True. AD&D used that term for another type of sword entirely.
When it comes down to it, their use of the term longsword is the least of their historic sins. I would say that this show has a fair amount of appeal for the weapons testing, and the "who would win in a fight" arguments. Anyone expecting to actually learn anything about the weapons or their use, has better places to go.
Now when are they going to do Anne Frank vs Lizzie Bordon?Did Vikings use massive Thor-like warhammers? Because I think that would have smashed a samauri real good.
That is fuckin’ funny
I have doubts as to if their “computer simulation” even exists much less if it is accurate. All we see is a shot with a computer on a table.
Or kisses.
I love the show even though I suspect it’s majorly stupid, stupid with two "o"s.
Here’s my matchup: either an Inuit or Lapplander hunter vs. [any of various tropical jungle or islands] cannibal headhunter.
I suspect terrain and climate would play a huge role in determining the outcome. And that the snowbird would fight even harder if he knew his opponent was a cannibal. 
O.K., one more: a 15th or 16th-C. Ottoman Janissary vs. a 15th or 16th-C. Spanish knight.
Ninja got housed by the Spartan.
I thought that was for defeating rock monsters, not cavemen
I dunno. A trident and net aren’t much good against a 30mm chain gun and Hellfire missiles.
I’ve watched parts of several episodes but can never really stick through an entire show, it seems like a retread of “Smash Lab” where they’re trying to appear scientific and wind up just hacking targets with stuff.
Have there been any real shockers in anything they’ve ever tested? Historically:
-Impaling weapons kill really well.
-Cutting weapons kill, not quite as effectively.
-Crushing weapons kill, not as effectively as first two.
-If you’ve got longer range than your opponent you’re odds-on to kill him first.
-All soldiers were effective killers in proportion to how much time they spent training to kill people.
-The cultural background of the fighters is a pretty small factor compared to those items.
The Ninja losing to the Spartan was a bit of a surprise, considering that the Ninja’s steel weapons are about 2000 years ahead of the Spartan’s Bronze Age equipment. Basically it came down to the Spartan’s shield and armor.
Well, Spartans trained from the time they were kids to be soldiers and kill other soldiers.
Ninjas were spies. Yes they trained in ways to kill people but I don’t get the feeling that was their 24x7 occupation. By the same token I’m sure that your average Spartan would have made a crappy secret agent.
I think Ninja v Apache and Spartan v Viking would have been a better match up
My money’s on the Babylonian. The horse-drawn plow was a really unwieldy weapon, not to mention that it requires tremendous strength to swing the horse.
Am watching it. Like the weapons testing to see what they will do. Don’t like the trash talking.
I am curious about how they program the simulation. Seems to me they aren’t taking account of actual fighting styles.
For instance, in Samarai vs Viking, the Viking guy pulled out his huge 6 ft axe and took a swing, saying “There’s no way a short Samarai can cover that distance” or some silly thing. But he’s an idiot, because Samarai were pretty nimble, and in fact could cover that distance. And the Samarai is not an idiot. He’s not going to stand there and try to catch the axe coming down. He’s going to wait until the axe swing is committed, then in the 3 seconds* it takes the Viking to swing the axe over his head, the Samarai will sidestep and parry the axe down, continuing the axe motion. And the Samarai is not going to try to hack the chain mail apart. He’s going to strike for more vulnerable areas - face, neck, legs.
Also, how does the simulation work? Do they assign values to each weapon? How do they assign the weapons for the simulation? They say 1000 trials, but they don’t describe if, for instance, they do 300 matches Ax vs katana, and for those matches those are the only weapons. I think a lot of the results would depend on the simulation method, but we don’t have insight into that. And it’s kinda hokey to have 1 acted out battle to represent the results of 1000 combat simulations. Come on, I wanna see some CGI mayhem.
The software guy mentioned weapon input values for offense and defense. I would imagine the simulation is stat based and probably borrows from Dungeons and Dragons. So, each warrior has a certain number of Hit Points (health), Armor Class (defense), Damage Range (or number of dice to roll for damage), and maybe some modifiers for strength, agility, etc. The program might start both warriors at long range and randomly decide to move them closer. Each round, the warrior can take various actions like attack, flee, change weapons, etc. The output is probably a text description of the battle, not a fancy CGI battle. Based on the output, the producers probably choose the most interesting result with the more likely winner and have the actors act that one battle out with a bit of artistic license.
I doubt it’s even that. I suspect it’s more like: “X killed with Y weapon”, and that’s it. The acted out battle seems to be scripted to include all the weapons, and have the one who won the most computer simulations emerge victorious at the end.
I wish they’d tell us more about what numbers they’re actually entering into the computer. I wouldn’t be too surprised if they’re just picking a single number to represent the effectiveness of each weapon based on their impressions from the tests, and then the computer turns these into kill probabilities and uses these to compute “Did a kill happen at long distance?”, “Did a kill happen at medium distance?”, etc. in sequence.
I’d like to believe it’s more than that, but I’m skeptical since they don’t show us the raw data they’re entering into the computer. I doubt their program has variables for “number of pig carcasses cut” or “did the arrow hit the eye or not?” The very fact that they aren’t doing the same measurements every week makes me think they aren’t really measuring the numbers that go into the computer, but rather guessing those numbers based on their measurements.
I suspect if they are running the same battery of tests each week in a scientific manner, that would *not *be what viewers are seeing. Because it does not make for compelling television. And since it doesn’t take a full day to shoot a dramatic weapon test for television, they have plenty of time to do accuracy tests. Out of 20 arrows fired, they can calculate a damage value and “roll d20” in the simulation. If a certain number is rolled, the arrow hits the eye or the leg or the arm, etc. It could be a simple damage number that is subtracted from the health points, or it could take into account which limbs are disabled if they wanted to get more complex.
Some of the hits could be “insta-kill” or critical hits that end the battle. This accounts for why the Spartan javelin got a tiny number of kills, but the Ninja egg and shuriken got zero kills… they had no critical damage chance.
Even with a relatively simple RPG-like simulator, you can find plenty of exciting battles that use all weapons if you run 1000 simulations.
Clearly there is a need to balance scientific rigidity with entertainment. The model can be as simple or as complex as they like. It can be anything from a rock/paper/scissors type formula to a detailed statistical simulation figuring weapon selected based on range, damage to specific limbs or body parts, % chance of weapon breakage and whatever else you can think of. The thing is, looking at some complex Montecarlo simulation in Excel is not particularly exciting television.
Here’s what I want to know - If Chuck Liddel can punch so damn hard (which I’m sure he can), how come he (or any other fighter) has never accidently exploded someone’s head with his fist in the Octogon?
Skull is thicker than fist. Skull is harder than fist. Fist against skull, skull wins. Fist gets busted.
I’ve disagreed with some of their assessments on comparing weapons and who gets the edge. I’ve wondered about some of the weapons pairings - especially axe against katana, and then “longsword” against whatever that Japanese polearm was. In fact, do they only pair weapons? From their descriptions, that seems to be the case, but I can see battles where the weapons would not be “paired”, and the Samarai would pick whatever was handy. So first he fights with the polearm, then when he drops it he pulls the katana, but the Viking kept his axe through both. Fer instance.
I think the measurements serve a purpose when you want to measure striking loads, or damage capability. Or accuracy. But I don’t think you can merely plug in damage capability and that be the end of the calculation. Agility and dexterity have to come into any combat scenario. If the computer simulation does not assess that, then it is a poor reflection of reality.
I suppose I can understand that the simulation is not a CGI machine. But I’ve seen “Secrets of the Dead” using CGI simulators to represent large battles on their shows, so the technology is there and could be done.
I would like this show a lot better if they pared it down to a half hour. Show me the weapons, show me how they were used, and debate how they would fare against each other. Cut the awful cheesy trash talking, stupid sermonizing on the nature of their warrior (that Apache guy was working my nerves), and shorten their coverage of the tests that they don’t even seem to need.