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Where are the slings in Historical movies? (Read 57869 times)
Curious Aardvark
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Re: Where are the slings in Historical movies?
Reply #30 - Sep 23rd, 2009 at 10:01am
 
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When a sling can send a .690" round ball at 900-1000fps(typical musket velociety) then I'll believe that a staff sling would be better then a musket, until then I'll stick with the musket. That being said, if you can't get a musket a sling would be better then chuckin' rocks with your bare hands, a lot better.  


Lmao - okay what you can do with a staff sling and about an hours training.
Hurl rocks a pound in weight well over 100 yards.
Clear tall obstacles - trajectory adjustment with a staff sling is very easy - I put a golf ball about 200 yards the other day and it went so high I almost lost sight of it.
So staff slings can drop much heavier missiles/grenades behind barricades - muskets can't do this. They can deliver much heavier missiles to the same or greater range than a musket.
And with the right staff and attached sling - yeah I'll go with staff slings having a greater average range than a hand sling. Which means they easily outrange a musket. They certainly have a much faster rate of fire.
Took my matial arts teacher to the end of the carpark with the staff slig the other day. He had 3 throws, all went dead straight and all over 100 yards.
Try that with a hand sling Smiley

At short range a musket is potentially more lethal - but anything beyond 75-100 yards staff slings rule, no question.
And shooting a staff sling does not send up a cloud of smoke that obscures your vision or create a huge bang that gives away your position.
A staff slinger could drop grenades or rocks on a musketeer from concealement without the musketeer having the slightest idea where they were coming from.
Other reason they are better than muskets: anyone can make one. Ammunition readily available, don't require gunpowder, weigh considerably less than a musket.
Won't explode in the users hands if you ram a bit too hard.

Nope give me a company of staff slings over muskets any day.
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TN.Frank
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Re: Where are the slings in Historical movies?
Reply #31 - Sep 23rd, 2009 at 11:16am
 
I can put a golf ball out about 275-300 yrds with my driver,LOL. Grin Guess it'd make a pretty decent weapon if we were using golf balls to fight with.  Roll Eyes
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Re: Where are the slings in Historical movies?
Reply #32 - Sep 23rd, 2009 at 12:30pm
 
Curious Aardvark wrote on Sep 23rd, 2009 at 10:01am:
Quote:
When a sling can send a .690" round ball at 900-1000fps(typical musket velociety) then I'll believe that a staff sling would be better then a musket, until then I'll stick with the musket. That being said, if you can't get a musket a sling would be better then chuckin' rocks with your bare hands, a lot better.  


Lmao - okay what you can do with a staff sling and about an hours training.
Hurl rocks a pound in weight well over 100 yards.
Clear tall obstacles - trajectory adjustment with a staff sling is very easy - I put a golf ball about 200 yards the other day and it went so high I almost lost sight of it.
So staff slings can drop much heavier missiles/grenades behind barricades - muskets can't do this. They can deliver much heavier missiles to the same or greater range than a musket.
And with the right staff and attached sling - yeah I'll go with staff slings having a greater average range than a hand sling. Which means they easily outrange a musket. They certainly have a much faster rate of fire.
Took my matial arts teacher to the end of the carpark with the staff slig the other day. He had 3 throws, all went dead straight and all over 100 yards.
Try that with a hand sling Smiley

At short range a musket is potentially more lethal - but anything beyond 75-100 yards staff slings rule, no question.
And shooting a staff sling does not send up a cloud of smoke that obscures your vision or create a huge bang that gives away your position.
A staff slinger could drop grenades or rocks on a musketeer from concealement without the musketeer having the slightest idea where they were coming from.
Other reason they are better than muskets: anyone can make one. Ammunition readily available, don't require gunpowder, weigh considerably less than a musket.
Won't explode in the users hands if you ram a bit too hard.

Nope give me a company of staff slings over muskets any day.


If you are using misshaped rocks and live somewhere below sea level, i can understand why people are having a hard time with 100 yd.
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Re: Where are the slings in Historical movies?
Reply #33 - Sep 23rd, 2009 at 10:07pm
 
Wow! Underwater slinging; this i gotta see!
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Donnerschlag
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Re: Where are the slings in Historical movies?
Reply #34 - Sep 24th, 2009 at 4:44am
 
Aussie wrote on Sep 23rd, 2009 at 10:07pm:
Wow! Underwater slinging; this i gotta see!

I kind of know how this would turn out, but now I kind of wanna try this, mainly to be one of the only people who willingly tried to sling underwater! Cheesy

Of course, the locations I sling at are all below sealevel, so I guess I'm slinging under the sea?
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Re: Where are the slings in Historical movies?
Reply #35 - Sep 24th, 2009 at 5:10am
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfvCjLgbpy0

Why did black-powder era armies fight with, well, black-powder muskets (or firelocks, or "fusils"), rather than with staff-slings ? Hmm. No doubt for cultural reasons, but also tactical reasons, I suppose.

Windage makes the flintlock musket inaccurate, sure. But the C18th armies tested these things (the data are easy to get-- e.g. P. Haythornthwaite's books on Nap era warfare)-- or try

http://napoleonistyka.atspace.com/infantry_tactics_2.htm

which gives sources for accuracy and range: by the late C18th, at 160 yards (so 150 m or so), against a target the size of an infantry company (say 1.7m high, 50-60m across), you get better than 50% accuracy. At 300 m or so, you still get better than 20% accuracy. I don't think a staff slinger can match that: the point is fighting, and defeating ranged bodies of men in setpiece battles, with massed firepower.

Massed firepower: fusil wielding people can range up tight, first row kneeling, to deliver volley fire-- of course, the reason why they're massed in the first place is because the weapon is inaccurate and requires mass fighting (rather than the "skulking" war of the skirmisher-- which, incidentally, you can do with a smoothore fusil, though a rifle is better: and you can lie down or kneel to skirmish).

Just some thoughts. But, to be sure, a good deal of how states fight is determined culturally-- uniformity, blocks of men, straight-up slug fest of the black-powder battalion, is how states conceived of "real" war. John A. Lynn's books on esp. French but also Sepoy fighting are good on this.
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Re: Where are the slings in Historical movies?
Reply #36 - Sep 24th, 2009 at 11:05am
 
Donnerschlag wrote on Sep 24th, 2009 at 4:44am:
Aussie wrote on Sep 23rd, 2009 at 10:07pm:
Wow! Underwater slinging; this i gotta see!

I kind of know how this would turn out, but now I kind of wanna try this, mainly to be one of the only people who willingly tried to sling underwater! Cheesy

Of course, the locations I sling at are all below sealevel, so I guess I'm slinging under the sea?


Yes, and your slinging where there is tons of air resistence and air resistance plays the biggest role in how fast and far your ammo is going to go. Thats why people do the world records for slinging at places like the dessert near arizona and utah because its like 5000 feet above sea level. But you prolly already know about air resistance but i just want people to know that it plays the biggest role.
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Re: Where are the slings in Historical movies?
Reply #37 - Sep 24th, 2009 at 3:18pm
 
Thearos wrote on Sep 24th, 2009 at 5:10am:
Why did black-powder era armies fight with, well, black-powder muskets (or firelocks, or "fusils"), rather than with staff-slings ? Hmm. No doubt for cultural reasons, but also tactical reasons, I suppose.



Surely also the psychological impact of an army that uses organised firepower (guns and their big brothers, canons). The noise alone must have had an absolutely shocking effect on people who lived in far more silent times.

It seems absurd to us that for example North American Indians in the 18th and early 19th century gave up the bow and aquired relatively unreliable firearms which not only scared away animals from their hunting grounds, but also made the tribes even more depending on trade with the colonists for blackpowder and ammo. But they did. Maybe it was just the fascination of possessing and "dominating" one of those noisy fire sticks. Fashion, if you want.

Firearms had one great advantage from the pont of view of the ruling classes: An army of gunmen which was sent home after a war had only a rather limited access to black-powder. Thus is was a minor potential threat to its own rulers than a mass of experienced staff-slingers who could build their shooting devices in a few minutes from material which lay around everywhere. 
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Re: Where are the slings in Historical movies?
Reply #38 - Sep 24th, 2009 at 3:35pm
 
Many Native Americans were still using the bow well into the 1860's simply because they could make their own arrows and get off more shots per miniute then the slower muzzleloaders of the time. Even after they adopted firearms many wanted flintlocks because they could knap a flint where as the cap lock guns needed caps which were unavailable on the frontier most of the time.
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Re: Where are the slings in Historical movies?
Reply #39 - Sep 24th, 2009 at 5:18pm
 
Mr. Boss wrote on Sep 24th, 2009 at 11:05am:
Donnerschlag wrote on Sep 24th, 2009 at 4:44am:
Aussie wrote on Sep 23rd, 2009 at 10:07pm:
Wow! Underwater slinging; this i gotta see!

I kind of know how this would turn out, but now I kind of wanna try this, mainly to be one of the only people who willingly tried to sling underwater! Cheesy

Of course, the locations I sling at are all below sealevel, so I guess I'm slinging under the sea?


Yes, and your slinging where there is tons of air resistence and air resistance plays the biggest role in how fast and far your ammo is going to go. Thats why people do the world records for slinging at places like the dessert near arizona and utah because its like 5000 feet above sea level. But you prolly already know about air resistance but i just want people to know that it plays the biggest role.


Yes we know; just having a joke with you. Fact is that the great majority of the world's people live close to sea level so we don't really have a choice, short of travelling hundreds of miles every time we want to sling.

Actually though, the greatest limiting factor to distance unless you're slinging table tennis balls is not air resistance, it's gravity. Gravity makes any projectile fall back to earth (naturally). Without it a projectile would go on virtually for ever. Unfortunately we can do even less about that than we can about air resistance. Fancy a trip on the space shuttle?
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Re: Where are the slings in Historical movies?
Reply #40 - Sep 24th, 2009 at 5:35pm
 
Isn't Death Valley actually Below Sea Level? Seems like I remember reading that. So a person can actually be on dry land(Death Valley is VERY Dry) and be below sea level too.  Wink
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Judges 20:16 "Out of all these troops, the best 700 were left-handed. Each could sling a stone at a hair and not miss."&&&&http://www.glockforum.com/forum&&
 
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Re: Where are the slings in Historical movies?
Reply #41 - Sep 24th, 2009 at 5:52pm
 
Correct again. There are quite a few places where you can be "below sea level". The Dead Sea is itself around 1200 ft below notional sea level (didn't check before posting so may be out).

The joke relied on deliberately misunderstanding below sea level as underwater.

Wonder if anyone has ever tried slinging at the Dead Sea? All that condensed air should make it a treacley experience.
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Re: Where are the slings in Historical movies?
Reply #42 - Sep 24th, 2009 at 5:56pm
 
I have slung at Badwater, Death Valley 282 ft below sea level. That was seriously warm.
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Re: Where are the slings in Historical movies?
Reply #43 - Sep 24th, 2009 at 10:45pm
 
Donnerschlag wrote on Sep 19th, 2009 at 9:45pm:
I can only recall one movie in which I saw a sling being used; "Princess Mononoke".
Unfortunately, it was only one slinger who knocked one of the protagonists out (rock to the head). the slinger wasn't in the shot for more than 3 seconds or so.  Tongue


That movie rules, one of the best Iīve ever seen. Those Japanese sure know their stuff.

A few days ago I saw, "Conquerors" I think that was the name. I can describe it as a poor manīs "Apocalypto". A lousy movie, Vikings attack North American Indians.

Anyway, the reason I mention this is that thereīs a key scene involving a slinger. The hero guides the viking through a mountain pass, who for some reason are all tied together. The hero uses a leather sling and hits the last Viking on the line, who falls to the cliff, dragging everyone with him. The only good thing about the movie was that scene. 
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Re: Where are the slings in Historical movies?
Reply #44 - Sep 25th, 2009 at 6:01pm
 
I think we need to get a petition started that we can send to Holleywood tellin' em' to start puting slingers in their movies.  Smiley
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