Modern firearms and the collapse of heroism

[Loaded dice]

You increase your odds of survival with proper dispersion.  Not your odds of dying alone.  I think you might need to get your head checked if you think there was ever anything heroic about the way soldiers die in this century or any other.  As for the skill it takes to operate a machine gun - have you ever suppressed a position with a belt fed weapon?  It takes some effort, and it makes you enemy target no1.  The 7.62 guys are a two man team, so I guess they wouldn't die alone anymore than a vehicle gunner would.  I can't imagine why a light mg would be more than a hundred meters from his squad either.

IDK it just seems carrying a gun and shooting is easier than carrying a sword, or fighting with your bare hands.. And yet guns are extremely powerful, bullets are efficient and lethal. Modern weapons are just scary...

[The Grand Nudger]

-and yet modern casualty rates are low.

Agree about them being terrifying, and that's why you disperse. Beyond some point, more people in an area don't help you to achieve your objective in any way, and in fact it begins to degrade your capabilities...not just because you've given the other guy more targets to shoot at in a denser field where it's harder to miss...but for all of the backend stuff it takes to even bring more men up..and all that you lose, if you do so, anywhere else those men might have been placed instead.

Fighting with your bare hands is the easiest thing in the world. No one in their right mind would want to do it - soldiers tend to carry weapons - and the most lethal weapons they can find. You've watched too many movies..I suspect, where a war is a series of 1v1 duels between oiled up hotbodies. Ballerinas on wire twirling around like christmas tree decorations. That's never been how this worked. It was peasants who were full time farmers stabbing each other to death with sticks in every age. My buddies could have cleared those spartans out of that pass in about 60 seconds.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

War has never been heroic

Which ones have you fought in?

[The Architect Of Fate]

War has never been heroic

Which ones have you fought in?

Are you arguing that wars are heroic? Not the people who fight in the wars they can be heroic I mean the act of making war itself what would make that heroic?

[Loaded dice]

-and yet modern casualty rates are low.  

Agree about them being terrifying, and that's why you disperse.  Beyond some point, more people in an area don't help you to achieve your objective in any way, and in fact it begins to degrade your capabilities...not just because you've given the other guy more targets to shoot at in a denser field where it's harder to miss...but for all of the backend stuff it takes to even bring more men up..and all that you lose, if you do so, anywhere else those men might have been placed instead.  

Fighting with your bare hands is the easiest thing in the world.  No one in their right mind would want to do it - soldiers tend to carry weapons - and the most lethal weapons they can find.  You've watched too many movies..I suspect, where a war is a series of 1v1 duels between oiled up hotbodies.  Ballerinas on wire twirling around like christmas tree decorations.  That's never been how this worked.  It was peasants who were full time farmers stabbing each other to death with sticks in every age.  My buddies could have cleared those spartans out of that pass in about 60 seconds.

So yeah dispersion is generally a good idea in modern warfare... it's really a huge change that goes unnoticed. 

I don't thinking fighting with your bare hands is easy, especially if you're not muscular, or if your opponent is simply much heavier and bigger. But once you have a gun, you can bring down anyone with minimal effort, that's what's so scary and evil about firearms, they're like a superpower that should have never become real.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Well, at least we’ve got Islamist psychopaths willing to stab innocent people up close and personal. Does that fit your definition of ‘heroic’?

Boru

Videos depicting stabbing are the one thing, the ONE thing I can't watch. 

Anyway, you do realize that what these people do has absolutely nothing to do with Islam, right ?

Edit : I removed the part in the OP describing the video, I feel it's too much.

Not what I asked you. You were kvetching earlier that killing from a distance isn’t heroic. What I’m asking is if you think Islamist terror fantastic who stab people in crowds are acting heroically. It’s a ‘yes or no’ type question.

Boru

[The Grand Nudger]

So yeah dispersion is generally a good idea in modern warfare... it's really a huge change that goes unnoticed. 

I don't thinking fighting with your bare hands is easy, especially if you're not muscular, or if your opponent is simply much heavier and bigger. But once you have a gun, you can bring down anyone with minimal effort, that's what's so scary and evil about firearms, they're like a superpower that should have never become real.

You're thinking of a duel again.  The only reason I can think of to go hand to hand with a guy is to hold him for my buddies to stab or shoot him.  The most likely outcome being that this is exactly what happens to me, doesn't matter if I'm the bigger or smaller guy.  That's not heroism, it's gambling. The no 1 rule of hand to hand combat is to never -ever- get stuck in a hand to hand combat situation. You'll laugh your ass off about this, but my hth training instructor sent himself to the hospital trying to demonstrate a bayonet against a tire. Came back and went straight into his mouth. Guy took it like he was made of stone. Full on official handoff, nice and calm, then briskly walked off the range to his vehicle.

This is what going hand to hand actually looks like.  It's not an exhibition for the camera.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

-and yet modern casualty rates are low.  

Agree about them being terrifying, and that's why you disperse.  Beyond some point, more people in an area don't help you to achieve your objective in any way, and in fact it begins to degrade your capabilities...not just because you've given the other guy more targets to shoot at in a denser field where it's harder to miss...but for all of the backend stuff it takes to even bring more men up..and all that you lose, if you do so, anywhere else those men might have been placed instead.  

Fighting with your bare hands is the easiest thing in the world.  No one in their right mind would want to do it - soldiers tend to carry weapons - and the most lethal weapons they can find.  You've watched too many movies..I suspect, where a war is a series of 1v1 duels between oiled up hotbodies.  Ballerinas on wire twirling around like christmas tree decorations.  That's never been how this worked.  It was peasants who were full time farmers stabbing each other to death with sticks in every age.  My buddies could have cleared those spartans out of that pass in about 60 seconds.

So yeah dispersion is generally a good idea in modern warfare... it's really a huge change that goes unnoticed. 

I don't thinking fighting with your bare hands is easy, especially if you're not muscular, or if your opponent is simply much heavier and bigger. But once you have a gun, you can bring down anyone with minimal effort, that's what's so scary and evil about firearms, they're like a superpower that should have never become real.

Unless you're temperamentally suited and have had at least some training, taking down someone with a gun isn't as easy as you seem to think. Suffice it say that if someone doesn't want their teeth broken, they shouldn't go waving guns in my face.

Boru

[The Grand Nudger]

I'm sure that mothers back in the day thought - "man, these swords that killed my son take real skill to use. It's not like you can put them in one child's hand and send them out to kill other children. No, this takes heroism!"

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

'The glory of man is extinguished forever.' - Some Greek whose name escapes me, on seeing a crossbow demonstrated.

Boru