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It’s improbable that something as simple as gunpowder would never be discovered. But, early gunpowder magazines were extremely dangerous. If sensitive high explosives had been discovered first, it’s conceivable that firearms might not have caught on with early militaries due to the existing negative connotations with high explosives. I’m going to run with that premise since it seems somewhat plausible.Archery:Bows are good weapons; I used one for many years. I’ve even used a bow for self defense. For a long time, they were what you used to kill people in battle when you didn’t want to get close enough to be hit yourself. That made bows an important weapon in warfare.Both bows and crossbows work by placing a long and thin aerodynamic projectile against a taut string bound to both ends of a flexible arc of material. When the string and projectile are drawn back, the flexible arc deforms. When the user releases the string, the flexible arc rapidly snaps back into its original position, returning the string to a resting state and consequently accelerating the projectile. Once the string and arc have come to rest, the projectile still has a fair amount of momentum. As a result the projectile leaves the string and carries forwards until it bleeds off enough velocity due to atmospheric friction that it simply falls to the ground or the projectile hits something along its trajectory.That may seem like an overly complicated explanation for the operating principles of bows and crossbows, but it’s actually very important to illustrate the differences between the two. Historically, crossbows and bows served very different purposes despite using the same basic operating principle.Regular bows should be familiar to most people. People draw back the bowstring by hand and release it to let an arrow fly. The further back a bowstring is drawn, the greater the distance an arrow has to accelerate. This distance is called draw length. The more difficult a bowstring is to draw back, the faster the bow will revert to its resting shape, thereby accelerating an arrow more quickly. This is referred to as draw weight. Generally speaking, longer draw lengths and heavier draw weights will result in higher arrow velocities. Higher arrow velocities are desirable because the distance an arrow can travel will be extended. However, there are two major drawbacks to having powerful bows with heavier draw weights and longer draw lengths.First, arrows suitable for very powerful bows have to be made with stronger shafts. When an arrow is launched, the entire arrow isn’t accelerated instantaneously. The back of the arrow is accelerated first and the rest is pushed forwards. This means that arrows will invariably bend since they aren’t being accelerated uniformly; the rear of the arrow acts like a lever on the front. This problem is exacerbated by fact that the front of an arrow must be heavier than the rear. Arrows are dependent upon air resistance to make them fly straight and the lighter portions of an arrow are more easily affected by air resistance resulting in the heaviest portion of the arrow eventually flying first once the projectile stabilizes. If you want the arrowhead striking before the rest of the arrow, then the front of the arrow has to be heavier than the rest. This extra mass at the front of the arrow also makes that portion of the arrow even more difficult to accelerate, causing further bending. If an arrow bends too much, then it will break. An arrow breaking while it is being launched might result in the user being stabbed by fragments of arrow shaft or being hit with the suddenly much more energetic bowstring. The bow itself might also be damaged if it returns to its resting state more quickly than normal. Needless to say, arrows breaking is a bad thing for the user.There are two ways of making an arrow stronger while keeping an arrow the same length:Make the arrow proportionately thicker.Make the arrow out of stronger materials.Historically, stronger materials weren’t always available so arrows were just made thicker. Making an arrow thicker also increases the mass of an arrow. While an arrow with more mass accelerates more slowly resulting lower velocity, the arrow will also have more inertia and therefore retain its velocity better than a lighter arrow made of stronger materials.The second drawback to powerful bows is the human body itself. A bow’s draw weight can only be made so heavy until nobody is strong enough to safely pull the bowstring back. A bow’s draw length can only be made so long before people’s arms aren’t long enough to fully utilize the bow. There’s no point in making a bow which can’t be used to its fullest extent.That brings us to crossbows.Crossbows utilize a stock running along the axis which it launches projectiles. When its bowstring is retracted, the string is locked in place, leaving the crossbow cocked and ready to fire without fatiguing the user. Firing a cocked crossbow simply involves pulling a trigger. Additionally, levers and winding mechanisms afford the user a mechanical advantage over simple arm strength in the cocking of a crossbow. This means the bow portion of the weapon can be made with a very heavy draw weight since the user doesn’t have to physically hold the bowstring back. The heavier draw means that projectiles can be accelerated very quickly over a short draw length.This is not without problems. Remember how arrows can break if they flex too much? Well the same thing happens with a crossbow, only the problem is worse since the projectiles, called bolts or quarrels, get accelerated even faster. The historical solution to this problem is still to make the bolt thicker, but this is implemented in a different manner than with arrows. Since the crossbow has a stock to guide its bolts, they don’t have to be nearly as long as an arrow. By making a bolt shorter, it also becomes stronger since it is proportionally thicker. Essentially the bolt’s shaft is a much shorter lever than an arrow’s which allows the bolt to accelerate in a more uniform manner than an arrow. Making the bolt shorter also has the side effect of making the projectile lighter and easier to accelerate.At this point, I feel like I should critique how some modern authorities use kinetic energy at the time of launch as a measure of the lethality of arrows (and by extension crossbow bolts) based on the misguided notion that kinetic energy is the sole determining factor of firearm lethality. Arrows kill people by cutting through soft tissue and causing bleeding or punching through a person’s skull and causing neurological incapacitation that can’t be recovered from before the person bleeds to death. To accomplish that, arrows need to be reasonably pointy, have sharp edges made of a hard material and have enough momentum to travel through enough of the body to cause such an injury at the time of impact. Therefore, retention of velocity is very important in the wounding capability of arrows.On the other hand, most metallic armor (plate and mail) doesn’t really care if it gets cut. But applying the right amount of force to metal over a small area will cause the metal to break in that spot. Kinetic energy is a reasonably good measure of how much force can be exerted by a projectile over a small area. Since velocity factors heavily into kinetic energy, this means that fast projectiles with hard, pointy tips which don’t deform easily have the best chance of penetrating armor.All these concepts caused bows and crossbows to be used differently in combat.Crossbows were best used at short range where their higher velocity made them suitable for penetrating armor. Crossbows were also usable by people of smaller stature or lesser strength. The ability to keep a crossbow ready to fire without physical strain on the user was a huge benefit as well. Unfortunately the short, lightweight bolts of most crossbows don’t make for great long range projectiles. They don’t retain velocity very well and once they lose enough velocity, their shorter length makes them unstable due to poor aerodynamics. Crossbows were most often relegated to a direct fire role where they did quite well.And that’s where bows pick up the slack. Trained bowmen were something of a commodity and generally had a superior rate of fire compared to crossbowmen. Good bowmen could make for effective mobile units since reloading a bow on the move was easier. Bowmen were also superb in the role of indirect fire. Arrows, especially heavy ones, were very aerodynamic compared to bolts and retained enough momentum upon impact to cause lethal injury. Although arrows didn’t perform as well against armor, they worked very well on horses and levies, conscripted infantrymen who were generally farmers with less than stellar equipment.So how might archery develop?Once we gained the industrial capacity to mass produce interchangeable components, bows would become more modular.Source: (Takedown bow) Rotated for viewing convenience.Above you see a takedown bow. The central piece, called the riser, is relatively inflexible. The flexible limbs attach to the riser. This system allows for different limbs to be used with the same riser. Some limbs might be stiffer than others, modifying the bow’s draw weight, or shorter or longer than others, modifying the draw length. Various devices can also be mounted to the riser, sights for example. This level of modularity affords the user the ability to modify their equipment over time to suit their needs. A teenager or newcomer to archery could start with a riser and weaker limbs for a training bow with a low draw weight. As this person becomes stronger and more skilled, they could purchase a more powerful set of limbs for increased performance. Additionally, if one or both of the limbs become damaged (not improbable since the limbs are the flexible component of the system), they can simply be replaced. Being able to take a bow apart for storage or discreet transport is another big plus.Unfortunately there’s a limited amount of things you can do with arrows beyond turning things into pincushions. Flaming arrows suck… trust me, I’ve tried; I have flare guns for a good reason. This video just about sums up my opinion of flaming arrows:Poisoned arrows? Yeah, those could be made. But most armies didn’t bother because infection was already a real pain to deal with. It’s also time and resource intensive to coat all your arrowheads with poison.Crossbows on the other hand would likely develop into something of a short ranged sniper’s weapon; a crossbow’s stock lends itself well to accuracy. Once better materials than wood were developed for bolts, longer, heavier, more aerodynamic bolts could be used. This would grant crossbows better range. The development of telescopic sights would allow a crossbowman to place their shots more precisely.Source: (Crossbow)Given the invention of high explosives (remember, that’s what made gunpowder unpopular in the first place), mounting explosive warheads on crossbows bolts would be another logical development. Although the payload capacity of single man operated crossbows would be very limited, much larger explosive launching crossbows would likely be common as a crew-served weapon and employed in a similar fashion to cannons or mortars.Source: (Roman siege engines)Source: (Crossbow)The concept of a sniper’s crossbow and explosive bolts could combined to create a weapon similar to today’s anti-materiel rifles.Source: (Scorpio (weapon))It would be reasonable to assume that legal authorities would try to regulate most types of crossbows in some manner and relegate them to military use.At a certain point, technological development for bows and crossbows comes to a plateau. They’re not bad weapons, but the nature of their design and ammunition is limited by the physical materials used in their construction. The other problem is ammunition.Arrows and bolts are time consuming and resource intensive to make. They’re also not very reusable. Sure, you can reuse arrows if you fire them into a hay bale during practice, but arrows become much less reusable once you get into combat. Often arrows are fired into places where you simply can’t retrieve them without placing yourself in physical jeopardy. If do have the opportunity to retrieve them, there’s no guarantee the arrows will still be physically intact. Remember how arrows can bend and break during firing if they’re accelerated too quickly? When arrows hit something, they slow down until they stop. Slowing down is simply acceleration in the opposite direction. If an arrow stops too quickly, say it hits a rock or a metal plate, then there’s a strong possibility that the arrow shaft will bend and break. Even if the shaft doesn’t break, the arrow can be damaged in other ways too. Fletchings, nocks, and the arrowheads themselves are all susceptible to damage. Damaged arrows aren’t safe to reuse until they’re repaired. Even if your arrow gently decelerates, usually by decelerating though something fleshy, if the arrow gets lodged into something and that something falls over, you again have a problem with damaged arrows. Basically arrows and bolts can not be counted on to be reusable.Arrows and bolts are also long and somewhat cumbersome to carry in quantity. For bows, there’s no real way around this issue; bows need long arrows. But crossbows can be modified around this problem. Bullet-shooting crossbows (sometimes called stone bows) were invented in the 16th century. Clay, lead, or steel balls are all relatively easy to create, compact, and disposable. That’s a significant advantage.Source: (Crossbows / Designs.)Source: (Ballistics of the Bullet-Shooting Crossbow)Bullet crossbows are still powerful at close range, but typically have less penetrative power than bolt firing crossbows since the bullets have lower mass. While this quality doesn’t make them particularly good weapons for warfare, bullet crossbows are ideal for hunting small game animals and birds. While bolt firing crossbows might be restricted for military use, less powerful bullet crossbows would likely be legal for civilian use.In the real world, bullet crossbows were a technology that never really got thoroughly developed. Early firearms were being developed at roughly the same time and fired similar projectiles at much higher velocities, velocities that allowed for the penetration of most armor. Bullet firing crossbows are still uncommon today, but do exist. They’re essentially better versions of a slingshot.Is there a better way of launching bullets?Air guns:Yes, air guns. This was a technology that was actually quite a bit more advanced than firearms for a long time but neglected by many militaries because the weapons were more expensive than firearms.Source: (In Progress -)Take for instance the Girandoni air rifle. It was a .46 caliber rapid fire rifle that was lethal out to about 100 yards and was fed by a 20–22 shot magazine. Apparently it was a capable deer rifle. It was complicated and expensive, but pretty much everyone who could afford a Girandoni loved it. They saw about 35 years of service in the Austrian military and one was supplied to the Lewis and Clark expedition. The expedition demonstrated the air rifle to the Native Americans at every opportunity as a display of military power. Over the entire two year expedition, only one man out of the entire 33 man group died… from appendicitis. Evidently the natives were impressed by the level of firepower they thought the expedition possessed.If firearms hadn’t been available or popular, it’s a fair bet that more work would have been done to develop air rifles into a mainstream weapon of war. A 20 shot repeating air rifle represents a significant increase in volume of fire over a crossbow.An interesting related development in air guns that we don’t really consider to be weapons are paintball guns. In recent years, pepper-spray projectiles have been created for military and law enforcement use where deadly force is inappropriate. Simply put, these are harder than average hollow balls filled with a chemical payload instead of paint. The paintball guns used in these applications usually fire the pepper-spray projectiles at velocities of around 300–400 feet per second.Source: (TMP Pistol | Pepperball)If paintballs can be filled with pepper spray instead of paint, that means they can also be filled with nastier chemicals. They’re still short range weapons, but they could be used in warfare to incapacitate opposing forces through respiratory distress. What chemicals might people in this scenario come up with? That depends on how creative their chemists are.Overall, I’d suspect that most air guns would eventually develop into the equivalent of submachine guns, fully automatic guns firing largish projectiles around 700–1100 feet per second. That’s impressive and well within the realm of engineering, but air guns by themselves can’t do much more than that. The maximum operating pressure of a really powerful air gun is significantly lower than that of most firearms; essentially they won’t have a range much better than that of a crossbow. To achieve higher velocities, combustion is required.Fortunately this can be achieved without gunpowder through an effect called dieseling.Modern air guns aren’t designed for this, but a few in the past have.The Daisy V/L rifle used caseless .22 caliber ammunition with no primer. Daisy marketed it as an air rifle but the BATFE deemed it a firearm since it used chemical propellant. It’s a really clever system, hot high pressure air is used to ignite the propellant block stuck to the back of the bullet, but Daisy decided it didn’t want to be involved in the firearms business so it discontinued the product.Source: (Daisy VL 22 cal. Presentation Rifle)That concept could be applied to other fuels and larger calibers though. It’s not inconceivable that long barreled sniper’s rifles could rely upon dieseling to propel bullets at high velocities in order to hit targets at much longer range than either crossbows or conventional air guns.But what happens when you use dieseling for something bigger?Up until now, all the weapons mentioned have had a relatively short range, only about 500 yards at maximum. That means laying siege to a castle or fighting naval battles has to be done at relatively close range. Once people discover dieseling, it’s only a matter of time until they invent some absolutely wicked artillery pieces, the light-gas gun and combustion light-gas gun.Source: (Light-gas gun)A combustion light gas gun. Source: (http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a462130.pdf)They’re elegant, conceptually simple solutions to propelling projectiles multiple kilometers per second. In practice, they’re really expensive. That said, if a world that didn’t like gunpowder invested in the mass production of light gas guns or combustion light gas guns, they would certainly be capable of making the weapon systems cost efficient. Furthermore, their artillery guns would be able to go toe to toe with what we have today. On top of that, it’s plausible that they would have developed light gas based artillery relatively early on (perhaps during the late 19th century) and refined the technology as they developed stronger and higher quality metals.Blades, Blunt Objects and Armor:Taking a step backwards in time, let’s talk hand to hand combat.Source: (Amazon.com : Cold Steel Assegai Long Shaft Spear w/ Secure-Ex Sheath - 95ES : Hunting Knives : Sports & Outdoors)Spears are pretty much daggers purpose built for being mounted on the end of a stick. That means they’re easy to make and wonderful for stabbing people to death before they can get close to you. Spears were the primary weapon of most armies for a long time because they’re dirt cheap and work amazingly well. If the user puts their weight behind a thrust, they even work pretty well at penetrating non-plate armor. It’s hard to make a better spear, they’re already really good weapons as it is.Source: (Shield)Shields have been around almost as long as spears. They were usually made of wood and sometimes had a metal rim to help prevent people from chopping them up. Shields work really well at protecting from spears and arrows. Arrows will usually get stuck in shield while spear users will only poke at the shield lightly so their spear doesn’t get stuck. Powerful crossbows work a little better against shields, but shields are overall still worth having since they’ll likely save your life. So that basically covers archery up to, but not including, crew served weapons.Air rifles might prove to be more of a challenge though. A wood shield is going to have a hole punched right through it by a rifle like a Girandoni. The shield will slow the bullet down a bit, but you’re still going to get hurt if you’re not wearing armor. If you get hurt and drop your shield, a rifleman will have an easy time firing another shot to put you permanently out of action.So what can we do to improve shields? We could make them entirely out of metal, but that would be really heavy and expensive. But what could be done is adding a layer of metal sheeting to the front and back of the wood shield. The front layer would be penetrated but help deform the air gun’s bullets, the wood would slow down the deformed bullet, and the back layer would catch the bullet. The sheeting could even be done in pieces and nailed into the wood so large sheets of metal wouldn’t have to be produced. Now that’s a shield you can give to a conscript.Long handled battle axes are really neat weapons. They have broad, thin blades that work really well at cleaving through flesh and removing limbs. You can chop through shields, fell trees (I have personally felled trees with that ax), and break down doors too. If you have a spike on the back of the ax blade, you can pierce through many types of armor. They also weigh 4–5 pounds. That means that even if they hit armor and don’t cut through it, they’ll often exert enough force to crush what is underneath the armor. If that impact is enough to stun your opponent, that gives you or one of your friends (You did bring friends to fight with you, right?) a few moments to finish off the stunned opponent.If you have a bearded ax like the one seen in the picture, you can also use it very effectively as a hook. Now what might you hook? You could hook a shield and rock your weight backwards to pull the shield out of your opponent’s hands. If he holds onto the shield, he’ll hit the top of your ax really hard when you stop pulling. Either way, your opponent is left fairly vulnerable. If your opponent doesn’t have a shield, you could hook a limb. Pulling on people’s arms and legs can put them in all sorts of uncomfortable positions.If you lengthen the handle of an ax, you get a Pollaxe.Source: (Amazon.com: Cold Steel 89PA Pole Axe: Sports & Outdoors)Poleaxes do the same thing as regular axes but they keep you farther away from your adversaries and hopefully further from harm. They also increase the leverage you can bring to bear with a strike making them impact even harder than regular axes. This makes poleaxes much better at defeating armor, even thicker plate armor. Some have a spike on the back, others have a hammer.If you shorten the handle of an ax you get something much like a Tomahawk.Short axes like tomahawks fall into the category of side arms, weapons you use because they’re handy and convenient. Side arms are weapons you can easily carry around and have on hand at all times.Tomahawks and similar sized axes of other names don’t chop, hook, crush, or pierce armor nearly as well as full sized axes. But tomahawks are compact and light enough to carry on your belt without any real fatigue. You’ll still have a reasonably capable fighting weapon if conflict arises… or if you want to chop a little bit of wood… or if you want to do a little bit of carpentry… The point is that tomahawks are useful tools in addition to being weapons. Small axes were a common thing to carry around in wooded environments.Source: (The Big Bad Wolf - Zombie Tools)What about swords? I hate to break it to the audience, but swords aren’t primary weapons, they’re sidearms too. They’re really incredibly effective sidearms for killing unarmored people and they’re flashy status symbols, but they don’t compare well to the effectiveness spears or poleaxes.Just like in the real world, as time goes on in this hypothetical world and swords become less expensive and more available, people will usually gravitate towards short swords with a greater degree of utility than long blades optimized for killing people.Machetes are popular all over the world because they’re very useful for clearing brush. This also makes them capable weapons.Much like sabers, machetes are best at slashing but they can also chop and stab to a certain extent. The flat and spine of a machete can be used for less lethal disabling strikes. The thin, broad bladed construction makes them durable and more affordable than dedicated swords while still providing reasonable reach. In a world where gunpowder isn’t used for pistols and compact air powered pistols might be expensive or legally restricted, it’s a fair bet that machetes will be a popular sidearm. Additionally, their availability and practical uses means both civilians and soldiers will likely be more familiar and proficient in the use of machetes than true swords.The kukri is a Nepalese design. It’s one of those weird weapons that straddles between a large knife and a short sword. The mass distribution of the blade allows the kukri to chop with similar efficiency to axes of similar weight and length. This type of performance gives them similar utility functions to a small ax. The mass distribution also permits the kukri to produce deep slashes that would normally be expected of a much longer blade. Additionally, the blade geometry of kukris allows them to produce broad stab wounds with less bending of the wrist than straighter blades. Really the only downside is the fact that they don’t have the reach of other short swords meaning the user must get closer to their opponent to employ a kukri.Knives are daggers aren’t really sidearms so much as tools which make handy last ditch weapons. Both can stab very well, but their reach is an extremely limiting factor for their use in combat. They can also slash, but this again is seriously limited by their lack of reach and blade length. Mounting a dagger or knife on a stick would increase the reach and amount of force you can put into a thrust, but that brings us back to the spear. Most people will probably carry a knife for reasons of utility, but not necessarily as a weapon.I’d count on machetes, tomahawks, and kukris all being popular sidearms with soldiers and civilians alike. Some jurisdictions might actually require all men of fighting age to possess a sidearm of some sort. They might not be tremendously useful against armor, but their utility in other areas more than makes up for that shortcoming.Since I keep mentioning armor, why don’t I go over armor now?This is a gambeson.Source: (Gambeson)It’s basically a padded jacket constructed of multiple layers of cotton, linen, or wool. It provides some protection from slashes and arrows. For the most part it’s there to provide padding and mitigate injury. A gambeson was relatively inexpensive compared to most metallic armor.This is is mail.Source: (Hauberk)Mail is made of lots of metal links. There are a few different types of mail.Source: (Hurstwic: Viking Mail)Butted mail is composed of links which are simply pressed together. When worn over a gambeson, butted mail provides protection from most arrows, slashes, and glancing thrusts from spears, swords, or daggers. Unfortunately, since the links aren’t held together by anything, the links hit by weapons tend to split and fall apart. Well aimed thrusts, arrows fired from powerful bows, crossbow bolts, axes, and poleaxes will all penetrate butted mail. That’s one of the main reasons why a gambeson underneath is so important. So butted mail kind of sucks since it falls apart as it gets hit, but it generally stops you from dying from common battlefield threats like glancing thrusts from spears and arrows hitting you from a long ways away.Source: (Hurstwic: Viking Mail)Riveted mail is composed of links which are all jointed together with a rivet. This makes the links very strong and very difficult to break apart. It protects from arrows, slashes, spears, swords, daggers, light crossbow bolts, and axes and doesn’t fall apart when the mail gets hit hard. You still wear it over a gambeson, but the gambeson is mostly there to cushion you from the impact of the blows you receive. Riveted mail is awesome stuff. If you wanted to kill somebody with riveted mail on you basically had to hit them in an unarmored part of the body, beat them to death through blunt force trauma, shoot them with a very powerful crossbow, light them on fire, or get them on the ground and hit them directly with a poleaxe.So why would anybody ever use butted mail if riveted mail was so amazing? A lot of people believe butted mail was rarely used since most surviving historical examples are riveted. That’s reasonable, but it takes out of consideration all the armor that wasn’t taken care of and didn’t survive, armor that was likely worn by significantly less wealthy people. Metal costs money and any type of mail was time consuming to make, it still is. That said, butted mail takes less time and fewer resources to make than riveted mail; all you need are coils of wire and two pairs of pliers. For somebody who doesn’t quite have the wealth to buy riveted mail, butted mail is a good compromise that still provides a lot of protection. So why don’t we see more examples of butted mail? My guess is… recycling. That’s right, armor got recycled; metal was valuable, remember? Once the butted mail became too damaged to be worth repairing, I suspect it was recycled by a smith for use in other applications.Unfortunately, neither butted or riveted mail works particularly well against air rifle bullets. That’s where plate comes in.Source: (Munition armour)What you see above is called half armor. Most lead projectiles fired by air rifles, certainly early air rifles, can be stopped by relatively thin plates. The armor will get dented, but dented armor is better than dying. You don’t really need full armor either, you mostly just need to protect your vital organs. The armor design you see above does a good job at that while still providing the wearer with a lot of mobility. Combined with a mail and a gambeson, armor like this could be used for a long time against air rifles and powerful crossbows, at least until explosive or chemical payloads start being used.Once you have the ability to pound out plate armor, making really rounded thicker helmets that can deflect air rifle fire is probably a good idea too.Source: (M1 helmet)Modern style helmets might be preferable since they’re less restrictive to hearing than a lot of earlier varieties. Hearing commands is an important thing on the battlefield.Land Warfare and Units:Setting aside the light gas guns for naval use, how would all this stuff likely be used by infantry forces? What might the structure and doctrine of military units be?Since air rifles are reasonably accurate, fire rapidly, and don’t produce a lot of noise or smoke, but are rather expensive and require a well trained operator, massed volley fire like what was seen with muskets doesn’t make much sense. It’s my opinion that most land based forces would be composed of mobile units with a mixture of well trained non-commissioned officers and conscripted men.A fireteam is the smallest useful infantry unit for accomplishing any kind of manuever. It would be composed of four to six men, half conscripted and half NCOs. I’ll use six men because I think it actually makes more sense for this scenario. First of all, everyone has a sidearm and is issued a shovel and a helmet. The machetes, tomahawks, and kukris I said would be popular are all useful for preparing campsites; a lot of being a soldier is just staying alive in the field, not necessarily fighting. Shovels are good for digging; an important and often overlooked part of warfare. Helmets obviously provide protection to the head.The three conscripted men are all given spears and plated shields. Their role is to protect the NCOs from rifle fire with their shields and prevent enemy units from getting too close with the spears. That’s an easy and important job for conscripted men to do. Plus they get to hide behind a shield that feels relatively safe.The NCOs, all corporals, are armored with half armor if the military can afford it. Two of the corporals are armed with repeating air rifles. These two men alternate providing aimed suppressing fire keeping enemy units behind their shields. The third corporal is a designated marksman. He has a more powerful weapon designed for defeating plate armor, either a heavy crossbow or high pressure dieseled air rifle. The designated marksman takes his time to pick off soldiers from enemy units, perferably opposing NCOs.A squad is composed of three fireteams commanded by an armored senior NCO, a sergeant. Using three fireteams allows two of the fire teams to pin down enemy units while the third fireteam maneuvers. Assisting the sergeant is a communication specialist using a trumpet or bugle. The role of the communication specialist is to signal basic commands and information to specialists in other units. Overall a squad is composed of total of twenty men.A platoon is composed of two squads commanded by an armored commissioned officer, a lieutenant. Attached to the lieutenant are a communications specialist, a medic trained in first aid, and two combat engineers. In total, a platoon has fourty-five men.The combat engineers are specifically trained in building and demolition. Their job is to supervise and guide all the other men (everyone has shovels, remember?) in the building of fortifications, preparation of camps, and leveling of rough terrain for supply trains. They’re also the only men qualified to handle high explosives. The squads may be used to maneuver the engineers into position in order to destroy enemy materiel, bridges, or fortifications.An infantry company is composed of two platoons and commanded by a captain. The just like the other officers, the captain has a communication specialist to relay information. The captain also has eight scouts at his disposal. Scouts are horseback mounted soldiers whose primary job is reconnaissance, information gathering. It would make sense to arm these individuals with air rifles and proper cavalry sabers so they might defend themselves and harass targets of opportunity. Horses won’t stand up well to rifle fire, but ideally the scouts will stay out of range of enemy units. Speed is the scout’s ally. A captain might also use scouts as couriers when information is too complex to be relayed by communication specialists or needs to be kept discreet.A battalion is the smallest unit capable of independent ongoing operations. The battalion is composed of three of the infantry companies described above in addition to an artillery company and a logistics company. A battalion is commanded by colonel with a major second in command. A battalion would have somewhere around five hundred men.The logistics company hosts spare horses for all the scouts, supply wagons, smiths, armorers, dedicated doctors and surgeons, and cooks. Scouts from the infantry companies might sometimes be loaned to the logistics company to forage for supplies. “Forage” in this context is a euphemism for “plunder nearby communities”.The artillery company includes crew served explosive launching crossbows, perhaps ten with a four or five man crew each. The artillery company should also have a platoon of its own for defensive purposes. The battalion command staff would work as best they could with the infantry companies to push enemy troops into massed groups for the artillery company to strike.Units larger than battalions would be more variable depending on the needs of an army during a conflict. Specialized units would certainly exist and be attached to battalions as necessary.Dirigibles:Source: (USS Los Angeles (ZR-3))Airships are cool, they were our species’ first real aircraft. They also happen to be really incredibly difficult to shoot down. While we think of balloons as things which go pop, airships do the exact opposite. They gas cells they use for lift are under very little pressure. Shooting bullets, even really large bullets, has an effect very similar to trying to drain an Olympic pool with straws. Until the invention of incendiary and explosive bullets for machine guns in airplanes, German airships were able to bomb Britain with impunity during World War I. The airships weren’t able to bomb things very accurately, but they were still terrifying. One of the biggest dangers for airships was flying at high altitude in bad weather.When you take into consideration that the range of weapons in a world without gunpowder isn’t very far, using airships to bomb infantry from relatively low altitude starts sounding like an amazing idea. While attacking in an airship isn’t exactly subtle, subtlety doesn’t matter if you literally can’t be attacked from the ground. Airplanes aren’t terribly useful for attacking airships without gunpowder weapons either.So how do you stop an aircraft that is next to impossible to shoot down?You’re going to have to build airships of your own in order to take the fight to the enemy. Then you have two options. The first is to mount your best field artillery on your airship and try to shoot the enemy’s engines or gondola. The goal in this case is to achieve a mobility or a crew kill on the craft. You could also try to use artillery to light the enemy ship on fire. The second option is boarding the enemy airship… from above… with paratroopers.Source: (USS Shenandoah (ZR-1))Your paratroopers have a couple options once they land on the airship. The first is sabotage. Planting explosives inside an airship will invariably cause a bunch of damage and force the ship to land. After the paratroopers plant their explosives, they can jump off the ship and parachute to the ground. The other thing they can attempt is infiltration and capture of the ship. This will be riskier but the payoff of gaining an entire airship for free from your enemy makes capture a very worthwhile and lucrative option.So essentially airship combat isn’t too terribly different than early naval combat. It still has boarding and disabling, only with a third plane for navigation, less ramming, and empty air instead of water; there’s no rescue if somebody goes overboard.Armored Vehicles:Petrochemicals are a wonderful thing; they facilitate all sorts of transportation. Once people figure out how to build an internal combustion engine, they can start building vehicles to carry people around in.Source: (Armoured personnel carrier)Source: (M113 armored personnel carrier)Putting your guys in an armored vehicle is a pretty sure way of delivering them into battle safely. Passengers will certainly be safe from air rifles and be well protected from explosive blasts as well. Mounting a couple air guns, perhaps hopper fed ones, on top of the vehicle will allow the infantry to be given covering fire.So how do you stop a fast vehicle that is hard to hit directly with artillery and resistant to air rifle fire?Flame Weapons:One of the best and easiest ways to kill people inside armored vehicles is fire. Burning petrochemicals do two very important things that are bad inside enclosed spaces:They produce heat, lots of heat, enough to cook people alive.They produce lots of carbon monoxide. Carbon monoxide poisoning is extremely dangerous, just a few breaths of air with a couple percent of carbon monoxide in it will render you unconscious and kill you in very short orderSource: (Carbon monoxide poisoning)For civilizations very familiar with constructing air guns, creating a pressurized system for spraying burning fuel is going to be easy. In fact they’re likely to simply modify existing designs to produce very compact flamethrowers.An introduction to flamethrowers with the expert in flamethrowers.Skip to about 21 minutes for a likely flamethrower design in a world without gunpowder.So at this point we have an air rifle shaped flamethrower probably weighing around 20–25 pounds with about 1–1.5 gallons of fuel. That’s very man portable and potent enough get an armored vehicle really hot and full of carbon monoxide. Additionally, getting a flamethrower user close enough to an enemy fireteam can render protective shields and any armor pretty much irrelevant. Really the only issue with a flamethrower is its range. Then again, infantry units are already used to engaging at close range with air rifles, so that’s somewhat less of an issue than it might be for infantry using gunpowder weapons.But what if for whatever reason you can’t deploy flamethrower wielding soldiers to take on armored vehicles?That’s why combat engineers exist.Source: (Flame fougasse)Source: (Fougasse (weapon))A flame fougasse is basically a filled fuel drum turned into a directional mine. Its effects are similar to a flamethrower, but on a much larger scale.So what haven’t I covered?Rocketry - Early rockets were gunpowder based and it wasn’t until Robert H. Goddard made use of a de Laval nozzle that we had particularly efficient rockets. Although liquid fueled rockets would certainly be within the technical abilities of a gunpowder shunning world, I don’t want to speculate about when or how they would be developed.Chemical Weapons - I touched briefly on the use of chemical weapons in paintball-like projectiles, but overall I don’t think chemical weapon development would be too much different than that of the real world.Naval Warfare - This is another are where I don’t feel things would be too different. Short range combat with artillery pieces was common for a long time in the real world. After the advent of ironclad warships, I’d expect artillery to be used less often and more ramming and boarding actions to occur. Once light gas guns which could pierce heavy armor were developed, naval warfare would likely return to business as usual.Advanced Melee Weapons - People can only wield weapons comfortably within a certain weight range and can only swing those weapons with a certain amount of strength. Physics, metallurgy, and biomechanics dictate a limit to how good melee weapons can be.TL;DR: A brief synopsis of eighteen centuries worth of weaponry takes a while to read, even if the main focus is really just about roughly five centuries worth of weapon development when gunpowder was used.

I made a dismal educational decision. Grab your favorite beverage and let’s take a walk together down memory lane.I graduated high school early and decided to go into a “manly skill”. I figured, with the medical stuff I had going on, I needed to counter it with something masculine and “grrr”. So, I enrolled in welding school. Learned it well. Found employ and was making good money when I decided I might like a little something to fall back on when I was older, if my plan of eventually owning my own welding shop didn’t work out. I started going to college.Well, time was a commodity in short supply, obviously. It didn’t take long, really, for me to discover that I wasn’t going to do too well. Staying up until 3AM studying some minutia of one sort or another, then getting up at 5AM, being on the road by 6, in the big city by 7:45 (very long commute!), and clocked in by 8. Power nap at lunch and a few high-calorie snacks to keep me going, get home by 5PM, to class by 6, home at 9, study to 3AM and to bed. On weekends, rather than spending my money on other hobbies I enjoyed, like women…I spent the largest portion of the weekend in bed, but alone. Far too tired to be there with anyone else. Sleep. Deep, restful, life-restoring sleep. Well, at least when I didn’t have a big test coming up that I couldn’t cruise through.Plus, it was expensive. Not work, that was actually pretty sustaining, but the schooling was killing me! Tuition fees and tech fees and “must be new edition of the textbook” and “must have graphing calculator” and blah, blah, blah.I’m making good money, and the only thing keeping me from making more is that I never have the energy to impress my boss because I’m always operating on the “two hours and a twenty minute power nap” when he sees me.Then I got the private speech after an Algebra class. The test coming up was a worry for the professor. Well, she wasn’t alone in that because the whole thing was looking bad for me. Her pep talk didn’t help.Neither did the one I got from my boss. It seemed both had a similar mindset; I needed to work on my time management, because I wasn’t giving either endeavor the appropriate respect.One is an income tomorrow. The other is an income today. If I don’t keep the income for today, I can’t afford the process to acquire the income for tomorrow. If I give up the income for tomorrow, I can keep the income for today. If I lose the income for today, I lose both.Took the test and…I’m not sure I didn’t set a record with how much I screwed it up. Math has never been my forte and I proved it conclusively. I got into my pickup and drove home after I got the grade back the next week…went home and never went back.My reasoning was, at best, they’re going to be haggling with me and suggesting things I’d already tried, suggesting I just “give up an hour of sleep to study up” or “talk with my boss”. Sorry to admit it, but my boss was a prick and whenever I’d spoken with him it usually ended up being a one-sided discussion I listened to about him lambasting the “new generation” for “not being willing to do good hard work, like he and his father had done.” The guy was about 70% against me for being a “college boy” to begin with.I just quit ‘em. The university sent the letters in the mail, and I filed them. I’d bet it all on welding, come what may. The letters were merely a scathing statement partly designed to motivate and partly to offer subtle insult; you can’t come back until you’ve proven yourself mature, responsible, and worthy. Worded differently than that, of course, but the sentiment was the same; I was out of the big top and the circus was leaving without me.Meh, screw ‘em. They needed me more than I need them.I went to work and enjoyed it with renewed enthusiasm. Making great money, energized, vibrant. It was great. There’s something about having enough energy to go have a beer with friends after work and not fall asleep face-down in your plate of cheesy fries, it just makes even hard physical work seem more rewarding and less like indenture.Then I came down with a cold. Not the worst cold ever, but it kicked my butt and good. I was lying on the coach and I could hear my heart beating. That’s new. Novel, but unnerving because it seemed to be going too fast. Probably because I was breathing shallower and faster than usual. Still, I needed something for the cold so I went to the doctor. Maybe they could give me a shot of something to help move it on out. At work we had a couple of big orders coming in and I really needed to be on point for the push. If that old jerk sees me sagging under the weight, I can kiss that Lead Welder position and pay increase goodbye forever.The nurse took my pulse and, while it would be a disservice to her to say she panicked, it’d be doing one to myself to say she wasn’t surprised. It not only seemed way too fast; it was way too fast, in the mid 400’s. To the ER with supraventricular tachycardia, and it won’t drop for them. They tried things, nothing worked, I’m admitted, released the next day, blah, blah, blah. Well, the boss didn’t like to hear it, but I was done. Wolff-Parkinson White syndrome, an accessory pathway in the heart, and until I had the surgery that could fix it, I needed to take it easy. The surgery (basically they’d make a cut in the artery in my groin and run a cable with zapper on the end up to my heart, zap the accessory pathway to put it out of commission, and then I’d be fixed) wasn’t something they could just…do. There must be tests and testing. The general consensus was nice: once they knew exactly what the radiofrequency ablation would need to zap, they could proceed and then I could go back to welding and making money.Then, my insurance dropped me. There I was, in need of a surgery, unemployed, and uninsured. 21 years, 3 months, and screwed. I’d been saving money, but I put most of my savings toward a better vehicle the week before I came down with the cold. I was on medication to keep things under control, but it had major flaws. First, it wrecked my stomach, second, if I overexerted I’d get dizzy. Tweaking and tuning dosages helped, but it was still a major underlying problem.It still is. Shortly after my health collapsed, my mother’s health did the same. Being an only child has its merits but it also has some pretty steep penalties too. You get all the attention, but if anything goes bad that the “kids” would normally handle, you’re the only kid. You’ve got two choices; cut and run or stay and fight on. I stayed. Put things on hold until her temporary difficulties were sorted out and she didn’t need me. That was almost 11 years ago. She died October of 2016, her temporary difficulties snowballed and I stuck by her through it just as she stuck with me through mine. In the process I agreed to take care of her brother when and if anything happened to her. That’s what I’m doing now.The bad thing about welding, even if I were doing it on the small scale while handling affairs of other types, is that it’s very much an in-person skill. Me being a pretty good welder won’t benefit someone a thousand miles away. It’s just not one of those skills that translates well to telecommuting.I’ve been saving every penny I could get my hands on, and I’m starting classes in the fall. Long time off the horse, but I need to ride. 14 years ago? I was taking classes and by now I’d be working solely online and making quite good money. For the past several years I’ve been working at just about everything online making…”almost” money. Almost enough to pay the light bill for the house, almost enough to have a decent Christmas, almost enough to afford doctor office trips for my uncle. If I’d stayed where I was, even though it was hard and tiring, by now I’d be 32 and set. I’d be on my way. Instead, I check my balance at the ATM and it prints a coupon for Cup-O-Noodles.Instead, in every way that matters, I’m starting over. Going back to the position I held almost half my life ago. I can’t say I don’t feel like a damn fool for ever choosing to leave college, and I can’t say I don’t feel like I’m being reminded I was a damn fool when the topic of age comes up during the process. If I’d gotten an early start at things, I could easily be the biological parent of half the kids who will be my classmates in a few months. Might’ve been if I hadn’t been so tired trying to be a “manly workin’ man” while also trying to be in college where I belonged.I blew two golden opportunities.I threw away an early high school graduation to go to welding school. Nothing against welding school, but I graduated way early by testing out of a few grades. I could have, if I’d really worked hard at it, been having my own graduation day from university while others my age were graduating from high school. I feel very much a damn fool for that.I quit the surer of two options. Welding’s cool, and I enjoyed it immensely, but it’s a physical gig and I should have known better. I had the world by the orb-shaped hairies, and I let go. I feel very much a damn fool for that too.

Start a family business and pay your child to do real work for the business —even little children can clean and empty wastebaskets, put things in order, open mail, and such. I had a lawn mowing business when I was 9. Continue to add responsibility and increase pay appropriately until the child is of college age. Invest as much of the money as possible for future living expenses and tuition. I suggest a Roth IRA early on and for any projected overage as a child’s tax rate is much lower than the tax rate of an older person. Time value of money.The year before the child goes to college start the process of buying a boarding house or small apartment building near the college. Have your child live there and pay them to manage it as an investment for your business while they are in school. This may also allow lower “resident” tuition rates for the child.Everything you pay your child through this process is tax-deductible to your business. If you were to directly pay tuition, student living expenses, and travel to oversee your real estate investment — not deductible. They also earn Social Security quarters and can contribute to IRAs on W-2 income. SS quarters will be useful if they enter public service that has a pension as they will be able to collect at least a portion of both in retirement.