership and is authoritarian. Switzerland, Finland, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen are all in the top ten countries for private gun ownership; two democracies, two authoritarian governments.

I suspect crime rates would vary similarly - some societies would be high crime, while others would be low crime.

What would modern warfare look like? With heavy armor but no equivalently heavy ranged weapons, you might end up with giant robots duking it out. Early tanks would likely have been APCs with lots of arrow/x-bow slits, with some mounting ballistas or catapults. As both sides started developing armored vehicles, you might start getting rams mounted on the fronts. Aircraft would be used for scouting and paratrooper drops. Fighter jets would be very different. Without guns, they might drag cables that could snag on enemy planes or foul their engines.

Segev
2018-03-29, 02:28 PM
There doesn't really seem to be a correlation between gun ownership and democracy. Some democracies have high rates of individual gun ownership, while others have a very low rate. Same thing goes for authoritarian governments. Source: Small Arms Survey (http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/publications/by-type/yearbook/small-arms-survey-2007.html). Tunsia owns about 1 gun per 1000 people, and is democratic. North Korea has a similar rate of private gun ownership and is authoritarian. Switzerland, Finland, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen are all in the top ten countries for private gun ownership; two democracies, two authoritarian governments.

I suspect crime rates would vary similarly - some societies would be high crime, while others would be low crime.

What would modern warfare look like? With heavy armor but no equivalently heavy ranged weapons, you might end up with giant robots duking it out. Early tanks would likely have been APCs with lots of arrow/x-bow slits, with some mounting ballistas or catapults. As both sides started developing armored vehicles, you might start getting rams mounted on the fronts. Aircraft would be used for scouting and paratrooper drops. Fighter jets would be very different. Without guns, they might drag cables that could snag on enemy planes or foul their engines.

I would be very surprised if the "1 in 1000" figure for N. Korea was misleading by virtue of it being non-coincidentally similar to 1 in 1000 people in N. Korea being part of the small, wealthy, ruling class.

I actually doubt the lack of guns would inhibit colonization very much. They were weapons of awe in certain areas, but no more deadly than crossbows for most purposes during the early stages of colonization. Most of the colonial power came from more resources to throw at it than the natives had. Better logistics, primarily.

Lord Torath
2018-03-29, 02:36 PM
Some early research into digestion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexis_St._Martin) would have been delayed. Or, depending on how the curse works and when it went into effect ... "He was injured by a ... huh, you know, I can't remember how it got there. Anyway, not important, the guy has a hole in his stomach and we can work with that.""Injured by a crossbow bolt". Or an arrow. Either one will easily make holes in the abdomen.

LibraryOgre
2018-03-29, 02:39 PM
The Mod Wonder: Be aware that we're starting to drift into politics again; perhaps we should drop the line about Democracies?

legomaster00156
2018-03-29, 08:59 PM
I'm not sure if this has been mentioned yet, but this video might be relevant to the conversation.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycEZIbQqA8A

Grek
2018-03-30, 12:14 AM
A world-building issues no one has touched yet.

There would probably be no democracies. They largely formed in the 18th-19th centuries when technology was such that numbers and morale were more important than having well equipped elite troops. If heavily armoured (and expensive) knights were never outmoded by massed cheap troops with muskets, the series of revolts (and threats/fears of the same) would likely have never really gotten rid of the aristocracy/nobility/feudalism.

No, we would still have democracies. They just would look a lot more Magna Carta and a lot less Bill of Rights.

The introduction of guns shifted government from an aristocratic system (where powerful individual warriors with high quality weapons/armour/training were in power) to a plutocratic system (where powerful individual merchants with the money to hire and equip commoners were in power) because guns meant that the plutocratic army would beat the aristocratic army. This in turn lead to the rise of universal suffrage, the idea that every man (and later every woman) gets a vote.

Feudalism is still out. There's no pyramid scheme with a king on top, dukes beneath him, counts beneath each duke, etc. etc. That system was a response to communication technology, to a situation where one King couldn't effectively govern anything more than a day's (horseback) travel from his palace. He had to have governors and lords underneath him with the authority to govern in the King's name. Add in modern telecommunications or even a postal service, and you'll swiftly see one of two results: a King with highly centralized authority, or an aristocratic parliament with either a royal figurehead or an elective monarch selected by act of parliament. Revolutions can shift from parliament to dictator, or swap out one king for another, but there's basically only two possible types of government: military dictatorship, or property-owner suffrage.

Women's lib is still on track, that's the result of antibiotics and birth control rather than a result of any sort of military takeover. Communism is still in, but looks different: it's focused on guild-based expansion of property ownership (where labourers come together and form a guild and the guild holds the means of production in common for the benefit of the guild) and on carving out a place for non-hereditary seats on the national parliament, or in buttering up the dictator enough not to have their property seized by the government and handed over to his aristocratic cronies. Nationalism is still in too, that's a product of vernacular printing rather than guns, so you can expect there to be a single unified German Empire which has all of the German nobility showing up to the same Reichstag and debating laws in German and possibly even planning to invade Poland. The major difference is that the common man doesn't get a vote - just rich men and rich women.

In terms of military technology, think something like a modern swat team, but with motorcycle lancers, even heavier armour and artillery support. The Red Baron is probably a literal baron of some place in Germany. That's your nation's military (and its police force - the idea of a police force that isn't part of the military is a plutocratic development), and it's owned and operated exclusively by wealthy hereditary aristocrats who have property-owner suffrage and surprisingly literate serfs working industrial concerns for hereditary landlords and/or powerful trade guilds.

Metahuman1
2018-03-30, 05:27 AM
I'm not sure if this has been mentioned yet, but this video might be relevant to the conversation.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycEZIbQqA8A

I could swear I posted that video on the previous page.

Altair_the_Vexed
2018-03-30, 06:26 AM
I've skimmed through the discussions here, so please forgive me if someone has mentioned this already - but removing gunpowder will have a massive impact on the industrialisation of the world.

Making guns and ammunition - from cannon and shot onwards to modern armaments - has been a major driving force for improved metallurgy. Without a need for the precision casting and milling to make guns, we only have to improve our smithing and forging techniques for most purposes. Sure, we still cast metals, but we don't need to do so in a way that can withstand explosive pressures - so we never need to improve casting beyond the most basic of methods.
Similarly, guns need precision cutting and tooling to bore out barrels, make reliable spring locks (match-locks, flint-locks and the like), and so on. And without the need for precision tooling to make guns, we don't need to develop the machinery to turn and cut hard metal en masse. Again, yes, we will probably do some machining of metals, but the precision and repeatability of that machining is less important.

These techniques are essential to our ability to make other technologies. Without the flawless strength of metals needed for guns, can we contain the massive pressures for large-scale steam power? Without steam power, and without the precision parts needed for guns, we reduce our ability make other engine types - we don't have the techniques and the engineering experience to make internal combustion engines.
Electricity will be impacted too. Without easily controlled mechanical power, electricity generation is nigh on impossible - we need strong precise gearing to make any sort of useful scale generators. Without the ability to produce a serious level of power to drive useful tools, lighting, heating and so on, electricity will be just an interesting scientific curiosity, and may never get harnessed as a power source at all.

So more than having a cultural impact on who wins what war, who rules what land - removing guns from history radically changes the technological age, or at best, massively postpones it.

Mechalich
2018-03-30, 06:55 AM
I've skimmed through the discussions here, so please forgive me if someone has mentioned this already - but removing gunpowder will have a massive impact on the industrialisation of the world.

Making guns and ammunition - from cannon and shot onwards to modern armaments - has been a major driving force for improved metallurgy. Without a need for the precision casting and milling to make guns, we only have to improve our smithing and forging techniques for most purposes. Sure, we still cast metals, but we don't need to do so in a way that can withstand explosive pressures - so we never need to improve casting beyond the most basic of methods.

The development of metallurgy would certainly progress differently - so would a number of other technologies such as chemistry - but you'd eventually hit on something else that required similar capabilities, like the steam boilers you mentioned and the development would happen. But this is just one of many second-order effects that occurs from the elimination of explosive projectile weaponry, which is why you can only really talk about this sort of thing in the broadest of possible strokes.

Starting from the 13th century and trying to imagine how seven hundred years of global history would unfold without a major technological element is a nigh impossible task. An alternative history starting from the 13th century and merely eliminating a single historical figure of importance - for instance Chinggis Khan - is an extraordinary task. It's much easier to take modern society, eliminate guns now, and then fast forward five years or so and have your setting unfold accordingly, as imagining the short term response to a suddenly gunless world is conceivable. Indeed, there have been several recent pop-culture attempts such as the TV series Revolution - which uses nanotechnology as its excuse - to put forward such a world (admittedly a rather lousy attempt), and the aforementioned Into the Badlands (a significantly better attempt, especially if 'swords are cooler!' is the reason for this setup).

Segev
2018-03-30, 09:56 AM
Indeed, the need for the pressure-withstanding chambers would eventually come up, and they would be developed. "Necessity is the mother of invention," is a saying for a reason.

Delta
2018-03-30, 11:57 AM
These techniques are essential to our ability to make other technologies. Without the flawless strength of metals needed for guns, can we contain the massive pressures for large-scale steam power?

I think at this point, your logic falls apart somewhat. You simply assume that without the metals needed for guns, there wouldn't be materials needed for steam power. When steam power comes around, the materials needed for that would be delevoped just as they were developed for guns. Yes, maybe some things might take a few years longer but I really think it would be far from as "massive" a technological delay as you make it sound.

LordEntrails
2018-03-30, 07:29 PM
Through the 20th century, technology was spurred by war. So, without guns, what military inventions would be needed or would replace guns. For every offense, there is a new defense, and for every new defense a new offense.

I think metallurgy would have still advanced similarly, even if just for improved armor and swords.

To figure out what those technologies would be, you still have to figure out what is a "gun". The broader you define such a thing, the more divergent (from history) those technologies would be. I still think biological weapons would play a much greater role. Maybe that would lead to earlier and socially acceptable genetic engineering (i.e. better health in order to resist bio weapons, etc).

(edit: spurred)

Karl Aegis
2018-03-30, 09:11 PM
Maybe we'd see a shift from armor and melee weapons to aerosols like bed liner or some kind of resin that gunks up armor.

Altair_the_Vexed
2018-03-31, 03:01 AM
I think at this point, your logic falls apart somewhat. You simply assume that without the metals needed for guns, there wouldn't be materials needed for steam power. When steam power comes around, the materials needed for that would be developed just as they were developed for guns. Yes, maybe some things might take a few years longer but I really think it would be far from as "massive" a technological delay as you make it sound.

You're assuming someone has the imagination to think "If I could only contain this massive and dangerous pressure, and somehow transfer it to do work..." - in an age where there is no material for the job.

The whole of steam power requires metallurgy developed centuries before from guns - the pistons, pressure vessels, pipework and boilers are all contingent on having metal good enough to do the job.

If we don't have the metal strength to contain steam pressures high enough to do work, it's likely we'll stick with the power system we already have for far longer. Which means more water wheel systems. In our real world, water power was dominant for decades during the industrial revolution before steam power became the big thing. But water power is fixed in place (where the water is). The leap to mechanised travel can't happen with water power.

Guns sort of worked - unreliably - while the metallurgy was less developed. They failed to operate, exploded and cracked more often that later weapons, but that unreliability was acceptable given their impressive power. Making a working system better is easier than creating a new system, especially when that new system need technology that you don't have yet, so gradual incremental improvements in metallurgy were driven by improvements in weapons. It's quite another thing to leap from basic cast and wrought iron and steel to the sort of metalwork required to make steam power in one go.

Blackhawk748
2018-03-31, 08:10 AM
I would like to point out that the Romans had all of the parts required to make a steam engine, they just never assembled them in that particular fashion

hymer
2018-03-31, 09:17 AM
I would like to point out that the Romans had all of the parts required to make a steam engine, they just never assembled them in that particular fashion
Another argument for not having slaves. It blunts creativity.

Altair_the_Vexed
2018-04-01, 05:58 AM
I would like to point out that the Romans had all of the parts required to make a steam engine, they just never assembled them in that particular fashion

Exactly my point - without the metallurgy to contain the pressure, the power of steam wasn't harnessed to do actual work for another 1500 years or so.

Blackhawk748
2018-04-01, 08:41 AM
Exactly my point - without the metallurgy to contain the pressure, the power of steam wasn't harnessed to do actual work for another 1500 years or so.

They had the metallurgy they just never had a reason to do it

Marcelinari
2018-04-01, 09:21 AM
I would like to point out that the Romans had all of the parts required to make a steam engine, they just never assembled them in that particular fashion

In actual fact, they did, but the technology was never applied on any sort of massive scale. Hero of Alexandria, for example, created the Aeolipile (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile), which could easily have been developed to be capable of useful work, if slave labor wasn't so culturally acceptable and available. There was no incentive to develop the technology, rather than metallurgy being the primary limiting factor.

vasilidor
2018-04-01, 06:02 PM
you have to look at the pressures required to make it worth while. the had steam engines yes, but they never believed it to be more useful than a toy because of the low pressure thresholds they had (they knew with what they had it would blow up in their faces if they actually tried anything productive with it).
this was because while yes they had steal, they did not have the ability to work it into piping, which was all brass or bronze, easier to manipulate and do fine work with, not that great for high pressures required for steam engines designed to actually do work.
now if there was the desire, than yes experimentation into metallurgy for steam engines could have been done, but this same technology could have been used to make guns (Steam cannons) and in a world where guns or anything of the sort were not invented, it would require that nothing ever came of steam engines for that very reason. if it becomes possible to make something (especially new ways to kill) we make it.

Segev
2018-04-02, 11:33 AM
Through the 20th century, technology was spurned by war.

Apologies for the quibble, but you want the word "spurred," here. "Spurned" means "rejected."

Metahuman1
2018-04-02, 06:38 PM
you have to look at the pressures required to make it worth while. the had steam engines yes, but they never believed it to be more useful than a toy because of the low pressure thresholds they had (they knew with what they had it would blow up in their faces if they actually tried anything productive with it).
this was because while yes they had steal, they did not have the ability to work it into piping, which was all brass or bronze, easier to manipulate and do fine work with, not that great for high pressures required for steam engines designed to actually do work.
now if there was the desire, than yes experimentation into metallurgy for steam engines could have been done, but this same technology could have been used to make guns (Steam cannons) and in a world where guns or anything of the sort were not invented, it would require that nothing ever came of steam engines for that very reason. if it becomes possible to make something (especially new ways to kill) we make it.

And yet, I'm still inclined to think the idea would come along in it's own time anyway. If, for no other reason, than the usefulness of putting it on a ship, or keeping mines running for the slaves in conditions were flooding would make that utterly useless, would be too much of a thing to never come around.

Maybe they came later, but I think they would come around.

vasilidor
2018-04-03, 12:54 AM
and then be promptly weaponized. it is one of those technologies that would make people go "now how do I kill with this?"
I am very much a pessimist when it comes to human behavior. there is pretty much nothing that we did not at one point try to weaponize in some fashion or another.

Amon Winterfall
2018-04-03, 01:43 AM
Without guns, the next technology is probably rockets or grenades. Either of these weapons would impose a lot more restrictions than guns (Rockets are going to be very difficult to make and a lot heavier than guns, Grenades are close range weapons unless they're somehow launched).

Armor may well get bulkier and heavier if grenades take the fore. Eventually, the rise of steam power means that early tanks go rolling into battle; by this point grenade payloads are truly terrible things like ultra-strong acids, incendiaries, and maybe even radioactive waste products.

In a world of Rockets, fighting ironically goes further and further away from contact. Scaling up a rocket to hit something stationary like a city is a feature of modern military planning, and hitting at artillery ranges isn't particularly difficult.

Rocket World would make heavy use of underground construction--if you can't indirect fire the rocket, you'd need to storm the bunkers.

Altair_the_Vexed
2018-04-03, 01:53 AM
And yet, I'm still inclined to think the idea would come along in it's own time anyway. If, for no other reason, than the usefulness of putting it on a ship, or keeping mines running for the slaves in conditions were flooding would make that utterly useless, would be too much of a thing to never come around.

Maybe they came later, but I think they would come around.

Nah - there are easy ways around a lack of steam power that don't need the complex skills and high-spec materials. Here's a wooden waterwheel that's still running (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laxey_Wheel)(as a museum piece) that was built to pump water out of a mine in a place where steam power was slightly less optimal than usual.

We're very good at avoiding things that are hard to do unless there's some sort of immediate return on it - like killing our enemies.
Look at the space race - if it wasn't for the impetus of an arms race piggy-backing on the rocket technology, the 20th century superpowers would not have bothered. It's only now that private companies are getting in on space projects at all, more than half a century after the way was paved by rival militaries trying to get nukes into orbit.

Clistenes
2018-04-03, 03:57 AM
If gunpowder wasn't discovered but technological advancement still happened, people would have found other ways to kill each other: flamethrowers, incendiary bombs, TNT, poisonous gas, steam-based cannons, airguns, railguns, electric slugthrowers, lasers, microwaves... etc.

Ratter
2018-04-03, 11:40 AM
This is actually interesting... I would guess that wars would happen WAY more often, after all, quick victories would be very hard, speaking of, more war based cultures, normally skilled fighters were less valuable than lots of fighters because any schmuck with a gun can kill someone, so a culture bent on being amazing at fighting COULD prosper. Wooden barricades would be SUPER good in war without guns. Guerilla warfare would more rely on ambushes and less on cover. Speaking of, almost no populace could overthrow an established government without outside help and LOTS of luck. Land would rarely trade hands without peaceful trade. Any mobile spys, mobile people in general is super useful. BUT lets not forget the way humans do things, we would likely find other ways to do things, like specially designed weapons to punch through walls, weapons to cut through drawbridge ropes etc. So in wake of no guns, we develop things that make guns unneccessary. You could have a field day with that.

Ratter
2018-04-03, 11:41 AM
electric slugthrowers

That was a crappy kids show

Segev
2018-04-03, 11:52 AM
War's commonality is more, I think, a product of what kind of government one has, than the weaponry with which it's waged. When the people who actually fight and die in a war have no say in whether it's declared, it's much easier for the ruling class to take offense at other rulers' actions, or even just decide that their personal wealth will be improved by the spoils of war, and send their peasants to fight and die for their honor, gold, and glory. When the citizenry who will sacrifice for the war effort actually have a say in whether the war is declared or not, however, the rulers have to actually convince them to support it. What does the farmer or factory worker care that President Pete was called names by Dictator Dave? I mean, sure, he's offended, but he doesn't want to sign up for the military and go to war over it. He doesn't want Pete sending his son or tax dollars after Dave for it, either.

He certainly isn't going to be swayed by the notion of conquering Dave's lands. What good does that do Factory worker Frank or Farmer Fred? He won't see any of those spoils, unless he signs up for war and loots directly. And we've established that he doesn't want to do that, most likely. Now, if it were Prince Pete, with autocratic power to declare war, he'd be tempted by seizing Dave's lands; it's a huge boost to his own wealth. And Frank and Fred would be forced to go along with it.

This is why democracies go to war more rarely.

The Roman Republic was still an oligarchy. And because military service was an avenue to Citizenship (and thus membership in that oligarchy), it was unusually popular to go to war to conquer: all the incentives pointed that way.

That isn't true in most modern democracies, and even those which have some sort of compulsory military service don't tend to loot and plunder and derive wealth from conquest, at least not for the common soldier. So the incentive on the part of the decision-makers just doesn't exist to support war as a first option. The destruction of wealth is felt at the level of the commoner, and so when the commoner gets to make decisions, he decides against it more often than not.

RazorChain
2018-04-03, 03:59 PM
Just focus on what you want.

Armored men with semiautomatic clockwork/electric crossbows

Fortified cities and borders

The big question is if you are going to include explosives and rockets.

Miniturization is eventually going to bring about Gyrocs if there are no guns. Gyrocs are small version of the rocket launcher that rapidly fire small rockets, so it's a gun in essense.

If there are no rockets but explosives then grenades will be prevalent in warfare and ballistae or other means will be used to shoot bigger payloads at the enemy until the advent of flight.

Police will have melee weapons and repeating crossbows.

Akolyte01
2018-04-03, 05:40 PM
No gunpowrder and no form of gun what so ever.

But how does that work exactly? Why didn't anyone invent it? Is it physically impossible? If internal combustion is possible it is inevitable that it would be weaponized. If its not possible then you wouldn't have cars or most industry in general.

Metahuman1
2018-04-03, 07:39 PM
and then be promptly weaponized. it is one of those technologies that would make people go "now how do I kill with this?"
I am very much a pessimist when it comes to human behavior. there is pretty much nothing that we did not at one point try to weaponize in some fashion or another.

I didn't say they wouldn't weaponize it.

You've got a ship faster and more maneuverable and heavier than any ship that doesn't have a steam engine as the power source and isn't built around having it.

Ramming is a thing.


Far as that goes, it's not hard to harass the crew of the other ship if they don't have a steam engine, meaning you can tire them out before you board with an entirely fresh crew. Which means any ship that isn't running on Steam is at a crippling disadvantage.

So they become prevalent as a necessity.


And then ramming is still a thing. And eventually, that probably does move to land. Vehicles are expensive though even rammers, and probably need infantry support to keep them from getting stolen in combat situations, so Infantry melee fighting isn't made irrelevant by this alone.




Altair_the_Vexed : Again, I submit, that there are other uses for Steam Power that people would be all over. Getting your goods and money from point A to Point B more rapidly for example.

Altair_the_Vexed
2018-04-04, 07:04 AM
...


Altair_the_Vexed : Again, I submit, that there are other uses for Steam Power that people would be all over. Getting your goods and money from point A to Point B more rapidly for example.

And I'll submit that no one had done anything with the steam power that was known of since before the fall of Rome because they lacked the metallurgy to make it work usefully. Once that metallurgy was developed for guns, it was quickly (about 200 years) applied to make steam power useful.

My argument - more of a suggestion really, as by its nature, we can't know what would happen in alternate history - is that steam power requires advanced metal working, and that advanced metal working wouldn't be driven by the desire for steam power, because we wouldn't have the knowledge that steam power could be as useful as it later became.

It's sort of like trying to invent computing without the concept of the number zero - you can only go so far before you reach a seemingly impossible problem.

Lord Torath
2018-04-04, 08:41 AM
But how does that work exactly? Why didn't anyone invent it? Is it physically impossible? If internal combustion is possible it is inevitable that it would be weaponized. If its not possible then you wouldn't have cars or most industry in general.The OPs intention is that anyone who thinks about inventing a gun has the thought removed and replaced with inventing something else. All the ingredients are there for making guns, but any time anyone gets the idea to, <shloop!> the thought is sucked out of their head. You could even invent a powder-powered nail gun, but as soon as someone gets the idea to use it as a weapon, <shloop!>.