6 ms·

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

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.

bluGill 3y ago
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.
- pixl97 3y ago
  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.
  - bluGill 3y ago
    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.
strangesmells06 3y ago
> 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.

6 ms·

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

by gustavus 3y ago

bluGill 3y ago
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.
- pixl97 3y ago
  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.
  - bluGill 3y ago
    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.
strangesmells06 3y ago
> 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.