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YOU'RE MORE IMPORTANT, PLINY, YOU HAVE TO LIVE
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2025
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I wonder what the reaction of someone who never heard of guns would be if you pointed a gun at them.
I don't think you could use it to compel them to do anything.
Threat that comes from pointing a gun at someone mostly comes from the body language and the facial expression of the shooter, knowing what a gun does empowers the threat, it doesn't truly create it on its own.
Someone who doesn't know what a gun is could definitely infer that it is a weapon, and that they are within its effective range. All that JUST from the body language of the shooter.
Interesting thought. Indeed, the person might think it's some sort of exotic bolt thrower.
But I think it's as likely they might think it's a device held to be magical. And then it all depends on how effective they expect it to be.
Pliny, as an extremely well-educated man, actually wrote a bit on chemical and incendiary weapons at the time. So while the notion of the chemicals being a propellant would be foreign to him, a warning shot from the smoke-and-thunder tube would probably give him a good basic idea of what he was facing - a machine that inflicted some form of harm via a projectile accompanied by fire and chemicals.
Pliny: "Fascinating! May I see it? I'm interested in this machine's functioning!"
Me, overwhelmed by the interest of such an illustrious scholar: "Oh, of course!"
Pliny: "How does it activate?"
Me: "You just point it at what you want to kill and pull the trigger, which launches the projectile."
Pliny, pointing the pistol at me: "You are going to help me rescue Pomponianus."
At least not until you gave a demonstration.