How would warfare develop without gunpowder? Repeating catapults?

How would warfare develop without gunpowder? Repeating catapults?

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Cavalry, archery, siege machines, espionage, perfection of tactics and armaments.

Stronger and better swords, armor, archery, Calvary, and so on.

Assuming how effective the crossbow was when it was introduced, advancements would be focused on tension-based projectile weaponry. Someone would figure out a repeating model after a while, which would then be supersized once the world reached industrialization.

Different armor designs for a good while, that's for sure

I wonder how a world without gunpowder would have developed up to modern day though, what kind of things could we have gotten with the advent of industry and technology

I wonder if no gunpowder would've led to everything going into laser weaponry once we got the sufficient tech to develop it

Yet, even with supermaterials, there's limits to tension-based projectile. Let alone early on. More than that, even with repeating weapons like the revolver and the Winchester rifle, only mechanized automobiles made melee cavalry irrelevant, and arguably, the machine gun, but light cavalry survived even the early Gatling to only full go out of style in WW1.

Metallurgic advances could render armor relevant for far longer without gunpowder, and that could make knights and a ruling warrior class relevant for a few centuries more than it was in reality. Without gunpowder, the ottoman empire would have a harder time conquering Constantinople, as their siege was based heavy around three monstrous bombards and even then it took a long time for the city to fall.

Naval combat would be a different monster altogether, I can't even begin to guess the shape of it. But I think the most pressing question is "what are you asking about?" It's easier to try and imagine a 15th century without gunpowder, or a 16th century, than a 21st world without gunpowder. The furthest you move from it's inceptions and it's spread in the late 13th century (on europe that is), the harder it gets to track the indirect ramifications of the change. Gunpowder alone didn't change the world but it was a factor in much more than warfare. Changes in warfare, fortification, naval combat technology, would affect social order, settlement construction, even european supremacy.

What happens with technology is that, without gunpowder, people might not even invest in portable ranged weaponry as a research are for a long while. We could get heatswords before we get laserpistols in a world used to rely on trebuchets.

But compressed air guns were stupid effective and only their absurd long reload time stopped them from taking over early firearms (before shells that is). So, maybe airguns would be a big thing post industrialization.

And gas-powered weaponry would take over as soon as refining reached a certain level.

Fully automatic crossbows

we van helsing now

Flame thrower squirt guns

Like this
finally a reason to post these

And this

Look up joergsprave, you will be shown the features of many rubber powered weapons

Copious amounts of flame weaponry.
If Armor keeps on advancing to beat most ranged and melee weapons available and keeps accumulating in number and you also need a weapon that doesn't take material from other wargear, then flamethrowers and the like fit the bill.

Poison and Gas based weaponry too, but flamethrowers and firebomb launchers are quite likely candidates.

Air rifles

>Air rifles
Were only developed well after the idea of gas-pressure based weapons was established via gun powder.

Just see China's stagnation.

>joergsprave
*Impales you in German

Pressurised air.

Air pressure guns. Rail guns and coil guns. Missiles.

Better war machines

Air rifles would be a thing once industrialization hit. Even if its not conceived right away after one or two boiler explosions someone would get the idea to used compressed air to shoot shit fast enough to murder fuck someone.\

Then from there guns WILL be invented. It's just a small step from air rifles to using any kind of explosive to shoot hot lead everywhere.

Practically you'd just use other means of propelling projectiles. Other chemical reactions and compressed air would be at the time.

If for whatever reason this thought exercise prevents using other chemical reactions (which basically just leads to technology stagnation cause everything is based on things that go fizzle and boom when mixed) you'd end up with extremely high spec paintball guns that shoot ball bearings, etc.

Ultimately I don't think tactics would change too much. You'd massively change the logistics practices of the modern day army though.

This might be a long shot, but considering how successful the war wagon strategy was, and it was only very soon rendered useless again because of how worthless it was against canons, maybe the warfare would evolve that way - away from chivalry all together, and towards mobile fortification sort of deal.
In fact I think you are all vastly undervaluing the importance of CANONS and overemphatizing the importance of guns all together.

Without gunpowder siege warfare would be drastically less efficient, and it's likely that mobile fortification and general advantage of fortification would turn war into slow crawl and a melee-trench type of issue.
Also, it's quite possible that instead of direct focus fire, siege warfare would start focusing in the direction of chemical or biological warfare.

RAIL GUNS!

I like how OP asks how would a world without gun powder evolve and most of people answer by "well they would develop different kind of guns!".

Nobody in this thread seems to realize that a handgun was secondary development of a canon, and that without canon, people would not come with up with the idea of handgun, which required centuries of refinement and experience with bigger caliber guns. Nobody would come up with the idea of an air rifle without having solid set of intuitions and knowledge of how to develop a barrel and similar mechanics before hand.
As for other chemical reactions - care to share with us which ones?

>As for other chemical reactions

sodium/water?

Yeah, go and construct a canon based on that principle right now. Also, you are not allowed to consult ANYONE on the subject of ballistics, basic gun construction etc... Let's see how that works out and how much more efficient than a regular onager that is.

Disclaimer: I'm not a chemist.

But 'gun powder' isn't a single formula. Modern propellants are nothing like black powder and a number of different formulations have been used over the years. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propellant#Solid_propellant)

Any sort of explosive is viable. Black powder just happens to be really simple to make and was the first discovered. Even if the combination for the very first gun powder didn't work, there are others and someone would have gone through the same process of setting things on fire, making bombs, and making cannons as they did just with a different material.

We can expand the thought experiment to "What if those other formulas for low explosives don't work?" but that mostly just keeps going and going. There's always another method of making gas/liquids rapidly expand and throw a hunk of metal fast and if we keep going we just end up in a world where modern chemistry and material science doesn't work.

I'm not trying to shit on OP's idea. I just think that if you want a setting where you can explore other branches of invention besides firearms then "gunpowder doesn't work" isn't a viable reason if you want a realistic reason. Better off might be exploring political reasons for the banning of firearms (both small-arms and artillery) due to religious order that everyone follows.

The jump from "it goes boom" to "if it goes boom inside a cylinder things go flying" to "if i aim the cylinder things die" is not all that complex, we just lacked the necessary physics, metallurgy and explosives to make use of it for a long time.

Regardless of the history of gunpowder, by the time the industrial revolution comes metallurgy and chemistry will have advanced enough than bombs will be a practical thing to use in warfare.

And if you have bombs, you have guns.

Again:
"World without gunpowder? Just make gunpowder with slightly different formula!"
Jesus you people really are idiots.
Also, the issue of something being easy to make and control KINDA MATTERS HERE. Jesus this is pathetic. Not only that you literally can't for a second imagine an alternate technological line where guns weren't developed (not in any way stopped by the fact that vast majority of all civilizations in the world actually did for vast majority of their history without them), but you don't have even the slightest fucking idea how basic technological progress and adaptation fucking happens.

Are you people literally brain-dead?

No we are not.

Also, do you know what happens when you toss cotton or paper into nitric and sulphuric acid?

Small tip: the result is stable and predictable.

And yet somehow, despite that, we had never developed weapon technologies based on that principle. Ever wondered why?
No, because you ARE IDIOTS.

Okay, here you go.

Without gunpowder (and other explosives, and other means of making non-human powered projectiles) the setting is going to run into both a societal and technological stagnation. Weapons will peak at melee weapons and mechanical siege weaponry. There will be improvements over these with advances in materials, but material advances will also be limited because the necessary chemical reactions to produce them don't exist.

Without the rise of firearms you stay in a world of small professional armies. This keeps power concentrated with the few on top (nobles, kings, sultans ect.). Because its harder to train peasants into effecting fighting forces revolutions will generally be less successful than they have been in history. You will never see the rise of the modern nation-state.

By some fluke of the law of averages you may get another democracy again in the style of the Roman Republic if some revolution manages to succeed or an enlightened despot ushers it in. But for the most part the rule of the land will be feudal systems.

Except that pneumatics developed completely separately from guns.

>Hurr the only way to imagine projectiles being thrown out of tubes is creating canons
You're literally dumber than southeast asian dart hunters.

>Goly gee we developed one way, clearly that is the one unique way to go about things
This level of arrogance and stupidty is disgusting.

Every single point of this is wrong. Try again. This time, actually try to think of what COULD happen, not focus on what didn't happen, then get utterly stumped and start screaming bullshit and spazzing out.

Why didn't we use dart guns around here?

This is quite literally beyond any belief.

Golly gee we also did not develop any way for most of the time, yet somehow we managed to keep on evolving. YOU FUCKING RETARDS.

Keep raging.

>we did not develop any way for most of the time
Oh, you're one of those guys. Open a history book. Many technologies had breakthroughs far apart indeed, but humans weren't stagnant.
More important, your ignorance of basic principles doesn't imply our ancestors were ignorant.
People knew about air pressure long before someone managed to create a mechanism to capitalize on it and propel a projectile. Same goes for steam, combustion, and so on.
We didn't use blowguns because the human lung wasn't as good as the human arm at propelling things (e.g. a javelin) but that changes when someone invents the air rifle, is that too hard to follow?

>But if we don't invent gunpowder every field of knowledge becomes stagnant, because people are dumb and technology is linear
Is your argument.

Or some tensile material*.

Well, chemistry hadn't advanced enough, and for most of history we didn't have nitric or sulphuric acid.

I guess that plays a part.

Changes in society, technology, and military tactics for the most part in history have been reactions to a change.

The point being made is that the development of the firearm has a dramatic effect on history. Not because of any magical aspect of gunpowder. But because killing people is history. Killing people easier has been a goal of technology as long as humans have existed.

However the mechanism you do it, hit person far away with easy to use non-exhausting tool is the damn grail of warfare for most of history. Someone is going to develop it by some other means even if the historical examples didn't exist. It'll happen because it's the natural progression of:
1. bash someone with rock
2. bash someone with sharp rock
3. throw sharp rock at someone
4. use machine to throw rock faster and further

We can keep going down the list of ways to throw a chunk of metal at someone with you vetoing at every step until we're left with nothing. Then we're at a standstill. Technology doesn't advance, without some new development the status quo stays the same and society doesn't change.

Also you're the only one getting mad. I'm having fun doing exactly what OP asked. Postulating an alternate history.

We could've
>progressed the chinese zhuge automatic crossbows and their lever mechanism

>developed air rifles after the advances in pneumatics that happened not long after matchlock guns

>found other combustible materials to replace gunpowder

And after we go through those, in a much more advanced society
>magnetic accelerators

But that's only assuming our ancestors were smarter than that user.

I like gyrojets and railguns. But if we're in a setting where lots of fuel sources don't work then its never progressing to that level of technology anyway.

It's just one autist saying everything is unworkable because gunpowder is somehow a requirement for every other chemical reaction that involves *thing go boom wow*.

>Oh, you're one of those guys. Open a history book. Many technologies had breakthroughs far apart indeed, but humans weren't stagnant.
Yes. Yet somehow you insist that it WOULD BE suddenly stagnant if it wasn't for gunpowder. This particular point, you pile of shit, literally proves you wrong and your insistence that gunpowder is an evolutionary necessity and any society without it would suddenly stop developing is laughable, even by your own fucking observations.

>People knew about air pressure long before someone managed to create a mechanism to capitalize on it and propel a projectile.
Most of them knew about pressure and yet never decided to capitalize it to propel a projectile. ONCE AGAIN POINT AGAINST YOU. Knowing about air pressure =/= development of a fucking gun.

>We didn't use blowguns because the human lung wasn't as good as the human arm at propelling things
My fucking point.

>Is your argument.
That is the literal opposite of my argument. Are you actually clinically retarded?

Yes indeed. That does play a part.

>The point being made is that the development of the firearm has a dramatic effect on history.
The point being made here is that some fucking insecure tards are more interested in jerking off their superficial and common-knowledge observations about the particular impact of gunpowder on OUR SPECIFIC HISTORY than they are in actually answering what OP asked for: speculating how different society that did not develop gunpowder would develop further.
That is my problem. My problem is with all the FUCKTARDS going "well development of guns is an absolute necessity and if it hadn't happen all societies would just stop in their tracks until they developed it so let me jerk off my elementary school knowledge of how gunpowder impact us!"

Also, you idea of linear evolution is both reductive and flat out wrong.

>Never decided
They literally did, not 100 years after matchlock rifles.

However, there is no evidence that the first gunpowder based guns were necessary for that to be created. You're acting like there is, and providing no evidence.

You are also the one insisting that it would be stagnant if not for gunpowder. I'm telling you that is -not- the case, that gunpowder didn't lead to other projectile weapons.
Meanwhile you insist that the concept of a barrel and a projectile being propelled through it is unique and requires gunpowder, because that's the way we observed it happening.
Which is a fallacy. You can't clain yhere is only one way to do X simply because you have only observed that one way.

That said, you might be conflating my posts with other anons', so it would make sense for you to be confused.

On a secondary note: adding capslocks and calling me a piece of shit makes you seem like an irritated child trying to lash out because they ran out of actual points.

The technology stopping aspect is you. The original response is "without gunpowder they'd use other methods of propelling projectiles." Which you kept responding to with "YOU MISSED THE POINT" when really we're answering the question.

Really, you missed the point. You complain we're not coming up with alternative branches of technologic advancement but also shooting down every offered alternative with "BUT THAT WASN'T ANY GOOD AND WAS IMPRACTICAL IN HISTORY"

But so were guns. Guns sucked for most of their history. But people kept tinkering with them because they saw the potential and thought it the best chance of success. Without gunpowder these same sorts of people and thoughts would exist but instead they'd use the best means available to them instead of gunpowder.

Ultimately the argument is that even without gunpowder you'd see the development of a gun-like using materials that aren't as ideal as gunpowder but viable. Because it's a natural obvious progression. Over time you'd have refinement and improvements, just like gun powder weapons.

That's OPs answer.

That question is probably what gave birth to the steam punk genre. Air propulsion weapons using high pressure to release rounds. Would start with crossbows and shit until we eventually made steam powered guns.

Oh and you are the one postulating linear advances since you seem keen on the idea of gunpowder as a necessity for ranged weaponry.

And pro-tip: the reason ranged weaponry would develop (and did develop) is simply because for human warfare it's the most efficient / resource efficient. With or without guns, our warfare would develop to be primarily ranged.

Like I said, the zhuge crossbow developed before guns, the air rifle developed not long after guns, and chemistry would go on with or without gunpowder. Acting like removing it would impede us from achieving similar feats through other means is stupid.

I'm starting to suspect that none of us is the guy claiming that without gunpowder nobody would have though about guns.

It's like, we are all here fighting one another whule largerly agreeing...

The question that sperger should really be putting forward is not a setting without gunpowder, which implies a universe with different physics, but what would a setting be like WITHOUT GUNS. This provides more interesting answers and is more along the lines of what sperger wants and what OP intended to get.

This is done already in lots of settings. We don't go with "why don't guns exist" we go with "why don't people use guns." The answers are usually they're highly illegal due to political or religious law or that the development of some sort of unobtainaium made their obsolete.

That would be pretty funny.

Nah, there's on specific guy who is getting real mad and calling people names. Definitely.

>cough dies the fire cough

Hydraulically pumped steel ballistae/scorpions throwing bundles of heavy flechettes and thermite or napalm canisters are definitely high on the list.

>They literally did, not 100 years after matchlock rifles.
By emulating the already commonly known model of a rifle you idiot. What part of "rifle took several centuries to evolve from a canon" did you miss?

>However, there is no evidence
OK, show me a fucking RIFLE developed by society that did not know canon before.

>You are also the one insisting that it would be stagnant if not for gunpowder.
Are you sure you did not start replying to the OPPOSITE GUY in the discussion?

>But so were guns. Guns sucked for most of their history.
But canons were not. And that is the absolutely vital point here. The idea to use chemical explosion to propel a hand-held weapon stuck because people already had CENTURIES of experience of how useful it is. As a by-product of this, miniaturization happened and people slowly developed hand-held guns that were more useful than cold ranged weapons.

Without the OBVIOUS usefulness of a canon, there is no reason to assume people would ever think to use chemical combustion to proper a fire arm, or at least not until other forms of industrialization would make the process of experimentation with technology far faster.

So no, the ultimate argument is that it was a sheer luck that black gunpowder was useful in siege and naval warfare for centuries and centuries that lead to the development of a gun. And not even everywhere, as China, India and Indochina actually never developed guns to begin with.

They - like almost all civilizations on earth, eventually figured there is a limit of what you can do with ranged weapons, and decided to focus their attention elsewhere. Such as fortification, or agorization of warfare and so on.

No, I postulate that gunpowder is necessary for development of a canon, and that is necesary for development of a GUN. I never said anything about non-chemically propelled ranged weaponry you spastic loon.

>Without the OBVIOUS usefulness of a canon,
Why wouldn't they use the same exact replacement material to develop a canon too?

>Why wouldn't they use the same exact replacement material to develop a canon too?
What replacement material? What the fuck are you raving on about?

You seem to be under the mistaken impression that the big honking artillery piece of a canon was the first canon. The earliest precusor to a canon was a firelance which was handheld and the oldest known firearm to have existed was the Heilongjiang hand cannon

Also, pic rated. This is the earliest known depiction of a canon. Note, it's being held. Early canons were more like blunderbusses and were hand held.

Literally the entire basis of the argument happening in this thread. Without gunpowder someone would just use a different explosive material that would provide similar results.

You think that because technology took centuries to archieve something, it means that technology needs centuries to archieve something?

Well, that sure seems logical, unfortunately you are missing a tiny detail: the rate of technological archievements is not constant.

See, in your mind you seem to think that going from cannons to guns has to take centuries. In reality, if you start using cannons in the 1800's guns will emerge at most 50 years later, because with the industrial revolution you have much more advanced metallurgy, chemistry, tools, economies and sheer amounts of smart people thinking things.

If the airplane as a concept had started to be developed 500 years ago (by intrepid guys throwing themselves off mountains on paper kites), it would have taken centuries to get where we are now, maybe a decade or two earlier.

The big artillery piece of canon was the first canon to be of any relevant use. In naval combat, to be specific.

Literally the entire point of my argument you retard: that is both completely failing to actually do what OP asked for and just plain fucking WRONG.

I love how desperately you need to contort yourself just to keep your pathetic line of argumentation up. All of this because you can't fucking admit that you are unable to give up on the option to circle jerk your fucking "guns had an impact" trivia knowledge.

How many utterly innane and insane IF conditions are you going to have to come up with?
IF an industrial revolution was already happening and IF society suddenly gained massive access to sulphur and nitric acid and IF it also had technology to make paper and IF god knows how many conditions were met:
I can get the guns I so desperately need to jerk myself off to.

Meanwhile, OP wanted to ask for how different things could be. You spend more and more absurd amount of time contorting more and more retarded scenarios just to in the end tell him that you are not going to wonder how different things could be.

Great job guys. Great fucking job.
Why is it that people who insist on guns being part of fictional worlds are always ABSOLUTE FUCKING RETARDS?
Seriously, what is wrong with you people? Is this american thing?

>everyone tells you how different things would be
>complains because it doesn't end like how you want it to
Go to sleep.
Next time ask "how would a world without guns work?".

...

Okay, I lose. Whatever hope I had on making you see my viewpoint died on this last comment. I only hope other lurkers see the logic in my statements, because I cannot make you do the same.

But just so you lurkers know, gunpowder and guns are not requeriments for archieving an industrial revolution, and at least 4 independent regions on earth were going that route before europe took the lead in the race.

There's no point user, he's acting like we're contorting ourselves to justify technology progressing normally, but he's the one bending his back until his balls are over his forehead:
Ultimately this asshole wants a world without guns, and he's mad because he asked the wrong question to get it.

OP, your thread is bad and I sincerely hope you stop posting on Veeky Forums.

Why don't you suggest something then instead of just sperging out you absolute fucking retard?
>suggestion
>NO THAT'S WRONG
>suggestion
>NO THAT'S WRONG
>suggestion
>NO THAT'S WRONG GOD CAN'T YOU PEOPLE DO ANYTHING RIGHT FUCK

Wouldn't it be more logical to just ban the concept of Guns rather than trying to remove the existence of chemical explosions?

Just go the roman route, some dude invented guns but conveniently everyone thought they were worthless and the tech was abandoned thus no guns or cannons or anything too conceptionally similar thus ensuring that ranged weapons remain mechanically rather than chemically powered.

Ranged weapons are seen as a cowardly woman's weapon. Real me fight up close.

Right now we’d have Gravity hammers and plasma swords with some kind of ceramic armor

STRAIGHT TO MAG GUNS

Wouldn't ceramic by shit for armor against blunt weapons?

only after the first strike.

Kinda expect to get hit more than once in a battlefield user.

I'd like to meet the bastard mad enough to put a Sodium powered Cannon on a damn boat. Or for that matter, anywhere during a rainy day.

As long as basic physical laws of the universe are more or less the same to ours some kind of a projectile weapon would be one of the most effective ways to kill your enemies and ruin their stuff.

It doesn't matter what exact method would be used to launch projectile but energy conservation and other physical laws tell us that it is one of the most effective ways of dealing damage to the target. Don't forget that even swords and spears are just objects moving at a certain speed to hit the enemy. From rocks, to axes, to bows and crossbows, to firearms, to missiles and railguns, to fucking RKV. Move the projectile faster and you get more people killed. This is the truth of our world.

Tension first, Steam, Electric and Magnetic Projectiles.

Scorpion Tanks!

This. All these fucking people with their delusions.

OMG WE'D HAVE LASERS AND HEAT SWORDS AND AND no you stupid fuck, we don't have those NOW because we don't have the technology yet, removing gunpowder WHICH WAS A STRONG ENABLER OF INDUSTRIALIZATION AS A MINING TOOL isn't going to lead to more advanced technology.

Could you kill a person with one of these?

And what's stopping people to ever understand that? Gundpowder doesn't have a phd in physics you gay nerd

Air rifles, rocketry, and flamethrowers are one of the few things that could be developed without blackpowder or modern gunpowder you penis pauper

If I use the engine of an early WWI tank to pull back the string (presumably made of metal) of a scorpion or other ballista, what kind of firing rate can I expect? Also, at which rate could I no longer penetrate other tanks' armour?

Okay, so I've only thought about this a little. The main reason not to have a gunpowder-like explosive is not having access to the nitrate compound, right? It appears that mostly these kind of places lack that: very humid places and very cold places. If it's a fantasy world mainly made of those kind of places, think about what other technologies would come to them naturally from their environment if they're looking for a weapon that does what early chemical-powered ranged weapon did.
Though I'm not any more creative than the rest of you, so I'll be sticking to catapults and crossbows… maybe ship-to-ship melee.

>Whaaa guns!
There is a very strong arguement to make that one of the major biological benefits humans gained from becoming bipedial and having larger forebrains was the advantage of being able to throw things. In the animal kingdom, we're very near the top in terms of any kind of projectile-usage, and the ability to use projectiles and plot the trajectory of handheld missile weapons is a talent that comes naturally to humans in a way that other animals just can't measure up to.

Handheld projectiles ARE the human's weapon of choice, and like it or not, warfare has always and will always progress towards "who can do what from the furthest away." The idea, or role that a gun or gun-like weapon fills as a weapon is just going to be a logical conclusion to this.

I mean, even if you just have an aesthetic hate-on for guns in muh fantasy, the bow and crossbow are just iterative steps towards directing our own physical energy into a projectile more efficiently, then to storing it for later use, then using some other potential energy to fire a projectile. If that isn't gunpowder, its going to be (and has been) pressurized gas, magnetics, other some other chemical energy. Adding magic to the mix doesn't help this either. From a practical standpoint, if you're being out and out realistic about it, if you can make a wand of something akin to mage hand, you can make a version that vomits out a bullet in the direction you're pointing in.

We don't use guns because they look cool. We use guns because they're fucking clever.

Ballistas, crossbows and pistol sized crossbows are a thing.

Sapper pig cannons

Would any civilization have ever been mad enough to try and launch paragliding medieval soldiers by catapult?

Yes they were every bit as lethal as gunpowder based weapons.

They were just expensive and took hours to reload using a massive pump.

The CANISTERS took a long time to reload. Soldiers carried multiple canisters and could exchange them very quickly.