#sword talk

[Provided you are this geek right here]

Sword Hedgehog made a friend! Blade hedgehog!

Ah, the question of the ages. I love broad swords, they're big, badass, fun to swing around, and they make Excellent wall decorations. They're a close contender, but not my Favorite. My favorites are this kind i found on Amazon. I don't know the technical name for them, but i'd put them in the machete family. They're like the machete's fun crazy second cousin that's also related to full blown swords. Like the broad sword they're fun to swing around, and they look great as wall decorations, but they're also way more practical (their lighter, sharper, and can be used easily with just one hand) and also prettier in my humble opinion.

Here are some pictures of the two i own:

They are The Best.

This is a curious concept since, technically, the gun subsumed the role of pike, spear and halberd, not the sword (a side-arm), and swords were used up until the end of the First World War as standard for Officers, and in at least a few instances were still used until after 1945. Swords being officially decommissioned from military standard is a relatively new thing. What is also worth noting the reason for this is simply that swords were not seeing as much practical use: firearms became more efficient for wounding, killing and capturing enemies than a sword, even in close combat, to the point a sword may only be drawn for practical purposes once in the line of service, simply because close combat was so hard to come by.

You know what though? With military armour becoming more and more high-tech, able to withstand varying degrees of gunfire, close combat is actually seeing to be on the cusp of becoming a viable method of combat again. We’ve found that at least in the Middle East, extremist groups are less concerned about being shot at, and more worried about a bayonet charge simply because armoured individuals charging upon you to stab you to death is a VERY UNSETTLING thought.

It occurs to me, therefore, that the return of bladed weapons (beyond that of knives) may actually see a return once armoured defence catches up to the point that it becomes viable to use larger melee weapons again.

There is also the matter that firearms can be mass-manufactured, whereas swords have always been expensive to produce (hence tended to stay in the hands of officers) and timely to train. In similar analogy, the use of the longbow was subsumed by rifles not because of rifle technology becoming better at many points (the Duke of Wellington thought the idea of using longbowmen against Napoleon to be novel and practical as bows can shoot OVER barriers) but simply because there was no-one to train a longbow corps by the time it was considered desired following standard issue of rifles. Once it became easier to train soldiers to use a widely effective weapon over a specialised tool that was lower-tech but virtually as good, the rifle took over…however, as in the example above, it’s been acknowledged at various times that the longbow was pretty much as effective, just hampered by the time it took to produce the archers.