06-21-2018, 06:16 AM | #11 | |
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: near Houston
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Re: Weapons 100+ years after the end?
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A generous and sadistic GM, Brandon Cope GURPS 3e stuff: http://copeab.tripod.com |
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06-21-2018, 10:34 AM | #12 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Austin, TX
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Re: Weapons 100+ years after the end?
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Does anyone use piezoelectric crystals for small arm ammunition? I guess it's no different that a piezoelectric camp stove, and certainly not having to mess with mercury fulminate simplifies the supply chain a lot, but is this something that anyone has actually done?
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06-21-2018, 10:48 AM | #13 |
Night Watchman
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
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Re: Weapons 100+ years after the end?
Getting the materials may well be the problem. An under-appreciated aspect of post-apocalypse settings is the inability to get many materials we regard as commonplace, because of the collapse of long-distance trade networks.
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06-21-2018, 11:07 AM | #14 | |
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Central Europe
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Re: Weapons 100+ years after the end?
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The only thing I would add is that some of the double-action revolvers and howdah pistols from GURPS Adventure Guns might be better choices than Colts in a world of crazy spray-painted, spiked-cycle-driving, die-hard road warriors. The cool kids will have TL 6+ designs with iffy ammunition though!
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06-21-2018, 12:10 PM | #15 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: MO, U.S.A.
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Re: Weapons 100+ years after the end?
Not only that, but the "easy to get to" stuff has already been mined out. A lot of modern chemistry binds materials in such a way that a post apocalyptic world may be very resource poor. Particularly if cities are irradiated death traps.
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06-21-2018, 12:41 PM | #16 | ||
Join Date: Apr 2005
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Re: Weapons 100+ years after the end?
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Junk guns will die quickly. Guns which are misused by someone who doesn't know proper gun maintenance or which are exposed to the elements for any significant period of time will quickly be reduced to junk. So, plenty of "caveat emptor" for buyers of pre-collapse guns! Quote:
1) Lack of trained workers. Depending on how bad the death toll was skilled machinists of any sort might be thin on the ground and certain skills might essentially be lost until some bright spark reinvents them. 2) Lack of good fuels. Part of the reason that industrialization went so well the first time around is because there was plenty of high quality fossil fuel literally coming out of the ground. Early oil wells were founded where there were oil seeps from petroleum deposits close to the surface. Likewise, early coal mining operations mined coal from exposed faces first. These days, most of the cheap and easily obtainable fossil fuels are long gone, which partially explains extreme extraction techniques such as off-shore drilling, mountaintop removal mining, and fracking. It's possible that someone could revive an existing TL8 mining operation using TL5-7 technology, but production would be much lower, in part due to problem #1. 3) Lack of good metals. The same problems regarding fossil fuels also apply to high quality, easily-mined metal ores. Admittedly, there's plenty of certain metals which could be recycled, but that implies that there are large stockpiles of decent quality scrap which isn't radioactive or guarded by spiky-haired mutant cannibals. In some cases, extracting new metals from old sites will effectively amount to a death sentence for mine workers due to lingering heavy metal pollution or worse (e.g., Pilcher, OK or Libby, MT). That said, it's not unreasonable to assume that firearm technology bounces back to low TL5 (flintlock muskets) within just a few years after a crash, even with a relatively low-skilled, sparse population of survivors. Crossbows would be simpler and cheaper to make initially, and almost as easy to use as firearms, but guns would still survive for certain applications. I've also heard that .22 long rifle rimfire cartridges can pretty much be reloaded indefinitely and it's an extremely popular cartridge type. At least for a couple of generations, there will be a steady market in reloading ammo, assuming that getting good quality brass and brass machining technology is a problem, but making simple explosives like nitrocellulose isn't. |
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06-21-2018, 03:40 PM | #17 |
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: The deep dark haunted woods
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Re: Weapons 100+ years after the end?
THIS is the reason. The apocalypse's main problem will not be loss of knowledge or skill, it will be loss of resources. Our global economy allows us access to everything. Without access to the distribution networks we take for granted, all we have is what's in a day or two walking distance. And there's only so much we can salvage.
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"When you talk about damage radius, even atomic weapons pale before that of an unfettered idiot in a position of power." - Sam Starfall from the webcomic Freefall |
06-21-2018, 04:56 PM | #18 | |
Join Date: Jun 2013
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Re: Weapons 100+ years after the end?
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I wouldn't really expect anyone to bother making such, of course, as it's really a variant on electrical ignition, and using a battery or similar is probably more reliable.
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GURPS Overhaul |
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06-21-2018, 05:01 PM | #19 | |
Banned
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: 100 hurricane swamp
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Re: Weapons 100+ years after the end?
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Depending on TL and how well communities can create and maintain trade networks, you could have trade networks spanning large areas of the US (for example), even from coast to coast. |
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06-21-2018, 05:24 PM | #20 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: Weapons 100+ years after the end?
TL 4 is about as high a technology that can be sustained without large populations connected by an extensive trading network. While any modern firearm that was stored properly will survive centuries, the acidic quality of modern propellents will eat away at the barrel and firing mechanisms of most regularly used rifled firearms within a couple of decades, even with proper cleaning. Homemade ammunition, with homemade propellents, will only accelerate the process.
Smoothbore weapons have more tolerance, but regular use will still cause degradation of the barrel and firing mechanisms within a few decades. In addition, the casing of ammunition can only be reused so often before the acidic nature of the propellents cause them to weaken to the point where they are useless. Unless you have modern industry to provide replacement parts and replacements casings, modern weapons will break down long before a century passes with regular use. Now, a lucky warlord could have stumbled on a secret armory (corporate, government, or private), that was forgotten because a biological weapon killed everyone who knew about it. With proper storage, you could have enough weapons and ammunition for a modern infantry division survive for centuries before decay compromised everything. The food and medicine would be worthless, as would the tires and fuel for the vehicles, but the ammunitions, armor, weapons, etc might be functional. Imagine a party of PCs who finds such a treasure. A recent landslide broke open the outer door, revealing a sealed but unlocked inner door. They open the inner door to the sealed armory and find tens of thousands of prestige weapons with hundreds of millions of rounds of ammunition. What will they do with their discovery and who can they trust to pay them a fraction of its value? |
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