No Gunpowder

CountofDooku

CountofDooku

What would a world without Gunpowder look like and how much would change in a time-line without Bombs, Firearms and other inventions from Gunpowder?

How would Empires, great historic Leaders and other things be effected?
 

Nik

A lot depends on what 'Greek Fire' actually was...

Lost the reference but, IIRC, there were several versions-- Think flame-thrower vs 'WillyPete' vs incendiary bombs. Snag was their recipes were held so secret, the various stages of their disparate processes were apparently lost during serial Byzantine upheavals...

I suppose the modern analogy would be 'FogBank', the near-mythical stuff acting as spacer in US' Cold War H-bombs. It was 'beyond top secret', with added security due obscurity. To the point, apparently, that the documented recipe *didn't work right* when later retrieved from the vaults. IIRC, the US had to spend a LOT of money re-inventing that toxic aerogel...

Um, unlike nukes, some counter-measures had been developed for some aspects of 'Greek Fire'. Still...
 
CountofDooku

CountofDooku

So it depends if we speak a) of the Chinese Gunpowder in the Middle Ages, or b) the much earlier Greek Fire or even c) simple another nation inventing something similar? So the who and when invented this?

How big would the difference be between such a time-line and our own, not just compared to the military but also the changes that came with it. A mass produced industrial revolution type society in the middle ages culture and mindset has to be much different then a already renaissance one, beginning from small political differences to a whole other nature of how they treat their people and how they view war.

Without gunpowder and the following inventions some kind of world war in this time-line would look much different on a maybe smaller scale (at least comparing the overall losses maybe, not looking at the geography it takes place). Would technological inventions look much different in this world, would war still be glory, just and holy because they will never see or suffer the millions of death and the horrors of the World Wars? Also the population might be smaller with a later or never occurring industrial revolution I guess?
 

Nik

Sorry, I've just had this awful vision of a battle out of a 'D&D' or 'GoT' scenario, with pike-men, shield walls, catapults hurling huge fire-balls, archers' flaming arrows and 'grenadiers' tossing incendiaries, these horrors concocted by mercenary 'Weapon Wizards'...

Sorry, got an essential op' coming up, its fast making me grumpy.
 

trurle

Banned
CountofDooku said:
What would a world without Gunpowder look like and how much would change in a time-line without Bombs, Firearms and other inventions from Gunpowder?

How would Empires, great historic Leaders and other things be effected?
Click to expand...
Any restriction on weapon technologies would benefit organized stated. Victories by training and army size, not by technological marvels.
In particular, Mongols are never going much past China. Not without their grenades and early cannons.

As about far-away consequences, much is dependent on exactly how gunpowder is prohibited. By change in bacterial biochemistry? (less available nitrates) Physics change (if yes, to which scope - just more stable nitrates, or blanket ban on explosives)?

People seeking advantage over adversaries will tend to invent various functional equivalents to gunpowder. Incendiaries, compressed air bombs, steam cannons, crossbows etc. I suspect a sort of magazine crossbow with electric motor based re-tensioning mechanism will be equivalent of OTL rifles of late 19th century. Batteries instead of gunpowder.
 

Nik

IIRC, there are still attempts to build a practicable liquid-fuelled cannon. It would revolutionise tank weaponry, for starters, removing combustible propellant from the turret thus doubling shell storage capacity. And no shell-cases to eject...

It would also benefit rapid-fire guns in that size-range, such as modern warships' turrets. Again, no shell-cases to eject...

( Yes, I know trad battleships' BIG guns had bagged charges... )

'Indirect Fire' artillery benefits because the 'charge' may be metered to adjust range rather than minutely cranking the angle. Also, rifling wear may be compensated easier...

FWIW, air-guns had an outing during the musket era. The tech was *just* advanced enough to have a hand-pumped tank providing enough pressure for several shots and enough range for a sniper to silently target officers...
 

Kevin Renner

Without gunpowder IMO you would never see the concept of liquid propellant guns. Possibly the concept of airguns goes to. Another possibility is no internal combustion engines.
 

Dathi THorfinnsson

Don't forget, too, the impact gunpowder had on mining and engineering (tunneling, canal excavation, that sort of thing).

Explosives will be invented by the time that tech gets to the 1850s level. Things like guncotton and nitroglycerin WILL be discovered when people are mucking about with industrial chemistry and acids. But you could, in theory, have no explosives until then. IMO.

----
Earlier gunpowder is more often explored here than none at all, but see the following

Could industrialization have occurred without gunpowder?
Alternate routes of technological development
Could Europe have become the dominant continent without gunpowder?
If gunpowder wasn't discovered and/or weaponized.
High middleages without gunpowder.
Latest possible invention of gunpowder
History- sans gunpowder
No Gunpowder
Gunpowder discovery delayed.
WI no gunpowder
Industrial Revolution before gunpowder?
Gunpowder is never invented
Military Tactics Without Gunpowder
No Gunpowder
Gunpowder not invented
What if gunpowder was shunned/ or never developed?
 
Last edited:

Dathi THorfinnsson

balthasargettysburg said:
Formula too easy. SOMEBODY finds it. Best question: POD the Inca and the Zulu find it "first." Now what?
Click to expand...
OTL, it looks like it was only found a single time in all history. If it were that easy to find, others would have.

Really, why are you mixing charcoal, sulfur and saltpetre like that? You need an alchemical or medical tradition of experimenting with weird combinations of substances. You also need that same tradition to be able to IDENTIFY those substances reliably. So... Lots of peoples could have done it; much of the ancient Middle East, Egypt, China, Renaissance Europe all would be good possibilities. Zulus? Nope, no way. They don't have the settled towns and merchants and alchemists, etc., needed. Whether the Inca could have done it as a wild fluke, I don't know. I don't know what their medical and alchemical traditions were.
 

Escape Zeppelin

Dathi THorfinnsson said:
OTL, it looks like it was only found a single time in all history. If it were that easy to find, others would have.

Really, why are you mixing charcoal, sulfur and saltpetre like that? You need an alchemical or medical tradition of experimenting with weird combinations of substances. You also need that same tradition to be able to IDENTIFY those substances reliably. So... Lots of peoples could have done it; much of the ancient Middle East, Egypt, China, Renaissance Europe all would be good possibilities. Zulus? Nope, no way. They don't have the settled towns and merchants and alchemists, etc., needed. Whether the Inca could have done it as a wild fluke, I don't know. I don't know what their medical and alchemical traditions were.
Click to expand...

Technologically there's no reason that gunpowder couldn't have been invented by the Romans, but like you said it's such a weird combination of things that it's not surprising that nobody did it. It's like finding out refined tree sap enables levitation when combined with essence of duck and moon dust. Even if you were combining random things gunpowder would be an unusual combination to hit on.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top
Top