20th century war is better

Why do they say that industrial war is more painful?

Id rather be blown up in an instant by an artillery shell than have my entrails opened by a sword and die in agony while my killer laughs at me while I die and cuts my head off for glory.

You have no idea what a bullet, especially one from a semi automatic, does to the body do you? Also by proxy, you will get a bad infection and have lead introduced straight into your body. Also, the ancients didn't have to work about battle fatigue so much as we do(partly because war was glorified but that is another thing). You can't get shell shock from barrage of arrows. Perhaps some form of trauma over all, but not to the same depth.

No one says that industrial war is more painful, it's just widely accepted that it's more gruesome. This is because the technological advancements of modern warfare mean that killing can be conducted in a much more efficient manner than medieval or classical warfare.
To contradict your point, however, who's to say industrial warfare isn't more painful than medieval or classical? Who's to say you'd be blown up instantly by an artillery shell and wouldn't instead have your legs blown off and slowly bleed out? Who's to say you wouldn't be caught in a gas attack and cough your lungs up or be shot through the throat or groin? Unironically believing that industrial warfare isn't as bad or worse than earlier forms of warfare is just wrong and smacks of the old 'lel guns are dishonourable, a true warrior uses a sword xD' arguments.

Who says that? both can be extremely painful. phosphorous and incendiaries that burn flesh are extremely agonizing. I think the idea is that modern warfare is much more likely to kill civilians since now urban centers are targets, as opposed to pillaging and massacring a city after the battle is over or a chance of a merciful conquerer as it was in the pre-industrial age. But now its pretty much a given that non-combatants will die

Not this user but he makes a good point. Battles pre industrial era were moments of intense stress which didn't last longer than a few days at most. A soldier could march for a hundred days and only fight for one of them. In modern warfare there's much more skirmishing and the greater array of ranged weaponry available means that battles now stretch over entire fronts instead of just a battlefield. So all this means that the modern soldier is practically never in a situation where he's 'safe' and can wind down after a stressful battle whereas the same could not be said for any soldier from an earlier era. On top of this there's also the lack of community among modern fighting units. By that I don't mean soldier had their squadmates etc, but just that they're likely people they've met either on tour or only as far back as boot camp. Soldiers from previous eras would fight with their neighbors, friends and sometime family too who you could unwind with and who would understand your experience. Modern soldiers, when they get out, often return to people who have literally no idea what service life was like and many don't stay in contact with their old friends in the service. And so that's why so many vets kill themselves because they're unable to truly deprogram themselves with people who understand their stress.

*hate or dislike their squadmates

>no fatigue

Absolute bullshit. Pre-industrial armies would have to walk on foot for days on end with often poor outfits for the environment and having to forage for food instead of having a steady logistics chain. Unless you were a horsemen, but even that was incredibly uncomfortable compared to riding in a train, truck, APC, etc.

How is shooting in a trench less tiring than swinging heavy battle axes and shields or having to agonizingly pull longbows? If you were fighting at sea, even worse with the brutality of being a galley slave.

> it's just widely accepted that it's more gruesome.
as compaired to entrails being opened by swords? and heads crushed by maces?

Being forced to be cannon fodder for your noble liege while he fights "honorably" doesn't form a sense of community. Also you keep out the fact that if you were captured, unless you were highborn, you would be almost certainly tortured or executed, while POWs of the 20th century could at least have the chance of living through the ordeal.

Firstly, I didn't mean battle fatigue necessarily in the physical sense, but in the mental. Second, I didn't mean they had none, I meant they didn't have to worry*(sorry for typo) about battle fatigue AS MUCH.

>wouldn't instead have your legs blown off and slowly bleed out

Melee weapons have the same effect.
>And so that's why so many vets kill themselves because they're unable to truly deprogram themselves with people who understand their stress.

We have no statistics from before the 20th century to compare PTSD to. I ask again, would you feel better fighting a faceless enemy a few km away or have to swing swords for hours with someone up close while he curses you and taunts you how he'll cut your skull apart?

>Being forced to be cannon fodder for your noble liege while he fights "honorably" doesn't form a sense of community
I didn't say that formed a sense of community, I said that you were likely to have been levied to fight by your liege alongside your community.

>as compaired to entrails being opened by swords? and heads crushed by maces
This is just cherrypicking. In industrial warfare you could just as easily have your entrails opened by bayonets and shrapnel and your head blown apart by bullets or crushed by tank treads.

>So all this means that the modern soldier is practically never in a situation where he's 'safe' and can wind down after a stressful battle

That is true for the entire human history.

There's countless instances where whole armies were massacred by being ambushed in their camps or while travelling. Teutoburg forest ring a bell? Did those legionaires not have to constantly be alert?
>Second, I didn't mean they had none, I meant they didn't have to worry*(sorry for typo) about battle fatigue AS MUCH
From what we see in the way pre-industrial warriors experienced actual hardships, this is actually not true. Battle fatigue has always been different, but EQUALLY shitty throughout history.

>Melee weapons have the same effect.
That's exactly my point here. You're trying to argue that medieval and classical combat is worse than industrial/modern combat when it's at least as bad if not worse.

>We have no statistics from before the 20th century to compare PTSD to. I ask again, would you feel better fighting a faceless enemy a few km away or have to swing swords for hours with someone up close while he curses you and taunts you how he'll cut your skull apart?
I'd actually feel much better fighting some guy up close since at least I can see him and react accordingly, In modern combat you're always facing the possibility of death even when no in combat as you could be in the sights of some sniper or suddenly get blown up by a drone or artillery barrage.

>In industrial warfare you could just as easily have your entrails opened by bayonets and shrapnel and your head blown apart by bullets or crushed by tank treads.

See, you're effectively stating the equivalence of the brutality of war. Except there's one difference. In an industrial war, there's still a chance that you will die painlessly or at least be lightly wounded and patched up(i.e. shrapnel or bullets in nonvital parts), while a predindustrial warfare GARAUNTEES and extremely painful death either by dismemberment or infection.

Were they traumatized to the same degree? I want sources? I say it was less likely considering war was glorified in those days plus you never had to worry about coming home and considered a violent asshole by civilians or anti protestors or try to conform back to a peaceful modern society which says all violence is bad.

>you could be in the sights of some sniper or suddenly get blown up by a drone or artillery barrage.

And a random arrow can pierce you, a horseman can trample you, another soldier could stab you in the back. You always face the possibility of unexpected death in warfare.

But now you're just talking about the difference in medical technology though, not about battles themselves. Obviously it was shittier in that regard. But you can say that about any condition that required a doctor.

>And a random arrow can pierce you, a horseman can trample you, another soldier could stab you in the back. You always face the possibility of unexpected death in warfare.
But for the most part you can at least react in some ways to those because you can actually see them. What I'm trying to stress to you here is that the RANGE of battle is much larger in industrial warfare, much further than what one can reasonably take measures to protect themselves against. You can try to block or dodge the arrow, kill the horseman or dodge away from him and notice the backstab or have it glance off of your armor. The same cannot be said of modern warfare because there is no way for the human senses to notice an external threat of sufficient length away from them; artillery, snipers etc until they've taken their shot. It's not so much about dying unexpectedly, it's about being unable to perceive that you're even under threat in the first place.

Not to the same degree. Recon and geurilla warfare were not such a heavy emphasis in the past. Most of the time you just fight an army in an open field /place designated or where' you met the other army. You can argue it's a terrifying to have to stare down all your enemies in the face who are about to come at and attempt to slaughter you, but in general, your life wasn't in constant danger where you constantly had to be paranoid and keep your withe about you. You may have been promoted I to at some points, but not always. Ambushes stabbing weren't the only elements of warfare in the past unlike today.

There are various accounts from ancient greece to the middle ages of symptoms equivalent to war PTSD, people were just more ignorant

>war was glorified in those days
Its glorifed now today. Keep in minds veteran's pay wasn't common and if you were maimed you were likely to become a beggar if you didn't have a family to care after you.

>Recon and geurilla warfare were not such a heavy emphasis in the past.

Assymetric warfare by horse raiders and barbarians says otherwise. Also a huge amount of battles were sieges and a fair amount were ambushes on camps and travelling unorganized armies.

I'm not talking about medical technology, I'm talking about ways to die. I repeat, in a modern war you have the chance to die instantly, while a predindustrial war gaurantees you to die a painful death through being skewered or slashed apart.

I still see homeless vets today though.
war is not so glorified today. There are plenty of antiwar types and liberals who distain it. Yeah they have those slogans with support our troops, but not everyone takes it so seriously or shows reverence to the cause. They may hate the government more than soldiers who they see as victims made to do their bidding but definitely not glorified as the highest honor or the best you can do with your life to "make a name for yourself"

Seige was still expected though. It didn't come out of nowhere. And there was a capacity to defend with strong castle walls.
People could just be hiding in modern warfare and just come out of nowhere to shoot. There was little you could do alot of the time but shoot back

Chopping of ones head is quick, so is stabbing the the heart. You got me on lung and throat punctures.