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[Strife26]

Maybe a barbed sabot?
We don't need water to get in, after all.
Bonus points if it's a lighter-than-air lethal gas. Instant ghost sub.

But then the sub is out of control and on its current course until you can get a prize crew on board.

[GiglameshDespair]

Maybe a barbed sabot?
We don't need water to get in, after all.
Bonus points if it's a lighter-than-air lethal gas. Instant ghost sub.

I imagine the sub will have closed bulkheads to stop flooding that'd also stop the gas from wiping them all out at once. In addition that would also be a war crime, and generally you only get away with using those on your own people.

While it might be buildable, your submarines would also be carrying around torpedoes full of deadly gas, which might not be the best idea. Better hope you don't have a gas leak.

Given the introduction of very basic modern technical knowledge of all colors into a much less advanced, but still steel-using society, I wonder how practical a simple-blowback black powder submachine gun could be.

How much less advanced is less advanced? As mentioned, there's necessary inventions beforehand.

The first recoil-operated machine gun was the Maxim gun in 1883.
However.

Smokeless powder, which is more powerful than gunpowder, had been invented, and Hiram Maxim patented a type of smokeless powder in 1889. I don't know for sure, but it seems likely the Maxim would have used catridges that used smokeless powder.

The question remains whether - disregarding any other technology needed - black powder would have the power to cycle the action of a gun and remain as a useful weapon.
I dunno, but that's my thoughts on it.

[Erkki]

--

The question remains whether - disregarding any other technology needed - black powder would have the power to cycle the action of a gun and remain as a useful weapon.
I dunno, but that's my thoughts on it.

It does, recoil is recoil, and if the system is operated by gas you just engineer the gun to work with lower pressures. It'll be helluva dirty(and corrosive to steel) though.

IIRC black powder guns of the 19th century had maximum chamber pressures about half of what a modern shotgun or rimfire gets, so I don't see how it wouldn't be possible. AK-47 works with blackpowder cartridges... kind of! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LopUNq6lF2U

Blackpowder Glock: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfzQ4uKvE7c

EDIT: the Maxim ran on blackpowder until 1892 I believe. .303 British was initially a blackpowder cartridge!

[Amperzand]

Basically this would be a situation with no infrastructure more modern than the medieval era, but the technology is being developed by someone with general knowledge of all modern technology. The question is which parts are least complex and most practical to replicate, not which require later inventions.

[Dirst]

Basically this would be a situation with no infrastructure more modern than the medieval era, but the technology is being developed by someone with general knowledge of all modern technology. The question is which parts are least complex and most practical to replicate, not which require later inventions.

Basically, the Connecticut Yankee as an inventor rather than a supposed sorcerer?

[Amperzand]

Basically, yeah.

[martinuzz]

Probably youd have a problem making the gun's body and barrel. Forging instead of casting those would be hard I can imagine.
At least, I don't think medieval times had steel casting technology yet.

I think you'd have more success with a repeater ballista firing pipe bombs. That is until a projectile gets stuck. You'd want to invent a delayed impact detonator.

[Amperzand]

I'm thinking in terms of small arms, for artillery, medieval siege equipment could throw comparatively small and light crates of dynamite a good long way to great effect.

I tend to think the most practical thing for large-scale implementation would be bayoneted minie ball rifles, although the barrels would of course be the most difficult part.

[NullForceOmega]

If they can cast bells, they can cast cannons.

[Erkki]

There was of course cast steel in medieval times but making a barrel, even smoothbore, needs precision work and special tools.. For one, you want whatever you work the steel with to be harder than steel, but I'm not sure if there was anything available then. Rifling at least you can forget about.

Explosives of many kinds, spyglass, the hot air balloon at least could be things someone from modern days could teach the locals to produce without improvements in industry.

Repeating ballista firing black powder bombs sounds good. 

[Amperzand]

Dynamite's also pretty simple, and a lot more powerful than black powder as an explosive.

[x2yzh9]

Well all I have to say much more on the subject is that also in a more practical sense I think you would have to be more inclined to think along the lines of the same people that went from single-shot muskets to semi-automatic rifles, there's a certain line of thinking in the current chronological moment that allows for more invention, and if this was analyzed and coupled with the ideas that people would likely come up with in a relative situation such as that-You'd have a much better outcome than looking at it from a single point of view-that being "Apocalypse happened, now we must take commonplace non-specialist knowledge and use that to mcgyver our weapons or instruments." whereas if you incorporated the way they were thinking at the time of the change from muskets to rifles, then maybe you could once civizilation has rebuilt itself end up with an even more advanced and efficient firearm than you had previously at that technological apex which was back-blasted by the theoretical apocalypse. Moore's law, and time travel paradox's kind of led me to this answer, indirectly.

[Amperzand]

Sounds good, yeah.

Another idea I had was basically a scuttling device.

So, in a middling-near spacefuture setting, orbital shipyards will presumably have parts, propellant, and so on for a variety of engine types, I.E: Fusion rockets and Orion Drives, among other less relevant systems.

My thought was that a particularly crazy, desperate, or paranoid fusion rocket captain might take the shaped nuclear charges used to propel Orion ships and strap them equidistant to the outside of his lithium deuteride tank. Basically set up his fuel tank as a enormous, inefficient thermonuke. The shaped charges would compress and heat the fuel presumably to the point of fusion, and in a good-size spaceship's tank, even a horrendously inefficient reaction would still fusion an impressive mass of fuel. From there it's just fireworks.

I got here by thinking about the fact that traditional fusion reactors are highly ill-suited to sudden nuclear annihilation, but the ability to abruptly convert one's vessel into expanding plasma can sometimes be desirable.

[Helgoland]

Dynamite's also pretty simple, and a lot more powerful than black powder as an explosive.

Yeah, focus on making better explosives: Nitroglycerin, guncotton, eventually picric acid and the likes... To do so on a large scale, you'd need to set up an industry for base chemicals.
Better metallurgy is also not that incredibly difficult, if you know what to go for. Some variant of the Bessemer process could yield large amounts of cheap steel, for example, giving you a major edge regarding materials.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalěs]

Orion? Pfht. Medusa is the future.