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Cake day: July 25th, 2023

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  • It is, honestly, not nearly as bad as you’d think. The weight should be pretty well distributed, armor doesn’t have to be all that heavy to stop a sword, and the gambeson is doing a lot of the heavy lifting for piercing weapons. Blunt weapons, well, those are going to be unpleasant pretty much no matter what. You get really hot though; there’s a reason that the Saracens did such a number on the crusaders when they were able to get them outside of cities.

    Wearing a plate carrier is, IMO, worse than wearing a gambeson and chain maille.





  • Sword fight? Fanning at each other, crossing and smacking swords.

    Just watch Olympic fencing; you get a very fast exchange that you can’t follow, and then someone has a point. In a real sword fight, without armor, that’s about what would happen. OTOH, when everyone is wearing armor, it gets a lot messier.

    And of course, the classic gunfight where nobody hits anything.

    That is surprisingly common. Most people are really bad shots when they’re stressed out. It’s physiological; when your body dumps adrenaline into your bloodstream, you lose fine motor control. So unless you’ve trained extensively under stressful conditions, you’re gonna have a hard time doing shit.



  • Most people in the military do a basic qualification that is pretty easy to pass (23/49 targets, at ranges from 25 to 300m); these aren’t head shots, these are just on the target. Once you’ve done that, and graduated from basic, depending on your specialty, you may rarely touch a rifle. Lots of former military people think that they’re good, just because they managed a single qualification, and that they know a lot about guns, but it’s often just fudd-lore. Spec ops guys and Marines tend to be more proficient overall, because they spend more time practicing. (TBH, a lot of the spec ops are very mediocre as far as competitive shooting goes, but they have a lot of other skills that are relevant to the military, and tend to refuse to give up.) Cops are often even worse; their qualifications are at short distances, with very lenient time standards.

    Bear in mind that the kill-to-bullet ratio in Afghanistan was about 1:300,000; most shooting in the modern military is suppressive, rather than directed at a specific target.

    Compare that to someone that’s a USPSA B class shooter, or someone that regularly shoots PCSL 2 gun matches; they will tend to outshoot a lot of retired military, because they tend to practice, and practice on a shot timer, a lot.



  • Without claiming outright magic […]

    …We’re still talking about zombies, right? Animated corpses that have an overwhelming need to consume human flesh, and can only be killed with overwhelming brain damage? I’m pretty sure that’s the definition of magic right there. If you’re talking about something like the cordyceps fungi–which, to infect humans, would still need some kind of magical power–you still have a very, very finite limit on how long a ‘human’ will survive (about four weeks without food, give or take), so you should be able to just wait them out, rather than needing to proactively kill them.

    That zombie horde will be a lot less dangerous and easy to clean up once it’s crawling on the ground with all the speed of a toddler.

    Less dangerous, yes. Not not dangerous, depending on which version of zombies you’re talking about specifically.





  • Kinda hard to walk with one leg

    Zombies can and do drag themselves, or even worm their way across fields. Until the brain is destroyed, they’re a threat.

    25mm chain gun is probably going to mist a few bodies.

    Sure, but, again, unless you hit the head, they’re still a threat. And meanwhile, you’ve blown through a thousand rounds of ammo.

    Artillery is an area denial weapon.

    You can only deny area when people aren’t willing to charge into it. Zombies aren’t doing massed charges though; each and every zombie is Leroy Jenkins, acting entirely independently, and with zero foresight.

    IMO, the most effective method weapon would be a steam roller, as long as all the mechanical parts and the operator cockpit were completely covered so that a zombie couldn’t damage anything. Like, say, some of the mine removal vehicles. Moving around is going to attract the zombies, and then running them over would eliminate them.


  • Given that independent (non-Democratic/Republican) candidates hold only a very, very tiny minority of all elected positions, I’d say that there have not been plenty of people putting in the work. Shit, look at local election; school boards positions elections sometimes have less than a thousand voters participating, depending on the school board. You should absolutely be able to get enough people knocking on doors to get Libertarian candidates (in Republican-dominated areas) or Green candidates (in Democratic-dominated areas) winning, if you just had people going out and knocking on doors.


  • Conventional infantry tactics don’t really work against zombies. For instance, suppressing fire; you can’t suppress zombies, because they don’t care if they get shot, and it only matters if they get shot in the head. You can’t inflict any amount of damage that’s going to force a retreat. Artillery and bombs are only going to effect them if they’re in the direct blast zone; shrapnel still has to penetrate the brain.

    Your best bets are likely going to be napalm and flame throwers. I’m not sure how many napalm bombs the US military has, but I’m pretty sure that they don’t have tons of flamethrowers.


  • That’s mostly because not enough people are willing to put in the work down ballot years prior to a presidential campaign to do anything. You have an infinitesimal number of 3rd party candidates holding local offices, almost none holding state offices, and only four independents in Congress (…two of whom are not running for reelection).

    If you’re not seeing 3rd party people getting elected to state and national office, then voting 3rd party for president is obviously a losing strategy.


  • You shouldn’t need to. .300 Win mag is long action, so you’re going to be using a bolt action rifle. There’s not going to be too many contexts where you’re going to want to swap out the scope for anything other than fairly long range.


  • HelixDab2@lemm.eetoMemes@lemmy.mlPerfect clarity
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    3 days ago

    Why would you us a bow? Range is poor, and lethality is also low, esp. with the access the the ultra-wealthy have to medicine. When you hunt deer with a bow, you can usually expect to have to follow a blood trail, as it’s rarely an instant drop.

    Use a .300 Winchester magnum from 1000 yards; at that distance, you still have about 850 foot-pounds of energy, which is roughly double a 9mm at point black range. With the right ammo, that’s more than enough to get the job done. You probably want a combined mechanical and ammunition accuracy of about .5 MOA range though, so that you have deviation of less than 6" at that range. It’s a challenging shot, but it’s definitely doable if you know your holds and can call the wind.