What if all bombs (nuclear and non nuclear), tanks, missiles, submarines, warships, fighter jets, artillery shells, rocket launchers, mortars, landmines, cannons, grenades and flamethrowers in the world just ceased to exist?
Therefore the only existing “typical” weapons would be things like guns, swords, machetes, katanas and knives, how would that affect the world?
Comments
So only things that are handheld weapons ?
Gymbros rule the world
We build new ones and try to find out what made them dissappear so we can do it with our respective enemies.
Easy to work out. Check out pre-20th century history.
Good!
Nobody needs the frikkin things anyway.
Then we wouldn’t have any large weapons
People would immediately start building more? With the US and China being even more dominant than they are now, China actually having a slight edge in immediately accessible naval power.
You need to be more specific. Is all knowledge gone and have all factories went poof too?
Trebuchets, Ballistas, and Catapults launching sodium and water explosives… Or similar chemical reaction weapons… Don’t underestimate our willingness to blow shit up in creative ways… If for some reason fire doesn’t exist or is dampened somehow… Pneumatic and hydraulic weapons would be made or adapted to replace combustion or explosives…
Then manufacturing would kick in, hard.
We would go to war with sticks and rocks
What about drones ? More investments into those along with ai, would just allow swarms of them to quickly be the force multipliers.
People would still kill each other…
All crimes are enabled by an imbalance of power. Large weapons or small, the real issue is that they are not evenly distributed among the population.
Whole bunch of wars and death…
Active or brewing conflicts switch to urban, either intensify or pause, depending on the root cause, resolution willingness, financial ability, and the depth of enemy hatred.
Countries with production ability and readiness, go into overdrive. The producers that are relatively safer in defense needs, will start selling. Previous net exporters with active contracts may have near-bankruptcy financial impact for not collecting the estimated revenue. Net importers stuck with unappealing contracts may want to terminate, if alternatives are available.
Socially, arts and humanities are paused, non-urgent healthcare slows down, leisure and luxury too. Countries appropriating culture and history by site of force, while unable to quickly reload, may stop.
Oppressor regimes go into survival mode. Many of them won’t make it. Older dictators may not survive the emotional impact, unless he’s on his third body double. Governments realize: A} the need to care for their populations; B} screw their populations even harder; C} on this spectrum, but closer to B), aka, business as usual.
The economy gets hit hard. Gold and silver become overvalued. Luxury goods with no inherent value become devalued very quickly. Countries heavily importing food staples and trading with luxury goods and services.. may not survive.
We would find ways to fight and make more big weapons. The Rwandan genocide was committed with machetes and small arms.
The mongol hoards would rise and rule with an iron fist, and people would realize what real violence is.
Same difference, it would just involve a lot more face to face confrontation and the process of inflicting death being much more personal and traumatizing for both perpetrator and victim.
Though the range of conflicts would be much smaller overall.
Then the strong will have an advantage over the weak.
The world becomes a much better place, for a little
While
I’d start looking into which God did it and become religious.
The companies who make them would have a field day rearming the world with new expensive shit.
I’m betting my money on boeing and LHM stock, with Honeywell in the mix if this happened.
Your “large weapons” went on to be “can fit in the palm of my hand”
Your mother would be deeply upset and I’d need new trousers.
If the world’s current supply of destructive weapons disappeared, then the countries that have the capacity and resources to Manufacture weapons would immediately become the biggest threat.
Theres countries that have no manufacturing capability but have Stockpiles… and they’d all be rendered useless. So if there was a cataclysmic cosmic event that converted the world’s supply of gunpowder into sand and rocket fuel into something noncombustible, in which case Guns would also be useless…
OP mentioned something interesting. Large vessels and warships and tanks and fighter jets… do they simply all get snapped out of existence or do they suddenly stop operating ? Do all weapons and vehicles get Isekai’d into another universe with all their crew onboard ? That would be an interesting premise !