Imagine actually fighting with a sword. No seriously, just imagine it for a minute...

Imagine actually fighting with a sword. No seriously, just imagine it for a minute. Imagine what it must have felt like to actually stab another man, who see his blood spill out, to feel the bones crunching inside of him, with him crying out in pain. And he's right in front of you the entire time. Must have been intense. How did people manage it?

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Dan? Is that you?

My name is Dan but I'm not the OP
Or Dan Carlin

Numbers 31;19-20
>Anyone who has killed someone or touched someone who was killed must stay outside the camp seven days. On the third and seventh days you must purify yourselves and your captives. Purify every garment as well as everything made of leather, goat hair or wood.

It fucked with their heads, like it would ours today. We are no different than somebody born 15,000 years ago. That being said, the reality of somebody 15,000 to 200 years ago was a completely different one. Pagan gods were real, the Judeo-Christian God was real, superstition stood as logic, and the world was no larger than the area you dared to roam. They killed to protect that world. They killed to expand that world. They died for it as well.

Battles back then, although very gory and personal, are very different than modern combat. From the United States' Civil War to today's conflicts, wars are fought 24/7 with shelling, bombings, air raids, and sporadic gun fire. Day in and day out people are subjected to the pounding reality of war. Eventually they lose a little of themselves. Some lose more.

Fighting in the past involved skirmishes and lasted varying parts of the day. They still retired for the night or even the next few days to regroup and plot. Pitched battles were rare because very few commanders were willing to place all their eggs in one basket - so to speak. Yes, even in the minor skirmishes I might have to gore another man the same age as me. I'd have to see his pleading eyes wishing for any other reality that one he is suffering with my knife buried deep in his guts. His warm blood washes my hands until I rinse them later back at camp. At least I can sleep. A soldier during the first world war would be stuck awake while 20,000 shells fell onto his position. Our great-grandparents would lie awake in their foxholes while Japs and Krauts slit throats of unwary soldiers.

tl;dr combat has always been visceral, but 24/7 warfare fucks with us far worse

Some Japanese sword schools taught spells to drive away the ghosts of those they had killed.

While they did really believe in ghosts this probably also served to help deal the post dramatic stress

sounds retarded desu you believe that trite

gay compared to a spear or gun. swords are overrated

ghosts are real, souls don't just disappear when someone dies

fighting with a sword is just more tiresome. death and gore were always present on any battlefield since the dawn of time.

This. Most fighting was relatively low-casualty before WWI (inb4 an out of context once-in-a-century historical decisive battle where an entire army was wiped out). As well, soldiers generally had time fighting and much time not fighting, compared to endless day and night shelling for years, a soldier would have experienced in the industrialization of warfare, and the thousand-dead charges into hails of gunfire that were freely given.

Now, after WWII, warfare has only gotten bloodier, with entire populations of countries being declared fair game. It truly has become an international, mechanized beast, and we don't realize it because the countries writing the histories are the ones operating the meatgrinder.

>From the United States' Civil War to today's conflicts

You misplelled "Crimean War"

>Battles back then, although very gory and personal, are very different than modern combat. From the United States' Civil War to today's conflicts, wars are fought 24/7 with shelling, bombings, air raids, and sporadic gun fire. Day in and day out people are subjected to the pounding reality of war. Eventually they lose a little of themselves. Some lose more.
>Fighting in the past involved skirmishes and lasted varying parts of the day. They still retired for the night or even the next few days to regroup and plot.

What is siege warfare?
Sieges could drag on for months, sometimes even years, with shelling everyday, skirmishes and night raids on besieger camps
And unlike modern troops, they wouldnt be switched with fresher troops once every three weeks
Once you were there, you remained until it was over

They had more testosterone.

Ancient battles were more a case of morale more then anything. Usually 1 side would break and run before any actual large scale killing started to happen. Most casualties actually fell when the broken side was chased down.

This is how the majority of battles went outside of a few exceptions where armies were surrounded and totally destroyed.

>Must have been intense.
If you are a faggot. I prefer to insert things into women.

No. I'm going to be a warlock.

youtube.com/watch?v=l3wLkFXoW5s&feature=youtu.be&t=15

Well its not trite if you understand that alot of "magic spells" were just a form of self-suggestion, which they were.

>there's bravery and then there's real bravery

Dan is a mad common name. I'm Dan, did you think it was me? It wasn't, but I'm here.

I've always wondered what motivates people to write these bizarre, silly greentext posts that don't in any way represent the post they replied to, since it is a slow day on Veeky Forums maybe you can enlighten me.

Are you that Dan I met the other day?

I was comparing the plight of the man in user's picture to two women kissing in front of an assembly of nuns.
Perhaps you should lurk moar

Kek, you're an appalling bad communicator.

Are we just throwing words around here or are you trying to tell me something.

I actually had a nightmare about this once. It was weird. I was in my house with my family, and we knew there were snipers trained on the front of the house so we were held up inside with my brother's swords. Next thing I remember is stabbing some guy in our living room in the chest with a sword, crying, he's coughing and struggling to stay alive, blood everywhere, I can't seem to get the fucking sword out. Bam, I wake up.

Dude, wtf is this?

>get brutally murdered
>have your territory taken
>wife raped and possibly murdered
>kids taken
Or
>stab someone
And if you're the aggressor I don't know what would keep you going unless you enjoy it

Swords are just big knives; killing someone with a sword is just butchery.

If you can get into that mindset, you can carve a man's guts out, drink some water, and go to sleep.

It's a great movie I saw decades ago. Or maybe it was shit. Don't remember

I know people who've been in knife fights. They manage it because you have to. It's that or die. They aren't thinking about the other guys wife and kids, or any high minded shit. They're thinking ENTIRELY about how painful that piece of steel will be if inserted into them, and how to make it not happen.

Same guy has also tortured people. THAT fucked with him to no end.

Sieges were, to put it in my friend's words, the lazy man's way of warfare (though I prefer the coward's way). Why risk your own life and limb when you can just build some siege devices and blockade a town? Sure it takes a battle that'll last a day and drags it out to months, but if you're the besieger then odds are you won't die in the process.

The condottieri were masters at it.

Okay part of all that is sanitation and quarantine protocols but yes the rest is all psychological. Oh and also they fucked their captives most likely. Sorted out who would become slave and who dies or is kept prisoner.