As we all know, ranged weapons like firearms and cannons gradually became more and more important on the battlefield, until by the end of the 19th century they were completely dominant. Your challenge is simple: with a POD any time after the invention of gunpowder, engineer a situation in which hand-to-hand combat is still a major and common part of warfare in the year 1900.
AHC: Stop ranged weapons being so dominant on the battlefield
- Thread starter Fabius Maximus
- Start date
You either have to nerf the invention of firearms which will completely change the course of history or have some effective ballistic body armor invented. The only possible solutions for the body armor are some unknown metal combination or a revolution in ceramics, possibly in the 1800s when Europe really gets a handle on things like porcelain.
this depends on how far you want to take it. the battle of Agincourt in 1415 proved that the longbow (a ranged weapon) was more effective than any armoured knight or foot soldier.
Not really, Agincourt is more an argument in favor of careful positioning and tactics as a means to defeat a numerically and qualitatively superior foe than it is an argument about why longbows are better than knights. Cavalry dominated the battlefield long after this point and the cream of the English long bowmen mostly died over the course of the war when they didn't have such good tactics on their side.
For example similar tactical moves where made by the Czech during the Hussite wars, Cavalry wasn't worse than ranged fighters because of it. They just didn't absolutely ensure victory.
Define "major and common." The Brits still make bayonet charges today and other armies did them up until Korea (and did them fairly frequently up until about the US Civil War); how often do those need to happen for it to meet your goal?
I think that to keep melee combat training seen as a fully essential part of a soldier's skillset by 1900, all you would really need to do is have something like a messier Boxer Rebellion that creates a more urgent apparent need to have soldiers trained in melee combat in case crazies try to punch them. (Or maybe the Harmonious Fists actually win and it's attributed to the strength of their kung fu.)
Now, if you're talking about some sort of scenario where, if the 1900 French and German armies meet on the battlefield, the first thing they do is charge each other with sharp sticks, then you pretty much have to delay technological development in general. Which is also doable, but less easy.
I think that to keep melee combat training seen as a fully essential part of a soldier's skillset by 1900, all you would really need to do is have something like a messier Boxer Rebellion that creates a more urgent apparent need to have soldiers trained in melee combat in case crazies try to punch them. (Or maybe the Harmonious Fists actually win and it's attributed to the strength of their kung fu.)
Now, if you're talking about some sort of scenario where, if the 1900 French and German armies meet on the battlefield, the first thing they do is charge each other with sharp sticks, then you pretty much have to delay technological development in general. Which is also doable, but less easy.
Xenobiological flying mammals of extraterrestrial origin make any kind of chemical propellant inert with a beat of their fleshy wings.
As much as I don't like useless answers like this, I have to say any prevention of ranged weapons would be impossible without magical blocks. Even if a series of treaties prohibited it, sooner or later someone would break those treaties when it became obvious he could kill his enemies before they came within sword range. Like the battleship, swords are still deadly weapons--provided you can get close enough to use them.
Exactly. Once it's figured out that if you mix a few common chemicals together you get gunpowder any kind of control on it is impossible in the long term. And all arms development follows logically from this point, you can't have gunpowder just for fireworks and not for guns.
Once a technology is known to exist, it cannot be kept secret. It's true with nukes(and super-solider nanobots) and it's true with gunpowder.
Simple: don't invent gunpowder.
It was originally developed around the 800s IIRC- the Chinese using it for rockets, bombs, etc. as well as "fire lances" or very very crude "guns". Black powder first appeared in Europe around 1200 courtesy of the Mongols/Muslims; by the 1300s it was seeing limited use primarily in siege mortars, basically bells turned on their sides and stuffed with a giant rock to fire over a castle wall. The first (European) hand guns started appearing around that time, but they were quite crude and didn't really "take off" as practical infantry weapons until the 1400s, becoming increasingly important over the next two hundred years; 1650-1750 is when guns finally emerged as the preeminent battlefield weapon.
In other words, it took a hell of a long time to get from "black powder that goes boom when you burn it" to "stuff it down a metal tube along with a lead ball and kill anything in front of you."
Gunpowder was actually surprisingly complicated to "stumble across" and its discovery is IMO by no means a given.
Without gunpowder, pikes, plate armored lancers, horse archers. and to a lesser extent crossbows are the most prominent on the battlefield. Tactics and logistics determine the precise ratio/effectiveness/employment of them.
Eventually, given general technological progress one might imagine that chemistry is developed, and explosives start appearing- but it is entirely feasible to delay the development of gunpowder for several centuries.
dead_wolf
Banned
Crossbows and regular bows are still "ranged weapons" though. Before the rise of gunpowder weapons European warfare was already moving towards heavily favoring ranged weapons, mixed units of pike and crossbow formed the basis for later pike & shot formations.
Well, as far as I can tell, the first proto-guns were invented c. 1100, which is around three centuries after gunpowder itself was invented; also, it seems (although it's difficult to tell for sure) that it was only invented once, and its subsequent spread was due to diffusion rather than to parallel evolution. Plus, of course, even countries where handguns were known often didn't exploit them as much as the European nations did. So I'm not so sure that the line from "Cool exploding powder discovered" to "Battlefield dominance by firearms scything down enemy soldiers with bullets" is quite as inevitable as you seem to think.
There was actually a kind of bullet-proof vest invented in the 1800s made from layered cloth. It was apparently effective against rifle and musket bullets, but its unfortunate tendency to catch fire meant that it never really caught on. If there could be found some way of reducing its flammability, you might see them coming into general use.
Why, exactly?
You can delay firearms by limiting the spread of gunpowder, certainly, but to get rid of them entirely it'd be comparable to getting rid of steam technology. After the invention of practical gunpowder, it was weaponized almost immediately, though bombs and fire lances. The basic technology of a firearm isn't a far stretch at all from other tech of the time, so yes, they will eventually develop and spread.
No doubt some sort of firearm would be developed, but early firearms were very inaccurate and short-range. Even as late as the 1470s, Charles the Bold's army contained approximately five times as many archers as handgunners. So I don't think it inevitable that they'd end up taking off; indeed, they only really took off in Europe, other parts of the world adopting them under European influence. Butterfly away their adoption in Europe, and I see no reason why the rise of the handgun would be inevitable.
Well the major reason for adopting firarms was because it took a short time to train a man to use one so if you have firearms you could raise an army very quickly. A bow on the otherhand takes a lifetime of practice to be proficient. The only thing necessary to use a gun is to know how to reload. It also does not require a soldier to be in top physical condition. A toddler could use a pistol not very well but they could. Also early firearms could be stopped easily by plate armor. Doesnt stop the horse from getting killed though. And enough guns firing at once one would get lucky and hit a weak point in the armor.
But, as soon as they encountered them, they took to them rapidly (look at e.g. Sengoku Japan, which quickly developed its own firearms industry).
And even if early firearms were crude, they will be subject to further development. They advanced rapidly OTL, after all, and not just in the form of handcannons, but also siege weaponry (which everyone recognized as a possible application right away), which will encourage continued development of firearms technology, even if personal weaponry is not initially emphasized.
Besides, even if you somehow prevent gunpowder from developing, crossbows and other ranged weapons are becoming increasingly important. The fact is, as soon as you get the ability to reliably kill someone before he can come close enough to kill you, ranged weapons are inevitably going to dominate. That's not really something you can change, it's simple logic.
Assuming you can avoid weapons that the average shmuck can own, however, "simple logic" can be derailed by considerations of "honor" and other ego driven things - look at how slow the Mamelukes were to accept firearms.
Of course, they were fine with bows, but I bring this up because people's decisions on this weren't governed purely by what did the most damage in the most efficient way.