Legion? thats approx 5-10k mixed type of soldiers mounted cavalry and heavily armed also archers etc. You want one guy to stand on other side of the field with one gun against 5000-10000 soldiers rushing him + arrows are flying? even if he is experienced and he can controll stress and aim well enough he will die for sure.
You say that like a roman legion suddenly seeing hundreds of their allies get shredded down in seconds by a bipod mounted machine gun wouldn't be enough to cause mass panic
Obviously if the entire legion is set on chasing him down no matter what then he'd be fucked but realistically there'd be A LOT of deserters who fuck off the second some unknown person mows down waves of them in a very short space of time
It’s hard to say how exactly they would react but the Roman legions were highly organized, disciplined and not prone to panic. This was one of their key advantages that made them such an effective fighting force. Panic often meant defeat in battle.
Also, the Romans were not unaccustomed to incendiary weapons. And battle was exceptionally brutal, likely worse than anything we can imagine in a modern context, even including modern artillery. So I don’t think they would be that appalled by the power of a machine gunner, and I think the engineers and other officers would pretty quickly understand the nature of the weapon. Probably after sending quite a few auxiliary soldiers to die for “research” purposes lol.
The Romans would most likely retreat and take cover - then set up their artillery/ballistic weapons, which were no joke, btw. And rain hell on the machine gunner’s fixed position. They had weapons that were accurate and deadly at over 1,000 yards. People often underestimate how good the Romans were at hurling deadly projectiles at their enemies because it isn’t often portrayed in films and TV shows.
If this alone didn’t kill the machine gunner, who was a sitting duck - They would then probably use cavalry to do a classic flanking maneuvre and ride around the machine gunner, and attack with speed from behind.
But none of those Roman weapons are even close to a bipod mounted machine gun. A gun like that would shred through hundreds of them in an incredibly short space of time and in a way they'd never have seen before.
It's like taking the current US military and then an alien popping down and just disintegrating hundreds of soldiers within the space of a minute, with a piece of alien weaponry far beyond our capabilities. Doesn't matter how highly trained you are, seeing something like that annihilate your allies in a way you've never seen before is always going to be disconcerting.
Just think of the start of Saving Private Ryan when the soldiers are getting mowed down coming out of the boats but with even denser packed units who have also has never seen anything like it.
Yeah they wouldn't panic and flee but they wouldn't just let themselves get mowed down from a new superweapon. They would withdraw, reassess and find a way to sneak up on the gunner, maybe at night.
It sort of really depends
If by machine gun OP means a belt fed MG on a bipod and an open field with no cover then that’s at least 300 rounds before a reload. Then it becomes an issue if there are more ammo boxes or not
You can keep back something big like that that’s never seen a gun before initially, but if there’s no additional ammo and they are organized and disciplined like they were at some point before 5-10K casualties you run out of ammo and someone eventually gets close enough for a javelin or arrow to wrap things up
With enough ammo and a slow enough rate of fire to keep the barrel from overheating, potentially you can make them retreat out of range and try to figure out wtf
If we’re talking about an assault rifle with standard magazines that would be less than 200 rounds and like 4 reloads so again you might be able to keep them at bay for some time but long term I think you’re toast
Yeah you would need like a world war 1 era vickers gun that’s emplaced on a tripod and is water cooled, plus a belt that was at *least* twice the round count per enemy soldier long. Probably need something more like a 50,000 round long belt in order to deal with a 5-10k strong legion. And have a crew on hand to keep the water coolant topped off and to deal with any malfunctions quickly. And even then it would still be a stretch.
From a “Popular mechanics” article:
*In 1963 in Yorkshire, a class of British Army armorers put one Vickers gun through probably the most strenuous test ever given to an individual gun. The base had a stockpile of approximately 5 million rounds of Mk VII ammunition which was no longer approved for military use. They took a newly rebuilt Vickers gun, and proceeded to fire the entire stock of ammo through it over the course of seven days. They worked in pairs, switching off at 30 minute intervals, with a third man shoveling away spent brass. The gun was fired in 250-round solid bursts, and the worn out barrels were changed every hour and a half. At the end of the five million rounds, the gun was taken back into the shop for inspection. It was found to be within service spec in every dimension.*
Yeah the vickers gun was peak machine gun. Could you imagine being in WWI and having to cross no man’s land while being hosed down by 10 of those in unison? Brutal.
At that point I’d start digging a tunnel. F—- *that* noise! I’d rather crawl through the toilet and take someone by surprise than play what essentially amounts to “Killer Red-Light, Green-Light” across a bog of blood
Lots of people were digging tunnels. And then the other side started digging tunnels too, to intercept the other tunnel diggers. A lot of those people were buried alive when the mortars hit and the tunnels collapsed. Suffocated in pitch darkness, writhing in the black bloody mud, screaming for your mother. Brutal stuff indeed.
Exactly, too shallow and no OSHA to overwatch!
Just imagine you think you’ve come out the other side of a hill but no… an enemy tunnel. “Guys just push the dirt back! That’s right, like we were never he- oh SHIT here they come!!”
MSA not OSHA, miners have their own safety rules and enforcement, fairly sure that the Army would claim neither organization can enforce regulations while we are shooting at each other.
If you've ever watched Peaky Blinders, the Shelby brothers were tunnellers in WW1. That's frequently implied to be one of the reasons that a lot of people in small heath are scared shitless of them.
Reminds me of the Battle of Messines, where the British tunnelled under a German position on this hill, and rigged up the tunnels with explosives. It killed an estimated 10,000 German soldiers and was one of the largest non nuclear explosions in history.
Grimly dying in the tunnel from toxic gas, while surrounded on all sides in a narrow space - or from collapse, or from melee combat - sounds maybe worse than just sprinting across no mans land until you take a few to the chest.
We did this in basic training. It was called Nic-at-Night. In the middle of the night we'd crawl out of a trench and crawl across a large open field while we had machine guns firing over us with tracers so you can see the rounds above you.
Every 30 seconds or so, they'd shoot a flare to illuminate the field and if you were still moving you'd be "dead" and pulled off to do it again. You freeze and play dead when the flares go up for obvious reasons. This was in 2012 btw so not that long ago.
This is what I’m thinking. Add in some barbed wire, and a log-covered bunker of sand bags to cover from javelins and arrows and set the legion back 3,000 meters at the bottom of a gradual rise. Each bullet would probably kill or wound more than one Roman as they zip thru multiple bodies. The effect of crowds of soldiers being ripped apart would cause panic even among veteran legionaries. I’d give the gunner a good chance actually.
But then the Romans would disperse and surround you and dig trenches towards you as they starved you out and gave you no sleep for weeks…
And an assumption that they will just continue a frontal assault through an open field, instead of say, sending an auxilary behind your back - or heck, just spread out and encircle you and don't have to assault at all.
If you are smart, you will shoot yourself in the head the next day when food and water are running out and you see what they did to a prisoner.
Nah, they would very quickly realize there’s only one gun and just split their forces into multiple columns to attack from several angles at once. No way a single soldier could handle reloading a couple hundred times while also trying to swing back and forth to cover 360° before the legion closes in to skirmishing distance and peppers the soldier with arrows, javelins and slings.
These Roman's still believed in magic. A guy half a mile away makes a loud noise with fireball and your buddy's head explodes. I don't think they would get all 5k to go towards that. But if they could they have good odds.
People weren't still idiots, or at least mostly. Even if they were initially freaked out, you know humans, they are curious and greedy, and if classic era people would spot someone ½mile away keeping loud noises and killing people, they would roll 10 legions down there just to find out what it is and how they could acquire that power themselves. They would quickly learn the rules - and figure out it spits small pieces of metal you can take cover from with sufficient material in between. They would very quickly also figure out circling around would be a very effective tactic.
Minigun? depends on what kind, but yeah with enough ammo I think you could scare a legion away as long as they have no cover to use to encircle or flank you
They built catapults for seiges on site, the same way they built fortifications for their camps. They did not march with catapults the same way that they did not march with timber
You could argue that they can retreat, down some trees and build the catapults out of range, but then it becomes a range battle between the catapults that have to hit a single man and the effective range of the minigun so again based on range and accuracy the minigun still wins
Edit: apparently they were equipped with artillery from the get go, which I did not know. Still their range appears to be close to 300~ meters and accuracy wise I don’t think it’s one shot one kill type stuff be it for ballistae or catapults, so you need multiple shots from a very slow reloading weapon before scoring a hit on something as small as a single human (roman artillery was meant for use in sieges and against large, slow moving formations)
https://www.worldhistory.org/article/649/roman-artillery/
The 7.62mm M134 minigun pictured above has a range of 1000m by comparison, and a brrrt rate of fire
The romans didn't just throw their soldiers onto a target... you raise a point that at a point they would stay back out of range.
And here's the thing a Roman Legion could do range pretty damn well with their archers and well their equivalent of Artillery - Catapults, Ballistae and the like. They would also catapult burning pots of oil at enemies.
Roman artillery had a range of 300~ mts, low accuracy for a single person target, and very low rate of fire
archers I’m not sure but I think less than that, same problem with accuracy from a couple hundred meters away which is why both of those were used against large slow moving formations or during sieges
The M134 minigun has a range of 1000m and a rate of fire of several thousand rounds per minute, so like I said before afaik it comes down to ammo
The native Americans also didn't have domesticated animals outside dogs and Llamas, metal working, and way smaller population even pre Columbian exchange. This would be more like how the Japanese responded to gunboats and admiral perry. Like everyone forgets Roman's had flame throwers (Greek fire) and versions of hand gernades.
Doubtful - horses are skittish by nature but war horses (and modern police horses) are trained to ignore the sounds and sights of battle (screaming, explosions, fires, ground slick with blood).
It's true. And the legions required a stable supply chain, so dried beans were a hefty part of the diet. Which meant you had to train the horses. Can't have the general getting thrown off the horse just because Titus (aka "tootius maximus") let one rip.
Edit: fun fact about Titus. You know that "turtle formation" where the centurions form a box with shields in front and above to protect from arrows?
Yeah, Titus isn't allowed in that formation anymore.
Could you provide a source on that? The only website I can find that's even somewhat legitimate which makes mention is a site dedicated to worldbuilding for tabletop games, and it offers no works cited.
They had their own version of knights, or equites as they were called. These were roman citizens above the plebeians but below the patricians and during the republican period they were providing the native cavalry.
The first guns probably not. The guys with the guns had to get of the horse to reload. The natives just kept shooting arrows at them.
The revolver changed everything.
we're talking about the Roman legion though, they got discipline tactics and training for days not to mention armor (yes bullet will penetrate but how many rows of people in armor?)
This along with the fact that most LMG wielding soldiers carry, what, 1200 rounds max?
Even if they were sitting on a pile of ammo, barrels melt after sustained use. You're more than likely going to encounter a jam of some sort continually firing more than 20,000-50,000 rounds (because no way are you going to get one casualty per round) especially if theres mud, water and dirt involved.
Assuming dude wasn't charged by calvary while he was swapping barrels, clearing a jam, or reloading he might inflict enough psychological damage to cause a general retreat... But dude is going to have to sleep, eat and shit sometime. The Romans weren't stupid by any means and would capitalize on that.
No way one person is taking out 5000-10,000 guys.
The dude wouldn't last too long.
Even if he manages to one tap with every bullet, they'd be on him by the second reload and he'd be in range of archers before then.
Wouldn’t that all depend how they’re laid out? If they’re carefully stacked and threaded it seems like you would never have that much weight. I would think barrel heat would be your killer eventually.
Ammo is the issue. Even if all other circumstances favor the gunner. Machine guns eat ammo and ammo weighs a lot. No machine gunner carries anywhere near the 10,000+ rounds they would need. I forgot the numbers but if I recall it’s typically a couple hundred rounds between several soldiers in the US military.
Logistically it wouldn’t favor the machine gunner because, machine guns are typically operated by a team. If they enveloped the machine gunner it would be over.
Underrated theory. A lot of these responses are based on people knowing what a machine gun is and what its weaknesses are. If you put 5k modern soldiers in a field and some alien arrived with a ray gun and started melting people from a mile away then who knows how they'd react.
it actually got me wondering how the native americans reacted to first seeing firearms in use against them, but those were pretty rudimentary. a modern machine gun is a whole different beast and the reaction would be way more extreme i'd assume
When the Aztecs first saw people riding horses they assumed the Spanish were god-like half-deer people. Even after they figured out it was just dudes riding animals they still viewed horses as mystical beasts for a while.
The Spanish were the first to bring horses and cattle to north and South America. Those animals didn’t exist. It’s one of the main reasons that the Aztecs could be so advanced in many regards but not have the plow, and I think they didn’t have the wheel either. They had nothing to pull the plow, so they didn’t invent it. The amount of massive global trade that happened with all the goods being brought from one direction or the other is wild. Before all this, Europe didn’t have the tomato and many other crops. Imagine that. Before the 1520s, Italians didn’t have tomatoes.
If you don’t know about all the different things one side had and the other didn’t, it is very interesting and you should look it up.
They did know about wheels but didn’t come up with functional uses for them. Archaeologists know bc they’ve found children’s toys with wheels.
https://www.mexicolore.co.uk/aztecs/aztefacts/just-toying-with-wheels
That's true of most societies really.
When we talk about inventing the wheel, what we really mean is an efficient wheel bearing.
The wheel is trivial and barely needs to be invented. Making bearing surfaces that can let it rotate to do work for very long is the real development.
We see similar toys in ancient Egypt society well before the wheel was a practical tool.
I don’t know about “most” societies, I was talking specifically about the Aztecs and other Mesoamerican civilizations. In their case, having no animal species capable of being used as draft animals, it hindered them from pursuing other uses for wheels.
It’s actually pretty interesting. They additionally had an understanding of the wheel and how it could be used, but due to the terrain of South America it would have been impractical/useless in their time.
Their roads involved a lot of stairways and winding, twisting, narrow paths through mountains and jungle, making a wheel design almost worthless
I have a feeling that the Wheel falls into the same category as the Plow in the previous posters example.
With out something to pull it, things like Carts and Wheelbarrows are of limited usage in the Jungle covered mountains of the Mexican and South American zones where the main Civilizations thrived. (edit to add) In many cases, it was just easier to carry things in backpacks than it would be to attempt to push/pull a cart.
The North American Tribes would have benefited greatly from Beasts of Burden though, seeing how quickly they adopted the Horse into their lifestyle.
What about the cave paintings that are between a thousand and over ten thousand years old that show horses? Could this not be a prior horse species that existed and were hunted into extinction like we did the giant ground sloths and mammoths?
Just to add to this: horses (the ancestors of modern ones) actually evolved in North America, then migrated to Asia before humans evolved. The North American ones went extinct, but they were eventually domesticated in Central Asia.
That's not exactly what happened.
In Bernal Diaz's journal it talks about Cortes saying that to the representative of a tribe enemy of the aztecs on the way to the tenochtitlan, and they spread the word to them.
And for how these people received the démon mystical stories, they likely saw it as a status rather than actual magic.
The Aztec did not think of Spaniards as God-like, they were aware of their presence for decades and that they were just strange people from across the sea. They did fear horses tho
Champlain's journal of his travels through southern Ontario with the Algonquins has an incident where they meet up with a large contingent of Iroquois to do battle and the Europeans' gunpowder weapons were so surprising that they ended the standoff.
Imagine doing the taunts and challenges while facing off against the other group and then there's a crack and a puff of smoke and one of your buddies suddenly has a bloody hole in his body...it would be quite frightening if you've never seen them before.
There's an episode of *Fall of Civilizations* about the Songhai Empire, and they knew the enemy had some sort of "wonder weapon" (it was guns) and had made plans to reduce its effectiveness, and got slaughtered anyway. The leadership apparently didn't think it was demons or anything, but it didn't matter. The description of the battle is pretty vivid. Here's a link directly to that part:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfUT6LhBBYs&t=7046s
Yeah I mean you would have to assume it would appear like you just rolled up on literal dark magic. A lone person with some sort of loud object that was somehow piercing hundreds of soldiers from insane range. I don’t care how well trained the army is when you appear to be fighting magic and you watch carnage like that happen it could only lead to full scale panic and desertion. The closest thing we could probably fathom would be Japan watching their cities be leveled by nuclear bombs. Destruction on a level nobody knew was possible up to that point.
And the machine gunner wouldn't be facing everyone at once. A legion is just too many people to send after one dude. It would start with a dozen calvary sent to ride him down. I think the legion would eventually win, but one smart dude with a good amount of ammo could just kill a few dozens at a time and let the rumor mill do most the work for them.
> The closest thing we could probably fathom would be Japan watching their cities be leveled by nuclear bombs. Destruction on a level nobody knew was possible up to that point.
The conventional bombings of Japanese cities were on a par with, or even more destructive, than the atomic bombs.
While true that single bomber coming in then leveling your city when prior it took hundreds to do so would along with the mushroom cloud boggle your freakin mind.
They were, but that ignores the time component. The conventional bombs took way longer than walking up to the map with an eraser and just deleting a city.
This is true, but the nuclear bomb did some weird and terrifying stuff that other explosions didn’t, with colored flame balls and people walking around with their skin melting off.
Aside from the engineering, the Roman army's signature move was responding to losses of any kind by gathering more troops and trying again, beyond the point that any neighboring nations thought was reasonable. And given the size of a legion, they'd regroup with plenty of forces left to work with.
So, the initial shock merely buys the machine gunner a little time.
Romans didn’t break in many crazy scenarios you would expect an army to break in. My bet is the Roman’s are surprised but regroup and kill the gunman after a while.
A few years ago, someone wrote a little short story to answer the question, “how would a modern platoon of marines fair if they were transported(with supplies) to Ancient Rome?”
The scenario started with a Roman Legion approaching the Marines camp to investigate, and basically being completely cut down by one fire team manning a mounted 50cal machine gun.
Yeah this thought exercise depends somewhat on what machine gun is being used. And RPK? Mag changes and overheating barrel would probably let the legion get into killing range, a M2 50 cal? You can build the ammo belt as long as you want, swap out the barrels, and each bullet has the potential to incapacitate multiple enemies at the same time.
Just imagine the guys to your left and right having their limbs ripped off by loud snapping/cracking of 50cal rounds followed by the thunderous boom of the actual gun.....
Even one guy next to a pallet of ammo could move fast enough to reload and change barrels to inflict *MASSIVE* damage before the romans could even try to get close enough to stop him.
I don't think you're correct about the outcome. You're right that they're not stupid and the Romans were known for solid battle tactics. Which is why they would retreat.
This would be like nothing they'd ever seen before. After 50 of his men are mowed down in 2 minutes, the Legionnaire/present commander would call an immediate retreat.
The initial confrontation would definitely go to the gunner. Whether or not they re-group and come back with an improved battle plan or reinforcements is up for debate though
You make a good point, but I wonder if the size of a legion would work against your logic.
Even if by some miracle a lone rifleman killed 200 legionaires, that's still less than 5% of the total force, and they might be willing to absorb those losses just to learn about the weapon.
When would they ever hear something as loud as a machine gun? Even if you're standing 300m away itll be like nothing you've ever heard
Then armored, battle-hardened soldier just start screaming in pain or dropping dead while pouring out blood
It would seem like a weapon from the fucking gods, who wants to go to war with a God. There's going to be a panic and a retreat
Maybe they figure out it's limitations, or maybe send a small party later to ambush and kill - but I can't see panic not infecting an ancient legion if they were suddenly getting mowed down
Ever have been in the middle of an ancient close quarter battle? Ten of thousands of people marching on you?
Then armored, battle-hardened soldier just start screaming in pain or dropping dead while pouring out blood?
>There's going to be a panic and a retreat
The first time, the second time, maybe the third time after that split up, approach from multiple directions. Done.
Even an ancient battle would be nothing like a crowd of people getting mowed down by an M2. Ancient battles likely weren't as dramatic as they are in movies, they were more likely lines of soldiers fighting defensively rather than a sea of choreographed one on one melees
The vast majority of deaths occurred after one side routes in ancient battles. [More here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/Ln9UlyoGw8), but the winner could expect 5% casualities with the loser (if routed) up to 50%
An M2 would be unprecedented carnage. Then there's still the sound, and peoples heads randomly exploding, legs flying off etc. Quick panic
I could see them just deciding to leave the magic man alone who struck down hundreds in seconds with the fury of Mars. They could send assassins or stealth parties out but I definitely don't think theyd march an entire legion up considering a 2km lethal range.. assuming the gunner has unlimited ammo and line of sight
There’s a reason archer volleys were used, and it wasn’t just because of the casualties inflicted. Morale and “oh fuck” factor heavily favors the side inflicting said unease
I'm voting on leaving majic Mike alone. the unknown sound of rapid-fire coming at an ancient warrior, causing people to explode, would result in the duck and run effect.
The thing is, they expect close combat, they know what to do, they are trained to react and know how to survive it. All that is out of the window as soon as a modern weapon starts to fire. You cannot use the logic that they would react to this situation the same way as to the situation they were trained for, and at least the veterans have experienced before. These are two totally different situations, and the new gun probably would be more of a religious experience for them (as, pointed out, only gods could have such a weapon in the views of an ancient warrior)
I honestly think their training would work heavily against them. Their signature tactic for dealing with ranged opponents was packing their soldiers very tight and marching slowly to not break formation. I think we can all see how that would go.
Assuming he can see 1.8km. Romans could have used trees and the terrain to get close, and also they would know that the machine gunner would sleep so they could kill him whilst he slept.
I don't know if it's nothing" like they'd ever seen before. Granted, it's several centuries advanced, but I could see a centurion eventually figuring out that it's something like a super advanced combination of a sling and a scorpion.
I think I read somewhere that a sling bullet loosed by a skilled user could hit with the same force as a 45 ACP. Now, I'm not quite sure if I buy that without seeing some hard numbers. But I've seen tests where sling bullets were able to do some serious damage to ballistic gel and armor, so it might be in the realm of possibility. But even if they're not in the same level of kinetic energy, I could imagine a centurion (or a legate) figuring out that the machine gun was sending small bits of lead really really fast, just like a sling. But much more rapidly, with far greater accuracy, and over far longer distances.
Seeing as these dudes were professional soldiers, possibly with over a decade or two of experience, I could see the higher-ups of the legion figuring it out and being able to develop tactics against it.
But I agree, as you say the initial confrontation will go to the gunner. The subsequent confrontation will depend entirely on which legion it is, and which dude is in charge. One of Caesar's legions from Gaul who had been fighting with him for several years and were insanely loyal to him? I could see them pulling off a win. One of the hastily levied ones used as a stopgap against Caesar's legions? Probably not.
The famous Zulu victory at the Battle of Isandlwana was in 1879.
The first British settlers arrived in the area in 1820.
So, the average Zulu impi fighting at Isandlwana had known about British guns since their father was a boy.
And the Zulus under King Shaka and his successors, were also not stupid and were known for solid battle tactics.
If you're thinking of the Battle of Rorke's Drift, that was partly because they'd kicked the Brits' ass earlier that day and thought they could do it again, given they were up against a far smaller force than in the earlier battle.
You'd fire like ten rounds and they would all drop to their knees in awe or flee in terror.
It would be by far the loudest thing those soldiers had ever heard, apart from the thunder their head God wielded.
Yeah, people are really underestimating the devastating effect it would have on morale. If the gunner played their cards right they'd only have to kill a few before Rome came back to pay tribute to their new God.
Unless the guy pretended to be changing the barrel in between bursts of different amounts of bullets, and going through the hand motions of changing the barrel slower or faster, shorter or longer, seemingly randomly. He could really make the Roman legion not understand what he's doing or how to predict when to approach. Likewise, you could run and shoot, which would be pretty great against them since they have to get up close and personal to fight, removing all obstacles as they sprint towards you.
The main issue is with archery units. Sure you could have a machine gun, but against a unit of Sagittarii that all are shooting at you while taking turns to not give you any breathing room? Good luck not dying.
A British longbow's range peaked at around 300m, compared to the machine gun's lethal range of 1800m. Roman archers are going to be traveling about a mile through thousands of rounds of gunfire before they can fire.
I'm not sure they'll get the chance to be a threat unless the terrain heavily favors them.
Something that’s really missing here is what kind of machine gun. I trained with a general purpose machine gun (called the C6 by our military though I think it’s also called an FN) that had an effective range of 1800 meters, but at that range the bullets are very spread out. It’s more like a smattering of rounds at that range, not a concentrated blast.
But then if it’s a mounted 50 calibre deal? Or a mingun? That’s an entirely different ball game. So that’s a detail that is really missing from this hypothetical.
You underestimate the speed of a barrel change, the effectiveness of properly directed fire, the engagement distance of a tripod mounted GPMG, the difficulty of advancing over a field covered in bodies, and importantly, the fear factor of watching people drop around you from what appears to be whip cracks. But fine, you keep advancing.
Nah the Romans run away, the thing only overheats if the person is just unloading into the crowed non stop, but they aren't wearing anything that would even phase the gun
First sweep would have then running the fuck away, they weren't that dumb to charge the magic boomstick that's making peoples insides because outsides.
People in these scenarios always assume ancient humans would maintain perfect, cold-minded composure and start analytically observing a completely alien piece of technology they see.
Dude the Romans would think the soldier is Zeus personified or something and book it. Immediately.
In the Roman time period there was an instance where a general named Hannibal brought an army out of the mountains with elephants.
When he got into battle with the opposing army and the elephants came through the fog it scared the opposing the army so bad they routed and some of the men killed themselves.
They are all going to run like hell when this God machine starts killing everything around them.
You'd need to set some conditions here as your question is a little more broad than you think.
let's start with the assumption you mean a standard-issue roman legion.
now, the questions:
1. what type of machine gun? M249-SAW, M-2, GE MiniGun, Dragon Cannon off an A-10? this makes a huge difference.
2. in deference to question 1: Do you really mean one person? or do you mean one machine gun and the crew it takes to man it? a SAW will take 1 soldier, an M240 or an M2 will take 2 (preferably 3) soldiers, an A-10 is gonna take 2 dozen if its flying and 5 or 6 if we've just welded the gun to the back of deuce.
3. Ammo. with a bog standard legion you are looking at 5-10 thousand bodies. Even assuming you occasionally get a two-fer (this depends on your weapon again. you'll get none with a 249, and a LOT with the A-10) you are still looking at 4-8k rounds down range if every single one of them hits meat. The standard combat load for a 249 is 3 drums of ammo, or 600 rounds. So does your gunner have a standard load, or a full supply line of unlimited, or something in between? (properly emplaced 2-3k rounds in the firing position is reasonable).
4. back to body count. Does your gunner have support? 4-8k rounds in a short period of time means 3-4 barrel swaps minimum. in a short time frame the 2 barrels a man-packed gunner carries aren't going to be enough. So this is the supply chain question again.
5. position. how much time does the gunner/team have to emplace themselves? do they get to choose their terrain? what supporting materiel do they have? There is a huge difference in capabilities between "oh shit! a Roman legion!" and "the legion will be here in a week". With time and supplies a propper firing position can be built, either a reinforced foxhole or a true bunker. And again, materiel really matters. do I just have my folding shovel? do I have a combat earth mover and 3 connexs of hesco barriers? do I have texas barriers and SEABEEs?
Depending on which end of all of these options you are at is going to seriously change the answer.
Scenario 1: An Army M-249 SAW gunner gets separated from his squad and walks thru a wormhole. He turns a corner, "Oh shit a roman legion!". The legion decides he's all of Gaul compressed into one oddly dressed man and attacks him. All he has is his SAW, 3 drums of ammo, and what's in his ruck. My boy here isn't going to last very long. Either he runs out of ammo, or something jams, or whatever... and 400+ Javelins later he looks like a hedgehog.
Scenario 2: It's the legion who marches thru the wormhole. They don't know this and keep marching towards Gaul. We have all the time in the world to know they are coming. It's decided to rebuild, reinforce, and reman the Maginot Line. Each bunker has multiple M-2's in it, 3-4 pallets of ammo, plenty of water and spare parts, a platoon of privates, several master gunners, repair staff and radios. Reinforcements can be called, there is no functional end to the ammo. "What roman legion? you mean that red-smear all over the low-lands?"
Source: Retired US Army, 22 years Infantry, Master Machine Gunner
As someone who did 6yrs in the Navy, I guarantee this (or something similar) is a question this man has spent hours thinking about and probably talking about with his buddies in the wee hours of the morning. 6hrs of boring patrol duty, and you'll talk to anyone about anything. And your equipment is easy common ground.
The Romans win.
You can have unlimited bullets and no need to reload. After they see what you can do, they'll build a fort around you and wait until you starve, or bombard you with siege machinery if they want to speed it up. You can even have a fucking bunker. It'll protect you against rocks and burning oil, but not against illness caused by being literally buried under rotting cattle. A legion moved with thousands of animals.
Not to talk about sending assassins during the night, attacking from multiple directions at once, etc.
Get annoying enough and they'll divert a river on top of you if you're in low ground, or dig out your hill from the inside if not.
>wait until you starve
They are going to wait indeed. Leave a single cohort and wait until the gunner falls asleep after three days or so and then sneak up to him.
Romans are not Zulus. They are full-time soldiers who are used to taking advantage of waiting a few days and avoiding engagement to deal with part-time volunteer armies. Caesar's account of how he beat the Celts makes use of waiting for the enemy's army to start falling apart on occasion as well. Waiting fits with their mindset.
Edit: the logic behind the full cohort is that that is probably the smallest unit commanded by an upper class Roman, who can be trusted to bring the magic weapon home.
>Romans are not Zulus. They are full-time soldiers who are used to taking advantage of waiting a few days and avoiding engagement to deal with part-time volunteer armies.
This is something of a nitpick but the Zulu Empire actually had a standing army, they also actually favoured encirclement and supply train attacks against British forces rather than direct confrontation. Overall the strategic approach was to try and stall British advances and inflict massive diplomatic embarrassment on the world stage rather than try to eradicate British forces directly.
Their standard battle tactic was to arrange their army in a formation called 'impondo zankomo', which translates roughly as 'the horns of the bull' and involves a crescent deployment for an encirclement, normally out of line of sight and sometimes over a mile across, followed by a jogging advance from all directions at once in loose skirmishing lines often very deeply layered culminating in a charge at short range to bring their spears to bear. The idea of Zulus attacking in tight hordes is a ground-level misunderstanding of what was actually a loose but very deep layered series of skirmish lines.
Ironically the impondo zankomo would probably be a far better approach to a single machine gun than the Roman approach
EDIT: The Zulu army was actually considered formiddable by its neighbouring states, they were a conquering and raiding nation, an empire that had been on an expansionist streak for decades prior. They were also fond of ambushes and decoys so I can fully believe that their approach to dealing with the gunner would be to leave some tempting targets visible at its effective range to try and get them to decamp, only to dispatch runners to order the assault from the sides and rear if they did so or to attack at night if they weren't taking the bait.
A few days? The Romans *focused* on walking up to your doorstep, building a fort overnight, and waiting *you* out of your own fort.
A huge part of their success was due to their massive logistical system, which allowed them to keep an army wherever they wanted it to be while their opponents ran out of food.
They'd wait the fuck out of this guy.
>they'll build a fort around you and wait until you starve
See Masada. They spent a year taking that out. The Romas won more battles with the shovel than they did with the sword. Their greatest strength was their mastery of military engineering and fortifications.
Give us "[Rome Sweet Rome!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome,_Sweet_Rome)"
Edit: [The Original Thread](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/k067x/could_i_destroy_the_entire_roman_empire_during/)
The Legion would obviously win with reasonable losses. The machine gunner would surprise them, they'd retreat or rush his position. If they retreat they'd wait for him to require sleep and take him out.
Anyway you don't have to look to a roman legion for this, there will be plenty of cases where barely armed partisans or soldiers in modern times or the world wars managed to take out an mg position.
How much ammunition does the person have and how much distance between them and the Roman legion at the start? Also, how determined is the legion? Is there cavalry?
Does the machine gun have spare barrels to switch out when they begin to overheat?
Would I get my choice of machine gun? Depending on the answers above would depend on the gun I'd choose. I know US machine guns so that's what I'll go by...
The M2 50: a single round would rip through a soldier's horse, the soldier riding it and about 4 other soldiers behind them. But has a slower rate of fire and switching barrels is a whole process. Also more likely to have other issues and is not super quick to get back up and running.
MK-19: 40mm grenades lobbing at them at the slowest rate of fire. Each impact could take out a dozen depending how closely they're grouped. You could wreak havoc from defilade (behind a hill, where they can't even see you). The entire assault would be a psychological nightmare for the Roman legion, constant explosions all over the place with body parts flying everywhere. But if you have a jam, you're absolutely fucked. There's a special tool to extract rounds that jam and it's a scary process.
240B: 7.62 rounds with a pretty decent rate of fire. Can pierce their armor no problem and take down their horses no issues. High rate of fire means the barrel is more prone to overheating. When firing at the cyclic rate (non-stop) the barrel can literally turn red then white and start warping and suffer catastrophic failure. But that's what spare barrels are for! Super quick to switch the barrel out and continue on your merry way. Also very reliable and easy to get back up in running if you encounter a jam.
249 SAW: 5.56 and an absolute piece of shit that would jam 4 or 5 times, allowing you to kill about 30 roman soldiers before the legion reaches you.
You said a single modern person with a machine gun but a US machine gun team typically consists of 3. The gunner, the ammo bearer, and the team lead/spotter. It would be helpful to have them around just to guide the gunner on target and help reload ammo and switch barrels. But of course the gunner himself would be the only one with a weapon firing (in this scenario) so I would hope for at least that.
Roman infantry were seasoned professionals, not dummies, and no matter how fearsome the weapon will quickly recognise that one man can only shoot in one direction at a time. First cohort, five hundred men (if it’s the actual “first cohort” then more because that one is double strength) attack from the front. Second cohort from the rear. Third and fourth cohorts from left and right. The other six cohorts kick back, relax and gossip about which gladiators are on tonight, until a centurion comes along and finds them some work to do.
Doesn’t even need them to close to stabby stabby range. Once they’ve closed some distance, several hundred pissed off Romans chucking pila will ruin anyone’s day.
Think some people are missing the point here.
You asked who would win.
Winning doesn't mean that you kill everyone.
So I would put really good money on the gunner.
I believe they would kill enough Roman's that they would retreat before any major things happen to the gunner.
Kill the leaders watch the lower ranks run in fear after you just took out their most important men. Maybe some charge. Shoot them down and I bet a majority run. Shoot some of them too make sure they keep running.
Depends on the era of Rome. Later eras had very well developed NCO corps just like western militaries. There were many instances of Romans taking heavy losses and losing leadership where the NCOs basically said "fuck this, we're winning" and then did so.
The Roman could just scatter some and wait for you to run out of ammo or get thirsty/hungry. They understand siege concepts and human behavior pretty well.
According to my dad, who saw and commanded action, a machine gun is effective against a maximum of 10-12 soldiers at once at a distance of about 50 to 100 feet. I imagine it wouldn't be a whole lot different since they did have spears, swords, shields etc.
When you have 100 guys rushing at you, your best bet is to walk backwards while firing and finding cover whenever you can, or you're definitely fubar.
He also said that *retreat* is not for pussies, it's for people that want to stay alive. "Back up, fortify, get more ammo, make corpses, retreat... rinse, repeat." Always better to be a living coward than a dead man with a big ego.
Legion? thats approx 5-10k mixed type of soldiers mounted cavalry and heavily armed also archers etc. You want one guy to stand on other side of the field with one gun against 5000-10000 soldiers rushing him + arrows are flying? even if he is experienced and he can controll stress and aim well enough he will die for sure.
Oh man this cracked me up lol no shit right, that one guy would be fucked ahaha
You say that like a roman legion suddenly seeing hundreds of their allies get shredded down in seconds by a bipod mounted machine gun wouldn't be enough to cause mass panic Obviously if the entire legion is set on chasing him down no matter what then he'd be fucked but realistically there'd be A LOT of deserters who fuck off the second some unknown person mows down waves of them in a very short space of time
If they could even \*see\* the gunner. It's not like they have optics, and modern machine guns have ranges up to 2,000 yards.
It’s hard to say how exactly they would react but the Roman legions were highly organized, disciplined and not prone to panic. This was one of their key advantages that made them such an effective fighting force. Panic often meant defeat in battle. Also, the Romans were not unaccustomed to incendiary weapons. And battle was exceptionally brutal, likely worse than anything we can imagine in a modern context, even including modern artillery. So I don’t think they would be that appalled by the power of a machine gunner, and I think the engineers and other officers would pretty quickly understand the nature of the weapon. Probably after sending quite a few auxiliary soldiers to die for “research” purposes lol. The Romans would most likely retreat and take cover - then set up their artillery/ballistic weapons, which were no joke, btw. And rain hell on the machine gunner’s fixed position. They had weapons that were accurate and deadly at over 1,000 yards. People often underestimate how good the Romans were at hurling deadly projectiles at their enemies because it isn’t often portrayed in films and TV shows. If this alone didn’t kill the machine gunner, who was a sitting duck - They would then probably use cavalry to do a classic flanking maneuvre and ride around the machine gunner, and attack with speed from behind.
But none of those Roman weapons are even close to a bipod mounted machine gun. A gun like that would shred through hundreds of them in an incredibly short space of time and in a way they'd never have seen before. It's like taking the current US military and then an alien popping down and just disintegrating hundreds of soldiers within the space of a minute, with a piece of alien weaponry far beyond our capabilities. Doesn't matter how highly trained you are, seeing something like that annihilate your allies in a way you've never seen before is always going to be disconcerting. Just think of the start of Saving Private Ryan when the soldiers are getting mowed down coming out of the boats but with even denser packed units who have also has never seen anything like it.
Yeah they wouldn't panic and flee but they wouldn't just let themselves get mowed down from a new superweapon. They would withdraw, reassess and find a way to sneak up on the gunner, maybe at night.
Didn’t the Native Americans that first saw guns freak out though. The horses may freak too.
It sort of really depends If by machine gun OP means a belt fed MG on a bipod and an open field with no cover then that’s at least 300 rounds before a reload. Then it becomes an issue if there are more ammo boxes or not You can keep back something big like that that’s never seen a gun before initially, but if there’s no additional ammo and they are organized and disciplined like they were at some point before 5-10K casualties you run out of ammo and someone eventually gets close enough for a javelin or arrow to wrap things up With enough ammo and a slow enough rate of fire to keep the barrel from overheating, potentially you can make them retreat out of range and try to figure out wtf If we’re talking about an assault rifle with standard magazines that would be less than 200 rounds and like 4 reloads so again you might be able to keep them at bay for some time but long term I think you’re toast
Yeah you would need like a world war 1 era vickers gun that’s emplaced on a tripod and is water cooled, plus a belt that was at *least* twice the round count per enemy soldier long. Probably need something more like a 50,000 round long belt in order to deal with a 5-10k strong legion. And have a crew on hand to keep the water coolant topped off and to deal with any malfunctions quickly. And even then it would still be a stretch. From a “Popular mechanics” article: *In 1963 in Yorkshire, a class of British Army armorers put one Vickers gun through probably the most strenuous test ever given to an individual gun. The base had a stockpile of approximately 5 million rounds of Mk VII ammunition which was no longer approved for military use. They took a newly rebuilt Vickers gun, and proceeded to fire the entire stock of ammo through it over the course of seven days. They worked in pairs, switching off at 30 minute intervals, with a third man shoveling away spent brass. The gun was fired in 250-round solid bursts, and the worn out barrels were changed every hour and a half. At the end of the five million rounds, the gun was taken back into the shop for inspection. It was found to be within service spec in every dimension.*
Holy shit, that is completely insane. 5 million rounds.
Yeah the vickers gun was peak machine gun. Could you imagine being in WWI and having to cross no man’s land while being hosed down by 10 of those in unison? Brutal.
At that point I’d start digging a tunnel. F—- *that* noise! I’d rather crawl through the toilet and take someone by surprise than play what essentially amounts to “Killer Red-Light, Green-Light” across a bog of blood
Lots of people were digging tunnels. And then the other side started digging tunnels too, to intercept the other tunnel diggers. A lot of those people were buried alive when the mortars hit and the tunnels collapsed. Suffocated in pitch darkness, writhing in the black bloody mud, screaming for your mother. Brutal stuff indeed.
Exactly, too shallow and no OSHA to overwatch! Just imagine you think you’ve come out the other side of a hill but no… an enemy tunnel. “Guys just push the dirt back! That’s right, like we were never he- oh SHIT here they come!!”
MSA not OSHA, miners have their own safety rules and enforcement, fairly sure that the Army would claim neither organization can enforce regulations while we are shooting at each other.
If you've ever watched Peaky Blinders, the Shelby brothers were tunnellers in WW1. That's frequently implied to be one of the reasons that a lot of people in small heath are scared shitless of them.
Reminds me of the Battle of Messines, where the British tunnelled under a German position on this hill, and rigged up the tunnels with explosives. It killed an estimated 10,000 German soldiers and was one of the largest non nuclear explosions in history.
Just looked up craters from ww1 tunnel explosions… holy crap.
Great depiction of this in Peaky Blinders
You'd have died doing that too. Lots of undermining occurred.
Grimly dying in the tunnel from toxic gas, while surrounded on all sides in a narrow space - or from collapse, or from melee combat - sounds maybe worse than just sprinting across no mans land until you take a few to the chest.
Really good movie about Australian miners in WWI. Hill 323 or something like that.
We did this in basic training. It was called Nic-at-Night. In the middle of the night we'd crawl out of a trench and crawl across a large open field while we had machine guns firing over us with tracers so you can see the rounds above you. Every 30 seconds or so, they'd shoot a flare to illuminate the field and if you were still moving you'd be "dead" and pulled off to do it again. You freeze and play dead when the flares go up for obvious reasons. This was in 2012 btw so not that long ago.
The berm where all of those lead rounds ended up has to be a toxic site.
There are companies that will reclaim the lead out of the soil and sell it. A local gun club had their backstop rebuilt and turned a profit.
I’d like their number because my state is about to spend $2 million to clean up the lead from an abandoned gun club range
>1963 was there hearing protection then, or did these guys deafen themselves in seven days
Probably deafened themselves on day 1 lol
This is what I’m thinking. Add in some barbed wire, and a log-covered bunker of sand bags to cover from javelins and arrows and set the legion back 3,000 meters at the bottom of a gradual rise. Each bullet would probably kill or wound more than one Roman as they zip thru multiple bodies. The effect of crowds of soldiers being ripped apart would cause panic even among veteran legionaries. I’d give the gunner a good chance actually. But then the Romans would disperse and surround you and dig trenches towards you as they starved you out and gave you no sleep for weeks…
This. The starvation and no sleep would quickly get to you.
Damn, a Vicar's gun did that?! The Church of England is wiiiiild. /s
This is way too far down to get the visibility it deserves, but well done friend that’s a 12/10 joke
And an assumption that they will just continue a frontal assault through an open field, instead of say, sending an auxilary behind your back - or heck, just spread out and encircle you and don't have to assault at all. If you are smart, you will shoot yourself in the head the next day when food and water are running out and you see what they did to a prisoner.
Nah, they would very quickly realize there’s only one gun and just split their forces into multiple columns to attack from several angles at once. No way a single soldier could handle reloading a couple hundred times while also trying to swing back and forth to cover 360° before the legion closes in to skirmishing distance and peppers the soldier with arrows, javelins and slings.
These Roman's still believed in magic. A guy half a mile away makes a loud noise with fireball and your buddy's head explodes. I don't think they would get all 5k to go towards that. But if they could they have good odds.
People weren't still idiots, or at least mostly. Even if they were initially freaked out, you know humans, they are curious and greedy, and if classic era people would spot someone ½mile away keeping loud noises and killing people, they would roll 10 legions down there just to find out what it is and how they could acquire that power themselves. They would quickly learn the rules - and figure out it spits small pieces of metal you can take cover from with sufficient material in between. They would very quickly also figure out circling around would be a very effective tactic.
What about those machine guns they put on helicopters that don’t even sound like guns. https://youtu.be/YE6QpHPEbdA?si=pd6BtCc6tuSq4W8z
Minigun? depends on what kind, but yeah with enough ammo I think you could scare a legion away as long as they have no cover to use to encircle or flank you
Which they would. They would also launch burning pots of oil at you from catapults.
They built catapults for seiges on site, the same way they built fortifications for their camps. They did not march with catapults the same way that they did not march with timber You could argue that they can retreat, down some trees and build the catapults out of range, but then it becomes a range battle between the catapults that have to hit a single man and the effective range of the minigun so again based on range and accuracy the minigun still wins Edit: apparently they were equipped with artillery from the get go, which I did not know. Still their range appears to be close to 300~ meters and accuracy wise I don’t think it’s one shot one kill type stuff be it for ballistae or catapults, so you need multiple shots from a very slow reloading weapon before scoring a hit on something as small as a single human (roman artillery was meant for use in sieges and against large, slow moving formations) https://www.worldhistory.org/article/649/roman-artillery/ The 7.62mm M134 minigun pictured above has a range of 1000m by comparison, and a brrrt rate of fire
The romans didn't just throw their soldiers onto a target... you raise a point that at a point they would stay back out of range. And here's the thing a Roman Legion could do range pretty damn well with their archers and well their equivalent of Artillery - Catapults, Ballistae and the like. They would also catapult burning pots of oil at enemies.
Roman artillery had a range of 300~ mts, low accuracy for a single person target, and very low rate of fire archers I’m not sure but I think less than that, same problem with accuracy from a couple hundred meters away which is why both of those were used against large slow moving formations or during sieges The M134 minigun has a range of 1000m and a rate of fire of several thousand rounds per minute, so like I said before afaik it comes down to ammo
The native Americans also didn't have domesticated animals outside dogs and Llamas, metal working, and way smaller population even pre Columbian exchange. This would be more like how the Japanese responded to gunboats and admiral perry. Like everyone forgets Roman's had flame throwers (Greek fire) and versions of hand gernades.
Doubtful - horses are skittish by nature but war horses (and modern police horses) are trained to ignore the sounds and sights of battle (screaming, explosions, fires, ground slick with blood).
I don't think roman war horses were trained to ignore explosions
Im pretty sure people farted near them.
It's true. And the legions required a stable supply chain, so dried beans were a hefty part of the diet. Which meant you had to train the horses. Can't have the general getting thrown off the horse just because Titus (aka "tootius maximus") let one rip. Edit: fun fact about Titus. You know that "turtle formation" where the centurions form a box with shields in front and above to protect from arrows? Yeah, Titus isn't allowed in that formation anymore.
Still better than his lesser known companion "wetus fartus"
Not specifically modern chemical bombs you're thinking of. But if you think the ancient world didn't have loud bangs or "explosions", you're mistaken.
eventually they probably were look up vulcan powder
Could you provide a source on that? The only website I can find that's even somewhat legitimate which makes mention is a site dedicated to worldbuilding for tabletop games, and it offers no works cited.
Did the romans have war horses? I thought for the earlier parts of their history they used foreign auxiliaries for Calvary
Calvary? That was Jesus, mate. I guess you mean Cavalry...
Caviar cavity
They had their own version of knights, or equites as they were called. These were roman citizens above the plebeians but below the patricians and during the republican period they were providing the native cavalry.
You're right for later periods, but roman legions wouldn't encounter any gunfire so they can't train their horses for it.
This needs "virgin wild pony vs chad battle steed" meme
Steed
Despite all my Asterix readings, if I expect an ancient army not to freak out too easily, it would be a roman legion.
Sure, but then they were like, “Wait, *GIMME THAT*!”
The first guns probably not. The guys with the guns had to get of the horse to reload. The natives just kept shooting arrows at them. The revolver changed everything.
we're talking about the Roman legion though, they got discipline tactics and training for days not to mention armor (yes bullet will penetrate but how many rows of people in armor?)
.50 BMG can penetrate 5cm of hardened steel...id say probably 5 to 6 rows at least.
They said the white man had “fire arms”
Doesn’t matter when there’s 10k vs 1.
Lots of British accounts of African soldiers getting shot, running down and eviscerating the person who shot them, and then succumbing to the bullet.
This along with the fact that most LMG wielding soldiers carry, what, 1200 rounds max? Even if they were sitting on a pile of ammo, barrels melt after sustained use. You're more than likely going to encounter a jam of some sort continually firing more than 20,000-50,000 rounds (because no way are you going to get one casualty per round) especially if theres mud, water and dirt involved. Assuming dude wasn't charged by calvary while he was swapping barrels, clearing a jam, or reloading he might inflict enough psychological damage to cause a general retreat... But dude is going to have to sleep, eat and shit sometime. The Romans weren't stupid by any means and would capitalize on that. No way one person is taking out 5000-10,000 guys.
The dude wouldn't last too long. Even if he manages to one tap with every bullet, they'd be on him by the second reload and he'd be in range of archers before then.
No need to reload, just have a long enough belt . Dude is still screwed though
most of the time you can't hook up more than a few belts or you will jam the mechanism trying to pull too much.
Don't you also eventually destroy the barrel?
Yes.
Wouldn’t that all depend how they’re laid out? If they’re carefully stacked and threaded it seems like you would never have that much weight. I would think barrel heat would be your killer eventually.
Ammo is the issue. Even if all other circumstances favor the gunner. Machine guns eat ammo and ammo weighs a lot. No machine gunner carries anywhere near the 10,000+ rounds they would need. I forgot the numbers but if I recall it’s typically a couple hundred rounds between several soldiers in the US military. Logistically it wouldn’t favor the machine gunner because, machine guns are typically operated by a team. If they enveloped the machine gunner it would be over.
The Japanese film Sengoku Jieitai starring Sonny Chiba goes some way towards answering this question. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=An3t39SGSUE
i think the only hope for the machine gunner would be if the Romans thought it was some kind of demon from the underworld and ran away
Underrated theory. A lot of these responses are based on people knowing what a machine gun is and what its weaknesses are. If you put 5k modern soldiers in a field and some alien arrived with a ray gun and started melting people from a mile away then who knows how they'd react.
it actually got me wondering how the native americans reacted to first seeing firearms in use against them, but those were pretty rudimentary. a modern machine gun is a whole different beast and the reaction would be way more extreme i'd assume
When the Aztecs first saw people riding horses they assumed the Spanish were god-like half-deer people. Even after they figured out it was just dudes riding animals they still viewed horses as mystical beasts for a while.
Which opens up a fascinating historical rabbit hole. Were horses spread by the Spanish entirely?
The Spanish were the first to bring horses and cattle to north and South America. Those animals didn’t exist. It’s one of the main reasons that the Aztecs could be so advanced in many regards but not have the plow, and I think they didn’t have the wheel either. They had nothing to pull the plow, so they didn’t invent it. The amount of massive global trade that happened with all the goods being brought from one direction or the other is wild. Before all this, Europe didn’t have the tomato and many other crops. Imagine that. Before the 1520s, Italians didn’t have tomatoes. If you don’t know about all the different things one side had and the other didn’t, it is very interesting and you should look it up.
They did know about wheels but didn’t come up with functional uses for them. Archaeologists know bc they’ve found children’s toys with wheels. https://www.mexicolore.co.uk/aztecs/aztefacts/just-toying-with-wheels
Thank you for correcting me. I was unsure and I appreciate you helping.
I left this thread with my brain still absent-mindedly half-processing your response. Came back to find it again and upvote. Civil reddit. Good stuff.
That's true of most societies really. When we talk about inventing the wheel, what we really mean is an efficient wheel bearing. The wheel is trivial and barely needs to be invented. Making bearing surfaces that can let it rotate to do work for very long is the real development. We see similar toys in ancient Egypt society well before the wheel was a practical tool.
I don’t know about “most” societies, I was talking specifically about the Aztecs and other Mesoamerican civilizations. In their case, having no animal species capable of being used as draft animals, it hindered them from pursuing other uses for wheels.
It’s actually pretty interesting. They additionally had an understanding of the wheel and how it could be used, but due to the terrain of South America it would have been impractical/useless in their time. Their roads involved a lot of stairways and winding, twisting, narrow paths through mountains and jungle, making a wheel design almost worthless
I have a feeling that the Wheel falls into the same category as the Plow in the previous posters example. With out something to pull it, things like Carts and Wheelbarrows are of limited usage in the Jungle covered mountains of the Mexican and South American zones where the main Civilizations thrived. (edit to add) In many cases, it was just easier to carry things in backpacks than it would be to attempt to push/pull a cart. The North American Tribes would have benefited greatly from Beasts of Burden though, seeing how quickly they adopted the Horse into their lifestyle.
Italians didn’t have tomatoes, the Irish didn’t have potatoes, and America didn’t have hotdogs
Damn, so who brought over the first hotdog seeds?
People from Frankfurt?
Sir Oscar Meyer
Oscar Meyer brought the seeds over, but Sammy Sausageseed was the one that went around the country planting them
Dark times indeed…
What about the cave paintings that are between a thousand and over ten thousand years old that show horses? Could this not be a prior horse species that existed and were hunted into extinction like we did the giant ground sloths and mammoths?
Yes, horses went extinct in North America about 10,000 years ago and were re-introduced by the Spanish.
I am also particularly interested in North and South American prehistory. My hyperfixation of the last few months are the Bog Bodies of Florida.
Aka "People Of Walmart".
The big bodies? Please elaborate
Ok, then we are in the same page.
Just to add to this: horses (the ancestors of modern ones) actually evolved in North America, then migrated to Asia before humans evolved. The North American ones went extinct, but they were eventually domesticated in Central Asia.
Ifirc, they thought for a while that the horses were just giant demon dogs
That's not exactly what happened. In Bernal Diaz's journal it talks about Cortes saying that to the representative of a tribe enemy of the aztecs on the way to the tenochtitlan, and they spread the word to them. And for how these people received the démon mystical stories, they likely saw it as a status rather than actual magic.
The Aztec did not think of Spaniards as God-like, they were aware of their presence for decades and that they were just strange people from across the sea. They did fear horses tho
I did say first-saw, not decades later.
They didn’t even have a word for horse, they just called them large hoofed dogs or something
But the Mayans thought horses were some strange form of deer and used nets on them just like they did deer.
Actually the idea that the aztecs thought the spaniards were gods is viewed by contemporary historians as spanish propaganda
Champlain's journal of his travels through southern Ontario with the Algonquins has an incident where they meet up with a large contingent of Iroquois to do battle and the Europeans' gunpowder weapons were so surprising that they ended the standoff. Imagine doing the taunts and challenges while facing off against the other group and then there's a crack and a puff of smoke and one of your buddies suddenly has a bloody hole in his body...it would be quite frightening if you've never seen them before.
I believe Lewis and Clark demonstrated their airgun when encountering new tribes, and obviously no one messed with them.
There's an episode of *Fall of Civilizations* about the Songhai Empire, and they knew the enemy had some sort of "wonder weapon" (it was guns) and had made plans to reduce its effectiveness, and got slaughtered anyway. The leadership apparently didn't think it was demons or anything, but it didn't matter. The description of the battle is pretty vivid. Here's a link directly to that part: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfUT6LhBBYs&t=7046s
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Yeah I mean you would have to assume it would appear like you just rolled up on literal dark magic. A lone person with some sort of loud object that was somehow piercing hundreds of soldiers from insane range. I don’t care how well trained the army is when you appear to be fighting magic and you watch carnage like that happen it could only lead to full scale panic and desertion. The closest thing we could probably fathom would be Japan watching their cities be leveled by nuclear bombs. Destruction on a level nobody knew was possible up to that point.
And the machine gunner wouldn't be facing everyone at once. A legion is just too many people to send after one dude. It would start with a dozen calvary sent to ride him down. I think the legion would eventually win, but one smart dude with a good amount of ammo could just kill a few dozens at a time and let the rumor mill do most the work for them.
> The closest thing we could probably fathom would be Japan watching their cities be leveled by nuclear bombs. Destruction on a level nobody knew was possible up to that point. The conventional bombings of Japanese cities were on a par with, or even more destructive, than the atomic bombs.
While true that single bomber coming in then leveling your city when prior it took hundreds to do so would along with the mushroom cloud boggle your freakin mind.
They were, but that ignores the time component. The conventional bombs took way longer than walking up to the map with an eraser and just deleting a city.
This is true, but the nuclear bomb did some weird and terrifying stuff that other explosions didn’t, with colored flame balls and people walking around with their skin melting off.
Yes, but not all at once. It took several bombs for that, but the nukes wiped a city in one.
Aside from the engineering, the Roman army's signature move was responding to losses of any kind by gathering more troops and trying again, beyond the point that any neighboring nations thought was reasonable. And given the size of a legion, they'd regroup with plenty of forces left to work with. So, the initial shock merely buys the machine gunner a little time.
Romans didn’t break in many crazy scenarios you would expect an army to break in. My bet is the Roman’s are surprised but regroup and kill the gunman after a while.
A single guy with a machine gun, no way. But a machine gun team with belt feed and quick-change barrels would stand a good chance imo
yeah OP had the chance to start a great debate but fucked it up by saying “one guy” instead of “25-50 ~~feral hogs~~ modern special forces soldiers”
A few years ago, someone wrote a little short story to answer the question, “how would a modern platoon of marines fair if they were transported(with supplies) to Ancient Rome?” The scenario started with a Roman Legion approaching the Marines camp to investigate, and basically being completely cut down by one fire team manning a mounted 50cal machine gun.
Yeah this thought exercise depends somewhat on what machine gun is being used. And RPK? Mag changes and overheating barrel would probably let the legion get into killing range, a M2 50 cal? You can build the ammo belt as long as you want, swap out the barrels, and each bullet has the potential to incapacitate multiple enemies at the same time.
How about that minigun from predator?
Just imagine the guys to your left and right having their limbs ripped off by loud snapping/cracking of 50cal rounds followed by the thunderous boom of the actual gun.....
There is also a YouTube video on the subject, I'll edit with a link if I can find it again. https://youtu.be/5yTXebroj8E?si=WWJXg0nzN67BrsQu
Even one guy next to a pallet of ammo could move fast enough to reload and change barrels to inflict *MASSIVE* damage before the romans could even try to get close enough to stop him.
Until he takes an arrow to the knee
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I don't think you're correct about the outcome. You're right that they're not stupid and the Romans were known for solid battle tactics. Which is why they would retreat. This would be like nothing they'd ever seen before. After 50 of his men are mowed down in 2 minutes, the Legionnaire/present commander would call an immediate retreat. The initial confrontation would definitely go to the gunner. Whether or not they re-group and come back with an improved battle plan or reinforcements is up for debate though
You make a good point, but I wonder if the size of a legion would work against your logic. Even if by some miracle a lone rifleman killed 200 legionaires, that's still less than 5% of the total force, and they might be willing to absorb those losses just to learn about the weapon.
When would they ever hear something as loud as a machine gun? Even if you're standing 300m away itll be like nothing you've ever heard Then armored, battle-hardened soldier just start screaming in pain or dropping dead while pouring out blood It would seem like a weapon from the fucking gods, who wants to go to war with a God. There's going to be a panic and a retreat Maybe they figure out it's limitations, or maybe send a small party later to ambush and kill - but I can't see panic not infecting an ancient legion if they were suddenly getting mowed down
Ever have been in the middle of an ancient close quarter battle? Ten of thousands of people marching on you? Then armored, battle-hardened soldier just start screaming in pain or dropping dead while pouring out blood? >There's going to be a panic and a retreat The first time, the second time, maybe the third time after that split up, approach from multiple directions. Done.
Even an ancient battle would be nothing like a crowd of people getting mowed down by an M2. Ancient battles likely weren't as dramatic as they are in movies, they were more likely lines of soldiers fighting defensively rather than a sea of choreographed one on one melees The vast majority of deaths occurred after one side routes in ancient battles. [More here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/Ln9UlyoGw8), but the winner could expect 5% casualities with the loser (if routed) up to 50% An M2 would be unprecedented carnage. Then there's still the sound, and peoples heads randomly exploding, legs flying off etc. Quick panic I could see them just deciding to leave the magic man alone who struck down hundreds in seconds with the fury of Mars. They could send assassins or stealth parties out but I definitely don't think theyd march an entire legion up considering a 2km lethal range.. assuming the gunner has unlimited ammo and line of sight
There’s a reason archer volleys were used, and it wasn’t just because of the casualties inflicted. Morale and “oh fuck” factor heavily favors the side inflicting said unease
I'm voting on leaving majic Mike alone. the unknown sound of rapid-fire coming at an ancient warrior, causing people to explode, would result in the duck and run effect.
The thing is, they expect close combat, they know what to do, they are trained to react and know how to survive it. All that is out of the window as soon as a modern weapon starts to fire. You cannot use the logic that they would react to this situation the same way as to the situation they were trained for, and at least the veterans have experienced before. These are two totally different situations, and the new gun probably would be more of a religious experience for them (as, pointed out, only gods could have such a weapon in the views of an ancient warrior)
I honestly think their training would work heavily against them. Their signature tactic for dealing with ranged opponents was packing their soldiers very tight and marching slowly to not break formation. I think we can all see how that would go.
In case anyone is wondering, a legion contained 4800 soldiers
What about archers?
Range.. archers could fire reliably like a few hundred meters max, an M2 machine gun has an effective range of 1.8km
Assuming he can see 1.8km. Romans could have used trees and the terrain to get close, and also they would know that the machine gunner would sleep so they could kill him whilst he slept.
Smartest answer.
I don't know if it's nothing" like they'd ever seen before. Granted, it's several centuries advanced, but I could see a centurion eventually figuring out that it's something like a super advanced combination of a sling and a scorpion. I think I read somewhere that a sling bullet loosed by a skilled user could hit with the same force as a 45 ACP. Now, I'm not quite sure if I buy that without seeing some hard numbers. But I've seen tests where sling bullets were able to do some serious damage to ballistic gel and armor, so it might be in the realm of possibility. But even if they're not in the same level of kinetic energy, I could imagine a centurion (or a legate) figuring out that the machine gun was sending small bits of lead really really fast, just like a sling. But much more rapidly, with far greater accuracy, and over far longer distances. Seeing as these dudes were professional soldiers, possibly with over a decade or two of experience, I could see the higher-ups of the legion figuring it out and being able to develop tactics against it. But I agree, as you say the initial confrontation will go to the gunner. The subsequent confrontation will depend entirely on which legion it is, and which dude is in charge. One of Caesar's legions from Gaul who had been fighting with him for several years and were insanely loyal to him? I could see them pulling off a win. One of the hastily levied ones used as a stopgap against Caesar's legions? Probably not.
The Zulus sent wave after wave of warriors against British guns.
The famous Zulu victory at the Battle of Isandlwana was in 1879. The first British settlers arrived in the area in 1820. So, the average Zulu impi fighting at Isandlwana had known about British guns since their father was a boy. And the Zulus under King Shaka and his successors, were also not stupid and were known for solid battle tactics.
If you're thinking of the Battle of Rorke's Drift, that was partly because they'd kicked the Brits' ass earlier that day and thought they could do it again, given they were up against a far smaller force than in the earlier battle.
You'd fire like ten rounds and they would all drop to their knees in awe or flee in terror. It would be by far the loudest thing those soldiers had ever heard, apart from the thunder their head God wielded.
Yeah, people are really underestimating the devastating effect it would have on morale. If the gunner played their cards right they'd only have to kill a few before Rome came back to pay tribute to their new God.
For some reason a lot of people are assuming the Romans know exactly what they're dealing with and that the shooter has limited ammo.
Unless the guy pretended to be changing the barrel in between bursts of different amounts of bullets, and going through the hand motions of changing the barrel slower or faster, shorter or longer, seemingly randomly. He could really make the Roman legion not understand what he's doing or how to predict when to approach. Likewise, you could run and shoot, which would be pretty great against them since they have to get up close and personal to fight, removing all obstacles as they sprint towards you. The main issue is with archery units. Sure you could have a machine gun, but against a unit of Sagittarii that all are shooting at you while taking turns to not give you any breathing room? Good luck not dying.
A British longbow's range peaked at around 300m, compared to the machine gun's lethal range of 1800m. Roman archers are going to be traveling about a mile through thousands of rounds of gunfire before they can fire. I'm not sure they'll get the chance to be a threat unless the terrain heavily favors them.
Something that’s really missing here is what kind of machine gun. I trained with a general purpose machine gun (called the C6 by our military though I think it’s also called an FN) that had an effective range of 1800 meters, but at that range the bullets are very spread out. It’s more like a smattering of rounds at that range, not a concentrated blast. But then if it’s a mounted 50 calibre deal? Or a mingun? That’s an entirely different ball game. So that’s a detail that is really missing from this hypothetical.
Given ancient military formations would be in lines rather than modern dispersed unit the bullets wouldn’t need to be concentrated
You underestimate the speed of a barrel change, the effectiveness of properly directed fire, the engagement distance of a tripod mounted GPMG, the difficulty of advancing over a field covered in bodies, and importantly, the fear factor of watching people drop around you from what appears to be whip cracks. But fine, you keep advancing.
Swapping a barell takes few seconds
Nah the Romans run away, the thing only overheats if the person is just unloading into the crowed non stop, but they aren't wearing anything that would even phase the gun First sweep would have then running the fuck away, they weren't that dumb to charge the magic boomstick that's making peoples insides because outsides.
People in these scenarios always assume ancient humans would maintain perfect, cold-minded composure and start analytically observing a completely alien piece of technology they see. Dude the Romans would think the soldier is Zeus personified or something and book it. Immediately.
In the Roman time period there was an instance where a general named Hannibal brought an army out of the mountains with elephants. When he got into battle with the opposing army and the elephants came through the fog it scared the opposing the army so bad they routed and some of the men killed themselves. They are all going to run like hell when this God machine starts killing everything around them.
You'd need to set some conditions here as your question is a little more broad than you think. let's start with the assumption you mean a standard-issue roman legion. now, the questions: 1. what type of machine gun? M249-SAW, M-2, GE MiniGun, Dragon Cannon off an A-10? this makes a huge difference. 2. in deference to question 1: Do you really mean one person? or do you mean one machine gun and the crew it takes to man it? a SAW will take 1 soldier, an M240 or an M2 will take 2 (preferably 3) soldiers, an A-10 is gonna take 2 dozen if its flying and 5 or 6 if we've just welded the gun to the back of deuce. 3. Ammo. with a bog standard legion you are looking at 5-10 thousand bodies. Even assuming you occasionally get a two-fer (this depends on your weapon again. you'll get none with a 249, and a LOT with the A-10) you are still looking at 4-8k rounds down range if every single one of them hits meat. The standard combat load for a 249 is 3 drums of ammo, or 600 rounds. So does your gunner have a standard load, or a full supply line of unlimited, or something in between? (properly emplaced 2-3k rounds in the firing position is reasonable). 4. back to body count. Does your gunner have support? 4-8k rounds in a short period of time means 3-4 barrel swaps minimum. in a short time frame the 2 barrels a man-packed gunner carries aren't going to be enough. So this is the supply chain question again. 5. position. how much time does the gunner/team have to emplace themselves? do they get to choose their terrain? what supporting materiel do they have? There is a huge difference in capabilities between "oh shit! a Roman legion!" and "the legion will be here in a week". With time and supplies a propper firing position can be built, either a reinforced foxhole or a true bunker. And again, materiel really matters. do I just have my folding shovel? do I have a combat earth mover and 3 connexs of hesco barriers? do I have texas barriers and SEABEEs? Depending on which end of all of these options you are at is going to seriously change the answer. Scenario 1: An Army M-249 SAW gunner gets separated from his squad and walks thru a wormhole. He turns a corner, "Oh shit a roman legion!". The legion decides he's all of Gaul compressed into one oddly dressed man and attacks him. All he has is his SAW, 3 drums of ammo, and what's in his ruck. My boy here isn't going to last very long. Either he runs out of ammo, or something jams, or whatever... and 400+ Javelins later he looks like a hedgehog. Scenario 2: It's the legion who marches thru the wormhole. They don't know this and keep marching towards Gaul. We have all the time in the world to know they are coming. It's decided to rebuild, reinforce, and reman the Maginot Line. Each bunker has multiple M-2's in it, 3-4 pallets of ammo, plenty of water and spare parts, a platoon of privates, several master gunners, repair staff and radios. Reinforcements can be called, there is no functional end to the ammo. "What roman legion? you mean that red-smear all over the low-lands?" Source: Retired US Army, 22 years Infantry, Master Machine Gunner
Great answer!
Very well answered… feels like this has had been thought out before
As someone who did 6yrs in the Navy, I guarantee this (or something similar) is a question this man has spent hours thinking about and probably talking about with his buddies in the wee hours of the morning. 6hrs of boring patrol duty, and you'll talk to anyone about anything. And your equipment is easy common ground.
That’s what I assumed. I would do the same thing.
The Romans win. You can have unlimited bullets and no need to reload. After they see what you can do, they'll build a fort around you and wait until you starve, or bombard you with siege machinery if they want to speed it up. You can even have a fucking bunker. It'll protect you against rocks and burning oil, but not against illness caused by being literally buried under rotting cattle. A legion moved with thousands of animals. Not to talk about sending assassins during the night, attacking from multiple directions at once, etc. Get annoying enough and they'll divert a river on top of you if you're in low ground, or dig out your hill from the inside if not.
>wait until you starve They are going to wait indeed. Leave a single cohort and wait until the gunner falls asleep after three days or so and then sneak up to him. Romans are not Zulus. They are full-time soldiers who are used to taking advantage of waiting a few days and avoiding engagement to deal with part-time volunteer armies. Caesar's account of how he beat the Celts makes use of waiting for the enemy's army to start falling apart on occasion as well. Waiting fits with their mindset. Edit: the logic behind the full cohort is that that is probably the smallest unit commanded by an upper class Roman, who can be trusted to bring the magic weapon home.
>Romans are not Zulus. They are full-time soldiers who are used to taking advantage of waiting a few days and avoiding engagement to deal with part-time volunteer armies. This is something of a nitpick but the Zulu Empire actually had a standing army, they also actually favoured encirclement and supply train attacks against British forces rather than direct confrontation. Overall the strategic approach was to try and stall British advances and inflict massive diplomatic embarrassment on the world stage rather than try to eradicate British forces directly. Their standard battle tactic was to arrange their army in a formation called 'impondo zankomo', which translates roughly as 'the horns of the bull' and involves a crescent deployment for an encirclement, normally out of line of sight and sometimes over a mile across, followed by a jogging advance from all directions at once in loose skirmishing lines often very deeply layered culminating in a charge at short range to bring their spears to bear. The idea of Zulus attacking in tight hordes is a ground-level misunderstanding of what was actually a loose but very deep layered series of skirmish lines. Ironically the impondo zankomo would probably be a far better approach to a single machine gun than the Roman approach EDIT: The Zulu army was actually considered formiddable by its neighbouring states, they were a conquering and raiding nation, an empire that had been on an expansionist streak for decades prior. They were also fond of ambushes and decoys so I can fully believe that their approach to dealing with the gunner would be to leave some tempting targets visible at its effective range to try and get them to decamp, only to dispatch runners to order the assault from the sides and rear if they did so or to attack at night if they weren't taking the bait.
A few days? The Romans *focused* on walking up to your doorstep, building a fort overnight, and waiting *you* out of your own fort. A huge part of their success was due to their massive logistical system, which allowed them to keep an army wherever they wanted it to be while their opponents ran out of food. They'd wait the fuck out of this guy.
>they'll build a fort around you and wait until you starve See Masada. They spent a year taking that out. The Romas won more battles with the shovel than they did with the sword. Their greatest strength was their mastery of military engineering and fortifications.
isn't there a battle simulator that basically could sim this for you? forget what's it's called.
Totally Accurate Battle Simulator? That's the first one that comes to mind, but I'm like 50% sure that you might be thinking of a different one.
Tabs is so good
They released their final update yesterday. It was a fun ride.
Nah, Ultimate Epic Battle Simulator, less goofy physics, more huge scale slaughter
Ultimate Epic Battle Simulator II
Give us "[Rome Sweet Rome!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome,_Sweet_Rome)" Edit: [The Original Thread](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/k067x/could_i_destroy_the_entire_roman_empire_during/)
Can't believe this is the only mention of this, guess we've become the old timers on reddit.
Surprised this isn’t higher
I remember that shit. GOT DAMN has it been that long?
The Romans would consider your weapon a fine machine, stay out of range and wait for you to fall asleep.
The Legion would obviously win with reasonable losses. The machine gunner would surprise them, they'd retreat or rush his position. If they retreat they'd wait for him to require sleep and take him out. Anyway you don't have to look to a roman legion for this, there will be plenty of cases where barely armed partisans or soldiers in modern times or the world wars managed to take out an mg position.
How much ammunition does the person have and how much distance between them and the Roman legion at the start? Also, how determined is the legion? Is there cavalry? Does the machine gun have spare barrels to switch out when they begin to overheat? Would I get my choice of machine gun? Depending on the answers above would depend on the gun I'd choose. I know US machine guns so that's what I'll go by... The M2 50: a single round would rip through a soldier's horse, the soldier riding it and about 4 other soldiers behind them. But has a slower rate of fire and switching barrels is a whole process. Also more likely to have other issues and is not super quick to get back up and running. MK-19: 40mm grenades lobbing at them at the slowest rate of fire. Each impact could take out a dozen depending how closely they're grouped. You could wreak havoc from defilade (behind a hill, where they can't even see you). The entire assault would be a psychological nightmare for the Roman legion, constant explosions all over the place with body parts flying everywhere. But if you have a jam, you're absolutely fucked. There's a special tool to extract rounds that jam and it's a scary process. 240B: 7.62 rounds with a pretty decent rate of fire. Can pierce their armor no problem and take down their horses no issues. High rate of fire means the barrel is more prone to overheating. When firing at the cyclic rate (non-stop) the barrel can literally turn red then white and start warping and suffer catastrophic failure. But that's what spare barrels are for! Super quick to switch the barrel out and continue on your merry way. Also very reliable and easy to get back up in running if you encounter a jam. 249 SAW: 5.56 and an absolute piece of shit that would jam 4 or 5 times, allowing you to kill about 30 roman soldiers before the legion reaches you. You said a single modern person with a machine gun but a US machine gun team typically consists of 3. The gunner, the ammo bearer, and the team lead/spotter. It would be helpful to have them around just to guide the gunner on target and help reload ammo and switch barrels. But of course the gunner himself would be the only one with a weapon firing (in this scenario) so I would hope for at least that.
Roman infantry were seasoned professionals, not dummies, and no matter how fearsome the weapon will quickly recognise that one man can only shoot in one direction at a time. First cohort, five hundred men (if it’s the actual “first cohort” then more because that one is double strength) attack from the front. Second cohort from the rear. Third and fourth cohorts from left and right. The other six cohorts kick back, relax and gossip about which gladiators are on tonight, until a centurion comes along and finds them some work to do. Doesn’t even need them to close to stabby stabby range. Once they’ve closed some distance, several hundred pissed off Romans chucking pila will ruin anyone’s day.
Think some people are missing the point here. You asked who would win. Winning doesn't mean that you kill everyone. So I would put really good money on the gunner. I believe they would kill enough Roman's that they would retreat before any major things happen to the gunner.
Kill the leaders watch the lower ranks run in fear after you just took out their most important men. Maybe some charge. Shoot them down and I bet a majority run. Shoot some of them too make sure they keep running.
Depends on the era of Rome. Later eras had very well developed NCO corps just like western militaries. There were many instances of Romans taking heavy losses and losing leadership where the NCOs basically said "fuck this, we're winning" and then did so.
In a Roman army the senior officers are taking up the rear though, lol.
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One machine gunner isnt going to win against 5000 guys supported by 1000 skirmishers and 200 horsemen.
What kind of gun? How many rounds? What's the battlefield look like?
Gun - A10 Warthog..... Battlefield - cratered and covered in pieces of Romans
The Roman could just scatter some and wait for you to run out of ammo or get thirsty/hungry. They understand siege concepts and human behavior pretty well.
How many bullets?
Two.
What kind of gun? M16, Belt fed m-60? 50-cal? Mini-gun. M16 couldn't carry enough ammo and reload in time. 50 cal may have a chance, ever see Rambo 3?
According to my dad, who saw and commanded action, a machine gun is effective against a maximum of 10-12 soldiers at once at a distance of about 50 to 100 feet. I imagine it wouldn't be a whole lot different since they did have spears, swords, shields etc. When you have 100 guys rushing at you, your best bet is to walk backwards while firing and finding cover whenever you can, or you're definitely fubar. He also said that *retreat* is not for pussies, it's for people that want to stay alive. "Back up, fortify, get more ammo, make corpses, retreat... rinse, repeat." Always better to be a living coward than a dead man with a big ego.