Silenced weapons

[Todg]

Originally posted by Shadow Bear:
How about a low tech weapon made with a high tech approach. A crossbow is fairly silent, has no recoil, has no flash and can send a round a fair way down range. With high tech sights and high tech head it could be the soultion you want.

How about the airrow?

Air powered arrow launcher. I'm told it's fairly quiet.

There are also versions of the crossbow that do away with the prods, replacing them with internal springs. One version I saw (prototype) looked like a conventional rifle, with the spring concealed in the stock. It was wound by a crank and had the equivalent of a 200 lbs pull.

If you want exotic.

 

[Todg]

Originally posted by Bhoins:
Of course in most of those cases a Barrett Light .50 is the right tool for the job. You might not be able to silence it but since the bullet travels so fast the bullet hits before anyone can hear it and you can fire from so far away that shooting back would be difficult at best.

I like the Barret M82, but it is horribly inaccurate. About 4 MOA on a good day, which makes it useless for long range precision shooting unless your target is a truck. At a recent .50 caliber match, the M82 placed dead last. Top shooting guns were a McMillan followed by a Windrunner, an AR-50 and a custom job I'd never seen before.

Surprisingly, the .408 CheyTac proved to be a better shooter than the .50BMG at all ranges out to 1500 yards anyway).

Want an ultra deluxe, silenced, long range precision rifle with all the hitting power you'll likely ever need?

[DELETED]

 

[Todg]

Since we've been talking about silenced weapons, here's another Real Life example that may fir the bill:

http://world.guns.ru/sniper/sn20-e.htm

The Russian VSS is a purpose built weapon with its own special cartridge. it's supposed to be very quiet.

 

[Morte]

Originally posted by Corejob:
Want an ultra deluxe, silenced, long range precision rifle with all the hitting power you'll likely ever need?

[DELETED]

That'll do the job at 200+ yards. And it's one cool-looking gun, which is not entirely irrelevant to RPGs. But would it be quiet enough to use at 20 yards?

 

[BetterThanLife]

20 Yards? A long arm is definitely out. If you can get to 20 yards without anyone noticing then you can probably get close enough to use a knife. May I recommens a K-Bar. Or if it is a busy city street the old KBG/Bulgarian Umbrella/Cane with the poison pellet in the tip. At 20 yards you don't need to be silent you need the weapon to be invisible as well. (Unless it is a lone sentry type thing.)

Originally posted by Morte:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Corejob:
Want an ultra deluxe, silenced, long range precision rifle with all the hitting power you'll likely ever need?

[DELETED]

That'll do the job at 200+ yards. And it's one cool-looking gun, which is not entirely irrelevant to RPGs. But would it be quiet enough to use at 20 yards? </font>[/quote]

 

[Todg]

Originally posted by Bhoins:
20 Yards? A long arm is definitely out. If you can get to 20 yards without anyone noticing then you can probably get close enough to use a knife. May I recommens a K-Bar. Or if it is a busy city street the old KBG/Bulgarian Umbrella/Cane with the poison pellet in the tip. At 20 yards you don't need to be silent you need the weapon to be invisible as well. (Unless it is a lone sentry type thing.)

I hope you're using something other than ricin. Didn't it take Georgi Markov something like 3 days to die?

 

[tucker2]

While I thought a knife and a skilled practitioner would be the multi-TL solution to silent killing, there's still got to be a reason all them folks want to use a suppressed firearm instead. In real-life anyhow, which I tend to keep at arms length when gaming.

While Bhoins do have a point, I think that 20 yards is a long damn ways, and I'd rather shoot from my hide than creep up and stick 'em. My PC Eddie on the other hand, well he'd use the knife, and prolly do a fine job of it.

 

[Todg]

A knife is way up there as a 'not really effective' weapon, both in real life and Traveller. To slinetly take out a sentry with a knife you have to 1) be able to get to the target without being detected. 2) Dispatch the target in such as way that they don't make any noise.

Yes, it can be done, but it takes rather a lot of both skill and luck.

 

[tucker2]

Well, that's true, a sticker is not exactly the best choice. However, there are folks that are good enough with the naked blade and sneaky to boot, and that's where Eddie comes in. That luck is a too large factor for some, well Eddie has good luck when it comes to killin' folk.

My own personal choice is poopin' my pants, since that is likely the result of me being asked/in the situation of killin' in cold blood. I am no kind of killer. I'm a pooper. I would prefer a longarm and around 100 yards between us-- downwind considering my incontinence-- if I had any kind of choice in the matter.

 

[Todg]

I did some research on the lethality of the knife. It turns out that a knife is really not a good weapon for killing someone. Only 4% of people admitted wounded with a knife die.

I have to agree with you on knife versus gun. Aside from the fact a gun is much more lethal, it allows some distance and is a lot more 'antiseptic'. Knife fighting is close up, gory, nasty business. Most people who are good at it are not the kind of people you'd want for friends or neighbors. Or anywhere near you.

 

[Straybow]

It may also be because knife wounds that are not intended to be fatal generally aren't, whereas bullet wounds take more of that decision out of the shooter's hands. It is certainly so for accidental wounds.

 

[tucker2]

I'm no expert either, but to my knowledge it's bad to get stabbed or shot, it hurts and you might die. I wonder how Corejobs stats were collected, if it was merely gross ER data on wounds and fatalities I think maybe the knife is getting short shrift.

A low velocity penetration, via bullet or blade, would seem to cause similiar damage-- barring special bullet types etc. IMHO, the ability to make the kill is paramount, not necessarily the tool. Isn't there some feller that wrote a fairly controversial book that speaks to this? He claimed that maybe 10 percent of combat troops do the actual fighting and killing, the rest shoot back 'over their heads' or seek some sort of avoidance role( gettin' more ammo and whatnot).

This ain't even close to topic anymore.

 

[Todg]

The work you are referring to is "Men against fire" by SLA Marshall. While Marshall's book is considered highly controversial and some of his datawas probably contrived, there is no doubt it had a tremendous impact on Army training and doctrine, and ultimately led to the use of operant conditioning in training troops.

As to statistic regarding the lethality of the knife vs. the gun, here's some of the data (taken from a post I make on rec.knives) taken from the medical literature with references for those who want to look it up:

rec.knives article

 

[Todg]

Originally posted by Straybow:
It may also be because knife wounds that are not intended to be fatal generally aren't, whereas bullet wounds take more of that decision out of the shooter's hands. It is certainly so for accidental wounds.

I doubt very much that a great deal of control is in the user's hands when it come to a real knife fight. Suggesting that a knife user is more able to accurately deliver an knife stab or slash just doesn't seem probable. After all, one could make the argument that the above ignore people with guns who intentionaly aim for no lethal areas.

 

[tucker2]

There is no breakdown into type of bullet trauma, though likely it would have been included in the findings if there had been any reason to. I do know wounding from HV( rifle thrown) projectiles is very much more damaging to tissue than LV(pistols or bows).

Anecdotally, I still think the knife has got to be effective in the proper hands, though it's use as a primary killing tool has never been popular. I'd agree as well that Corejob's assertion that a firearm is just as capable of discretionary use as any other weapon, but I think Straybow was referring to an unskilled shooter.(?)

 

[Todg]

Point taken.

Based on my own time working in a hospital, and purely anecdotal, I'd say that rifles are by far the most lethal weapon (excluding autombiles and such).

Of all the injuries we had from gunshots, there was not a single person hit with a rifle (excluding .22) in the head or torso that I remember surviving. These were typically hunting accidents, and centerfire cartridges with expanding bullets were the norm.

 

[Pagan priest]

What was the delay time between injury and treatment? A hunting accident is likely to take a fair bit of time to reach an emergency room.

I wish I could remember the statistics from the Vietnam war, there was something about the survival rate of any wounded soldier that was medivac'ed to proper care within 15 minutes...

 

[tucker2]

Pagan, the survival rate was pretty high, as I recall, and a great deal was learned in the process of trauma care in that war and every other. I think the general lethality of most weapons sort of even out if you cannot recieve proper tx, over time anyhow.

We're more looking into what would be more useful for a quick and silent kill, faster the better, and frankly it'd be hard to beat a big'ol bullet to the brainpan or pump. There do exist some real scary folk that make a simple knife pretty unbeatable, but they aren't generally fit to live among us.

 

[Straybow]

Defensive wounds on arms or hands are frequently the only wounds received in a non-lethal knifing. A bullet doesn't stop if the victim successfully "blocks" a shot with a defensive gesture.

 

[Todg]

Originally posted by Pagan priest:
What was the delay time between injury and treatment? A hunting accident is likely to take a fair bit of time to reach an emergency room.

Within the 'golden hour'. It's not far from Spokane to the 'woods'

I wish I could remember the statistics from the Vietnam war, there was something about the survival rate of any wounded soldier that was medivac'ed to proper care within 15 minutes...

Again, It's within an hour. In vietnam, survival rate was over 70% if the casualty was evaced to medical aid within one hour. Better that your chances on the freeway back in the states. Soldiers who are killed outright typically bleed to death. If bleeding can be controlled and support care given, the chance of survival is pretty good. It also help that diagnostic tools are getting really sophisticated. We now have medcical imager that can be deployed to forward medical facilities. These have made a huge difference in the survivability of head trauma.

By the first gulf war, the survival rate was over 90%. But there are some provisos here. 1) most military casualties are not caused by small arms They are caused by explosive fragments from mortars, bombs, artillery and the like. 2) Military rounds use non-expanding bullets. The damage cause by a full metal case 7.62x51mm round is nothing compared to the same cartridge shooting a 180gn soft point hunting bullet.