Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[sluissa]

So apparently US Navy destroyer crews need to go back to driving school.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-40995829

[Egan_BW]

Hmm. Eh, it's only like a year old~
Egan gestures and the thread begins to move!

50 medieval European peasants vs 50 first-world-country citizens from 2018. Both sides are armed with cheap steel spears and have no real combat experience. Who wins and why?
Do the modern folks beat out the medieval ones with the strength of being bigger and less malnourished? Or will they be at a disadvantage due to being coddled and poorly-exercised? Maybe the currentyear-ians can vaguely recall some battle strategies from high school history?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Humans are actually capable of crowd coordination without training - the part of our brain dedicated to walking and pathmaking is highly developed. I suspect the first-worlders win if combatants are bloodlusted, otherwise nearly everyone routs as soon as the first mortal wound is struck by one of the 2-4% without hard aversion to killing, leaving the winner essentially up to chance.

[Hanslanda]

Humans are actually capable of crowd coordination without training - the part of our brain dedicated to walking and pathmaking is highly developed. I suspect the first-worlders win if combatants are bloodlusted, otherwise nearly everyone routs as soon as the first mortal wound is struck by one of the 2-4% without hard aversion to killing, leaving the winner essentially up to chance.

This. Unless you trapped them they wouldn't want to risk a lethal fight, like any animal with functional neural ganglia. I believe a modern humans' basic knowledge of anatomy would tip the fight in their favor, along with size from better nutrition and lack of rampant lead poisoning.

[Loud Whispers]

Hmm. Eh, it's only like a year old~
Egan gestures and the thread begins to move!

50 medieval European peasants vs 50 first-world-country citizens from 2018. Both sides are armed with cheap steel spears and have no real combat experience. Who wins and why?
Do the modern folks beat out the medieval ones with the strength of being bigger and less malnourished? Or will they be at a disadvantage due to being coddled and poorly-exercised? Maybe the currentyear-ians can vaguely recall some battle strategies from high school history?

Depends what peasants, from what country and what time period. English freeholders, malnourished Polish serfs, Alpenine Germans, French farmers, Corsican villagers, Russian frontier peasants e.t.c. all have varying degrees of nutrition and combat experience depending on where they lived and when they lived. In almost all cases I will always give the advantage to the peasant.
The peasant is always working physical labour, while the peasants who weren't typically physical labourers were usually violent people when violence was required (English millers and bakers being frontline soldiers in the peasant's revolt for example). They were conscripted to fight at a moment's notice, with the particular mental and physical preparations needed to kill enemies which does not exist in civil society today. It reminds me of a British army officer being asked how he thought the British army today would fare against the French or British army of the Napoleonic wars, during a re-enactment of the Napoleonic wars, assuming they had equal equipment standards. The army officer said that today's soldiers were better shots and bigger men, but the men of yesteryear were much more resilient, especially where killing by the bayonet was the standard. Couple that with peasants having a better diet than today (food security and lack of variety is not the same as food quality, of which there has been a serious decline in our diet today - medieval peasants in northern and western Europe from cultures with high meat consumption have always been producing large men), the supposed advantage of superior size fades away too when you're speaking about average peoples.

Assuming you don't luck out and pick 50 heavy protein Chad lads who are all about non-stop bulking and lifting, chances are you'll end up with a modern person from urban and urbane society, used to a sedentary office lifestyle. They'll have been actively taught that self-sufficiency is actually a dangerous thing to pursue and will lack the most basic of survival skills or instincts, right down to fighting in groups or knowing how to cook. They'll likely be malnourished either by being doused in corn syrup, soy and all the wonderful chemical additives & chemicals of modern agriculture and food processing, and unlike the peasants, the modern sample will include those who are severely underweight, underweight, vegan, overweight, obese and hyper-obese. The likelihood of the modern sample being hurt by the greater proportion of elderly compared to the peasants will also work against the modern sample. Knowing military strategy will be entirely worthless without the means to execute it, at which point it becomes a question of from which country are you selecting the modern sample. In this case, I believe the country best capable of defeating their medieval counterparts would be the Americans, as their ordinary population has a high percentage of war veterans who would serve as an immediate and effective nucleus for leadership. The only other downside would be convincing the 50 modern folk into killing the other 50, as there has been a general decline in civilian bloodlust, so unless the modern 50 are sampled from a football club it's not looking good.

[Rowanas]

Hmm. Eh, it's only like a year old~
Egan gestures and the thread begins to move!

50 medieval European peasants vs 50 first-world-country citizens from 2018. Both sides are armed with cheap steel spears and have no real combat experience. Who wins and why?
Do the modern folks beat out the medieval ones with the strength of being bigger and less malnourished? Or will they be at a disadvantage due to being coddled and poorly-exercised? Maybe the currentyear-ians can vaguely recall some battle strategies from high school history?

Depends what peasants, from what country and what time period. English freeholders, malnourished Polish serfs, Alpenine Germans, French farmers, Corsican villagers, Russian frontier peasants e.t.c. all have varying degrees of nutrition and combat experience depending on where they lived and when they lived. In almost all cases I will always give the advantage to the peasant.
The peasant is always working physical labour, while the peasants who weren't typically physical labourers were usually violent people when violence was required (English millers and bakers being frontline soldiers in the peasant's revolt for example). They were conscripted to fight at a moment's notice, with the particular mental and physical preparations needed to kill enemies which does not exist in civil society today. It reminds me of a British army officer being asked how he thought the British army today would fare against the French or British army of the Napoleonic wars, during a re-enactment of the Napoleonic wars, assuming they had equal equipment standards. The army officer said that today's soldiers were better shots and bigger men, but the men of yesteryear were much more resilient, especially where killing by the bayonet was the standard. Couple that with peasants having a better diet than today (food security and lack of variety is not the same as food quality, of which there has been a serious decline in our diet today - medieval peasants in northern and western Europe from cultures with high meat consumption have always been producing large men), the supposed advantage of superior size fades away too when you're speaking about average peoples.

Assuming you don't luck out and pick 50 heavy protein Chad lads who are all about non-stop bulking and lifting, chances are you'll end up with a modern person from urban and urbane society, used to a sedentary office lifestyle. They'll have been actively taught that self-sufficiency is actually a dangerous thing to pursue and will lack the most basic of survival skills or instincts, right down to fighting in groups or knowing how to cook. They'll likely be malnourished either by being doused in corn syrup, soy and all the wonderful chemical additives & chemicals of modern agriculture and food processing, and unlike the peasants, the modern sample will include those who are severely underweight, underweight, vegan, overweight, obese and hyper-obese. The likelihood of the modern sample being hurt by the greater proportion of elderly compared to the peasants will also work against the modern sample. Knowing military strategy will be entirely worthless without the means to execute it, at which point it becomes a question of from which country are you selecting the modern sample. In this case, I believe the country best capable of defeating their medieval counterparts would be the Americans, as their ordinary population has a high percentage of war veterans who would serve as an immediate and effective nucleus for leadership. The only other downside would be convincing the 50 modern folk into killing the other 50, as there has been a general decline in civilian bloodlust, so unless the modern 50 are sampled from a football club it's not looking good.

I dunno.  Peasant revolts still comprised of a relatively small number of peasants compared to the total peasant population. large, kill-capable men might have been the order of the day, but I can't say for certain.

[USEC_OFFICER]

The peasants have spent their lives toiling in the fields and performing manual labour. They are more desensitized to violence and blood due to slaughtering their own animals and preparing the cuts of meat (though this I'm less certain about and probably varies more across time and location).

A modern human might be better fed, but they don't have the endurance or strength of the peasants and will undoubtedly be more hesitant about killing. Knowing more about tactics probably means very little with only 50 people armed with only spears.

Though with all that being said, the losers are probably going to be the guys who break first. Most causalities in medieval/ancient battles came after one side turned and ran after all. So the edge is probably towards the peasants, if only because the modern humans don't want to participate in these blood sports.

[Loud Whispers]

Unless they be sports ball hooligans

[USEC_OFFICER]

Well that goes without saying. If the Byzantines had 50 sportsball hooligans armed with steel spears then Constantinople would have never fell. Alas. It was not to be.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I disagree with the idea of the peasants as more ok with violence. There was more violence around them, but if you look at classical culture you see a lot of lamenting and wretching over it. All those Quaker pacifists came from somewhere, after all.

Modern first-worlders are often unrealistic about violence because of a lack of experience - but that means that in this instance, all those small business tyrants who spend their free time on Facebook demanding drug users get the death penalty are going to dive right in and spear some fucking peasants. The PTSD comes later.

[smjjames]

Should we also assume that they're using the same technology? After all, guns would still beat spears and bow+arrow in terms of deadlyness, though it only matters if the gunwielder gets the shot off first and bow+arrow has the advantage of being wholly silent. Otherwise, the two ranged weapons are on roughly equal ground.

While edged weapons would be more durable today, their basic design has changed little in millenia.

[Madman198237]

The problem of malnourishment has been brought up, but I would like to say again that it's a big one. If you choose only fit young adults from each population, then "who wins" is all down to what modern country you pick from and who's peasants you pick from. Heck, depending on which YEAR you pick the peasants from, it will change a lot.

But no, they weren't somehow more homicidally insane or whatever, they had the same lack of desire to go killing as we do. The difference probably comes from the fact that if someone DOES decide to start killing, in medieval times it tended to be close enough that you either defended yourself or died, unlike with bullets where you shoot back or you don't, and as far as your terrified, frozen brain can figure in the midst of combat, shooting back doesn't actually improve your chances of survival.


Guns are much more deadly and much longer-ranged and much easier to use. Also, bullets aren't stopped by padded cloth. Arrows at any range other than "point blank" don't do well against clothing. Cloth armor was the standard for millennia in all places across the world.

[Loud Whispers]

I disagree with the idea of the peasants as more ok with violence. There was more violence around them, but if you look at classical culture you see a lot of lamenting and wretching over it. All those Quaker pacifists came from somewhere, after all.

And they were run out of Britain by less lamenting and wretching peasants who were more keen self-defence, burning witches and raise angry mobs to kill other communities. Classical aint medieval, and literate nobility lamenting war =/= peasants who were more than willing to murder surrendered enemies

Modern first-worlders are often unrealistic about violence because of a lack of experience - but that means that in this instance, all those small business tyrants who spend their free time on Facebook demanding drug users get the death penalty are going to dive right in and spear some fucking peasants. The PTSD comes later.

How many coked up business tyrants are you going to get in your sample of 50? Unless we get to choose who is in the 50, at which point we're drafting a dream team of 50 regular people. The most coked up business tyrants, the most impulsive gangsters, the sort of sports hooligans for whom violence is a matter of first resort

Well that goes without saying. If the Byzantines had 50 sportsball hooligans armed with steel spears then Constantinople would have never fell. Alas. It was not to be.

The Varangian Club
Although they did have chariot hooligans

[smjjames]

I think we're assuming none of them are wearing armor other than basic clothing worn at the time. The peasants might be wearing more durable leather based clothing rather than cloth of modern era since they'd generally be wearing more work-durable clothing, but it won't help against stabbing type weapons, maybe a little with slashing.

[Loud Whispers]

I think we're assuming none of them are wearing armor other than basic clothing worn at the time. The peasants might be wearing more durable leather based clothing rather than cloth of modern era since they'd generally be wearing more work-durable clothing, but it won't help against stabbing type weapons, maybe a little with slashing.

I assumed they had equal clothing standards