What The @&#%?!

Soldiers’ storm down a villa staircase equipped with an assortment of assault rifles in order to immobilize the intruder. Yelling obscenities, the soldiers point and fire their weapons at the man, John Matrix (Arnold Schwarzenegger), as he dives behind a group of bushes. He then rises from the bushes on the enemies’ right flank and begins his counter attack firing the M60 medium machine gun from his hip he takes out his targets directly in front of him. He continues the assault walking down a path never once letting go of the trigger and carries on his brutal onslaught, hitting his targets out to what appears to be over 150 meters. This scene was from the movie Commando which is a perfect illustration of how Hollywood exaggerates their action sequences, and how they overdue their weapons effects.

For years Hollywood has been creating amazing action movies from Apocalypse Now, to movies like Transformers. These movies contain edge of your seat kick ass action scenes where the viewers are in awe as they watch these big screen heroes slay their enemies, but what a lot of these movies lack is the realism of what the weapons being used are actually capable of doing.  For example the scene I just described where Arnold is shooting with incredible accuracy from the hip, while feasible to perform this maneuver it is entirely unrealistic due to the weapons power. Being that it is a medium machine gun firing, a 7.62mm round, which is meant to take out light skinned vehicles’ such as a car or truck, the M60’s recoil would throw that weapon’s rounds all over the place. Another unrealistic part to this scene is the fact that the M60’s firing rate is 600 rounds per minute and seeing how the clip was approximately two minutes long and he was carrying at least a 100 round belt where was the reload?

With the aid of MythBusters and my extensive knowledge of weaponry there is another movie where Hollywood takes it too far. The Parkour chase sequence in Casino Royale where James Bond (Daniel Craig) is chasing an individual through a skyscraper construction site and winds up in what seems to be a military compound surrounded by armed guards and no way out Bond quickly draws his Walter P99 9mm pistol and fires one round at a set of propane tanks mounted on the wall. These tanks explode sending the guards flying through the air, and Bond swiftly exits during the chaos. While this scene is awesome, it is very fictional. MythBusters is a show where the cast takes these scenarios and put them to a test to see if a lot of these Hollywood movies scenes are possible, and they “busted” this scene on one of their episodes. I have also tried this experiment where I took my Mossberg 500, loaded it with slugs and fired it at a propane tank. What happened was that the propane tank cracked and rolled around on the ground, ejecting its contents into the air.

The action movies that Hollywood produces are, for the most part, visually stunning, but for Military people such as myself find that these movies are full ridiculous non-sense. A machine gun cannot be fired from the hip, a propane tank will not explode with a 9mm round, and a grenade will not blow up a city block! The truth of the situation is that Hollywood should at least do research to make some of these action sequences more realistic.       

Unguard…Touché!

Before guns were created, the sword was the most common weapon used on the battlefield. Each country had its own unique style and qualities when it came to designing these swords and using them. Even though each country had its own idea on how a sword should be forged and what sorts of qualities it should have, it is clear that each continent had an overall common conception on these weapons. The swords that were created in Europe all have similarities to them, and the swords that were created in Asia have similarities to them as well. However, these two continents had vast differences in opinions when it came to these weapons.

European swords were typically meant for brute force. The swords were often crafted for doing a lot of damage by stabbing, hacking, and slashing, but the speed of the weapon was reduced drastically simply because of how heavy the swords were. Though each type of sword has its own weight, the average European sword weighed at least three pounds, but a lot of the swords weighed more than that. For example, the Claymore, a type of Scottish sword, would weigh at least 4.9 pounds. Even though that doesn’t sound like much, one has to take into consideration the duration of use, the amount of force put behind each swing and thrust, and the amount of resistance that the blade faced. Then there’s the type of edge the blade of the sword had. The most common type of blade that the European swords used were the double edged swords, however, they did use single edged swords, but these were typically the soldier’s back up weapon. Another thing that the Europeans used when creating these weapons was the cross-hilt, the two metal rods that ran perpendicular to the blade and was where the handle and blade met. The cross-hilt was meant to protect the user from injuring himself on his own sword as well as preventing the user from punching the shield of an enemy, and it was fairly long.

The design of the Asian swords is different than that of the European swords. For one thing, Asian swords were typically lighter and were created with speed and agility in mind. The blades tended to be single edged blades used more for cutting rather than stabbing. The blades were also curved, though the angle of the curve of the blade differs for each sword. For example, the Katana, a Japanese sword that was used by samurais during the Muromachi period has a slight curve to it, whereas the Shamshir, a Persian sword that was used by the Persians from the 12^th century throughout the 16^th century, has a radical curve of at least 5 degrees from tip to tip. This is a great difference from Asian swords to European swords since the Europeans used straight blades. Another difference between the two continents’ swords is the cross-hilt. As I mentioned before, the European’s cross-hilt was fairly long, but the hilt of an Asian sword is quite small, and in some cases it is a circular piece of metal that protects the warrior’s hand all the way around on the top.

Overall, the Asian sword is better simply because it is designed for speed and cutting rather than the hacking and slashing of the European sword. Also, since it is lighter, the warrior would be able to fight with it a lot longer without getting tired than the warrior who would use a European sword. Although both swords are quite different in the way they are designed, they still served the same purposes. These swords were weapons that the warriors used to defend and protect their nation and the people that lived there. They were used for the destruction of any enemies that threatened their well-being, and they were each regarded highly in the society they were created and used in.

Gamming & Guns

            The average American household has at least one gaming console, if not more, and with the popularity of these gaming consoles a wide variety of video games are made for them. One such type is the classic “shoot em’ up” which are usually set in a time o9f war or great distress. These games have become rather realistic. They have inadvertently become a virtual training session, and gamers will be able to not only tell the difference between certain weapons, but would also know how to reload them and what sort of reactions they could expect if they were to fire the weapon.

            Games are being trained in the basic knowledge of weapons with the graphics of the games nowadays being so life-like, the details of the weapons are precise enough so that the gamer can, in real life, tell the difference between real gun and a toy gun just by looking at it. The realism in the graphics also trains the gamer in the proper way to hold and fire the weapon. In games such as Call of Duty there is always a team of soldiers and the gamer controls the soldiers and fires the weapon as if he, the gamer himself, is actually holding and firing the weapon.

            Not only do these games train the gamer the knowledge of knowing the difference in weapons and knowing the proper way to hold them and fire them, they also train them to know how to unload and reload the weapon properly, as well as what to expect in terms of recoil when firing the weapon. These games show the gamer exactly how to reload a clip/magazine from a weapon. This is precisely because the creators were so detail-oriented in creating these games that they made sure that the process was correct. These games show the gamer how the weapon is fired; the round is expelled out of the chamber after the trigger has been pulled and they see how each weapon recoils after its fired. The gamers may not be trained physically to deal with the recoil; however they are trained to know which weapon would have a stronger recoil and which weapon would have a weaker recoil.

            Overall, todays video games have had a huge impact on society and have become a virtual training tool for gamers, giving them the skills and know-how to handle a wide range of weaponry from their own homes. Though it might not have been the creators intent to make their games a virtual training tool, that is essentially the result.