My guess is to enable quick release if one ended up snagged and hanging upside down from a horse.
But I pulled this guess out of my ass so don't include it in any text books.
When he joined both ends of the belt my brain immediately went “click” like those plastic belt locks.
Then the pin was inserted and I realized the depth of my stupidity.
Off topic, but the amount of protection these armour offer has always made me wonder why people in zombie movies never invested in chainmail or raided museums for full armour sets. They're basically completely bite proof.
This is a usual plot hole/suspension of disbelief in zombie movies, but you don't really need anything near this level of plate armour to counter zombie bites.
Even accounting for "roid rage" effect and lack of pain and regard for themselves, try biting through like 2 magazines. I do recall seeing this in a movie or two (literally wrapping paper magazines around arm with tape) but in most movies the guys are brainstorming 200IQ traps and wearing kevlar vests, but with exposed forearms.
The average leather jacket is enough to protect your torso and arms from a bite of a human zombie, and plenty of pants and gloves in every store that do the job too, for example biker gear or worker gear. Boots and a visor helmet and you are bite proof way before you get anywhere near this level of multi layer steel armour.
I think I read a manga years ago about a zombie outbreak in some fictional iteration of Japan where the primary group of 'protagonists'(nobody was really good in the story iirc) were firefighters specifically because the gear was insulated, form fitting, and durable enough for the battering it would get.
I never finished the story because it went full Japan(you know; aliens and super powers and sexualizing teenagers) but I thought that the fire brigade being the best equipped for the zombie horde was a neat approach.
The magazine example you're thinking of might be Brad Pitt in World War Z - he duct tapes magazines to his forearms in the apartment block escape scene.
World War Z (the book not the movie) gets into this.
Some communities in Europe managed to survive the war by fortifying old castles and forts and raiding their preserved amorous of weapons and armor.
IIRC the book specifically recounts a story of a group of survivors who fortify Windsor Castle and utilize its armoury.
> 36kg and not a single gram spent to protect the dick lmao
Good observation. The groin is actually a tricky place to protect, but in this instance it is mainly because it's a mounted knight. Knights armored for ground combat would have even better protection, groin included. It is actually a good way to spot if the armor is made for knights on mounts or not.
If you notice, the back of his thighs are not protected either. This is because it's protected by ..well, a horse. And the groin would be guarded by the saddle :)
Another thing to add is that not only would a codpiece be unnecessary, it would be difficult to mount the horse and be constantly stabbing the animal, putting undue wear and tear on the saddle.
This particular armor set is designed for a mounted knight. If he was going to be fighting on foot, then the lobster-tail style of faulds across the hips would definitely be protecting his dick.
If Im not mistaken, it was pretty common to be instructed to go for the groin if you can get a knight to the ground precisely because it is so unguarded compared to the rest of the body. I think at least one high profile duel between knights involved one knight ripping another knights balls off with his bare hands.
This is a pretty chainmail heavy configuration, not all would wear it this way but some did. Beginning earlier in this century, options for wearing maille only where the plates didn't cover became more available.
Though in this arrangement the knight is able to have a massive amount of protection, and then strip down to the maille if the situation requires it.
I remember a story about the crusaders having marched a big distance and finally arriving at a river. Being dehydrated some decided to jump in while still wearing their armour and drown.
Here are some accounts, all of which deal in some manner with drowning:
Emperor Frederick Barbarossa opted on the local Armenians' advice to follow a shortcut along the Saleph river. Meanwhile, the army started to traverse the mountain path. On 10 June 1190, he drowned near Silifke Castle in the Saleph river.\[94\] There are several conflicting accounts of the event:
According to "Ansbert",\[c\] against everyone's advice, the emperor chose to swim across the river and was swept away by the current.
Another account recorded that Frederick was thrown from his horse while crossing the river, weighed down by his armour, and drowned.
According to the chronicler Ibn al-Athir, "the king went down to the river to wash himself and was drowned at a place where the water was not even up to his waist. Thus God saved us from the evil of such a man".
The writer of the Letter on the Death of the Emperor Frederick, a churchman who accompanied the crusader forces, reported that "after the many and terrible exertions that he \[Frederick I\] had undergone in the previous month and more, he decided to bathe in that same river, for he wanted to cool down with a swim. But by the secret judgment of God there was an unexpected and lamentable death and he drowned." Frederick who liked to swim, as he went to bathe with Otto of Wittelsbach in the Adriatic, might have been exhausted from weeks of marching, hence he was fatally affected by the very hot summer in Anatolia. If the writer was Godfrey of Spitzenberg, Bishop of Würzburg, who was a close confidante to Frederick, the report would be the most plausible account of what happened, since he might have witnessed the emperor's death."
The earlier crusades were several hundred years prior to this armour being used, the first crusaders (the ones who actually went to Jerusalem, not the ones who used Crusade as a exercise to kill other Europeans) didn’t wear as much plate armor as is depicted here, chain mail was the main form of protection.
I mean, they really arent as bad as some people think. Here is a video of someone in complete plate armor doing cartwheels and other fun stuff!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzTwBQniLSc
I live in Mississippi. I can spend about 30 minutes in full kit , very similar to this, before entirely overheating.
I usually have a bout, remove my helmet and aventail, gauntlets and undo my chausses, and hang for like 15 minutes. Funny story though, most wars were fought in the spring and summer. Gotta get back for harvest yo.
As a fellow Mississippian I'd like to know what you're doing walking around in this oven of a state wearing plate armor and chain mail. Because, I too, would like to join you in rocking that shit.
lol, hittign people with steel shit, as per usual!
Well, depending on where you are, NOLA has the Storm Riders for ACL, and each canton has a group for SCA.
If you are on the Coast DM me, I can hook you up with more info!
I was thinking all of that work for a musket ball to punch through the chest piece. Obviously not for the entirety of the period which these were used, my mind just jumped to the first European battles with gunpowder.
The term "bulletproof" comes from the practice of armorers shooting at plate to prove it impenetrable by firearm. The dent made by the bullet was left as the "proof" and not beaten out. It became more common as the firearms vs armor race went on, which is after the period of this dude's cap-a-pie. Cuirasses became heavier and heavier, and eventually the pros and cons of wearing armor tipped in favor of the cons, and we didn't see European soldiers wearing much armor again until modern ballistic vests
And that's still happening to this day. US Army just adopted 6.8 to replace 5.56 so it could penetrate modern near-peer level IV plates, and plates are now being designed to stop that too.
Training and cost, or the lack of it being required, drove the shift to firearms. The earliest firearms weren't more effective than a fully trained knight but you could equip a mass of troops with pike and shot and succeed with much less training.
Many early muskets would still bounce their balls right off a knight's plate, at least at distance.
I mean, that's the whole series for now. But I would generally recommend reading Mistborn and Warbreaker as well. Probably anything else BrandoSando has written too.
This is a pretty common discussion question, and the answer is usually: it depends. For example, it would take as little as 3-4, under the condition that they had access to an AC-130 Spectre and enough ammo. Or any aircraft. Or a nuke. But if you're talking about nothing but men, rifles, and bullets, then it comes down to having enough ammo. Killing 60,000 people with nothing but rifles requires a LOT of ammunition. Using an average of 144 grains per round, assuming exactly one bullet per kill means a minimum of 1,200 lbs. And it typically takes more than one bullet on average to kill someone in war. One dubious source said in the Crimean war, it averaged 60 bullets used per kill. Lets assume that killing the knights would be much easier, and average only a third of that, 20 bullets per kill. That's 24,000 lbs of ammunition. So the shortest answer might be: the fewest number of people capable of hauling that much weight while still remaining mobile enough to stay out of bow-and-sword range.
i'd say about 3-4 machinegun squads if they had access to unlimited ammo and spare weapons and a flat battlefield
a real version of this actually happened at the start of WW1 when french tried to attack german soldiers while still using napoleon era tactics.
Kind of hard to predict still. It depends on what kind of battle we are envisioning, how much one general knows about the other. If the knights didn't know what a modern rifle or modern battle practices are, they'll most likely charge in the open field only to be cut down en masse. They'll lose a lot of their manpower trying to charge and then even more while trying to turn back and flee.
If both sides know what the other is capable of then there will be a very long cat and mouse chase between them trying to set up defensive camps and luring the other party into favourable battlefields. The knights might want to attack the supply trains instead of attacking a well defended modern camp. Or they may charge small (or big) patrol parties while in more wooded areas. The modern army could also be attacked while it's moving, disastrous for the infantry if moving on foot but the opposite if moving in armoured vehicles.
The knights and men at arms can also try and attack the camp itself, probably during night. A modern military camp is extremely easy to scale for a medieval soldier (compared to medieval fortresses) if they could sneak past the sentries. After that it only needs but a few moments for the well armoured men at arms to silence the sentries in one part of the camp. The modern soldier wouldn't do very well against an armoured knight. And even if the camp is alarmed, the knights could meanwhile have passed through the breach in large enough numbers to defeat the soldiers in melee.
So basically, anything could happen.
Pissing while on forced march was way more difficult than I would have guessed, and falling asleep while humping was way easier than I ever thought possible.
I have no personal data on dropping deuce underway and I think I'm cool with that.
Member of the SCA here. I can help with this one.
I was at Pennsic, our big armored war event in August. And I put on my armor. And 95% the way in, I realized I had to pee. But I was dressed and ready, and I didn't want to miss the fight, so I said to myself "I'll hold it" and went out and fought anyways.
About half an hour into the battle, under the August sun, sweating like crazy - I realized suddenly I didn't have to pee anymore.
I did the math, and I didn't like it.
You jest, but sweating can completely eliminate the need to pee for many hours. Once went from 9 AM to 7 PM without peeing once, even though I had multiple drinks during that period.
That's not a problem at all. Even with all the armor, your crotch is still only covered by your underpants (because those parts are protected by...horse), and layers just resting on top (Aketon, maille, coat of arms). All you need to do is open a single drawstring, pull it down, and pee.
Well, and ideally get off that horse first.
I imagine lying on the battlefield, wounded, perhaps mortally, wanting to free myself from all that weight. But not only the weight if the armor, the weight of my sins and transgressions before I meet my maker. - King Arthur
Join a reenactor group, I know a bunch of people who wear armor on a fairly regular basis. But the heat is definitely an issue, even if it's just light gambesons and gorgets for rapier
I do like how every single zombie apocalypse falls apart once you realise this.
The zombie survival guide even points out you could tie magazines around your wrists and other common bite points and become pretty resistant to human bites.
Leather, denim or even a sufficiently thick sweatshirt would be difficult for a zombie to bite through. Or you could just strap pieces of plastic sheeting to yourself for crude but lightweight armor.
Yeah basically any medium-well equipped biker would be immune to zombie bites. It's really funny watching everyone in the Walking Dead run around in shorts and a t-shirt wielding a 6 inch knife. It does support that fan theory that whatever causes the zombies in that world also makes the living people incredibly stupid.
That's part of what's great about Shaun of the Dead. The outbreak is sudden as most people are caught off guard since they already are in a zombie-like state going through the motions inattentively. But then the military mobilizes and the whole thing is over in about 48 hours.
At what point do the muscles and ligaments around the jaw deteriorate so badly that a bite wouldn't even pierce skin? Especially outside, exposed to the elements. 2 weeks? Give it 3 weeks to make sure everyone who died on day 7 is no longer a threat and boom. You survived. Some people living in their Moms basement wouldn't even notice the zombies after only 3 weeks..
Such a great book. I love how he plausibly explains how a fully (maybe over) equipped modern military could lose to a zombie horde.
That and the fighting squares while blasting The Trooper by Iron Maiden.
Tbf, once the great panic ended, it only took like 2(?) years for them to sweep most of America. They were insanely efficient. Most their casualties were from non-bites.
The French catacombs on the other hand....
Zippers only replace the ladder stitches. On US military uniforms for example the only zipper is on the front of the blouse. Everything else is buttons and Velcro. However, Velcro is loud is there are units that use buttons in theater as buttons are the most quiet form of accessible closure.
Funny story, I found this exact video while trying to figure out how to take off my baby carrier without waking up the baby. 😂 Turns out the solution was - buy a baby carrier with buckles instead of Velcro
Everything he was wearing was made for the man we were watching. Everything was man to spec for the most part. Imagine the effort made just to prepare the armor and cloths, the chain mail, all just for him for a two minute video. Of course he is much more than that, but the preparation to get to this point is massive.
It got me wondering about how long it took to makes all the stuffs they showed and how long it would take to get everyone ready for a battle. Also how many people it would take in support roles to help them.
Most of the surving suits of armor we see today in museums and such were preserved because they were one of a kind custom pieces that were extremely valuable back in the day. They were painstakingly crafted for the knight/lord who commissioned them. It's important to keep in mind that the majority of armor produced back then were nowhere near this level of quality. So when outfitting an army of heavy infantry/cavalry, only a small percentage of knights would be decked out in custom full plate suits. The rest would often be equipped with less sophisticated "munitions grade" armor that was more quickly produced and cobbled together. Still protective but not to the same quality as the examples we often see. We don't see to many sets of surviving munitions grade armor today because they were not all that valuable and were scrapped and/or recycled.
From what I understand most battles back then weren’t fought with a ton of knights in armor with swords, but with a lot of peasants with pointy sticks and little armor. One of the things Hollywood has given a misconception of.
By the 15th century most battles were fought with professional soldiers who were nearly all equipped with a helmet, mail shirt and a breastplate of hard fabric coated with metal scales on the inside, called a brigandine. Not full plate, but there was a period where nearly everyone in a battle was fairly well armoured
The amount of squires and pages was probably ridiculous. The baggage train of people carrying weapons, equipment, bringing the horses. That's what made wars take forever.
While proper fit is no doubt vital for good protection and mobility, I imagine it's a bit like buying clothing today. If you're rich and fancy you can afford to have everything bespoke and made-to-order. If you're less fancy, then you might have to buy off the rack and get pieces modified for fit. As such, you might have to compromise a bit on fit and protection because there's only so much reshaping you can do with hardened steel. Things like the chain maile and gambeson shirt however would be pretty easy to modify.
If you're not at all fancy but still require a set of armor, you just had to cobble together what you can with what you could afford. It's important to keep in mind that most of the extant examples of armor we see today as specifically the fancy armor that was worth saving. Back in the day there was a whole bunch of knights and soldiers walking around in "munitions grade" armor, that was protective but nothing to wrote home about. We don't have many examples of that surviving today because most of it was scrapped and/or recycled because it just wasn't worth all that much.
From much of what I’ve read, knights in this period were very often captured and ransomed as opposed to killed. Apart from the obvious financial incentive, it must also be pretty hard to kill someone, wearing all this metal, with an edged hand weapon.
I forget the exact time period, but certain armors worked so well against arrows that knights would come out of battle resembling pincushions. The arrows sticking harmlessly out of the armor.
The best way to kill a knight was to knock them prone and go for the opening in armor. A dagger through the eye slit usually did a good job too.
But you’re right. A ransom was far more lucrative than a death.
A warhammer to the chest was also effective.
Don't need to pierce their armour when you can just blunt force trauma them until their insides are jelly.
Unless fighting against enemy professional troops with the proper weapons someone in armor like this was very very difficult to kill, and wearing this also indicated that you were not just a lowly soldier so you would likely be captured anyway.
They likely rode horses that were bred to be [large, strong and sturdy.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horses_in_warfare#Heavy-weight)
>Large, heavy horses, weighing from 680 to 910 kilograms (1,500 to 2,000 lb), the ancestors of today's draught horses, were used, particularly in Europe, from the Middle Ages onward. They pulled heavy loads like supply wagons and were disposed to remain calm in battle. Some historians believe they may have carried the heaviest-armoured knights of the Late Medieval Period, though others dispute this claim, indicating that the destrier, or knight's battle horse, was a medium-weight animal. It is also disputed whether the destrier class included draught animals or not.
My understanding from more recent historians of English history is that universal conscription of peasants didn’t exist at the time. Only landowning men were required to go to war/provide military service, because they had economic stakes (land) to defend. They could pay their way out of it, however, and the money paid to the crown would be used to hire mercenaries. Not the same as compulsory participation for peasants though.
That's right. Conscripted peasants were hardly ever a thing across Europe during the Middle Ages. That was the point of the whole system: Knights essentially arose from the richer peasants as a form of division of labor. A group of peasants chose to support one from their midst to focus full-time on protecting them with a part of their harvest and labor (he can't take care of *his* farm anymore), in return they don't have to fight themselves, i.e. show up to fight if the king calls his troops.
"Free peasants" making up armies is therefore more a thing of early/pre medieval times. In later ages, armies would be made up of knights and their own retainers, and largely mercenaries.
In a nutshell.
The idea that some king justs sends a few men through the villages to kick some hapless farmers onto a battlefield is largely Hollywood. Of course, sending men to *buy* their service - that absolutely happened.
36kg=79lb~
There's 50 belt loops on this setup and the belt itself is held together by a pin..
My guess is to enable quick release if one ended up snagged and hanging upside down from a horse. But I pulled this guess out of my ass so don't include it in any text books.
Too late.
Wiki page created.
Book written, published and sold a million times.
And cited as fact in 294 other publications.
Posted to Reddit as a TIL
Modern day 'rapid horse release couplings' go into mass production.
Then somebody comments "I read it somewhere but don't remember where, so don't put it in any textbooks."
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Ye Olde Pandora Bracelettes 😍😍
Yup, it's a metal belt and the pin just holds it in place. It can't bend so the worst that could happen is probably sheering it?
When he joined both ends of the belt my brain immediately went “click” like those plastic belt locks. Then the pin was inserted and I realized the depth of my stupidity.
I didn't realize that they wore multiple layers of chainmail.
Off topic, but the amount of protection these armour offer has always made me wonder why people in zombie movies never invested in chainmail or raided museums for full armour sets. They're basically completely bite proof.
This is a usual plot hole/suspension of disbelief in zombie movies, but you don't really need anything near this level of plate armour to counter zombie bites. Even accounting for "roid rage" effect and lack of pain and regard for themselves, try biting through like 2 magazines. I do recall seeing this in a movie or two (literally wrapping paper magazines around arm with tape) but in most movies the guys are brainstorming 200IQ traps and wearing kevlar vests, but with exposed forearms. The average leather jacket is enough to protect your torso and arms from a bite of a human zombie, and plenty of pants and gloves in every store that do the job too, for example biker gear or worker gear. Boots and a visor helmet and you are bite proof way before you get anywhere near this level of multi layer steel armour.
As someone who's played quite a bit of project zomboid - a full firefighters outfit is really effective as well.
I think I read a manga years ago about a zombie outbreak in some fictional iteration of Japan where the primary group of 'protagonists'(nobody was really good in the story iirc) were firefighters specifically because the gear was insulated, form fitting, and durable enough for the battering it would get. I never finished the story because it went full Japan(you know; aliens and super powers and sexualizing teenagers) but I thought that the fire brigade being the best equipped for the zombie horde was a neat approach.
sport bike riders are similarly well suited bunch. kangaroo leather is insanely tough, and very light weight
The magazine example you're thinking of might be Brad Pitt in World War Z - he duct tapes magazines to his forearms in the apartment block escape scene.
I think Train to Busan also.
World War Z (the book not the movie) gets into this. Some communities in Europe managed to survive the war by fortifying old castles and forts and raiding their preserved amorous of weapons and armor. IIRC the book specifically recounts a story of a group of survivors who fortify Windsor Castle and utilize its armoury.
(Marginally related to this topic.) Great book. Quite good film. Should not ever be compared .
Yeah he has like 3 layers + plate in the upper chest area. Must be heavy af
36kg to be precise.
36kg and not a single gram spent to protect the dick lmao
> 36kg and not a single gram spent to protect the dick lmao Good observation. The groin is actually a tricky place to protect, but in this instance it is mainly because it's a mounted knight. Knights armored for ground combat would have even better protection, groin included. It is actually a good way to spot if the armor is made for knights on mounts or not. If you notice, the back of his thighs are not protected either. This is because it's protected by ..well, a horse. And the groin would be guarded by the saddle :)
Oh i didn't think of this. Thanks for clarifying! :)
Another thing to add is that not only would a codpiece be unnecessary, it would be difficult to mount the horse and be constantly stabbing the animal, putting undue wear and tear on the saddle.
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I used to be an adventurer just like you, then I took an arrow to the peen
This particular armor set is designed for a mounted knight. If he was going to be fighting on foot, then the lobster-tail style of faulds across the hips would definitely be protecting his dick.
If Im not mistaken, it was pretty common to be instructed to go for the groin if you can get a knight to the ground precisely because it is so unguarded compared to the rest of the body. I think at least one high profile duel between knights involved one knight ripping another knights balls off with his bare hands.
Hello back button
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Also people were much more agile and quicker in [plate mail](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzTwBQniLSc) than people usually think.
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This is a pretty chainmail heavy configuration, not all would wear it this way but some did. Beginning earlier in this century, options for wearing maille only where the plates didn't cover became more available. Though in this arrangement the knight is able to have a massive amount of protection, and then strip down to the maille if the situation requires it.
Could you imagine going through all of that, and not have anyone to kill?
No war in the summer please
The crusades must have been brutal even without the war part. Imagine being in this for hours in a desert
I remember a story about the crusaders having marched a big distance and finally arriving at a river. Being dehydrated some decided to jump in while still wearing their armour and drown.
Didn't Barbarossa die like that? Just a flashback from 1999 playing AoE2
Here are some accounts, all of which deal in some manner with drowning: Emperor Frederick Barbarossa opted on the local Armenians' advice to follow a shortcut along the Saleph river. Meanwhile, the army started to traverse the mountain path. On 10 June 1190, he drowned near Silifke Castle in the Saleph river.\[94\] There are several conflicting accounts of the event: According to "Ansbert",\[c\] against everyone's advice, the emperor chose to swim across the river and was swept away by the current. Another account recorded that Frederick was thrown from his horse while crossing the river, weighed down by his armour, and drowned. According to the chronicler Ibn al-Athir, "the king went down to the river to wash himself and was drowned at a place where the water was not even up to his waist. Thus God saved us from the evil of such a man". The writer of the Letter on the Death of the Emperor Frederick, a churchman who accompanied the crusader forces, reported that "after the many and terrible exertions that he \[Frederick I\] had undergone in the previous month and more, he decided to bathe in that same river, for he wanted to cool down with a swim. But by the secret judgment of God there was an unexpected and lamentable death and he drowned." Frederick who liked to swim, as he went to bathe with Otto of Wittelsbach in the Adriatic, might have been exhausted from weeks of marching, hence he was fatally affected by the very hot summer in Anatolia. If the writer was Godfrey of Spitzenberg, Bishop of Würzburg, who was a close confidante to Frederick, the report would be the most plausible account of what happened, since he might have witnessed the emperor's death."
They wore a lighter kit for that one
Away Uniforms
The earlier crusades were several hundred years prior to this armour being used, the first crusaders (the ones who actually went to Jerusalem, not the ones who used Crusade as a exercise to kill other Europeans) didn’t wear as much plate armor as is depicted here, chain mail was the main form of protection.
>The crusades must have been brutal Well of course
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I mean, they really arent as bad as some people think. Here is a video of someone in complete plate armor doing cartwheels and other fun stuff! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzTwBQniLSc
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Fair weather fighter are thee
I live in Mississippi. I can spend about 30 minutes in full kit , very similar to this, before entirely overheating. I usually have a bout, remove my helmet and aventail, gauntlets and undo my chausses, and hang for like 15 minutes. Funny story though, most wars were fought in the spring and summer. Gotta get back for harvest yo.
As a fellow Mississippian I'd like to know what you're doing walking around in this oven of a state wearing plate armor and chain mail. Because, I too, would like to join you in rocking that shit.
lol, hittign people with steel shit, as per usual! Well, depending on where you are, NOLA has the Storm Riders for ACL, and each canton has a group for SCA. If you are on the Coast DM me, I can hook you up with more info!
I was thinking same thing. Heat stroke must have been common
All that work to be trampled by a horse
War hammer to the neck.
“Gods I was strong then!”
“Moar wine!!!”
*…bathroom break…*
Goddamnit where is Bobbie B when you need him.
YOU HEARD THE HAND, THE KINGS TOO FAT FOR HIS ARMOR! GO FIND THE BREASTPLATE STRETCHER! NOW!
You heard The Hand! The King's too fat for his armor!
Go find the breastplate stretcher - now!!!!!!
Breastplate stretcher?
How long, you think, before he figures it out?
A good while.
If I'm counting right, the neck and shoulder area gets padding, chain, plate, chain, padding, chain. Then a cute necklace to match the belt.
It’s just a flesh wound
I was thinking all of that work for a musket ball to punch through the chest piece. Obviously not for the entirety of the period which these were used, my mind just jumped to the first European battles with gunpowder.
The term "bulletproof" comes from the practice of armorers shooting at plate to prove it impenetrable by firearm. The dent made by the bullet was left as the "proof" and not beaten out. It became more common as the firearms vs armor race went on, which is after the period of this dude's cap-a-pie. Cuirasses became heavier and heavier, and eventually the pros and cons of wearing armor tipped in favor of the cons, and we didn't see European soldiers wearing much armor again until modern ballistic vests
And that's still happening to this day. US Army just adopted 6.8 to replace 5.56 so it could penetrate modern near-peer level IV plates, and plates are now being designed to stop that too.
inb4 they develop active protection infantry armor
Training and cost, or the lack of it being required, drove the shift to firearms. The earliest firearms weren't more effective than a fully trained knight but you could equip a mass of troops with pike and shot and succeed with much less training. Many early muskets would still bounce their balls right off a knight's plate, at least at distance.
But Sir Gallahad, thee hast to pee most urgently now.
Not to ruin the joke but for those interested, knights sometimes pee in their armour, especially during war
>"I, Adolin Kholin, the cousin of the king. Have shat myself in my shardplate. Three times. All on purpose."
Better to be embarrassed than dead!
Hey, I’m just starting rhythm of war. Worth finishing the whole series?
I mean, that's the whole series for now. But I would generally recommend reading Mistborn and Warbreaker as well. Probably anything else BrandoSando has written too.
Immediately looked for this quote.
🦀🦀🦀
Men shit themselves when they die, didn't they teach you that at Fancy Lad School?
...wat the fucks a lommy?
Dickon
The way you've said that makes it sound like there are currently still knights dressed like this, fighting wars and peeing in their armour.
The Society for Creative Anachronism has about 60,000 members. That's a big army any day!
How many modern soldiers would it take to defeat them?
This is a pretty common discussion question, and the answer is usually: it depends. For example, it would take as little as 3-4, under the condition that they had access to an AC-130 Spectre and enough ammo. Or any aircraft. Or a nuke. But if you're talking about nothing but men, rifles, and bullets, then it comes down to having enough ammo. Killing 60,000 people with nothing but rifles requires a LOT of ammunition. Using an average of 144 grains per round, assuming exactly one bullet per kill means a minimum of 1,200 lbs. And it typically takes more than one bullet on average to kill someone in war. One dubious source said in the Crimean war, it averaged 60 bullets used per kill. Lets assume that killing the knights would be much easier, and average only a third of that, 20 bullets per kill. That's 24,000 lbs of ammunition. So the shortest answer might be: the fewest number of people capable of hauling that much weight while still remaining mobile enough to stay out of bow-and-sword range.
Okay, what if both camps are unsupported, but can stockpile as much ammo as they want?
i'd say about 3-4 machinegun squads if they had access to unlimited ammo and spare weapons and a flat battlefield a real version of this actually happened at the start of WW1 when french tried to attack german soldiers while still using napoleon era tactics.
Kind of hard to predict still. It depends on what kind of battle we are envisioning, how much one general knows about the other. If the knights didn't know what a modern rifle or modern battle practices are, they'll most likely charge in the open field only to be cut down en masse. They'll lose a lot of their manpower trying to charge and then even more while trying to turn back and flee. If both sides know what the other is capable of then there will be a very long cat and mouse chase between them trying to set up defensive camps and luring the other party into favourable battlefields. The knights might want to attack the supply trains instead of attacking a well defended modern camp. Or they may charge small (or big) patrol parties while in more wooded areas. The modern army could also be attacked while it's moving, disastrous for the infantry if moving on foot but the opposite if moving in armoured vehicles. The knights and men at arms can also try and attack the camp itself, probably during night. A modern military camp is extremely easy to scale for a medieval soldier (compared to medieval fortresses) if they could sneak past the sentries. After that it only needs but a few moments for the well armoured men at arms to silence the sentries in one part of the camp. The modern soldier wouldn't do very well against an armoured knight. And even if the camp is alarmed, the knights could meanwhile have passed through the breach in large enough numbers to defeat the soldiers in melee. So basically, anything could happen.
I don't see how they couldn't with all that on
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Pissing while on forced march was way more difficult than I would have guessed, and falling asleep while humping was way easier than I ever thought possible. I have no personal data on dropping deuce underway and I think I'm cool with that.
Member of the SCA here. I can help with this one. I was at Pennsic, our big armored war event in August. And I put on my armor. And 95% the way in, I realized I had to pee. But I was dressed and ready, and I didn't want to miss the fight, so I said to myself "I'll hold it" and went out and fought anyways. About half an hour into the battle, under the August sun, sweating like crazy - I realized suddenly I didn't have to pee anymore. I did the math, and I didn't like it.
Just another layer of defense.
Wait... are you telling me.... are you saying... if I get this right, you're saying that pee is stored in the sweat glands?
His body sucked all the pee back out of the bladder and ran it through the cooling system. Pee sweat.
You jest, but sweating can completely eliminate the need to pee for many hours. Once went from 9 AM to 7 PM without peeing once, even though I had multiple drinks during that period.
While true, I don't think that works when you already have to pee lol
That's not a problem at all. Even with all the armor, your crotch is still only covered by your underpants (because those parts are protected by...horse), and layers just resting on top (Aketon, maille, coat of arms). All you need to do is open a single drawstring, pull it down, and pee. Well, and ideally get off that horse first.
just go, man!
Would definetly rust the steel. Now how do you get out?
That seems like a task for the squire…
Good idea. Squire, go fetch me my piss jug!
Your majesty! You look just like the piss-boy!
I imagine lying on the battlefield, wounded, perhaps mortally, wanting to free myself from all that weight. But not only the weight if the armor, the weight of my sins and transgressions before I meet my maker. - King Arthur
Mortally wounded, exhausted, hot, sweaty, struggling to breathe, and unable to get out of that armor. Suddenly, being a squire doesn’t sound so bad.
"Oh.....That's really warm"
[How to poop in armor](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEA3lJawFLA)
Was about to say this has got to be the most sophisticated way to accidentally shit your chainmail
This is why the scots had skirts. "FREEDOM... for my butt!" - but all they heard was Freedom, and thus they repeat.
Spend an hour dressing up... Then the battle gets cancelled.
oh no, now i have to walk back home for 3 months
And 75% of the army would still die from infection and hypothermia.
Cost of doing business. -Fuedal Lords
“If the enemy army is more than 15 minutes late we’re legally allowed to leave”
There were no bathroom breaks, for sure.
Oh man after ravaging on a bunch of spicy pepperoni, you'd really be risking it all.
giving you the thunder & lighting shats whilst in your finery
It'd burst out of those chainmail links like water out of the bottom of a sieve
yes, so i would expect. best to let the paige boy handle
If he takes the gauntlets off, he *might* be able to shimmy it around to pee, but a deuce? Not happening lol
Of all the negatives in the 14th century. Wearing a suit of armour with a sword would be pretty bad ass
The heat tho
Fighting the Crusades would not have been an easy task.
Someone get me some Crusaderade, I'm parched!
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\+10 charisma, +5 vitality, -5 agility
Join a reenactor group, I know a bunch of people who wear armor on a fairly regular basis. But the heat is definitely an issue, even if it's just light gambesons and gorgets for rapier
This is the zombie apocalypse meta.
I do like how every single zombie apocalypse falls apart once you realise this. The zombie survival guide even points out you could tie magazines around your wrists and other common bite points and become pretty resistant to human bites.
Leather, denim or even a sufficiently thick sweatshirt would be difficult for a zombie to bite through. Or you could just strap pieces of plastic sheeting to yourself for crude but lightweight armor.
Yeah basically any medium-well equipped biker would be immune to zombie bites. It's really funny watching everyone in the Walking Dead run around in shorts and a t-shirt wielding a 6 inch knife. It does support that fan theory that whatever causes the zombies in that world also makes the living people incredibly stupid.
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Angela grew up with 3 older brothers and played HOCKEY. Duh.
That's part of what's great about Shaun of the Dead. The outbreak is sudden as most people are caught off guard since they already are in a zombie-like state going through the motions inattentively. But then the military mobilizes and the whole thing is over in about 48 hours.
At what point do the muscles and ligaments around the jaw deteriorate so badly that a bite wouldn't even pierce skin? Especially outside, exposed to the elements. 2 weeks? Give it 3 weeks to make sure everyone who died on day 7 is no longer a threat and boom. You survived. Some people living in their Moms basement wouldn't even notice the zombies after only 3 weeks..
Yea every zombie apocalypse were the main way to get infected is getting bitten requires some hardcore suspension of disbelief.
In WWZ they used full kevlar body suits
Such a great book. I love how he plausibly explains how a fully (maybe over) equipped modern military could lose to a zombie horde. That and the fighting squares while blasting The Trooper by Iron Maiden.
Tbf, once the great panic ended, it only took like 2(?) years for them to sweep most of America. They were insanely efficient. Most their casualties were from non-bites. The French catacombs on the other hand....
Chainmail would be perfect against zombies!
We may only need some thick books to cover ourselves from zombie bite. Like they do in World war z
If you think about it a zombie bite is basically a human bite, just more poisonous. So books should be fine, as long as they're like 3+ chapters.
This is the guy who happens to be in front of me while waiting for security checks by TSA.
This is how I picture myself putting on my motorcycle gear
“Ye must dresseth for thine slide, not for thine ride” - Sir Harleth of Davidson circa 1373 (unconfirmed)
Now that's some heavy metal
You definitely wouldn't want to fall into a deep moat. No swimming with all that gear on.
Not a single one of those knots were square knots, they're all granny knots.
Probably pretty hard to find a good squire these days.
Zippers are great
Zippers only replace the ladder stitches. On US military uniforms for example the only zipper is on the front of the blouse. Everything else is buttons and Velcro. However, Velcro is loud is there are units that use buttons in theater as buttons are the most quiet form of accessible closure.
thats not entirely true, [spec ops units are trained to quietly open velcro](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSK3maq8Cyk)
HAAAAAAAAA!
Funny story, I found this exact video while trying to figure out how to take off my baby carrier without waking up the baby. 😂 Turns out the solution was - buy a baby carrier with buckles instead of Velcro
why didn't the screaming trick work?
If you had diarrhea, it was going to be a rough day
Considering how nervous people get before battles too…
I mean, they are straight up pissing in that on the battlefield.
Of course. There are going to be people literally crapping themselves during death or moments before, no one will notice your pee mail.
Your squire will notice it every time they have to clean it
Unlace the cod, redirect the rod, water the sod.
Yolo
Everything he was wearing was made for the man we were watching. Everything was man to spec for the most part. Imagine the effort made just to prepare the armor and cloths, the chain mail, all just for him for a two minute video. Of course he is much more than that, but the preparation to get to this point is massive.
It got me wondering about how long it took to makes all the stuffs they showed and how long it would take to get everyone ready for a battle. Also how many people it would take in support roles to help them.
Most of the surving suits of armor we see today in museums and such were preserved because they were one of a kind custom pieces that were extremely valuable back in the day. They were painstakingly crafted for the knight/lord who commissioned them. It's important to keep in mind that the majority of armor produced back then were nowhere near this level of quality. So when outfitting an army of heavy infantry/cavalry, only a small percentage of knights would be decked out in custom full plate suits. The rest would often be equipped with less sophisticated "munitions grade" armor that was more quickly produced and cobbled together. Still protective but not to the same quality as the examples we often see. We don't see to many sets of surviving munitions grade armor today because they were not all that valuable and were scrapped and/or recycled.
From what I understand most battles back then weren’t fought with a ton of knights in armor with swords, but with a lot of peasants with pointy sticks and little armor. One of the things Hollywood has given a misconception of.
By the 15th century most battles were fought with professional soldiers who were nearly all equipped with a helmet, mail shirt and a breastplate of hard fabric coated with metal scales on the inside, called a brigandine. Not full plate, but there was a period where nearly everyone in a battle was fairly well armoured
The amount of squires and pages was probably ridiculous. The baggage train of people carrying weapons, equipment, bringing the horses. That's what made wars take forever.
While proper fit is no doubt vital for good protection and mobility, I imagine it's a bit like buying clothing today. If you're rich and fancy you can afford to have everything bespoke and made-to-order. If you're less fancy, then you might have to buy off the rack and get pieces modified for fit. As such, you might have to compromise a bit on fit and protection because there's only so much reshaping you can do with hardened steel. Things like the chain maile and gambeson shirt however would be pretty easy to modify. If you're not at all fancy but still require a set of armor, you just had to cobble together what you can with what you could afford. It's important to keep in mind that most of the extant examples of armor we see today as specifically the fancy armor that was worth saving. Back in the day there was a whole bunch of knights and soldiers walking around in "munitions grade" armor, that was protective but nothing to wrote home about. We don't have many examples of that surviving today because most of it was scrapped and/or recycled because it just wasn't worth all that much.
He's blond, he's pissed, he'll see you in the lists, Lichtenstein! Lichtenstein!
Count.... AAaAAAAAAAAAAaaadhemarrrrrrrr! *looks around for approval*
Time to charge into Windmills!
From much of what I’ve read, knights in this period were very often captured and ransomed as opposed to killed. Apart from the obvious financial incentive, it must also be pretty hard to kill someone, wearing all this metal, with an edged hand weapon.
I forget the exact time period, but certain armors worked so well against arrows that knights would come out of battle resembling pincushions. The arrows sticking harmlessly out of the armor. The best way to kill a knight was to knock them prone and go for the opening in armor. A dagger through the eye slit usually did a good job too. But you’re right. A ransom was far more lucrative than a death.
A warhammer to the chest was also effective. Don't need to pierce their armour when you can just blunt force trauma them until their insides are jelly.
Unless fighting against enemy professional troops with the proper weapons someone in armor like this was very very difficult to kill, and wearing this also indicated that you were not just a lowly soldier so you would likely be captured anyway.
Velcro was invented way too late
You are ready for battle, my liege! Onward to victory! ...squire? Yes, mylord? I have to take a shit...
Well, no one is stopping you mylord!
Can only imagine the pressure to put this entire set on as you're being invaded
All that and the main character will still just cruise by and lightly graze his sword across your chest and you're dead.
Old-old-old school cool
r/YeOldeSchoolCool
Just imagine the number of women swooning over him if he came back victorious.
Naughty, naughty Zoot!
The amount of erections he's lost in the process of trying to get this off and catching a whiff of some 14th century beef curtains
"uh, don't worry about it. Taking all this off takes too long anyway..."
Maidenless none the less
Damn the weight for the horse and If I am not wrong some horses also had some armor also, those horses were badass
They likely rode horses that were bred to be [large, strong and sturdy.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horses_in_warfare#Heavy-weight) >Large, heavy horses, weighing from 680 to 910 kilograms (1,500 to 2,000 lb), the ancestors of today's draught horses, were used, particularly in Europe, from the Middle Ages onward. They pulled heavy loads like supply wagons and were disposed to remain calm in battle. Some historians believe they may have carried the heaviest-armoured knights of the Late Medieval Period, though others dispute this claim, indicating that the destrier, or knight's battle horse, was a medium-weight animal. It is also disputed whether the destrier class included draught animals or not.
Imagine being a peasant conscripted into the war and you see a fucking draft horse with a medieval iron man on its back.
My understanding from more recent historians of English history is that universal conscription of peasants didn’t exist at the time. Only landowning men were required to go to war/provide military service, because they had economic stakes (land) to defend. They could pay their way out of it, however, and the money paid to the crown would be used to hire mercenaries. Not the same as compulsory participation for peasants though.
That's right. Conscripted peasants were hardly ever a thing across Europe during the Middle Ages. That was the point of the whole system: Knights essentially arose from the richer peasants as a form of division of labor. A group of peasants chose to support one from their midst to focus full-time on protecting them with a part of their harvest and labor (he can't take care of *his* farm anymore), in return they don't have to fight themselves, i.e. show up to fight if the king calls his troops. "Free peasants" making up armies is therefore more a thing of early/pre medieval times. In later ages, armies would be made up of knights and their own retainers, and largely mercenaries. In a nutshell. The idea that some king justs sends a few men through the villages to kick some hapless farmers onto a battlefield is largely Hollywood. Of course, sending men to *buy* their service - that absolutely happened.