I think this will be a great debate… speculitive history always ends with two experts with differing opinions argueing.
question is:
how would the world develop if weaponized explosives were not a major thing. if technology in general got up to the level it is now, but for some reason explosives never really took off in war, lack of components or wars in damp enviroments to foil early gunpowder or stigma for whatever reason.
would we still fight with swords? with steam guns? would weaponized lasers be what we use? railguns? would war not exist? how would war have been in the 1800s? would we fight with chemical weapons and flame throwers?
what kind of progression of war sounds even remotelly plauseable assumeing similar technological progression through the ages.
I would imagine there would be a proliferation of ‘tension’ weapons, things that are an offshoot of the bow and catapult. With the development of stronger materials, I would imagine people would inevitably invent missile weapons which had the functionality of a gun.
The question isn’t entirely hypothetical. There are posters here with much deeper knowledge of Japan than I, but Japan essentially forbade the use of firearms when it closed itself to the outside world as they were a threat to the ruling class. They had used them very extensively before this.
The book “DUNE” goes somewhat into this. The author created a feudal society in the future by inventing a form of shield. Lasers cannot be used around them because a laser hitting a shield causes a mini-nuke explosion and fast moving objects(bullets, possibly arrows) are deflected. Slow-moving objects (Swords and knives) are the only way to kill a shielded opponet, which means sword fighting is very much the way battles are fought. Spring guns are also mentioned, but only on Arrakis, where shields do more harm then good in the desert(they attract worms).
Nukes exist, but anyone who uses them offensively runs the risk of everyone else nuking them.
Not quite the same thing, but brings some perspective to the dicussion.