Most terrifying weapon of the pre-modern era?

[Olthar]

Fireballs and lightning bolts.

People had magic back then, right?

[Tahar Joblis]

This too.
And duelists frequently run into the Amateur problem.
You stand more chance of beating someone with 10 years duelist experience if you have absolutely no idea what you are doing than if you have 1 years experience, because you are going to act in a way that is so counter intuitive and stupid that the duelist will probably not be prepared to counter it.
(This only applies if they do not know you are an amateur. This amateur problem can also occur in chess they found. Experienced chess players will spend longer evaluating the board after an amateurs move because the amateur did something they didn't account for and suddenly they have to re-evaluate a whole new 8 moves ahead, since they assumed noone could be so stupid as to move the piece you just moved. In particularly bad cases, this can lead to the experienced player losing on timed matches. Against an expert, they EXPECTED them to move that piece. Against an amateur? totally didn't see it coming. ESPECIALLY if the amateur plays in such a way that the expert cannot be sure if they have absolutely no idea what they are doing, or are just SO SKILLED that the expert didn't notice the advantages of the move )

When it comes to blades, the hazard isn't generally having an amateur win per se. It's instead the amateur doing something spectacularly stupid that leads to mutual death or at least mutual severe injury, namely unwittingly impaling themselves on your blade right as they launch a strong attack. It can sometimes be hard to avoid stabbing someone and instead getting enough distance to safely parry and riposte when they're being suicidal, and they don't have to know they're being suicidal if they don't know what they're doing.

From experience, I can say that in fencing, when someone who has very little idea of what they're doing pushes around a more experienced fencer, it's because the former is in enormously better physical condition [and often also has training in other martial arts]. I managed to score wins against vastly more experienced opponents in my first couple months of fencing foil and epee, and in my first couple weeks of starting saber; but I did that only because my athletic condition was much better than theirs, and I had prior martial arts experience.

[Tagmatium]

Greek fire.

Damn, that was going to be my answer. I don't know any terrifying weapons, beyond stuff like swords.

Anyway, I've now read the whole thread and I accept the popular opinion: Greek fire.

You're the only person who has quoted my post rather than just repeat it.



But, yeah.

Napalm was bad, but imagine that before fucking bombs have even been invented.

[United States of Raptors]

I have to agree with the greek fire guys.

Napalm before the bombs, damn that is scary.

[Shnercropolis]

pepperbox guns. By far.

[Tagmatium]

I have to agree with the greek fire guys.

Napalm before the bombs, damn that is scary.

Guns hadn't been invented.

This shit was basically fucking magic, since it could burn underwater. Your average Medieval dude would have been freaked out by it, let alone people these days. I mean, shit, fire causes all sorts of primal fear these days.

[Ostroeuropa]

This too.
And duelists frequently run into the Amateur problem.
You stand more chance of beating someone with 10 years duelist experience if you have absolutely no idea what you are doing than if you have 1 years experience, because you are going to act in a way that is so counter intuitive and stupid that the duelist will probably not be prepared to counter it.
(This only applies if they do not know you are an amateur. This amateur problem can also occur in chess they found. Experienced chess players will spend longer evaluating the board after an amateurs move because the amateur did something they didn't account for and suddenly they have to re-evaluate a whole new 8 moves ahead, since they assumed noone could be so stupid as to move the piece you just moved. In particularly bad cases, this can lead to the experienced player losing on timed matches. Against an expert, they EXPECTED them to move that piece. Against an amateur? totally didn't see it coming. ESPECIALLY if the amateur plays in such a way that the expert cannot be sure if they have absolutely no idea what they are doing, or are just SO SKILLED that the expert didn't notice the advantages of the move )

When it comes to blades, the hazard isn't generally having an amateur win per se. It's instead the amateur doing something spectacularly stupid that leads to mutual death or at least mutual severe injury, namely unwittingly impaling themselves on your blade right as they launch a strong attack. It can sometimes be hard to avoid stabbing someone and instead getting enough distance to safely parry and riposte when they're being suicidal, and they don't have to know they're being suicidal if they don't know what they're doing.

From experience, I can say that in fencing, when someone who has very little idea of what they're doing pushes around a more experienced fencer, it's because the former is in enormously better physical condition [and often also has training in other martial arts]. I managed to score wins against vastly more experienced opponents in my first couple months of fencing foil and epee, and in my first couple weeks of starting saber; but I did that only because my athletic condition was much better than theirs, and I had prior martial arts experience.

Noted, consider my post ammended.

[New Chalcedon]

I've looked through the thread, and the popular opinion appears to be...

...Greek Fire! This substance was invented in antiquity; however, the Byzantine (or Greek) Empire was the first nation to weaponise it on the large scale. Made to a formula that was lost in the Middle Ages (and has yet to be successfully reconstructed), it would burn on anything, including on the surface of the sea itself.

Used in both naval battles (as shipkillers) and land warfare (as defensive and offensive siege weapons), Greek fire saved the Empire at least twice, and constituted the first flamethrowers in history.

All of which puts aside the "sheer, howling terror" factor of seeing your enemies throw fire at you in the Middle Ages.

[EnragedMaldivians]

Byzantine diplomacy. Brains over brawn and they were clever fucks.

For instance they liked to hold claimants to the Ottoman throne hostage, and if the Ottomans pissed them off or threatened them too much, they would release them to wage war on the Sultan. Indeed during the Ottoman interregnum period in the early 1400s, when the Empire was almost destroyed by Tamerlane's armies, the Byzantines greatly prolonged the ensuing civil war by supporting whichever brother (all of whom were competing for the throne) was the weakest, to keep some sembleance of a balance of power. Of course, it didn't work out too well in the end (Constantinople fell to the Turks in 1453)...but they put up a good fight and I wouldn't have wanted to be on the wrong end of one of their schemes.

And yes, it counts.

[The Magnified Union of Aligned Communes]

Used in both naval battles (as shipkillers) and land warfare (as defensive and offensive siege weapons), Greek fire saved the Empire at least twice, and constituted the first flamethrowers in history.

I think this is worth bringing up- a likely flamethrower precursor used by the Thebans in the Battle of Delium. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Delium )

100. The Boeotians presently sent for darters and slingers from [the towns on] the Melian gulf; and with these, and with two thousand men of arms of Corinth, and with the Peloponnesian garrison that was put out of Nisaea, and with the Megareans, all which arrived after the battle, they marched forthwith to Delium and assaulted the wall. And when they had attempted the same many other ways, at length they brought to it an engine, wherewith they also took it, made in this manner: [2] Having slit in two a great mast, they made hollow both the sides, and curiously set them together again in the form of a pipe. At the end of it in chains they hung a cauldron; and into the cauldron from the end of the mast they conveyed a snout of iron, having with iron also armed a great part of the rest of the wood. [3] They carried it to the wall, being far off, in carts, to that part where it was most made up with the matter of the vineyard and with wood. [4] And when it was to, they applied a pair of great bellows to the end next themselves, and blew. The blast, passing narrowly through into the cauldron, in which were coals of fire, brimstone, and pitch, raised an exceeding great flame, and set the wall on fire, so that no man being able to stand any longer on it, but abandoning the same and betaking themselves to flight, the wall was by that means taken. [5] Of the defendants, some were slain and two hundred taken prisoners; the rest of the number recovered their galleys and got home.(via www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=thuc.+4.100.1 )

[Arkotania]

Me.

Do ships count? If so, I'd say the Koreans with their Kobukson. Pretty ingenious for 15th century.

[Norcroft]

The bow and arrow.
This is the weapon that basically let Genghis khan conquer most of the known world back in the day.

[Paleocacher]

No matter what dead is dead so a soldier wouldn't have time to be terrified anyway.
The Turks launched pots full of venomous snakes at enemy ships. That and their Greek Fire must have been a terrifying combo.

[The Occident]

The most terrifying weapon of the pre-modern era, or any era, is a good soldier. Well-trained, well-equipped, and well-disciplined, the soldier will forever be the most formidable weapon any military has. All a nation's bombs, and all a nations guns are utterly useless if no man will use them to preserve it.

[Gregosaurs]

Disease. The mongols were sending bubonic plauge infested corpses into cities for years as a weapon.

[Forsher]

Damn, that was going to be my answer. I don't know any terrifying weapons, beyond stuff like swords.

Anyway, I've now read the whole thread and I accept the popular opinion: Greek fire.

You're the only person who has quoted my post rather than just repeat it.



But, yeah.

Napalm was bad, but imagine that before fucking bombs have even been invented.

I really don't think you are going to get anything scarier. Even normal fire is bad enough and absolutely devastating in a densely packed, wooden city with narrow pre-car passages.

[Xathranaar]

Smallpox.

[AETEN II]

Either biological agents or the Greek napalm. Hell, take a plague corpse, douse it in napalm, then launch it at the enemy. Great way to get rid of any dead and terrify the enemy.

[Germanyball]

The screams of pissed off Scotsmen.

It doesn't matter what you arm them with, you could give them each a down pillow and a few hundred of those naked, screaming bastards will still be the scariest thing you dream about at night.

[Confederate States of California]

A Scotsman with a claymore.

[Xathranaar]

A Scotsman with a claymore.
(Image)

Not nearly as scary as a Norseman with a dead Scotsman's claymore.

[Trotskylvania]

A Scotsman with a claymore.
(Image)

Not nearly as scary as a Norseman with a dead Scotsman's claymore.

Which is not a scary as plague infested dead Norsemenn or dead Scotsmen thrown over the city walls by a trebuchet.

[Nazis in Space]

Not nearly as scary as a Norseman with a dead Scotsman's claymore.

Which is not a scary as plague infested dead Norsemenn or dead Scotsmen thrown over the city walls by a trebuchet.

Which is small change compared to a plague infested undead Norseman charging towards you screaming and swinging his rusty broadsword as green clouds of pestilence continually leave his orifices and bits of rotting flesh fall off, continuing to crawl independently towards you on their little meaty stumps.

[EnragedMaldivians]

Which is not a scary as plague infested dead Norsemenn or dead Scotsmen thrown over the city walls by a trebuchet.

Which is small change compared to a plague infested undead Norseman charging towards you screaming and swinging his rusty broadsword as green clouds of pestilence continually leave his orifices and bits of rotting flesh fall off, continuing to crawl independently towards you on their little meaty stumps.

Oddly enough, and I'm only half kidding, that bit about meaty stumps has made me quite hungry.

[Trotskylvania]

Which is not a scary as plague infested dead Norsemenn or dead Scotsmen thrown over the city walls by a trebuchet.

Which is small change compared to a plague infested undead Norseman charging towards you screaming and swinging his rusty broadsword as green clouds of pestilence continually leave his orifices and bits of rotting flesh fall off, continuing to crawl independently towards you on their little meaty stumps.

Well, that escalated quickly