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Comment by strangesmells06 | Hacker News Reader

The article outlines the advantages and disadvantages of both the bow and firearm and it seemed to me that the firearm had more advantages as a combat weapon than the bow in the modern world.

Now if theres a collapse the bow would be a requirement to know how to use and build.

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> Now if there's a collapse...

True. But compared to the chemical / metallurgical / etc. skills and supply chain needed to keep producing modern bullets...making and using bows is trivial.

[Edits - emphasis added.]

> making and using bows is trivial

The using part seems like it requires a level of skill that might take longer to acquire than skill at hitting a close target with an automatic gun.

Sure. But given a crossbow made with salvaged spring steel, I suspect that skill (hitting close targets) would have much quicker learning curve (vs. a bow).

I don't know if I'd agree with that. Bowyers would spend years practicing and honing their craft as apprentices, the process to make a good bow usually involved weeks or months of labor. It wasn't as simple as finding a stick and curving it, there was boiling it, gluing it, layering different types of wood, each step of which could take days.

Meanwhile I can build a gun with not much more than a block of wood and a pipe, as for bullet availability. As a species we've produced a lot of those and a lot of them can be found in a lot of places, so I don't imagine a bow will become feasible until well after the collapse.

A good bow takes that much effort, but a primitive bow from a stick works. How would you make the pipe for that gun - you have a lot of modern technology invested into that pipe.

Which is to say if we got sent back 200k years to anywhere in the world of our choice, after 3 months in a library studying the books of our choice, the bow would be easier to create.

If you spend 3 months studying you better spend the vast majority of it figuring out how to make antibiotics and gather supplies.

Unless you were fighting other humans with ranged weapons, you'd be far, far better off with spears and traps.

This is a thought experiment, lacking a time machine we can't do it. You are right that bows should not be the first thing you reach for.

> Meanwhile I can build a gun with not much more than a block of wood and a pipe

hmm doubtful. even with a musket you need gunpowder, primer, trigger mechanism, some sort of boring inside the barrel

in short a lot of specialized materials and equipment are needed for even the most basic gun

A bow you just need trees and some woodworking tools and some sort of metal for arrowheads.

Producing modern bullets is primitive technology, compared to any modern manufacturing process. Lots of normal gun owners do it at home to save money. Granted they usually buy the powder, bullets, and primer separately but it’s not like they are microprocessors or something.

The cartridge can be re-used. Gunpowder made of three elements that are widely available. The lead bullet is one of the easiest materials to find and work with, lead is a low temperature metal used for thousands of years; you can cast the stuff in a literal campfire.

The one part you might have a hard time with is the primer, but you can stock up on those or use a black powder rifle and flint (Look up successful attempts to make the Gorn gun)

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