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Marisa · **05-11-2015, 08:14 PM**

(05-11-2015, 06:33 AM)Nako Wrote:
(05-11-2015, 06:17 AM)Ryoko Wrote:
(05-11-2015, 02:59 AM)Aaron Wrote:
Well they did actually exist and were used to kill things like wounded boar.Â

I honestly think they were abandoned because in the end, why fight with a gunblades when you got a M16? Rather than it being inefficient. In war time today not many people are gonna go swordfight over having a machine gun.
Actually, hand-to-hand combat happens far more today than it has any other time in the last few centuries. Because today's conflicts are almost entirely urban, soldiers tend to get up close and personal with enemies. However, where the gun-sword was quickly determined to be stupid, the gun-spear is one of the most effective weapons ever created.Â

Also known as the bayonet, this weapon is so effective that it will probably stick around long enough to be used in wars on other planets.
by last few centuries, how far back are you going? cause I am fairly certain Hand to Hand was far more prevalent in the Napoleonic wars, and that was only 200ish years ago.

Napoleonic warfare is kind of a passion of mine. Now, you're sort of right. When soldiers committed to hand-to-hand, they did so in mass, and it was pretty glorious. However, a bayonet skirmish was very rare, is the thing. It was hard to get men to commit to steel (having your soldiers straight up just walk off the battlefield was a huge problem back then so commanders had to know their limits) and when they did, the opposing army would typically just fall back until you stopped chasing them. Events where you'd charge and they'd stand to fight you were pretty rare compared to today. The reason you see it happening every single battle in movies and whatnot is because those battles were the ones everyone remembers (because a proper steel-on-steel battle is crazy epic)Â

What's funny is that typically whichever army decided to charge first was the army that won, but rallying your troops to do so was damn near-impossible. Stranger still, you'd actually have fewer casualties fighting steel on steel. Stab-wounds are relatively easy to recover from. Musket balls are almost always a death sentence. Still, the psychological effect of being inches away from your enemy was too great for most.Â

So yeah, modern combat has fewer people doing the stabbing, but it happens way more often.

Gun blades

RPC has moved! These pages have been kept for historical purposes