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Gunpowder's superior noise, its superior posturing ability, made it ascendant on the battlefield. The longbow would still have been used in the Napoleonic Wars if the raw mathematics of killing effectiveness was all that mattered, since both the longbow's firing rate and its accuracy were much greater than that of a smoothbore musket. But a frightened man, thinking with his midbrain and going "ploink, ploink, ploink" with a bow, doesn't stand a chance against an equally frightened man going "BANG! BANG!" with a musket.

---Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society

Current Mood: contemplative

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edenfalling

Ah.

What you have to understand is that Grossman is taking the very interesting fact that up through WWII, only 3-4 soldiers out of every 20 ever fired their guns at the enemy. And he's trying to explain why, and then why that statistic has changed during the 20th century as armies changed their training methods.

It is apparently, at the moment of truth, very hard for most people to kill other people, whatever weapon they're using. But it's a lot easier to scare off the enemy if you can make an impressive loud noise and a belch of smoke. And, yes, it's also easier to learn to use a gun... but that's no particular guarantee that you'll use it well, or actually use it to kill the enemy.

I'm not sure I agree with all Grossman's ideas, and his writing has an unfortunate tendency to slip into melodrama at times, but he makes some very interesting points. *goes back to her reading*

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