Let me introduce you to US Patent #1183492A Albert Pratt's Helmet Gun.
this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2025
46 points (100.0% liked)
askchapo
22959 readers
222 users here now
Ask Hexbear is the place to ask and answer ~~thought-provoking~~ questions.
Rules:
-
Posts must ask a question.
-
If the question asked is serious, answer seriously.
-
Questions where you want to learn more about socialism are allowed, but questions in bad faith are not.
-
Try !feedback@hexbear.net if you're having questions about regarding moderation, site policy, the site itself, development, volunteering or the mod team.
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
OK, I think you cam take the prize
I mean there is a helmet that's even stupider, or perhaps just more tragic.
WARNING: Extremely NSFL - features a device built for self-harm.
spoiler
Back in the 1970s, a troubled but mechanically inclined youth built this macabre "weapon." It featured 8 short metal tubes affixed to a crude helmet. Each contained a shotgun shell. Each shell was then wired to an arc welder. At the flick of a switch, 8 shotgun shells activated simultaneously, aimed directly at the inventor's head. The kid really, really wanted to make sure he didn't survive this. So he built a device to shoot himself point-blank with 8 shotguns simultaneously.
I like how it has a spike on top so you can do a running headbutt if the gun misses
Hey, I'm not abiding by nunchuck slander. They were invented by okinawan peasants who were barred from owning weapons by their samurai occupiers, so they made all sorts of makeshift weapons instead, such as the nunchuck being derived from an agricultural flail. Is it the ideal weapon? No, but you had to use what you could when a samurai could legally kill a peasant without consequences
Honestly improvised peasant weapons go hard AF, a while ago I had this cool idea for a hammer/sickle symbol for the Hussites that's a crossed threshing flail and a straightened scythe (how peasants would rotate the blade 90 degrees to make a glaive). Maybe making the sign of the cross because of the Hussite's "heretical" Christian beliefs.
Pitchfork
Modern weaponry? FASCAM (Family of Scatterable Mines). Effectively a "minefield in a can" where each mine is launched from a tube that has a little computer brain in it that is supposed to have a timer that tells it to detonate after so many hours.
Good idea right? Forces can quickly drop some area denial minefields over square miles in a matter of hours instead of the days it took with with hand emplacing that will explode themselves instead of needing to be removed by hand. But with all the points of failure in computery devices... internal battery failure, failure to communicate between the brain box and the mines before deployment, the mine canisters getting really hot making the solder on the mines' circuit boards getting soft enough that things break loose when hitting the ground nothing about these things seems to be a "good idea."
Wind up having to manually proof minefields anyways AND you've got WAY less idea where the fucking things landed than with hand emplacements.
Oh... and the antipersonnel mines that are mixed in with the antivehicle/tank mines try to throw out trip wires when they are dropped. Making an already fucking terrible weapon that causes terrible situations even more terrible.
I don't know much about mines but with like gps and drones and shit, wouldn't mines that don't do anything until someone sets em off remotely work pretty good? You'd need a guy watching the mines for the right people to blow up pass by if they do but they pay people to watch monitors all the time anyway
My vote is for early chemical weapons (like the kind they pumped out via hoses) because the wind would change and they'd poison their own guys. A liability that big is it's own kind of stupid.
This goofy mall ninja shit
oh it's a little sharky 
If it counts, my pick is railway artillery guns. They're super impractical and inaccurate, and extremely vulnerable to being attacked and disabled. They use way too many resources for the impact they have. But on the other hand I absolutely understand why they were built, because man has always wondered: "what if we just make the gun bigger?"
They seem fun
Gonna defend the nunchuks, they're basically just a flail, you can hit with a lot of force without feeling recoil through your hand because of the chain, and nunchuks have roughly the length of a shortstaff at full range, but foldable because it's segmented.
If you actually wanted to fuck somebody up with nunckuks, there's no need for the elaborate moves they do in exhibition nunchuk competitions, you would just swing that shit at full extension towards somebody's head or legs. And, as somebody who has dicked around with practice nunchuks for fun, it's not hard to avoid hitting yourself if you keep it simple, follow Dusty Rhodes' rule "do not do shit you do not know how to do."
I'll recommend checking out a youtube called "Jesse Enkamp" who's a karate guy and explains the history of it in one of his videos, if anyone is interested. (this is not an endorsement of their other content, which I have not viewed or vetted)
EDIT: to answer the question, those self-defense spike things. Like yes you could hurt a person with them, but practically a crenelated flashlight does the same shit, but is also a flashlight, making it more practical and less embarrassing to carry with you.
Flails also suck and weren't really used that much historically if at all
(this is not an endorsement of their other content, which I have not viewed or vetted)
He's sensationalist and a bit unscrupulous.
He visited Steven seagal and validated his obviously fraudulent martial arts record. He's also argued that Mike Tyson uses karate.
He does have great knowledge of the history of karate tho.
I say this as someone who has watched a ton of his stuff lol
there is a nice scene in one of the John Wick movies where Wick shows off some practical nunchuk work. The nunchuks themselves had of course come from a display case.
load more comments
(4 replies)
The keyblade
This!!!! HOLY SHIT I HATE KEY BLADES!!
They are not blades! They are just big keys you fuckers! You are beating each other up with large, badly weighted clubs! Stop calling them blades! STOP!!
The users probably said skill issue but it never looked like a good idea to me
Yeah but consider that they were commonly used on horseback. They didn't even need to swing it that hard to wipe out someone on foot. It's like a mega clothesline.
I think there's debate about whether a ball on chain flail was ever actually designed used as a serious weapon in the middle ages. We know straight length weapons like morningstars, war hammers and maces were and peasants used threshing flails in revolts.
But there's not many archaeological examples of non ceremonial or farming flails. Like a flail designed for fighting. There's drawing in marginalia but they also draw dick trees and rabbits fighting snails.
Most evidence we have is mounted knights would use lances first, as they were longest but also easily lost or broken, then swords as they still had decent reach if you're riding by someone, and maces if you got scrunched together against other cavalry, for short range and armour piercing.
Glad you posted those so I didn't have to make sure I wasn't wrong and get into a research hole
I thought the misconception was that the chains were exceptionally long. Like even the length of the chain in the picture is kind of excessive. Also that the balls were particularly heavy. Then again I learned this almost 20 years ago, maybe it was a theory that was crumbling as I learned it.
Edit for my own childish amusement: "Pain is stored in the balls."
A quick dive back into the research says it's still debated but generally the rough consensus is peasants having flails would have been super common, as they were a threshing tools. In Eastern Europe and Central Asia they were somewhat present as weapons, in Western and Central Europe they would have been pretty rare (and high to late medieval period) but not unheard of. They would have been the Nunchaku of their era. Like a French knight might think it an odd choice if a peer wielded one.
This article is interesting https://www.mdpi.com/2409-9252/4/1/9
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
I really don't get how these weird sheet metal swords are supposed to be useful in combat. Okay so I can inflict nasty cuts on my opponent? And myself? Also just seems like they'd get caught around things and break.
I remember the deadliest warrior episode with one of those and it seemed like high risk little reward. I feel like the flexibility would fuck up how deep it can cut and deadliest warrior showed that to be true.
The guy doing the demo is really feeling himself. Mall ninjas are everywhere i swear.
Yeah it's really not exclusively an anglo thing. All cultures have mall ninjas.
Also fighting and war through history has ranged from serious trying to kill each other and doing a little show to impress the fellas. Depending on material circumstances of the time.
For every silly weapon made to be shown off there's also something like the Iklwa (Zulu short stabbing spear) for killing.
Those guns where it's just five barrels all pointing in different directions
Like, you shoot once and maybe hit one of the line of guys charging at you
But then his four friends are pissed
How dare you.
They're kind of designed for a very specific niche, particularly in 18th century naval combat where you want to fill a narrow space with multiple shots and the heavy smoke from the powder prior to attempting to board so that the defenders either get hit, take cover, can't see for the smoke or are disorientated by the noise.
I think the idea of was being damn sure you'd kill one guy. Guns were bad at aim and sometimes just didn't feel like firing back then. Having 5 meant at least something should hit whar it was meant to
I would have said meteor hammer, but I saw a demo of that shit by an actual pro and it was pretty amazing. Now I want a rock on a rope, but I have no skills so I'd just get myself killed faster than screwing with a lightsaber.
I've got the urge to make a ur mum joke, but I'll refrain.
I think a lot of tactical nuclear weapons are kinda dumb. Things like the Davy Crockett or nuclear artillery seem to put your own troops at significant risk, and it's also an easy path to escalation.
I watch short videos of this girl who uses anything as a throwing weapon and every time she throws she says biu~~~ (usually she's throwing pins) so. Some of those are dumb (a leaf??? A playing card? Like I know gambit is cool and all and on some level everyone thinks they can probably throw cards if they practiced but you gotta admit it's goofy).
So I'm gunna go with some of the things that she throws to give some variety compared to the nunchuck answers (which ai agree with). The other things she throws like ice daggers are unreservedly cool though.
Shuriken and kunai are pretty cool though. They are effectively construction hardware and tools altered to be used as concealable weaponry.
any weapon that was likely not used as an actual warfighting weapon and is now relegated to mall-ninja cool shit like meteor hammers lmao
load more comments
(4 replies)
view more: next ›