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Firearm

2022-05-23T18:17:24Z

2607:FB90:6E70:87D3:6C6E:99BD:B47F:F93E: /* Modern Firearms */

[[image:Shotgun After Firing.jpg|thumb|450px|right|Nothing like the smell of burnt powder in the morning]]
About twelve hundred years ago in [[China]], some people figured out that certain chemicals mixed together (such as potassium nitrate, carbon, and sulphur) rapidly combusted when brought to spark, which became known as "black powder." After some experimentation, they discovered that a tube sealed off at one end could be used to contain the pressure of said combustion and focus it into an explosion to propel an object at high speeds. After a few centuries of refinement, and invention of the frag grenade, they managed to take that mechanical principle and apply it as a weapon of warfare which changed the game: the arquebus. Comparatively cheap, easy to make, easy to learn to use, and capable of penetrating all but the heaviest armor, this marked a transition away from close quarters to ranged warfare.

In modern times, firearms are the staple weapons of any nation. Speculative fiction showcases weapons that don't even fire solid projectiles, like [[lasgun|lasers]].

From an engineering standpoint, firearms had a big difference from previous weapons in that they don't require the user's muscle power to work. Swords, maces, and axes are swung, spears are thrust, and bowstrings need to be drawn. Even crossbows and siege weapons work by storing muscle power via tension until it's released. The energy required to accelerate a firearm's projectile comes from explosive propellants; all the user needs to do is to hold the weapon, aim, brace themselves and set off said explosive charge. The significance of this is illustrated in the American Proverb: "God made man, Sam Colt (the inventor of the first practical revolver) made them equal." Having a reliable repeating gun means that your simple brute physical strength does not mean as much in a fight as it would in a bare knuckle brawl or a swordfight (either defensively or offensively).

The firearm's bigger bro is the [[Cannon]] and its cousin is the [[Rocket]].

==How Traditional Guns Work==
For our non-firearm oriented friends, here's a brief, heavily condensed explanation of how these murdersticks work. These instructions will probably vary depending on the type of gun you're using.

[[image:Teppo.jpg|thumb|300px|right|Some Tanegashima matchlocks]]
===Olden Muzzle-Loading Guns===
====The Slow Way====
1. Put your musket in half-cock position. Take your powder flask, and pour a few grains into the flashpan. Pour some more down the barrel (amount can vary wildly; later powder flasks come with built-in measuring tools for ease of use and safety). Ram the powder, bullet, and cloth wad down the barrel of your gun. Ensure you're doing this in correct order because [[Not as Planned|putting the ball first, then powder, for example, can lead to hilarious and/or lethal results]].
 2. If you're using a matchlock gun: light up the fuse, aim and brace yourself, and lastly wait for the fuse to burn out. If you're using a flintlock gun: just cock the mechanism. With percussion caps, replace the explosive cap on the firing titty after cocking the hammer. In any case, aim once you're done setting it up.
 3. Once the powder burns; the gasses from explosion of the black powder will send the bullet flying out of the barrel like a bat out of hell and penetrate into something or someone, and if you're lucky it might actually hit what you were aiming at. Also, hope you aren't downwind because guns during this time generated ''a lot'' of black smoke.
 4. Take stock of the situation. If you've managed to hit anyone or you're currently still in a shooting war; repeat step 1. If your firing line missed most of their shots and those barbarians are charging up your position; [[Imperial Guard|affix bayonets]]. Additionally, if you have time, make sure to use the ramming rod to clean out the barrels of residue to avoid an explosive jam that could burst your barrel (said note applies to all guns unless you're using smokeless powder).

====The Not-Quite-As-Slow Way====
1. Take your paper cartridge, and bite off the end with the powder in it. Carefully pour a few grains into the flashpan, and the rest down the barrel. Take the remainder of the cartridge, ball and paper, and ram it down the barrel.
 2. Follow steps 2 through 4 as above. Paper cartridges have the advantage of saving you a few seconds of precious time while reloading, which can mean the difference between life and death on the battlefield. Another advantage is that they can be made somewhat weatherproof with a grease coating. But if you're just hunting or can't find/afford paper, most people didn't bother with the time-consuming preparations. Towards the end of the muzzle-loading era, paper cartridges could be chemically treated to be more flammable, so tearing them open became unnecessary. This was mostly done with revolvers.

===Single-Action Guns===
1. Load rounds into the magazine (or chamber if it's a single cartridge gun), remove the safety, work the action (pump the slide, rack the bolt, cock the hammer, et cetera) to chamber a round, and aim.
 2. Pull the trigger, this will cause the hammer to strike the primer on the chambered round and cause the powder inside the shell casing to ignite and explode; sending high-pressure gases screaming out of the barrel while propelling the solid bullet out at high speed towards whatever you were aiming at. If you're using single-action flintlock guns; see above for the result.
 3. Because the gun lacks a mechanism to re-chamber itself; you now have to work the action again to eject the spent shell (unless its a revolver, in which case you do that while reloading) and load another round into the chamber. How you do this depends on the gun in question.
 4. Repeat until you run out of bullets in the magazine if your gun has one or you have a spare moment where nobody's shooting at you, in which case either reload the magazine or load a new round (the default case if you're using a single round breechloader).

===Auto-Loading Guns===
1. Load rounds into the magazine, remove the safety, work the action to chamber a round, and aim.
 2. Pull the trigger and this causes the same effect as stated above.
 3. Because of the mechanism of the gun; it redirects some of the forces used to propel the bullet to work its action, eject the spent shell (unless its a DA revolver), re-chamber another round, and allow you to shoot again by just pulling the trigger. The forces used depend on the gun in question, some use a gas block to redirect some of the gasses expelled by bullets, while other uses the force of the recoil itself, to work the action and chamber another round. Additionally, it could also re-chamber itself using a mechanical sequence (like revolvers) or is electrically operated.
 4. If you're using an automatic; hold the trigger down and only release it once you want to stop shooting (or are forced to do so due to lack of ammo). If you're using a semi-automatic; pull the trigger again to fire another round.
 5. Repeat until you run out of bullets or you have a spare moment where nobody's shooting at you, in which case either reload the magazine or load a new one.

==A Brief History of Firearms==
'''800's:''' Taoist monks attempting to find an elixir of immortality stumbled on the next best thing: a substance that would suddenly and violently make things very dead. They'd discovered potassium nitrate (alternatively called saltpeter), a white crystalline powder that burned with a purple flame. When mixed with powders of charcoal and sulfur the resulting substance would burn instantly and aggressively on exposure to flame. It didn't take long for the Chinese to start inventing ways to use it.

[[image:Firelance.jpg‎|thumb|150px|left|The Firelance, the Chinese invention that started this all]]
'''1000s to 1200s:''' The Chinese realize they can make barbarians shit their pants by shooting hollowed arrows packed with powder and bamboo tubes filled with powder and pebbles at them. Bamboo gradually gives way to cast iron and bronze. The Mongol Invasion accelerated the development as the Song Government tried everything to fight them off, which the Mongols often stole and used themselves.

'''1300s:''' Various gunpowder weapons begin to proliferate westward along the Silk Road, aided by the [[Mongols]]. Crude versions of hand cannons, grenades, rockets, and flamethrowers all see use. Despite considerable psychological effect and good armor penetration, most of these weapons are only marginally more likely to kill the target than the user and had a range of only twenty or so meters. As such, their use is not widespread. For the most part, these weapons were used by skirmishers and guards. The fact that they were so dangerous meant they were mostly used by low class soldiers, and in turn this meant that the smiths making them were generally not the most skilled artisans; which did little to improve quality even given the limitations of the day. Even so, the designs and methods of manufacture were gradually refined and improved by various early gunsmiths through trial and error if nothing else.

'''1400s''': Hand cannons see continued and expanded use. Bit by bit from the crude handgonnes of previous centuries, the first "true" firearms evolve with the gradual development of the matchlock, taking on the basic shape of lock, stock, trigger, and barrel (which is where we get the saying from). By clamping a lighted wick into a flashpan via a trigger, the shooter is able to aim ''and'' fire at the same time, making him markedly less likely to blow his own jimmies off. Despite advances, the matchlock was unwieldy, unreliable, and generally inferior to a good bowman. The issue of course is that only England (in Europe) HAD good bowmen; bowmen were the scum of the army everywhere else. This didn't stop some inventive commanders from seeing their potential, particularly with poorly trained conscript soldiers. [[Weeaboo|Some forces]] made a go of it by carrying two or three guns at a time and just throwing the spent ones away like a really shitty Matrix movie. Note: while we use a "weeaboo" hyperlink up there, it's worth remembering that troops like cuirassiers and even pirates would do the same thing with pistols, carrying a whole brace of them, but they just did not exist yet. By the 1400's having more then one gun was the only way to have any real rate of fire before breechloaders existed.

'''1500s:''' Guns continue to evolve with the invention of spring-loaded firing mechanisms. The wheel-lock spins a steel plate against sulfide rocks to produce sparks (think cigarette lighters), which ignites powder a flash pan. This was revolutionary, allowing soldiers to prime their weapon in a matter of seconds instead of fucking around with a lit wick, and allowed calvary to use guns for the first time while on horseback, giving rise to the cuirassiers. It also means that for the first time, guns weren't completely fucked in the rain, just mostly fucked. They also cost a lot to make and were still not completely reliable, so most people stuck with matchlocks. Powder formulas had improved considerably, including the development of the more powerful, stable, and moisture-resistant corned powder made by wetting raw gunpowder, forming it into cakes, crushing them, and sieving them for size. Japan's Oda Nobunaga was particularly notable in the history of firearms for his heavy transition from blades to guns after discovering the novelty of matchlock guns. In fact, by the end of the 1500s, they had more trained arquebusiers in their armies and produced more matchlocks than any other country to date during that period and had the most guns per capita in the world. They still relied on yari equipped pikemen to keep cavalry away but by this time, mounted archery and swordsmen had taken a backseat as supporting units like the knights and winged hussars in Europe. Meanwhile, virtually every army figured out how to use a combination of volley fire in dense square formations surrounded by pikemen (called Pike and Shot) or roughly equivalent units of gunmen protected by spearmen (such as the Chinese Mandarin Duck platoon formations); making armored cavalry, crossbows, & longbows outdated. Accuracy still sucked but that was what the massed shooting was meant to compensate for and soldiers were trained to just point their matchlock in the vague direction of the enemy en masse and fire.

[[image:FlintlockMechanism.jpg‎|thumb|200px|right|The flintlock mechanism. Now you did not need to light some string and put it into a serpentine before firing]]
'''1600s''' The wheellock is refined into the simpler and more reliable flintlock, though it would take some time to supersede the matchlock. Muzzle loading is simplified with the creation of paper cartridges, essentially the pre-measured cake mix of murder. Some German dudes came up with the idea of cutting spirals into the barrel, which they called "rifling," to spin-stabilize the bullet so that they wouldn't have to walk up right next to their targets to hit them, but this required a barrel tighter than a nun's cunt, a hammer to ram the ball in, and grooved bullets made for the gun so it could fit the rifling of the gun like the cap to a soda bottle. To put all that into perspective: well-trained musketeers could fire three to four shots a minute, while a rifleman could only manage one shot every minute. Not great, however the idea of spin-stabilisation hung around and payed off in later times. Breechloaders are invented alongside the flintlock in both Europe and China but the problem of hot gas leaking and burning shooters' hands made them limited in use and in number. Hence, while nobles such as King Henry could own a breech loading rifle for hunting ducks, said breech loaders were either expensive to make in good quality, leaked hot gas every time you shot a less finely crafted piece, or was of inferior performance to the basic muzzleloader.

'''1700s''': The French invent the bayonet, allowing their troops to be [[choppa|choppy]] while they were [[dakka|shooty]]. Thus, the Pike and Shot formation became the Bayonet and Shot formation. That and refinement of tactics led to the dense but slow and cumbersome square formations being reformed into thinner but more responsive rectangle formations. This is the point where gun infantry tactics become the dominant (though still not only) form of fighting when guns go from one of a few common infantry weapons to the primary weapon used by most infantry. Formations of musketeers go from big square blocks to lines two or three ranks thick to put enough bullets in the enemy's ranks as quickly as possible. In the 1600's armies had started to realize that dividing up your people into groups and firing in turn would allow you to maintain fire while reloading (particularly the English with the New Model Army), but it was in the 1700's that everyone really got good at drilling it into soldiers how to fight in lines. Another interesting development at this time was the creation of the air gun. As seen with the Italian Girardoni air rifle, it was issued to specialized sharpshooters who valued it's silence, long range, and rapid-firing capabilities. Their apparent effectiveness in the Austrian Army's Windbüchse Jägers during the Napoleonic Wars was such that according to legend (which is disputed by historians), Bonaparte himself was so angry that he desired for any soldier captured from those units to be hanged as assassins or spies instead of treated as a regular POW. However, the difficulties of making and maintaining reliable pressure tanks and air pumps meant it couldn't compete or become mainstream once conventional rifles and breechloaders were improved upon.
[[image:Chassepot.jpg‎|thumb|200px|left|The mechanism of a French Chassepot needle rifle, an early bolt action rifle, as well as its paper cartridge]]

'''1800s''': Pretty much everything that makes up a modern firearm is invented here. Some English fools discovered fulminates (with the first formula of mercury fulminate made from mercury, nitric acid, and ethanol), an unstable explosive compound that could be put in a metal cap that would instantly ignite if you slam it with a hammer; which led to the first explosive primers. So flintlocks transitioned to percussion caps. This basically involves putting explosives in your explosives to explode your explosives. Eventually, standardized methods of making copper & later brass casings by the French and English replaced paper cartridges; making gas leakage in breech loading mechanisms a thing of the past. Cartridges that contain a primer, propellant, and slug, similar to modern-day bullets, are developed. With this, not only was loading ammunition simplified with a package that contained everything needed for a gun to fire, it also made it waterproof & easier for conscripts to load. Furthermore, the brass casings' small expansion when firing served to seal the firing chamber to prevent hot gases from leaking and burning users’ hands. Extracting the flush but stuck cartridge in the chamber was simply a matter of adding extraction pins that were manually pressed to kick them out by the rims on the bottom base. By this time, wars were largely fought using firearms rather than melee weapons, though also by this time firearms were also melee weapons as in the early 1800s the bayonet charge was still both an accepted and useful tactic.

By the late 1800 inventors had finally gotten the technology to contain the force of the gunpowder explosion with a tight seal and do so cheaply. Experiments that had been done earlier like the Puckle gun (1718), Ferguson rifle (1776), and even the bizarre 1780 Girandoni Air Rifle, [http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Steampunk which was an air gun with a 20 round magazine], all failed to create breech loading rifles cheaply. See, despite that it was well known that that slotting in bullets from the rear and using a mechanism to load it into the chamber is much simpler than spending about half a minute to ram it down a long barrel, the technology was just not there as without cheap steel with good quality control (cheap is important for hand guns you are going to mass-produce). In the meantime, getting regular iron to contain the explosion without deforming, cracking, and leaking gas - thus weakening the shot - was a nightmare. The Industrial Revolution, among other things, gave birth to the ability to mass produce novelty features such as "breech-loading" and later "magazines" and simpler mechanised feeding systems like tubes, slides, cylinders, and bolt-actions. The likes of pump-action shotguns, bolt-action rifles, and lever-action rifles, and revolver and semi-automatic pistols, are developed and/or developed upon, giving a glimpse on how weapons in the future would function. Near the end of the decade, some French guys worked out that they could both improve firepower and keep their guns considerably cleaner by replacing black powder with nitrocellulose, the first of many "smokeless powders." Also known as “guncotton/flash-paper,” it was first discovered by some German chemist who accidentally soaked a cotton apron in a nitric/sulfuric acid mix before trying to dry it by the fire; culminating with explosive results. After various explosive bouts of trial and error, the French managed to alter its formula to make it stable enough to use without blowing up its creators. They stabilized it by soaking and drying it a second time in alcohol. Next, they added stabilizer compounds that made concoction safe to make without blowing factories sky high from static electricity. This alongside partly dissolving it in ether/alcohol to form collodion before adding extra explosive compounds such as nitroglycerin served to make it more malleable and explosive for shells and artillery. Shaping it was simply a matter of spinning it into stiff thread/yarn to be cut down to desired pellet sizes. Not only is there a massive increase in power, its also a clean burn compared to the highly corrosive nature of black power and the horrible maintenance pain that comes with that. This won't matter ''as'' much for another century, since the primers are still corrosive.

Just as important as the new designs that came about during this period were the new methods of production. People like Eli Whitney worked out devices such as milling machines, which allowed for the quick production of finely tuned parts which were so close in size that you could take one bit off one gun, stick it on another from the same line, and it would work just as fine. Breech loading and repeating firearms had existed for centuries beforehand, but were not cost effective to mass-produce until the Industrial Revolution.
[[image:Lee-Enfield Rifle.jpg|thumb|200px|right|A British Lee-Enfield Bolt Action Repeating rifle]]
This is also the time where the first "automatic" guns were invented and put into production. The word "automatic" is in quotes because these early machine guns were not self-reciprocating; they did not load and fire themselves and were instead manually powered. The most famous (and successful) of these weapons is the Gatling gun, which saw limited action in the American Civil War, but became much more widely used the world over in subsequent wars. But while it was the most famous, the Gatling was not the only manual machine gun developed; dozens of different types were produced during the US Civil War alone on both sides, but because these guns tended to be mounted on cannon carriages they were treated like cannons instead of the close support weapon machines guns are, so it took some time for them to hit their stride. Some were hooked up to a motor and became true machine guns, giving them a rate of fire that's high even by today's standards, but the requirement of having a power source meant it only saw limited use on ships.

The first works of the great John Moses Browning start showing up. While his 20th century inventions are more famous, his perfection of the lever action, and invention of the pump action shotgun were major advances. Browning would even patent a semi-automatic shotgun by the end of the 19th century, though it would not be produced till the 20th.

'''1900-early 1930s''': The heyday of guns because of the advent of WW1. The idea of bolt-action rifles are popularized, along with semi-automatic and fully-automatic weapons. Bolt-action rifles meant that riflemen no longer had to be confined to shooting one round at a time before needing to reload as they could now load individual clips that contained 5-10 rounds a piece. Machine guns are now becoming more and more popular in the battlefields, drastically changing the way infantry would maneuver the battlefield as a single MG emplacement can effectively cripple platoons with the right positioning. Submachine guns are developed by the Italians through total accident, as it turned out their pistol caliber machine gun designed for air-to-air fighting (remember planes of this era were very fragile) was effective as an infantry weapon. The German Empire would be the first to make a purpose built infantry sub-machine gun, giving the rest of the world an idea of the wonders of a lightweight fully-automatic weapon that could easily be used by infantrymen, which was previously restricted to crew-served heavy machine guns and the still heavy BAR. They were so impressive, the various post-war regulations prohibited the Germans from having a military armed with them ([[Derp|completely missing the loophole that the Germans could just arm civilians like police and railway guards with them and have a German owned company in Switzerland build them]]).

On the subject of the machine guns, if there was ever a weapon that represented this part of history it would be the heavy machine gun. We talked about the hand powered machine guns above, and while good when used correctly, these weapons have their issues. In order to use most of them, you had to be standing up to turn the crank and sustained fire was tiring, but the hand cranked guns had one major advantage: the most successful of the hand-cranked guns, like the Gatling or Gardner, had multiple barrels meaning you can fire them with little or no need to stop to let the barrels cool down. At the dawn of the 20th century, this is what the early machine guns had to be compared to when European generals went window shopping. The solution was water-cooling, which allowed machine guns to fire for countless hours with little or no failures, but at the cost of weight rendering them truly static, though highly effective, weapons. If you could point to two developments that caused the First World War's trench warfare, you can point to water-cooled machine guns and barbed wire.

The semi-automatic pistol had some developments in the last decade of the 19th century, but only the bulky C96 Mauser would see any real popularity, with next most notable, the Borchardt C-93, only having a few thousand made. The Borchardt’s refinement by Georg Luger would be one of the big game changers, as it saw adoption by the Swiss in 1900 and Germany in 1904. John Moses Browning would be the real pioneer, creating a series of pocket pistols that saw widespread success in civilian sales. He would cap this off with the 1911 in the same year, his first military pistol that was then adopted by the US military. He designed the 1935 Browning Hi-Power, but didn’t live to see it completed by his apprentice Dieudonné Saive and his son Val Browning. The pistol was produced by both sides of World War II (its factory was captured when Belgium was invaded, but Saive would flee with the plans and produce them in Canada), and all future developments amounted to more plastic, and a few improvements to safeties. All the mainstream self-loading pistol cartridges that remain in use are from this era except for 9x18 Makarov (unique more to deny captured pistols ammo than effectiveness), .40 S&W (never adopted by a military and rapidly falling out of favor after its main user decided to go back to 9mm), and some rounds intended to defeat body armor that aren’t primarily for pistols anyways.

'''late 1930s-1940s''': At the start of World War II, all of the powers involved, France, England, Germany, and Russia, were armed with bolt action weapons. Over the course of the war, automatic and semi-automatic rifles started to become more common; however, only the Americans completely phased out bolt-action rifles for standard infantry by the time of the war (Marines and Army units in the Pacific Front were stuck with the old stuff for a few months due to the Germany First policy). Submachine guns are now becoming more popular with various armies around the world, making it the staple lightweight automatic weapon for infantry troops, totally redefining urban combat due to the weapon's great effectiveness in close combat. Nazi Germany invents the ''Sturmgewehr 44'', the first widely produced assault rifle (the Fedorov Avtomat was the first to be put into service, introduced in 1915, but production was limited due to costs [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Revolution and uh, well...]). This weapon would later become the template for modern assault rifles used by the world over.

[[image:QBZ-95.jpg|thumb|200px|left|A QBZ-95 Assault Rifle, the current service rifle of the People's Republic of China, note bullpup configuration (the magazine feeds behind the trigger), thus saving space]]

One unsung advance is the production side. Advances in manufacturing phase out final hand-fitting (that the 1911 and M1 Garand predate this is why current production still varies and costs so much). The M1 Carbine, due to extensive efforts by the US military, it was the first firearm to have all parts be completely interchangeable, no matter which factory it was made in.

'''1950s-1990s''': With World War II over, the armies of the world had a chance to study Germany's assault rifle and built their own. The key invention was selective fire, which allowed a single weapon to serve as a traditional rifle or a somewhat long and unwieldy submachine gun. Burst fire was also developed, intended to fire a grouping of rounds to defeat personal body armor but automatically stop before the recoil of fully automatic fire would have a significant impact on aim. The USSR's entry was the AK-47, which was powerful, easy to mass produce, and legendarily tolerant of mistreatment after briefly flirting with the SKS (a semiautomatic carbine fed by stripper clips). On the other side of the world, the US briefly experimented with an automatic version of the M1 known as the M14, before (mostly) getting their shit together and developing the M16, which was expensive, complicated, and notoriously finicky. One thing not to be underestimated is the standardization introduced by NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Gone were incompatible calibers unique to each nation, and in their place were a single pistol caliber (9x19 for NATO, unless you were an American snowflake, and 9x18 for Pact.), a single intermediate caliber (5.56x45 for NATO, 7.62x39 for Pact, later 5.45x39 in certain Pact countries), a single full power rifle cartridge (7.62x51 for NATO, unless you were a French snowflake, and the venerable 7.62x54 for Pact), and heavy machine gun cartridge (.50 BMG for NATO and 12.7×108mm for Pact) for small arms. Even before NATO standardization was officially a thing, many western countries eagerly armed themselves with American surplus M1 Garands and M1 Carbines, which greatly simplified things.

'''2000s''': With the invention of more advanced materials such as plastics and carbon fiber, along with numerous technological advancements of the modern world, firearms are... basically the same they've been for the last fifty years, just usually lighter and with more options. Serious efforts were made to look at new designs like caseless ammo and fused smart grenade bullets, but most went nowhere. The most significant development in firearm technology was the advent of practical ranged tasers; essentially wired dart launchers with high voltage capacitors, they're the first handguns ostensibly intended for less lethal force (occasional heart attacks not withstanding) that weren't a total joke (like pistol caliber tear gas rounds).

'''2010s''': Relatively speaking, guns have changed a lot and a little in the following years. Primarily, there had been emphasis placed on modularity, mobility, and ruggedness as can be seen with Western nations adoption firearms such as HK416 variants or overall improving the current M4 system. Development of practical telescopic and caseless ammo (LSAT program), and ship cannon sized railguns (The Naval Research Laboratory) have been placed, with the former showing fruition into the NGSW program (see 2020s). The main innovation at this time comes from the improvement of optics, machining techniques (such as CNC machining), materials (stronger and lighter polymers as well as overall better metal alloys), and further optimized design. New designer rounds have been developed to compete with conventional military ammunition, however by late 2019 most have fallen into either becoming niche or have lost traction/attention for wider spread use. Thus in 2010s the firearm technology focus was improving and fine tuning current technologies with some developments into more experimental areas.

[[File:LSAT telescopic ammo.png|200px|thumb|right| Further development of practical telescopic ammo. Designed to be provide reduce weight not not compromising muzzle energy. Culminated into the NGSW program]]

On the more individual front, CNC and 3D printing development has improved significantly enough that either personally designed or online sourced designs can be used to produce firearms parts and associated equipment that can be used to quintessentially make home made firearms. Although several nations have tried to curb this onset of what have come to be called ghost guns, this phenomenon is here to stay. On a larger scale production front, CNC firearms manufacturing allows for more precise machining thus superior fit and finish and improved tolerances.

[[File:Textron Systems, General Dynamics, and SIG Sauer NGSW-R respectively.png|300px|thumb|left| NGSW system prototypes by different companies competing for the potential to become America's new service rifle. The last one is the winner.]]

'''2020s''': With the rising commonality of rifle resistant gear (i.e. body armor and helmets, eg not unheard of for soldiers to survive otherwise direct fatal blows thanks to modern helmets), need for reduction of weight and increased mobility, ability to react to both close and extended range threats (eg M4A1/M27 accurately pushes to 500/600 meters where engagement ranges can exceed 800 meters), and desire to [[Powergamer|overmatch competing militaries]], Western firearms development has begun to focus on new munitions. Namely looking to full power and reduced weight ammunition (be it polymer or reinforced) that can reach out lengthy distance without being excessively heavy or cumbersome. In that regards, the US Army is looking into the NGSW system program, with several contractors competing for the program. Thus far the competition as of 2020 consists of AAI Textron Systems (backed H&K & Winchester), General Dynamics, and SIG Sauer competing for the bid.

Currently the US Military and its branches are looking at 6.8mm NGSW (no XM designation yet), 6.5mm Creedmoor, and .338 Lapua/Norma Magnum to either replace or supplement current ammunition such as 5.56 and 7.62 NATO. The latter most more so because American snipers found themselves outmatched by their European counterparts. Come April 2022 and the Sig Sauer candidate has been declared the winner. While sporting a conventional layout and using standard brass ammunition, it’ll likely get the job done and will be issued to infantry, scout, and combat engineer units in the Army while everyone else will keep the M4 until further notice. Or they'll just do another competition to get an actual caseless round to replace everything and have XM5's be used by line units until then.

[http://As%20of%202021%20if%20you%20have%203,https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAHKS0nVlL4 As of 2022 if you have 3,500 dollars you, yes YOU can buy a working Gauss rifle]. While definitely out of the reach of most armed forces for mass deployment, it took less then 1 human life time to go from the Wright Brothers to the heavy multi-engine bombers of WWII so the technology is coming.

== GUN SAFETY ==
Should be self-evident, but to be frank it isn't. Between the movies having actors brandishing guns everywhere, the video games and toys like airsoft that make them look more harmless than they are and plain human ignorance and negligence; people forget that they're holding something that could easily scatter someone's brains or outright remove their skull.

That said, there are four main rules to gun safety.
*Muzzle sweep: Avoid this. Muzzle sweep is one when points or sweeps a gun in a direction onto people or objects that could get harmed. To avoid this, one should keep the gun's barrel pointed away from anything that you don't intend to destroy or value. This means one must be conscious of where they are pointing it. Or in other words, '''never point the gun at something you don't want to shoot!'''

*'''Treat every firearm as if they were loaded at all times.''' Even if you fully know the gun is empty after removing the magazine and checking the chamber, still treat it as if it wasn't. This creates a force of habit so that if you are ever in a rush/interrupted while handling your gun/given a weapon by someone else/whatever... you will avoid any mishaps and tragedies that could arise because you think the gun is empty where it actually isn't. The only obvious exception is during maintenance, and that's only after visually and physically ensuring the chamber is clear and the magazine is removed (or empty if your gun's magazine is built-in). Don't feel peer pressure to stop obsessively checking each and every chamber around. As far as addictions go, this is not a bad one. Always, always check multiple times. If you don't feel sure for a single moment, check it. Better to waste a couple of seconds than a life, ask Alec Baldwin.

*'''Know the target, what's in front of the target, and what's behind the target.''' Remember, bullets are designed to punch holes in things. Even if you've got pinpoint accuracy, the bullet might go right through the target and kill some guy who's just minding his own business. This is why any self-respecting firing range has a thick wall or a pile of packed-down dirt behind the targets. Bullets that don't punch through the target and don't shatter (like frangible rounds made of sintered metal) can ricochet back at the shooter or others around them. For this reason, shooting at metal targets is usually done with the targets angled down.

*Trigger discipline: '''Never put your finger on the trigger unless you want to kill/destroy whatever you're pointing your gun at.''' Why? Any number of things, either in a firefight or peaceful day in the gun range, can cause you to be spooked and involuntary clench your fingers. If your finger happens to be on the trigger of a live gun, you can potentially cause a negligent discharge, and that's bad. As in "You're putting your and other people's lives at great risk for being a colossal idiot" bad. It doesn't matter if you're a hardcore Tier 1 spec ops operator or regular Joe taking on recreational backyard shooting, everyone's susceptible to the dreaded ND, which is why it should be second nature for you to always keep your finger '''''off''''' the trigger until ready to fire.

Easy, right? Well... apparently not. Ask any gun enthusiast and they'll gladly tell you all sorts of horror stories that happened because [[That Guy|somebody]] failed to follow these simple rules.

And for the love of the God-Emperor, don't be a fucking tool and mix alcohol/drugs and firearms together. Doing so, very, very unsurprisingly results in the breaking of one or more of the aforementioned rules.

==Types of firearms==
Having been around for well over 1500 years there have been many types of firearms over the course of time. Humans are, if anything, very inventive when it comes to coming up with new and interesting ways to kill each other. A rough list are:

===Ye Olde Gonnes===
*Firelance: Oldest of the Oldschool guns, simple bamboo tubes stuffed with gunpowder and pebbles used in the Ten Kingdoms period and the Song Dynasty. One inaccurate spray of flaming fuck-off in close quarters, often tied to a spear.

*Handgonne: A catch-all term for a primitive gun without a lock that need their powder charges. Majority of these guns were handcannons, as in literal man-portable artillery pieces that had a 50/50 chance of either working or malfunctioning, the worst of which would be the gun exploding in the shooter's face.

*Arquebus - A basic matchlock Firearm. A note of clarification: 'Arquebus' and 'musket' are both used to describe firearms from this time and they are often used interchangeably. But if you want to be ''really'' technical in this period an Arquebus is a regular two handed matchlock firearm while a musket is a larger heavier gun firing a larger projectile, sometimes up to an inch in diameter. Latter (about 1700 onward) musket would refer to any muzzleloading long barreled handheld firearm used for mainly shooting solid shots. This is not too much of a big deal and is nothing to get mad about, but it is worth noting.

*Musket - Today, the musket is a catch-all term for all early smoothbore, shoulder-fired, muzzle-loaded firearms. Technically this isn't the case, the musket was an improved Arquebus, one of the earliest muzzle-loaded guns. However because of romanticism and literature; people who aren't acquainted with firearms will commonly refer to any muzzle-loaded long weapon as a musket (about the same reason why most people today refer to any automatic weapon as a machine gun). Muskets were inaccurate as people have yet to put serious research into firearm ballistics, lacked sights, generated a lot of smoke due to primitive gunpowder mixtures, and were temperamental to environmental conditions (rain will pretty much render a musket into an wet stick of wood), but still enjoyed a lot of popularity due to their lethality and ease of use compared to other man-portable ranged weapons at the time - and even their inaccuracy (they were after all, shooting at a bunch of guys standing shoulder-to-shoulder...) may have been more attributable to the generally-poor training given to the vast majority of soldiers of the time. Muskets were quickly phased out once rifles sufficiently improved (they co-existed for multiple decades, with rifles being reserved for light infantry who used their rifles to place accurate shots...at a fraction of the fire-rate of muskets who stayed in the hands of the line infantry, because the light infantry now had to shove the bullet in by the spiraled rifling) to do what a musket could do, but better. Muskets were categorized by what firing mechanism was used in the lock:
:*The earliest versions used matchlocks, which fired by poking a slow-burning fuse into the firing chamber. These were fairly unreliable and somewhat hazardous since you had a smouldering fuse close to the flashpan when you were reloading.
:*The next developed version was the wheel-lock, which used a quick rotation of a wheel against a pyrite to create sparks, making it the first self-igniting firearm. Due to it's price, it didn't replace the matchlock in most cases, only being used by cavalry, elite soldiers and gunpowder guards.
:* Flintlocks replaced matchlocks, which ignited by generating sparks when a piece of flint struck the iron frizzen, igniting the powder in the flashpan. The flint would periodically break and need replacing, but it was still safer than a matchlock.
:**Fusils are early flintlocks (in fact "fusil" derives the Latin "foisil" , meaning a piece of flint), and like any early technology they were more expensive then there later derivatives. Therefore Fusils were given to elite higher trained troops, hence the english/french words 'fusileer' and 'fusillade'. The primary use of Fusils while they distinct from standard infantry weapons (matchlocks) were guarding artillery since unlike matchlocks, flintlocks like the Fusil do not produce so many sparks, a major concern around barrels of gunpowder common around artillery trains!
:** Snaplock uses a flint to strike against a frizzen but is different from the later flintlocks in that the frizzen and pan are separate pieces of the weapon while later flintlocks combine frizzen and the pancover into one, which made the later flintlocks much cheaper. The user also has to manually open the pancover before shooting, which can be a problem in rain. Like the wheel-lock, snaplock didn't manage to replace the matchlock and in fact, in many regards wheel-lock was considered superior despite coming first.
:** Snaphance is similar to a snaplock but it has an additional mechanism which opens the pancover automatically when pulling the trigger, making it a lot less likely that the gunpowder would get wet.
:* With the invention of the percussion cap came the Caplock, or Cap & Ball. This was the final evolution before breachloading became widespread. The cap would be fitted onto a tube to the firing chamber after the musket was loaded. Caplock firearms did not generate sparks in and of themselves; rather, they used a simple hammer to strike the cap, which would in turn ignite the powder in the firing chamber. Far more contained than flintlock, until the fully self-contained cartridge superseded it entirely. After the introduction of cartridges, it was fairly simple to convert existing caplock weapons by replacing the percussion cap tube with a firing pin, and adding a loading gate. Cap & Ball still sees use, even having a few entirely new designs created using the mechanism, due to many countries not considering them or anything prior as "firearms".

*Multi-barreled gun - In the olden days, people wanted more dakka launched at enemies, but things like magazines and self-loading weapons were still an alien idea during its time. So as an alternative people took a breach/muzzle-loaded firearm, slapped one or more barrels onto it, and reworked the trigger so they can fire more shots before needing to reload. This resulted in some particularly wacky times for guns. To this day, the only multi-barrel weapon still commonly used (disregarding military rifles with underslung grenade launchers, door breaching shotguns, or rotating barrel Gatling-style guns) is the double-barreled hunting shotgun. Some notable guns were volley guns called ribauldequin, which were a line of infantry dudes without most of the dudes. The problem was that this took very long to load, because you have one or two people ramming shit rather than 20 dudes each loading. So, that was a colossal fail in a long term artillery exchange, but quite effective for countering a charge when all you need is one volley to make mincemeat out of that cavalry coming at you.

===Modern Firearms===
*Handgun - Also called "pistols", handguns are small-sized firearms that can be comfortably fired in one hand (hence the name). Handguns are mainly used for close defense and as a sidearm, making them akin to daggers. Modern pistol calibers are commonly between 8mm and 11mm, although popular magnum rounds like the .50 GI and .50AE are also exist for handguns (albeit they tend to be large, heavy, and likely to fuck up your wrist from the recoil).
:*Self-loading pistol - Semi-automatic pistols are magazine-fed handguns that use the fired cartridge’s energy to extract and eject the spent cartridge, recock the hammer, and feed a fresh cartridge into the chamber. A concept that took a comparatively long amount of time to get into place, with the first functional semi-automatic pistol being the German Borschardt C93, and the first mass-produced one being the iconic Broomhandle Mauser C96. These had several advantages over revolvers, like having a bigger magazine, being much easier to reload under field conditions, but the most important of which being that they were much easier to maintain. Starting with the Walther PP and the Colt M1911, most nations militaries quickly shifted towards pistols instead of revolvers, with some completely replacing them even before WW2. Revolvers stuck around longer in police service in many countries, but were pushed out of this role as well, making Revolvers only widespread on the civilian gun market, especially for hunters, where the safety and reliability of a Revolver is an advantage over semi-autos that cannot be ignored.
:*Machine pistol - A machine pistol is a handgun that can fire in either bursts or in full-auto. While they're commonly thrown into that category, machine pistols are not submachine guns due to their size and use. Machine-pistols are not in widespread use with traditional military forces as SMGs and PDWs do better damage and have a longer range, but they remain popular with personnel like bodyguards or hitmen, who require a highly portable and concealable but powerful sidearm.
:*Derringer - Another case of the concept being named after its inventor, "derringer" refers to tiny pistols, often used as concealed or backup sidearms, that could fit into the palm of your hand. These things have been around since the 19th century and were single-shot, though could have multiple barrels to fire off more shots before reloading, which were fired in a sequence. Due to their size and intended use (i.e: shooting someone while literally next to them); derringers typically used small rounds like .22 and below. But if you ''really'' wanted someone dead (and your wrists obliterated); some packed larger shots like [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COP_.357_Derringer .357 magnum rounds].
:*Pocket Pistol - Modern versions of the derringer, those are really small handguns or revolvers that sacrifice range and ammo count in order to be as small and easily concealed as possible. Also called "subcompacts". Obviously ideal for bodyguards, spies and VIPs to use as last resorts.
:*Flare Gun - While not exactly a proper firearm per se, due to being used to fire fat and slower moving flares instead of actual bullets, flare guns made from metal (any plastic ones are a risk waiting to cripple your hand) can accept tubular inserts into the breach in order to fire small to medium sized shotgun shells and pistol rounds. Granted, accuracy is going to be mediocre (assuming the inserts themselves have no rifling) and you're going to have to load and remove each bullet case like grandpa's old break action shotgun before you can shoot again. However, it works well as a hidden holdout weapon or a dual-use survival weapon while you're hunting or in the wilderness. The original ammunition, the flares themselves, can also be useful for burning combustible matter as they've been used by soldiers in the past to sabotage equipment to keep out of enemy hands or set fires off from a distance. In some extreme cases, they've been experimentally designed to fire grenades as seen with Nazi Germany's experiments with the Kampfpistole/Sturmpistole or outright used as lethal (albeit improvised) weapons during the Korean War by shooting flares that lodge into some poor Chinese soldier’s coat to burn him to death.

*Revolver - A revolving gun is any weapon that uses a revolving cylinder to load new rounds after every shot. While its commonly now relegated to pistols (a revolver typically meant a revolver pistol these days) the style is still used for some shotguns (like the Armsel Striker) and grenade launchers (like the MM1-Hawk). Historically, revolver rifles were invented in an attempt to create repeater rifles for soldiers as seen with the Colt's New Model Revolving rifle from the 1850's. However, due to lack of of a gas seal, most were notorious for leaking gas that could harm shooters or set off all the chambered rounds in a chain fire if they were pre-brass cartridge designs. By the time reciprocating chambers were made to automatically seal gaps between the barrel and the cylinders (like with the Nagant M1895 and it’s unique cartridge), revolvers had already been superseded by magazine-loaded firearms in military arsenals. However, they did make a small comeback with brass cased ammo and installed blast shields as seen with Taurus/Rossi Circuit Judge carbine or the MTs255 shotgun. Revolvers are still in use for a few reasons: they're simple and cheap to make, can easily be used by left and right-handed shooters (since spent casings aren't automatically ejected like in the case of modern firearms) and is still pretty robust compared to today's modern weapons as fewer mechanisms means fewer points of failure. Downside is that they have very limited ammunition space (because the gun was made around the cylinder you can't expand it like how you can with detachable magazines, so you either had a gun with 5-8 rounds or a bulky gun with a 12-round cylinder) and reload time (even with speedloaders, the time it takes to empty and take apart the gun to load more bullets can be lethal, which the FBI [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_FBI_Miami_shootout learned the hard way]). Thanks to the American old west era and subsequent movies about it, revolver-styled handguns have achieved a kind of rustic yet sleek appeal to them. Revolvers come in generally the same calibers as handguns, from the modest .22 Long Rifle used for practicing and target shooting to the behemoth .500 S&W Magnum which can put down a bear. "Snubnose" revolvers refer to revolvers with shortened barrels in an attempt to make them more compact.
:* Top Break/Tip up - A revolver with a hinged frame that opens to expose the cylinder. These were originally designed for cavalry, as they are very easy to load. However, the two piece frame is a weakness that limits the power of cartridge that can be used. Due to this, these types of revolvers are rarely used today, and are mostly relegated to using low-powered ammo between the .22 and .32 range.
:* Swing Arm - By far the most common type of revolver, the swing arm mounts the cylinder on a moving arm known as a crane, which allows the cylinder to be exposed for loading. The chief limitation of the swing arm design is that the crane can bend over time and due to rough handling, but several tests would indicate you'd have to be deliberately trying to break your gun over a period of time for this to happen (assuming you aren't using a cheap gun made out of low-quality metal). Modern revolver-style grenade launchers are typically swing-arms.
:* Gate Loading - Named for their loading gate, these revolvers can only expose one cylinder for reloading a a time, with the spent casing being pushed out through the gate by a long ejector rod. Gate loading revolvers are the earliest style for cartridge revolvers, dating back to conversions of percussion cap revolvers. Gate loading revolvers are now rare except for reproductions, revolvers designed to big cartridges, and revolver shotguns. The fixed cylinder is the strongest possible configuration of revolver and thus the most tolerant of high power ammunition.

*Submachine gun - A submachine gun (abbreviated to SMG) is a fully automatic weapon that fires pistol cartridges instead of the larger rifle cartridges. One of the first true fully automatic infantry weapons outside of the machine gun, hence the name. The weapon fulfills a similar role of the carbine, striking a balance between firepower, recoil, and bulk. They also make good stealth weapons, as most pistol rounds are subsonic with heavier bullets and thus much quieter when suppressed.

:*Personal Defense Weapon - A PDW is a bit of a mix of a carbine and an SMG, firing specialized cartridges with rifle-like characteristics (usually in the 4-5mm range, shorter than a rifle cartridge but longer than a pistol cartridge) at the cost of additional weight. Its original role is as its name implies; a personal defense weapon for nonfrontline infantry, like artillery spotters, scouts, vehicle crews, commandos, etc. Back in the day PDWs weren't necessarily automatic; a pistol with a longer barrel and mounted stock could be classified as a PDW (This was done with the German C96 and Luger P07), today however these would qualify as "pistol carbines". These days PDWs are commonly lumped into the same category as SMGs, as they now fulfill similar roles.

*[[Shotgun]] - Shotguns are smoothbore weapons (as in the barrel is not rifled) designed to fire either shot (multiple steel or lead pellets) or slugs (a single, heavy projectile), although modern times have included other types of ammunition. The ability to fire multiple types of ammunition without modification is one of the main advantages to using a shotgun; converting an anti-infantry weapon into a door-breaching tool, a mini-flamethrower, or a less-lethal weapon with but a switch of the munitions. The vast majority of shotguns are pump-action or breech-loading, though as of 1905 shotguns can come in semi-automatic or fully-automatic configurations, but sheer variety of shell loads makes their reliability highly ammo dependent. For more information see the [[shotgun]] page. The most common bore size for shotguns is 12 gauge (about 18.5mm). Confusingly, higher gauges are lower in size because its based on weight of spheres of lead rather than diameter; a 20 gauge is about 15.6mm, while a 10 gauge is 19.7mm (.410 bore exists outside this and is .410 inch/10.4 mm/67 bore).

*Rifle - Rifles were originally shoulder-fired weapons that had their barrels "rifled" to increase precision, by putting spiral grooves into the barrel in order to have the bullet spin before leaving the barrel; reducing it's wind resistance (otherwise known as drag) and giving it more momentum as it leaves that muzzle. In ye olden days, these were specialist weapons given to marksmen while the common soldier carried a musket. However, because all modern non-shotgun non-explosive firearms now use rifling to improve ballistics, the term is usually reserved for a shoulder-fired long weapon, designed for accurate fire.
:*Assault Rifle - Assault rifles are a term given to any rifle that can be fired on full-auto and shoot intermediate-caliber rounds, typically in the 5mm range (or a shortened 7mm round if you're from the Eastern bloc). This is usually the standard weapon of a non-specialized front-line infantryman. The STG44 is considered to be the earliest one fielded in industrial quantity, though the idea has been around since at least the first World War. Traditionally, the term "Assault Rifle" is rarely ever used by servicemen to refer to this type of weapon, and typically call them "Automatic Rifles" or "Service Rifles" instead.
:*Battle Rifle - Basically the assault rifle's big brother; battle rifles are bigger automatic rifles designed to fire high-caliber rounds, typically in the 7mm range. These were the mainstay for armies in the 1950s, but the US eventually found out that giving infantry rifles with smaller rounds is better since its lighter and can allow infantry to be more accurately engage enemies better due to lower recoil (albeit at the cost of power), so battle rifles were replaced by assault rifles for front-line use and battle rifles were relegated to specialists like marksmen or support gunners (who's job permits for a slower-firing but more powerful weapon). The M1918 BAR may count as one, though the first occurred no latter than 1942's FG42. Some armies still prefer to use full battle rifles alongside assault rifles, notably the Turkish MPT-76 in 7.62 NATO was made after soldiers expressed lack of satisfaction with 5.56 MPT-55's, though no army only has battle rifles unless it's third world with nothing else around.
:*Carbine - A carbine is a compact rifle, primarily designed to be used in close quarters. In most cases, carbines are based from a parent rifle, and are scaled down by using lighter/smaller parts and shortening the barrel (such as in the case of the American M16 vs M4) or is its own weapon (like the Korean K1A). These are typically given to units who need to engage the enemy at close range and need a rifle for the job, like commandos, assault teams, or other specialist units, or given to units who are not expected to fight on the front but need a compact but decent weapon to defend themselves if the need arises, like pilots or vehicle crews. Carbine may also refer to pistol-caliber semi-automatic weapons that are longer than a pistol, but this is typically only used in the civilian market. The concept of a carbine predates modern firearms, though they existed primarily for cavalry.
:*Micro Assault Rifle - Even smaller than carbines; these are ultracompact rifles designed when someone needs a highly portable but powerful weapon. A MAR is basically a PDW that shoots actual rifle rounds. Much like carbines; a MAR can either be based on a parent rifle and scaled down or made as its own weapon. These tend to have low effectiveness for standard calibers, since those were designed for full length barrels, but the logistics of supply are superior.
:*Sniper Rifle - A sniper rifle is a special precision rifle, specifically designed to engage targets at extreme range with lethal efficiency. Many sniper rifles use standard 7.62mm rounds, but high-performance rifles will use more potent rounds up to 12.7mm rounds for extra range and stopping power. Preferably, sniper rifles should use match-grade ammunition to provide consistency and accuracy at high extended ranges. The vast majority are bolt-action for simplicity and power (much more reliable and because all the gasses are diverted into the barrel, rather than some being diverted to work the action; the gun can launch the bullet farther and faster), but there are also a decent number of semi-automatic ones. Sniper rifles are given to special marksmen called "snipers", who are capable of engaging the enemy from extreme distances, usually well away from the scrap.
:*Designated Marksman Rifle - A sort of compromise between battle rifles and sniper rifles, DMRs are precision weapons meant to be used by frontline infantry to accurately engage distant targets that regular infantry weapons cannot. Due to its role, it's generally more accurate than a rifleman's gun, but usually not as effective as an actual sniper's gun (DMRs are usually only effective within 1 kilometer, while SRs are typically effective beyond 1 kilometer). Generally speaking, DMRs avoid using the more high-performance rounds that snipers may use, as it may be detrimental for an infantryman's role.
:*Recoiless - Not a conventional gun in most senses; a recoilless gun (models with rifling are called "Recoiless rifles" though people often miss this distinction) is as the title suggest, a rifled weapon without (or at least reduced) recoil. It does this by basically being a cannon with the back taken off. When loaded the cartridge sits in an open back tube, there is no breach. When fired, the explosion propels the shell out the tube, but an equal amount of gas comes out the other side canceling out the recoil. This means that total muzzle velocity is lower than a cannon with a breech on it, but they make up for it by shooting bigger shells, and with HEAT shells (thanks to the nature of the Munroe effect) the wider the diameter of the shell the more effective it is, meaning even a large slow moving projectile can do a great amount of damage to tanks. Larger, towed versions are often mistaken for field artillery or antitank cannons. Meanwhile shoulder fired versions are often mistaken for their rocket launcher cousins like the bazooka or the RPG; while both rocket launchers and infantry portable recoilless rifles lob antitank munitions at tanks, the recoilless rifle round are not self-propelled by rocket motors and rely on just momentum from the launcher to fly.
:*Anti-Tank/Materiel Rifle - Essentially modern elephant guns; these rifles are geared towards destroying tanks and hard objects, although they are very much still capable of demolishing infantry (albeit overkill since rifles of this type tend to outright cause body parts to explode by the sheer amount of force they carry.). Anti-tank rifles were the norm for years (From the 1910s to the late 1970s) as they were a cheap yet effective way of getting rid of tanks, but advancements in vehicle armor has largely rendered AT rifles obsolete (at least for anti-tank roles, these things can still royally murder lightly-armored vehicles and urban housing, thus why they can be seen in use today). Anti-materiel rifles however, are a bit of an offshoot of AT rifles, and are still in use today. They are often used to take out lighter vehicles, to detonate ordnance at a safe distance or fuck up anything valuable to the other side like radars, communication devices, heavy weapons, etc... They have been successfully used against light boats and even to down the occasional helicopter. Likewise, they have been used by both professional and paramilitary forces due in thanks to their ability to annihilate cover (and hopefully what's behind it) where most conventional small arms won't. Usually chambered in heavy machine gun caliber around 12mm to 15mm barring some attempts at making man-portable 20mm caliber guns interwar to early WW2 though those didn't pan out.
:*Stopping Rifle- A rifle that fires a ludicrously heavy bullet, usually as a single shot but rarely as a bolt action. As the name implies, these were developed to bring down stop big game. like elephants, that were charging at you but eventually became the precursors to anti-material rifles. Unlike the later, range or penetration aren't big concerns so much as delivering a massive amount of energy to a soft-skinned target. While hunting elephants may be illegal today, a large caliber weapon is still useful for defense against large predators like bears or lions, who would shrug off a smaller 5.56mm or 7.62mm to the body. Firing such a heavy weapon while standing or even sitting isn't a pleasant experience; without the right stance, it'll go flying once you pull the trigger.
:*Everything else - Except sniper rifles and most Designated Marksman Rifles, all of the above rifles are generally "military-grade" and thus are generally not available to the public (unless you are in '''The Great United States Of America'''*, *NFA restrictions apply). Any other type of rifle will typically be called a "sporting rifle" or "hunting rifle", etc and are either bolt-action or semi-automatic. Technically speaking, most "military-grade" firearms can be modified to become semi-automatic to allow for use within the public.

*Machine Gun - Colloquially a machine gun is a large automatic weapon (though technically anything fully-automatic, ranging from a machine pistol all the way up to auto-cannons), typically fed from a magazine or a belt (or both, as is the case with the M249) and meant to either be man-portable or fired from an emplacement or mount like a tripod or turret. The main difference between MGs and the rest of the automatic weapon family is that an MG is a gun meant to fire with longer continuous bursts as a support weapon; meaning that the machine gunner applies continuous suppression fire at the enemy to keep them down (and occasionally kill those stupid enough to not get the message), while the rest of the squad maneuver. Machine guns are generally heavier, not only because of the volume of ammo they carry; but their parts (such as the barrel) are made of heavier materials so that the gun can withstand the punishing amounts of bullets it puts downrange (firing hundreds of rounds without pause can cause guns to overheat and malfunction, even catch fire or explode in the worst of scenarios, unless they're built for such a task.) Even then, barrel changes occur frequently to change warped and damaged barrels.
:*Light Machine Gun - an LMG is a man-portable MG that fires the same intermediate rounds as assault rifles. They are intended to be almost as portable as a rifle (as in, they can be shouldered, but get better performance with a bipod) and allow machine gunners to provide suppressing fire at the squad level. Some LMGs are magazine-fed rifles with heavier barrels and modified bolts to allow them to withstand the heat buildup of sustained fire (such as the RPK), or else are scaled-down MMGs (such as the M249 SAW).
:*Medium Machine Gun - an MMG is a man-portable MG that fires the same full-power rounds as battle rifles. These tend to push the limit of what's practical for a man-portable weapon, and when deployed are usually fired from a stationary position either on a bipod or tripod due to the recoil they generate. These weapons usually overlap with General Purpose Machine Guns and tend to be deployed at the company level or as a vehicle weapon.
:*Heavy Machine Gun (classic) - The definition of an HMG has changed a bit over the last 100 years so the catagory has been split up into two categories. The classical heavy machine gun is exclusively meant to be fired from emplacements and mounts like a tripod due to their large size and weight and was designed to be fired from a fixed position: constantly, just spitting out bullets for days. Often done with the aid of a water jacket which further increased the weight of the weapon. These are the guns that created the quagmire of the great war. Their heavy weight made them impossible for an infantryman to fire on the move (regardless of what you hear; even Hollywood couldn't make these monsters man-portable in their movies, and those fire low-powered blank rounds and is being held by the like of [[Sly Marbo|Sylvester Stallone]]). But that weight also greatly limited their maneuverability and forced them to stay in a static defensive position. Usage outside of vehicle mounts died off when artillery became more precise and could easily wipe out immobile emplacements. Unlike modern heavy machine guns, classical ones used a standard sized rifle cartridge, the vickers for example used the .303 bullet same as the standard rifle of the day, what made them 'heavy' was the focus on sustained shooting to throw back waves of attacking infantry. Examples include the Maxim gun, Hotchkiss Mle 1914 and the Vickers.
:*Heavy Machine Gun (Modern): a modern heavy machine gun is not designed to fire constantly, but to fire a big bullet. Only slightly too small to qualify for the definition of 'cannon' are weapons like the M2 browning .50 caliber, or 12.7 mm machine gun. Modern HMG's are powerful enough to penetrate light armor and damage fragile equipment on heavy armor (like scopes), making them formidable weapons. Examples of modern HMG's are the Russian DHSK and the American M2 Browning.
:*General Purpose Machine Gun - Essentially a machine gun that can perform multiple roles of the previous stated. Examples of this are the German MG34 (arguably the first of this concept) and MG42/MG3, or (from an American prospective) the American M60 and M240, which can reliably serve both infantry-level support weapon and mounted gun roles by fitting them with the appropriate parts. The first ones used the general rifle cartridge, while modern examples are in 7.62x51 NATO or its equivalents.
::*Squad Automatic Weapon - An attempt to make a GPMG that use the intermediate cartridges everyone else in the squad used. Despite the weaknesses of intermediate cartridges (limited range, low barrier penetration/destruction) being more noticeable in a machinegun role, they is still commonly used by virtue of their reduced logistical requirements and lighter weight compared to other man-portable LMG variants. The RPD, RPK and M249/SAW/MINIMI family are the main entries here, though it seems every modern assault rifle has tried to make a SAW variant with varying degrees of success.
:::*Infantry Automatic Rifle - A more recent concept that seeks to combine the continuous firing properties of a machine gun with an assault rifle's accuracy and ease of use. So far only attempted seriously by the US Marine Corp with the M27; while the higher-ups are pleased with it so far, there is considerable debate about whether its lower rate of fire compared to the M249 will make it less effective at providing suppressing fire.
:*Rotary Machine Gun - Originally known as the "Gatling gun", man's first known attempt to have enough [[dakka]]; a rotary machine gun is an automatic weapon that uses revolving barrels that interchange every time the gun fires off a round. The kicker to this is that it allows the gun to shoot with little threat of the barrels wearing out as they interchange between shots; giving them a small window to cool off before firing again. The end result is a gun capable of firing over 3,000 rounds per minute without fail, or in a smaller scope; 50 rounds per second. Modern rotary guns are electrically powered to allow them to reach such insane speeds, and are given ammo drums that contain thousands of rounds to be able to sustain that amount of bullets being fired; so they're confined to static emplacements and vehicles (unlike what the media constantly portrays; these things are not even close to being man-portable without assistance from powered armor.) These types of guns are used almost exclusively on aircraft. anti-aircraft emplacements, or even anti missile turrets as they're the only non-missile weapon that can reliably hit fast-moving aircraft. But a rotary gun that fires 30mm rounds is powerful enough to tear tanks in two, as well (metaphorically, they only have to penetrate top armor and rate of fire helps). Unlike what the movies would tell you a rotary machine gun does not need a long spinup time to get to full speed: when the trigger is pulled the gun starts to spin and fire immediately.
:*Chain gun - A chain gun is a machine gun that is fed using an electric motor. Instead of relying on the gasses from the bullet to work the action to cycle a new round; a machine automatically ejects and loads a new round in after firing a shot. Chain guns have the benefit of never jamming due to feeding failures, as even if the round is not discharged; the machine pops it out and loads a new one regardless. However, it is also not man-portable as it requires an electric motor to function, so it is only found on fixed emplacements or vehicles. Can easily fuck up any poor shmucks day by perforating the boat or car they are in. People sometimes use the words "chain gun" and "rotary machine gun" interchangeably (thanks, Doom), but chain guns are typically single-barreled, as they don't need the high rate of fire that rotary guns do outside of anti-air guns. If you see an actual rotary barrel chain gun, it's probably a CIWS like the Phalanx or the Kashtan, and while primarily designed for air defense (mostly helicopters and ground attackers who get too cocky) and to shoot down incoming shells and missiles, they can most assuredly put holes in boats and vehicles.

===Actions===
"Action" refers to how ammunition is loaded into the weapon.

*Single-shot: The first and oldest of all; a single-shot weapon is when users manually load rounds into the chamber. This can be anything from loading a new round, cocking the weapon every shot, or pumping the action.
**Muzzle-loaded: The earliest form of how weapons were loaded. This meant you had to load a new round directly into the muzzle, which is where the bullets come out. In its earliest form; muzzle-loaded guns were complicated to arm; you had to fuck around with a wad, powder, and slug. In the heat of battle, you had to ram these down the barrel of your gun in the correct order, light the wick, then aim before the gun goes off. And you had to do all this while standing in the open within firing range of your enemy. Still in use because many jurisdictions have a muzzle loading only season and such obsolete arms are subject to fewer legal restrictions in general.
**Breach-loaded; An upgrade over muzzle-loading and developed shortly after cartridges were invented; breach loaders are where the back of the barrel can be opened so that you can load a new round into it. Many muzzle loaders were converted to breech loaders in workshops near the end of the Industrial Revolution. It is still a popular setup for multi-barreled shotguns. Certain revolvers are breach-loaded as well, but given the size and design of the revolver, this gives them a notable weak point at the top of the weapon where the parts connect together. Most come in flavors such as break action (popular with simple shotguns and flare pistols), trapdoor mechanisms, rolling blocks, falling blocks (attached to levers), or bolt action.
**Bolt-action: This type of action is where you pull the charging handle of a weapon, every time you shoot so that a new round can be chambered. They come in two varieties: faster but weaker locking straight-pull bolts and slower but stronger rotating bolt actions. Originally starting off as single shot rifles, they eventually added magazines to reduce the amount of loading required once smokeless powder was used. These were pretty popular in WW1 and continues to be used today for precision rifles and discount anti-material rifles due to their simplicity and strength.
***Needle Rifle: An early precursor to the bolt action from the 1840's with the Dreyse and Chassepot rifles. Unlike its grandchild in WWI, these used self-contained paper cartridges where the primer is on the tail end of the projectile and the gunpowder is sandwiched between the primer and the rest of the paper cartridge. To ignite the gunpowder, the bolt's firing pin actually needs to puncture the cartridge from the back with a needle and hit the primer. While faster to fire at six to fifteen rounds per minute compared to a regular muzzleloader, their needles warped after repeating shooting and had to be replaced. And in the case of the Chassepot, their rubber seals in the breech would deteriorate and require swapping. Once metal cartridges were invented a decade later, the needle rifles were replaced with fully fledged bolt action rifles as we know them.
**Lever-action: The cool kid of the single-action club; lever-action weapons are those where you have to use a lever to chamber a new round, which was usually mounted near the trigger. Great for shooting from horseback, not so great lying on the ground. This type was made popular by Winchester during the frontier age of the Wild West and even more by Arnold Schwarzenegger when he used a lever-action shotgun during Terminator 2. Tend to be chambered for pistol cartridges and intermediate rifle cartridges because its metalurgy and action weren't strong enough for full rifle cartridges till the 1890s, when bolt actions had started displacing it, and tube magazines requiring flat nosed rimed cartridges while market forces limit them to cartridges that are still made (a crossover that's essentially just .22lr, revolver cartridges, .30-30 and .45-70).
**Pump-action: A pump action is where you had to pull the "pump" of the weapon to cycle a new round. This is the most common action used by shotguns. A few rifles used this setup as well (but only with round bullet heads as pointed bullets have the risk of setting off the primers), and there is one instance of a bunch of madmen creating a pump-action 3+1 (three in the tube, one in the chamber) 40mm grenade launcher.
*Automatic action/Self-loading: Unlike single-shot weapons, it uses gasses expelled by the cartridge or recoil to power a mechanism that automatically chambers a new round after each shot. Generally speaking, the semi-automatic to fully-automatic action is determined by the trigger sear, which may either inhibit the hammer from hitting against until the trigger is let go (semi-automatic), stops firing after a certain number of rounds have been fired (burst-fire), or continuously fires until ammo is expended (fully automatic).
**Semi-automatic: A semi-automatic weapon is any weapon that can fire after every trigger pull, with the user only needing to work the action after reloading a completely empty gun. Most handguns and many rifles are semi-automatic.
**Burst-Fire: A setting sometimes included on automatic weapons, each trigger pull fires several rounds before stopping automatically. Fully automatic fire in a handheld gun tends to very quickly go off target due to muzzle rise, but by limiting fire to a controlled burst, the gun is easier to keep trained on target. The main purpose for this setting is to defeat personal body armor; many types of armor such as ceramic inserts are only designed to reliably stop one rifle bullet, not a close grouping of several hits in succession.
**Fully-automatic: A fully-automatic weapon is any weapon that can fire automatically, so long as the trigger is depressed, rather than pulled each time like how semi-autos work. Automatic weapons tend to be banned for civilian use outside of firing ranges and are only available to military even in countries liberal with gun rights.

===Ammo Storage and Feeding===
This refers to how ammunition is given to the weapon. Also the topic of a /k/ommando's greatest sources of rage; the clip vs magazine misconception. This section will give a short explanation for both.

*Pepperbox - basically the bastard child of a break-action long gun and a revolver; a pepperbox gun has 3 or more barrels loaded and ready to fire, with the gun rotating between the loaded barrels to fire in relatively quick sucession. As this was one of the only ways to get more than a single shot in less than a minute without resorting to carrying multiple guns; the design was wacky but popular during the olden ages (and still today to a limited extent for some pocket pistols). The Empire's Outriders are armed with these weapons if you want a visual of what they looked like. Most pepperboxes where smoothbore since they were made on the cheap and never intended for more than point blank fire.

*Harmonica - Also called a ''slide gun,'' it was a precursor to the detachable magazine, it was basically a reusable steel block with multiple holes drilled into the sides to house preloaded powder and shot alongside percussion caps. While loaded from the side near the hammer on adapted breechloading firearms and manually reset between shots, it still did not solve the problem of gas leakage that plagued early non-muzzleloaders until the invention of brass bullet cartridges.

*Volleygun - A variant of the olden multi-barrel family, the volleygun foregoes single, accurate shots in favor of alpha-striking to saturate the area in lead, having anywhere between 2 to 20 barrels (and you can go well beyond this if your contraption can handle it) and the size ranging anywhere from a pistol to a full-sized artillery piece. As the name describes; it fires all of it's payload in a single volley, basically making it a one-man firing line. This style of weaponry gradually fell out of disuse as more modern firearms were developed (mainly self-loading weapons, which were more reliable and accurate), but is notably still used for the "Metal Storm", a prototype weapon with truly absurd number of gun barrels that go off simultaneously to shred the ever-living fuck out of it's target. The only types still in use today are double barreled shotguns and derringers.

*Superposed load - the disadvantage to using a multi-barreled firearm is that it adds a lot of weight to the firearm. One alternative was to simply stack multiple bullets and charges into the same barrel, and then have the firearm set them off sequentially. The early version of this mechanism was prone to failures, as the bullets were not self-contained and a poor gas seal could result in multiple charges going off, destroying the gun (and the user if unlucky enough) if it was not designed to handle the stress. The King of England was once gifted several such guns and after one exploded killing the guard firing it the whole affair was deemed a very creative attempt at assassination. However, this setup was revived with the invention of caseless bullets and electronic triggers used most prominently in Metal Storm weapons. If combined with multiple barrels, a metal storm weapon can have a bewildering rate of fire. So far the technology is mostly used in multi-shot grenade launchers.

*Bullpup - A bullpup is any weapon where its action is located in the behind the trigger, instead of in front. Bullpups have the advantage of being more compact, whilst still retaining the same ballistic properties of a full-sized weapon as it can use the same barrel length, but the weapon's profile is shorter thanks to the design. However, some of the disadvantages are it not being readily ambidextrous (being that the shell ejection port is directly beside the shooter's face, you cannot switch to a left-hand grip so easily if the situation calls for it. Some bullpups can have ambidextrous controls, but implementing them typically requires tools and is not something you can swap during a fight). One of the more technical problems is weight distribution. Unlike traditional firearms where the weight is typically in the center, allowing both left and right arms to distribute the weight of the gun: most of the bullpup's weight is in the back, so most of the work is being lumped onto the dominant hand, which can cause fatigue faster. The other is poor trigger pull due to the distance from trigger to action, though there are aftermarket kits for many that can mitigate it a good deal. Modern pistols and many SMGs that feed from inside the grip are ''technically'' bullpups, since their magazine and action are behind the trigger and connected by a transfer bar, but they generally aren't counted as such. Despite their on-paper advantages, bullpups have been a hard sell on account of most of their early offerings being either hideously expensive, or finicky garbage, or inciting visceral digust just looking at it, or just straight up not-American enough to make it out of subcommittee at the Pentagon. Their lack of reach with a bayonet is a hindrance (even with modern firearms, room-to-room combat and POW control still use bayonets) while their difficulty with being modular or customizable makes each model a one-trick pony.

*Clip - A clip is a device, used for bundling bullets together for immediate use. Guns cannot use clips by themselves, they have to be loaded into a magazine first to be used by a gun. The most common version were "stripper clips": each clip held about five bullets, and to load the rifle you placed the clip on top of the magazine, then squeezed the bullets off the clip into the magazine. Another type, en bloc, was used by the M1 Garand and held eight bullets in a 2x4 configuration. The entire clip was put in the magazine, with the clip being ejected after being emptied. The last kind is the moon (or half-moon) clip, used specifically for revolvers, which holds bullets in a circular formation for loading the chamber up in one go. Clips are still used today, but exclusively to speed up loading external magazines. Filling external magazines generally requires a small disposable tool, which is included in any ammo lot packaged on stripper clips.

*Speedloader - A speedloader is essentially a clip that has moving parts, usually to aid with holding and/or loading ammunition. Two common types exist. The first is similar to a moon clip in that it holds bullets so that they can all be loaded into a revolver simultaneously, but use a locking mechanism to secure the bullets while they are being carried, then release them once they are loaded into the cylinder. While not as fast as a moon clip, it still makes loading revolvers considerably faster. Another type of speedloader is the magazine loader, which is designed to reduce the spring pressure in a magazine, making it faster and easier to load.

*Magazine - The magazine is part of the weapon that houses and feeds actual ammo into the weapon. In the olden days, many guns had magazines that were built into the weapon itself and were fed using clips of ammo that were loaded after the gun ran out. Built-in magazines, however, severely limited the potential ammunition capacity of guns as they cannot be expanded without significantly making the gun larger and was a pain in the ass to reload (such as in the case of revolvers). To counter this; people designed guns whose magazines were detachable from the gun itself. This allowed people to easily expand the ammo cap of a gun, as they only needed to ensure that the extended magazine will fit into their gun and cycle properly, they no longer needed to re-work the entire structure of the gun to enlarge a built-in magazine. It also greatly increased a person's reload speed, as instead of fumbling around with several clips to ram down the gun: they just had to detach a magazine, pull one out of their vest/bag, load it in (charge the gun if needed), and they're good to go. High-capacity magazines tend to take on weird shapes rather than the standard flat box; the most common variant is the drum magazine, but there are also double drums, caskets, and helicals. Typically the weakest part of any firearm. A large part of the misconceptions of the M16 were related to the fucktarded idea that it should be issued with DISPOSABLE MAGAZINES! They were initially not intended for repeated use, empty the mag. Drop it, crush it under your boot, reload a brand new never used mag. Worked well till some bureaucrat ordered reusing them which alongside some other bureaucrats skipping the chrome lining for the barrel and issuing really shitty ammo made with spare parts caused regular failures. Newer iterations of the magazine have since addressed these issues.

*Belts - The belt is what it is; a long belt filled with bullets, which can either take the form of a cloth belt or linked by metallic chains. Belts are the common loading method of most machine guns, who typically have ammunition capacities well beyond 100 rounds. The reason for this is that it simplifies the operation of the gun (since belts do not require them to be fed to the gun with a mechanism like in traditional magazines) and makes them less prone to malfunctions (with a gun designed to shoot continuously; you wanna make sure that there's less critical moving parts to fuck up as it's firing it's 300th round at the enemy). Belts are also much easier to transport, as the belt can be folded several times to make it more compact, versus a solid magazine. This is mostly because until H&K put out their steel high reliability 5.56 nato mag, most magazines couldn't keep up with the fire rate and were too flimsy(The Soviet counterparts that used magazines, used AK pattern magazines which you can open a beer with and then load into the gun). Pretty much every man issued a M249 with the magwell adapter, will attest to how dire you must be for bullets in the air to use it but it's better then nothing when the belt is out and your buddies can toss you a couple mags rather than sitting on your thumb waiting for someone to drop their gun.

==Ammunition themselves==
To call a round or cartridge "a bullet" would be the equivalent of calling of calling a magazine a clip. Bullets are the projectiles that are or to be launched, while the "round" is the entire thing. To do otherwise would summon the wrath of the /k/ommando.

===Composition of the modern round/cartridge===

*Casing - The metal jacket that houses the propellant, primer, and to an extent the bullet (pardoning telescopic munitions which house the bullet completely.) Usually made from brass, they can be made from steel or plastics (at the detriment of the gun itself, unless designed for such).

*Propellant - Powder that is used to propel the bullet/slug/projectile. In the good ol' days, it used black powder (which was made from charcoal, sulphur, and saltpeter - either potassium nitrate or sodium nitrate), but those clouded the air with black smoke, left soot in the gun, were corrosive, and weren't powerful. Most modern rounds use a double base powder (generally guncotton/nitrocellulose, both dry and in a dissolved form called collodion, and nitroglycerin), may include a variety of stabilizers (to improve shelf life of the round) and deterrents (to prevent the cartridge from being too "hot" and prematurely combusting or shattering the barrel from overpressure). Historically, the British formed their propellant as stiff string called Cordite stuffed into cartridges before the mainstream use of small grains took over. For artillery, they make good use of triple base propellants, which is smokey as hell but burn well with no corrosive fouling.

*Primer - What activates the powder in the rounds themselves. They're percussion caps filled with sensitive explosive compounds (like fulminates, perchlorates, styphnates, tetrazenes,or azides) that ignite upon being hit. Generally a firm dent is enough to activate the munitions. Modern commercial ammo generally use non-corrosive compression sensitive materials, though many governments kept using corrosive primers well into the Cold War.

*Bullets - What people get tripped up on in naming munitions. Being the projectile, anyone loading the munitions has a vast choice of what can be used as a bullet. Generally, lead, steel, and tungsten make the core of the round (thanks to their weight) while the outer coat for the round could be lead (since it is also very malleable), copper, and nickel, though Teflon and certain plastics can also be used. If you're feeling lucky, you can load a variety of other materials into the rounds (or shells for shotguns). Take for example salt, which doesn't kill, but you can mark people and they sting like hell. Alternatively, if you're riot police trying to suppress a crowd without killing them, you'd use bullets or shotgun shells loaded with rubber, foam, wax, plastic, bean bag rounds, or tear gas with reduced propellant. If it hits you in the head or in an unlucky spot, you might die from blunt force trauma but it's less lethal than an actual bullet.

===Types of bullets===
As a short note on bullets, its important to know that just because a bullet can easily penetrate armor doesn't mean its a definite upgrade over everything else. If a hard bullet like the FMJ or AP penetrates the human body and exits in the same shot; its gonna hurt like hell but unless that bullet was in the 12.7mm (.50 caliber) category or it hit something important like a lung or the head; the target has a good possibility to survive through a combination of medical aid, hormones (adrenaline in fight or flight), and willpower (with the side possibility of stimulants), and even still continue to fight onwards if they're that [[Ork|dead 'ard]]. That said, if a 12.7mm round came tearing through your body; it has enough momentum to potentially rupture a good chunk of your insides which is ''very'' lethal, but 12.7mm guns are generally not mainstay (these are guns like the Desert Eagle, M2 Browning, or M82 Barrett), so unless you're a real-life action hero, a turret gunner, or a counter-sniper; its unlikely for you to have access to these behemoths.

Likewise, if a soft bullet like the JHP or SP penetrates the body, then which expands, fragments, and/or tumbles inside; in short internal and external bleeding would be the most urgent of the target's concerns, with ruptured organs and torn muscles leaking like a broken sewage pipe, thus making HP lot more lethal and debilitating. That said, soft bullets fragment easily and body armor proportionate to it's caliber can reliably stop soft round. That said even if armored; the target is still gonna feel the impact of the bullet's force hitting against his body, and that still has the potential of killing someone if the circumstances are right (although its still unreliable).

In the end, a bullet is either specialized where it's only effective against either armored or unarmored targets, or a special combination that renders it effective against both types (although these require an experienced smith to manufacture properly).

*Ball - though if we start talking bullets we need to start with the first bullet: the lead ball, from where we derive the common term for bullets as 'rounds'. It's. . .just a lead ball though, not much to say about it. The balls were hand made, often by soldiers themselves since lead has such a low melting point, with the molds often being unique to each gun. This used largely the same process that was used for [[Sling]] bullets since antiquity. These early bullets would be smaller then the barrel and so would often 'rattle' down the barrel due to the ill fitting, which combined with a lack of riffling would mean early guns were horribly inaccurate. If one used a larger bullet that better fitted the gun, one could use rifling, but this required, (see above) hammering the bullet into place to make sure that there were no gaps.

*Minié ball- The first bullet we would know as a 'bullet', and the first truly distinct from a lead ball. A Minié ball is a conical bullet with a concave hole in the base. When fired the base flared out from the pressure of the blast, letting it engage with the rifling of the gun. This meant that it formed a seal with the barrel making it incredibly accurate, while not needing to be tightly hammered down the barrel. The best of both worlds. Combined with it's large size these things were lethal on the battle field maiming and crippling an entire generation of soldiers during the US civil war.

*Full Metal Jacket (FMJ)- Generally a lead or steel bullet encased in a soft metal such as copper. Acts a sort of lube as well as preventing fouling of the barrel. Depending on design, has a potential to fragment post impact, shredding internal organs.
**Synthetic Jacket- FMJ ammo with a plastic jacket, which has the advantage of reducing cleaning requirements and safer when hitting steel at the cost of various things not really relevant in practice ammo. Currently only in handgun calibers and only made as practice/match ammo (though some hollow points and AP rounds do also use polymer jackets).

*Hollow point (HP)- The hollow section in the center makes the bullet expand on impact, creating a bigger hole in its victim at the expense of being less effective against armored targets. That being said, the decreased penetration also makes it safer to use in situations where over-penetration could be dangerous (e.g. on an aircraft). Certain designs have bladed tips on expansion, causing additional cutting and bleeding too. It was banned from military use by the Hague Convention of 1899, so restricted to police, civilians, and, as of 2017, the United States Armed Forces (The US didn't sign that provision, but previously stuck with FMJ even after mass production became feasible for the sake of NATO compatibility).

*Semi jacketed Hollow point (SJHP)- Same as a hollow point, but has a copper jacket to help reduce fouling.

*Jacketed Hollow Point (JHP)- Same as above, but fully covers the bullet down to the tip.

*Wad cutter (WC)- Flat tipped bullet. Not very aerodynamic but it leaves a big hole to help tell you where you hit the target. Generally for closer range paper targets as they lose velocity very quickly due to the drag on them.

*Semi Wad Cutter (SWC)- Like the wad cutter, but more aerodynamic.

*Armor Piercing (AP)- As name implies, intended to penetrate armor, be it person or equipment. However, this ultimately depends on what gun you're shooting from and what armor you're shooting at. A 9x19mm AP steel round coming from a 4" barrel will do diddly to NIJ Level IIIA, where as a 7.62x51 AP flying out of a 24" barrel will punch through it easy as you please. Modern AP rounds are often jacketed in plastic, but this is purely to protect the barrel (turns out sending something meant to destroy steel through a steel barrel results in a wrecked barrel) and adds no armor piercing quality.

*Saboted light armor penetrator (SLAP)/Saboted bullets- Think of the discarding sabots fired from a M1 Abrams or a saboted slug of a shotgun, but redesigned to be fired like a standard rifle round. The sabot is designed to the grip the rifling until it leaves the barrel, then discard after leaving the barrel. This would leave the penetrator or bullet with a high velocity while providing a sufficient spin to the bullet to keep it stabilized in the air. With a higher density and/or thinner bullet, they can potentially penetrate better than potentially even APHE. Likewise for handcrafted bullets, they provide higher velocity for a smaller bullet in a cartridge intended for a larger caliber. G

*High Explosive incendiary (HEI)- Explosive tipped munition. Generally for larger rounds (think 7.62 and beyond), they typically are meant for non-infantry targets such as light vehicles, light aircraft, and barriers, showering those inside with speeding shrapnel. Despite their implication, they might not work as well as one might think against hard target.

*Armor Piercing Incendiary (API)/Armor Piercing High Explosive (APHE), High Explosive Incendiary Armor Penetration (HEIAP)- Designed with the intentions of penetrating hard targets that HE rounds can't do alone and being anti-material in general, API and HEIAP are the answer to those targets. Generally have sufficient power in and behind the bullet (think Raufoss Mk.211), it will penetrate body armor and light vehicles with awe-inspiring ease.

*Soft point or semi jacketed - Like a FMJ, except the tip is exposed. Designed to have the reduced drag of a FMJ, while expanding upon hitting a target similar to a hollow point. Generally designed for hunters in mind.

*Ballistic tip - Similar in performance to the semi-jacketed bullet, but rather than being a solid core of lead it is designed like a hollow point, but with a plastic tip at the end to reduce drag and ensure expansion.

*Ratshot - made for smaller-caliber guns and is basically birdshot for rifled barrels. The tip is a plastic cap that contains a small amount pellets, typically within the 1.5mm range. As the name implies; the gun is primarily designed for shooting pests and small animals like rodents and grass snakes. You can use it to shoot at larger pests like coyotes or humans, but it's woefully underpowdered for the job.

*Matchgrade - ammo designed primarily for shooting competitions and/or extreme feats of marksmanship. Very expensive compared to popular alternatives and impractical for common use, but you get what you pay for: a cartridge produced with the finest minds R&D could muster, subjected to much more rigorous batch testing and quality control, and guaranteed to shoot a bullet as far and accurately as physics would allow. Rounds alone do not make an accurate firearm however, so the gun it's chambered in has to be well-maintained and designed for precise shooting in mind.

*Tracer - a regular bullet coated in pyrotechnic coating that ignites when fired. These are most commonly used with machineguns (every fifth round in a belt, to be exact) since it's useful for the gunner to accurately see where all his bullets are going, as well as make it clear to any enemies he's suppressing just who he's aiming at. Similarly rifle magazines are often loaded with tracers at certain intervals to provide indication of remaining ammo. Of course, the caveat is "tracer's work both ways" as they can give away your position; this can be mitigated by using "dim" tracers that can only be seen through night vision goggles. Sometimes also used by spotters or commanders to mark a specific target. They can potentially set fire to objects, if the incendiary compound hasn't burned out yet on impact.

*Less-lethals - Commonly known as 'rubber bullets' even though they're made of other substances such as plastic, foam, wax, and beanbag rounds for shotguns these days. Used in riot control and such, where the shooter isn't allowed to kill. The key word is "less", however. They hurt like a sonovabitch and can still kill in the wrong circumstances when they hit you in the head or a sensitive area, though. Some, such as blanks or wax, are also mixed in with real rounds before being loaded in weapons of a firing squad to make the responsibility of an execution unclear amidst the shooters. Airsoft this ain't.

*Silver - Pure fantasy, but common in there to counter supernatural creatures weak to silver. Silver bullets would suffer from many problems that rarely get mentioned in fiction. Chief among these are the cost, that silver shrinks when cast (so it's really hard to get the right size and shape), and that silver is too soft to engage rifling so even if you get the right size accuracy will be terrible. [[Monster Hunter International|More /k/ aligned works]] solve these issues with solutions like sabots (which helps accuracy but still worse than real bullets), ballistic tips made of silver and frangible bullets filled with powdered silver (instead of the typical competitively cheap metal).

===Types of Rounds===
Apart from the traditional type of rounds, here are some unique ones for reference.

*Blanks - What you commonly see loaded in movies. Blanks are basically that; the round has a primer and powder, but the bullet is just a paper or plastic sheet designed to keep the powder in, so you get the sound of a gun going off, but not the damage. That said, blanks ''can'' still kill people, the gasses used to propel the bullet forward are still there (just not launching any bullets); and its powerful enough to liquefy organs and break bones if you were dumb/desperate enough shoot someone with a blank at close range. Movie armorers make a point of demonstrating this with things like fruit before letting anyone touch blank firing guns. This is why instead of blank-firing guns, actors will use flash paper guns at close range for safety. There's also blank ammo specifically designed to make as much noise as possible for the purpose of disorienting and intimidating people in an area. In a military sense blanks do have a use: typically for turning your rifle into a grenade launcher, using the expanding gasses to launch a grenade held at the muzzle by a cup.

*Caseless - An old but futuristic concept, a caseless round has everything required for the bullet to be launched, inside the bullet itself. [[Memes|That's 65% more bullet, per bullet.]]This removes the need for guns to eject spent shell casings after every shot, reducing weight and ammo costs. While this has been pioneered since WW2 and a few prototype examples for it were already developed (like the G11); caseless rounds are still determined to be too unreliable for field combat use in comparison to traditional ammunition, so as of today their use is largely limited (mainly to grenade rounds like the Russian VOG-25 grenade). Their biggest disadvantage is that ammo cases normally transports a large amount of heat out of the weapon, and, if you have paid attention in your physics class, you know that heat always has to go ''somewhere'', so with caseless ammo, it naturally goes into the weapon, making it prone to overheating and dangerous cookoffs, unless the ammo somehow counteracts this, making it more complex and therefore expensive in the process, and if you've at one point in time interacted with any branch of a national government, you know that the word "expensive" usually spells doom for any project that it is attached to.

*Gyrojet - A unique but largely impractical cartridge in the gun circuit, WH40K's famous [[bolter|boltguns]] run on the same concept as the gyrojet. Basically, the bullets are miniature rockets that build up speed as they travel, capable of exceeding the speed of sound after traveling 60ft. While the idea sounds cool; gyrojets were ''required'' to gain minimum distance to achieve their full effect (if you fired at point-blank for example, they didn't really do much), had a design flaw in their propulsion system that made the rockets prone to corkscrewing off-course, and were highly temperamental to environmental conditions, not to mention the costs. At the end the concept was a bust as it didn't really do a lot that couldn't be achieved with traditional small arms for cheaper. Still GeeDubs thought it was nice and became the basis of how boltguns work, where it's largely the same but with more techno-flubdubbery and "because future".

*Magnum - Unlike what vidya gaems portray, magnums aren't really super-mega handguns of death. A magnum round is basically a parent cartridge that's been enlarged so it does more damage due to a combination of larger mass and more powder used (so it flies faster and hits harder), and this can be anything from the .357 magnum handgun round used by revolvers, to the large caliber .338 Lapua and Winchester magnum rounds used for precision sniper rifles.
** Special - An earlier equivalent. The only two to see continued existence are .38 special and .44 special which also went from black powder to smokeless powder, both of which coincidentally have even longer magnum variants; however both are lengthened only as a safety precaution to make them different, as smokeless powder left plenty of room for more powder.

*Overpressured - Designated as "+P", overpressured rounds still uses the same cartridge (unlike the magnum), but is loaded with higher-pressure powder that releases more energy when fired. It sounds like a nice way to up your damage, but guns have a level of pressure they can tolerate, and if your gun isn't designed to do such and you use +P rounds; you run the very high risk of destroying your gun (and the rest of your body if you're that unlucky). There are guns that are proofed to fire +P and +P+ ammo but it typically used in SMGs. Certain batches of surplus ammo will blow up guns because they were made to be used in more robust SMGs and not commercial pistols, poorly stored, or just plain poorly made.

*Subsonic - Rounds designed to shoot slower than the speed of sound to prevent creating the loud cracking sound a projectile makes when it goes beyond 345m/s, making them more stealthy. There's three ways to go about this. The first is to put less powder in the round, or use specialized one that explodes with and imparts less energy (although this may cause problems for self-loading guns, who are not designed to cycle using less powerful ammo). The other is to make the bullet much heavier than usual so the standard powder load doesn't have enough energy to have the bullet break the sound barrier, although this translates to slower projectile speed and lower range, but increased chances of armor penetration as heavier bullets retain energy much more efficiently than lighter ones. The last is a combination of the two methods. Subsonic munitions are primarily used in silenced weapons for their sound-reduction benefits (the most extreme case of which is that only the cycling of the gun can be heard, the gunshot is virtually inaudible), although some take advantage of certain subsonic rounds' heavy bullets and low-energy for defeating armored opponents at close range (as the lower energy translates to lower chances of overpenetration, which AP bullets have a tendency of doing when tearing through non-armored parts of the body).

===Types of shotgun loads===

*Buckshot - The shell is filled with lead or steel pellets, each of which is typically around 15mm each (it ultimately depends on the bore), that spread out once discharged. Poor at penetrating armor and limited effective range comparison to other firearms as the pellets scatter and the pellets are too small to do serious damage individually (Although do note that unlike what the vidya gaems portray; a decent 12G shotgun loaded with buckshot is effective upto 30-50m, not just in point-blank range); but they do cover a fairly large radius and the force of 8-12 pellets impacting against your body will send you tumbling and rolling on the floor in agony, even if they don't penetrate.

*Birdshot - Similar to buckshot and more pellets, but the pellets are smaller (5mm and less, although still depends on the bore). As their name describes; the ammo is designed to pelt down birds by [[Ork|throwing as many bullets at the target and hoping atleast a few of them hit]]. You can use them against non-avian targets aswell and they'll do something, but they don't pack the punch you'd like and don't expect them to dent body armor too much. Their ineffectiveness against human targets [[Wikipedia:Dick Cheney hunting accident|was demonstrated by a (possibly drunk) Vice President of the United States]] when he shot an old guy in the face with some and the only lasting damage was the voice.

*Slug - Instead of multiple pellets; the gun fires a single, heavy lead projectile, similar to how traditional ammo works. Because shotgun barrels are not rifled; slugs do not have the range nor accuracy rifles do, but because of their weight and the shotgun's fairly large caliber; they're fully capable of crushing their way through armor at close range. Slugs are typically used for hunting large game in areas where rifle ammunition isn't allowed due to the risk of overpenetration.

*Breaching - A specialized variant of the slug round, breaching rounds are designed specifically to destroy door locks at extremely close range. Generally composed of very dense powdered steel held together with wax.

*Less-lethals - Designed for riot control where the shooter isn't allowed to kill; the bullet is either made of rubber, paint, or beanbags designed for minimal penetration, while the powder used in the rounds is less to reduce the projectile's velocity. The end result is a bullet designed to simply cause shock and pain to the target in order to incapacitate them long enough to be arrested and not rejoin the fight in the meantime. That said, you're still talking about launching an object at someone at speeds similar to cars speeding on a highway; so hitting vulnerable parts of the body like the head, neck, or ribs can still result in a fatality. On the flip side, anyone wearing bullet-resistant armor won't be affected too much.

*Chain-shot - Typically reserved for olden cannons, the chain-shot is two cannonballs linked with a chain. The spinning contraption was intended to tear through a ship's mast and sails. Obsolete as fuck, but it is still possible to replicate this with shotgun ammo. Basically you tie two pellets or slugs together so that when they're discharged; they're basically flying garrotes. Awesome, but because of how unpredictable bullets are while in flight, it's highly impractical for combat use.

*Flechette - Buckshot, but instead of pellets; the shell is loaded with small metal darts. They achieved better penetration and range than traditional buckshot; but because shotguns aren't really designed as precision weapons; they were highly impractical for combat applications. They destroyed barrels and tended to deflect off really silly things like raindrops.

*Explosive Rounds - The shell contains an slug that explodes upon impact, capable of using anti-armor or anti-personnel shells, basically turning the shotgun into a portable grenade launcher. Not as powerful as the real thing, but invaluable when you need accurate explosions but not the excessive collateral damage or restrictive weight and mass. Has seen some use in rifle rounds on the eastern front of World War II as well as in .50 BMG (officially for use on objects, not people).

*Dragon's Breath - An odd type of ammo. DB shells are loaded with magnesium pellets. When discharged; they create a short but hot burst of fire that burn at temperatures upto 1,600°C. While not really used much for conventional combat due to its status as an incendiary weapon, blasting a person with this at close range will create about the same results as a giant fire-breathing lizard incinerating an unlucky knight to death, hence their name. Also destroys barrels, as dragon's breath burns hotter than the melting point of steel, and close to the melting point of chromium (two of the most common metals used in gun parts).

*Misc - Shotguns aren't really picky with ammo since they are manually operated and don't depend on a gas seal as much; just about ''anything'' can be used for bullets if worse comes to worse/you're bored. Could be lego pieces, could be old hard candy, solid scrap,frozen meat [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-n4bxxn9gA or even glass]. They can also fire flares (but need stronger propellant and an unchoked barrel to avoid getting stuck and melting the barrel). Hell, it can be a Sly Marbo tabletop figure if you could fit him inside a shell and prevent him from disintegrating from the force while exiting the barrel, the choice is yours. (More likely blow up your gun as Sly refuses to die and gives you the finger for trying.) Incidentally this unfastidious in ammunition also means that in a fantasy setting you can basically load anything you want down the barrel of a shotgun to deal with basically any monster that had a weakness. Wooden stakes for vampires, Cold iron for fae, silver for werewolves, the aforementioned dragon breath for flame vulnerable monsters, salt if that's a thing demons hate in your mythos, freeze holy water into ice and you could still likely shoot it with a sabot. Basically shotguns should be the go to for the modern murder hobo.

==Manufacturing of Firearms==

===Brief Overview===

The production of firearms historically speaking has been an, err, interesting path. The first firearms were little more than metal (or whatever other material one so chose) cylinder with with one hole for the ignition of the powder and one for the projectile to be projected. As time passes on manufacturing techniques got more advanced, leading to triggers which frees up one hand from having to push a hot object into the powder. Most used a sort of striker to ignite the powder, be it flint or rope. Around the early to mid 19th century, self-containing cartridges became a possible reality. As such the firearm had to change too, with an action either simply accepting a round into the barrel or an action that would be worked to put it in. Near the end of the 19th century and start of the 20th, auto-loading firearms became possible, but the actions had to become more complex to automatically feed the round by means of either recoil or gas. After that, guns haven't exactly changed too drastically (still major changes) in the current 21st century, pardoning the much higher efficiency of the modern weaponry. The complexity of modern firearms however doesn't interfere with how cheaply they can be produced. As such, there are endless aftermarket gun parts for sale around in places such as the USA.

===DIY===
[[image:.45 ACP ISB SMG.png|thumb|175px|left|.45 ACP ISB SMG designed from a STEN/Sterling, but has many parts that differ. According to the designer "I like to think of it as a cross between an FG-42, a Welrod and a Sten."]]

First and foremost: guns are not toys, and should never be treated as such.

It comes as no secret that one can manufacture their own guns in one's own home so they chose to ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khyber_Pass_copy Just ask the Afghans]). Depending on the skill of the user, the manufacturing tools used, material quality of the parts being used and/or made, design of the gun, and so on, a DIY can range from a explode-in-your-hand zip gun all the way up to high-quality rifles that have a minute of angle (MOA) of 1 or less. All one need is one's [[Ork|imagination]] and a [[Techpriest|firm understanding on how a gun works from the inside out and machining]]. In addition to that, the internet has a broad data base on the knowledge and schematics of guns. Additionally, while online information is enough to give you a rough understanding to create black or smokeless powder to add to hand-loaded cartridges, the proper equipment, environmentally controlled rooms, and ingredient ratios are hard to get right the first time without causing an accident (as attested to the many Chinese and European chemists who historically died while tinkering to get the formulas right). And while you could arguably use firework material or even discarded nitrocellulose film tape instead, most people are going to simply buy their primers, propellants, and projectiles off the shelves to reload their spent casings instead of building a lab in their basement.

[[image:Homemade_gun_exploding.PNG|thumb|150px|right| Careful you might blow your eye out]]
That said, DIY-guns require a decent understanding of physics, chemistry, and mechanical engineering to manufacturer at all, so unless you're a [[Mekboy]] with all the know-wotz implanted in your brain; its highly recommended you read up first, lest your firearm's first unwitting victim is you.

[[image:Stormbolter_IRL.jpg|thumb|223px|right|If a modern rifle was a stormbolter.]]

Examples of DIY are:

*[[Grot Blasta| Zip gun]]: Bottom of the barrel trash guns that are considered too simplistic and bare bones for anyone who isn't a post-apocalyptic raider or somewhat ambitious convict. These guns are rather unique as they require next to no skill to actually make, often incorporating rubber bands, nails, plumbing supplies and zip ties into their construction (hence their name) to craft something that [[counts as]] a gun while firing (sometimes); a common example is the slam-fire shotgun which is literally two pipes (one just wide enough to comfortably fit the shell with the other one wide enough to fit the other pipe while sealed at one end) that are slammed into each over where a fixed nail at the end acts as the firing pin.

*[[Stubber| Standardized design]]: With gun laws around the world becoming ever more strict its little wonder that some would protest such bullshit by creating guides on how to make fully functional semi professional designs in your shed. At one end of the spectrum is the infamous Luty gun which is a family of submachine guns specifically designed by a man named Philip Luty to be buildable by anyone with some basic hand tools in protest to the British government’s delusion that they can prevent criminals from getting guns [[derp| by making guns illegal]]. Said designs (including the related Carlo SMG’s) have been found in the hands of organized crime and guerilla groups in particular lawless or insurgent-prone regions like South America, Palestine, and other developing countries. At the other hand of the spectrum is artisanal gunsmiths like the ones in the Khyber Pass region on the Afghan-Pakistani frontier that clone their gun parts off existing models they got their hands on and disassembled as a [[Standard Template Construct|master template]].

*[[Shoota| Experimental design]]: Every line of guns started out as a experiment somewhere. Some catch on, some don't, some just are there because why the heck not? Want to have dual barrels on your gun? Go for it! Add a counterweight to the gas block so that the recoil is next to nothing? Makes shoot a breeze! Add a round cam to your bolt so you can have a smooth action and reduce wear on the gun? No reason not to! The choices are endless if with time, diligence, and a bit of imagination.

*[[Tau| CNC Manufacturing]]: Avoiding the painstaking effort of machining it by hand [[Machine Spirit|a machine do it for you?]] A Computer numerical control (CNC) machine can easily set the settings in any digitally-connected presses, lathes, mills, saws, and drills to crank out receivers and whatever other parts you need assuming you have the plans on the computer and the materials to be worked. In most countries, it's only necessary to mill some of the components as most firearms have a single designated part which is legally viewed as "the gun" (usually the receiver for rifles and the frame for pistols) and everything else is considered replaceable. The downsides of that CNC are a bit pricey relative to their hand milling machine counterpart. However some go for as low as $1200, which is roughly the same price as a mid-tier intermediate rifle in the USA.

*[[Wraithbone|3D Printing]]: while of questionable quality and legality the same way [[3DPrinting|3D printed]] miniatures are with “official” tabletop gaming tournaments, the additive manufacturing spinoff of [[Casting]] can theoretically enable you to form all but the most stressed parts of a firearm. Barring the barrel, receiver, and firing chamber (besides springs, screws, and attachment pins) of a firearm that are better off milled or stamped from metal, one can theoretically 3D print all the other parts of a gun frame from the stock and grip to the fire control group and trigger. Examples range from small pistols (like the single-shot Liberator) to full power rifles (such as the Amigo Grande clone of the CETME) with all other kinds of intermediary weapons in between. For simplification (unless incorporating an existing gas piston system attached to a pre-made metal barrel), most aren't more advanced than blow-back powered semiautomatics as building a gas-operated piston system with plastic is suicide. In addition, unless built by someone who really knows what they’re doing, actually shooting full-power ammunition out of a 3D printed gun is as risky or worse as firing bullets and shotgun shells out of a plastic flare gun. So far, some 3D printed guns, like the FGC-9 carbine, have been seen in the hands of organized gangs, neo-IRA, or Burmese partisan groups.

==Relations here==
Most fantasy writers tend to exclude firearms. There are a variety of reasons for this, such as:
*Most fantasy comes from [[Tolkien]], who, being a naturalist who largely despised industrialization, did not put guns in Middle-earth, although gunpowder does exist, used by the wizards (Gandalf's Fireworks and Saruman's Fires of Orthanc) and by the orcs.
*Most fantasy (whether copy-catting Tolkien or not) is based on medieval Europe. Depending on your definition of "medieval," Europe did ''technically'' have firearms towards the very end (crude and unreliable ones, but firearms nonetheless), but most authors base their fantasy on earlier medieval Europe.
*As in real life, firearms mean that vulgar, dirty, peasant conscripts can take down the author's Mary Sue noblemen [[knight]]s that trained ''so'' hard in the arts of swordsmanship and melee combat, though if the writer had any historical knowledge they would know that armor can be made "proof" against early firearm bullets (which is partly what spurred the development of full-body plate mail to begin with, as a sidenote) or that a crossbow or longbow can just as easily (in fact, MORE easily due to the general shitty performance of old guns) turn an armored man into swiss cheese.

All that being said, most fantasy authors are much more open to cannons, which became viable on the battlefield long before smaller firearms anyway, especially in naval use (cannons were a huge game changer for sea battles). Some even make room for crude rocket launchers, especially if there is a not-China/not-Korea in their setting. (Laugh, but a big firework rocket will put a sod on fire and ruin his day just fine, doubly so if the morons are in wooden fort.)

Generally speaking, if a world has both the "stock" fantasy races and guns, there will a strict hierarchy of who uses them, from most to least likely:
*[[Dwarves]]: They almost always have the best, most plentiful guns. If only one race gets firearms, it's likely going to be them.
*[[Gnomes]]: As tinkerers, they're frequently on a different tech level from everyone else, including firearms.
*[[Human]]s: Unlike the other races, which are usually an all-or-nothing deal, different human nations have different likelihoods of having guns. Italian and East Asian analogues, as well as the "industrious" or "scientific" nations, are much more likely to have them. Your barbarians, guys keen on knights and chivalry, and the more conservative less so. If the nation is Post Renaissance, expect pike and shot style IRL analogue armies. If your setting has pirates, you pretty much have to have cannons at the very least.
*[[Orc]]s: Orcs would probably love guns if they could actually build some. However, they're usually either incapable of building things or have a hard time organizing themselves to the point that large-scale firearm and powder production is possible. Even so, they could still obtain them them by other means such as fighting as mercenaries for guns and stealing them off the corpses of the fallen and similar. They are higher on the list if they are more like Tolkienian orcs, which can be fairly well organized and "delight in explosions" enough to manufacture their own gunpowder, if only for simple bombs. If Orcs are of the more Chaotic Evil variety then they will barely have crossbows, let alone guns. If Orcs are of the Klingon variety, as in the violent tendencies are normal enough that the civilization can function, then they will LOVE big guns.
*[[Elves]]: Being arrogant pricks, they see guns as crude, inaccurate, foul-smelling contraptions that are no substitute for a bow. However, they'll still use them when necessary, even if they don't like it. That said, elves also had a good reason to not use them, namely most firearms in a fantasy settling are arquebus-type single-shot smoothbore weapons, which are outranged by longbows. Longbows are even decent against most kinds of armor ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Agincourt ask the French]). The main advantage of firearms, even early ones, is ease of use and armor penetration though armor could be made that could stop an early handgun. The main problem with longbows is that it takes years to learn, which is not a problem for long-lived elves. Between a smoothbore handgun and a longbow, the bow is simply a better choice to an elf. The problem of course is that longbows are about as good as bow technology can get while handguns can be improved to rifles, against which bows only have rate of fire as an advantage, then Repeating Rifles, which bows have no advantage at all against. So while Elves may have an advantage to sticking with their longbows well into the age of pike and shot, if they're not careful their Longbows will end up fighting against Springfields and Winchesters and they will end up the worse in that exchange. If tech reaches that point, expect the Archer/Hunter stereotype to turn into Snipers/Mad minute riflemen. And if they're still vehemently opposed to foul-smelling gunpowder, it's possible they could consider air guns (like the Girardoni air rifle used in Europe and by Lewis & Clark's exploratory mission). Assuming they can make a reliable air pump and pressure tank on their own.
*Wood Elves and other Fey/Nature types: They'd rather die than use a firearm, even if the rest of the world has moved onto biplanes, bolt-action rifles, shell-firing cannons, and tanks. If this happens, this means they either have powerful magic (so the actual weapons used are unimportant), they are ''really really'' good shots with a bow, they have much stronger friends (Think like the amish) or they're about to get colonized. That said: the problem they have are not guns themselves, but making them as mass production always has some environmental costs they can not stand for. If they could get their hands on some way to make guns that did not harm the environment in the process, at least anymore than making a sword does, they might go small for small scale fire arm production, but this is rarely explored in fiction.

For how this conservative attitude tends to apply to tech in general for fantasy settings, see [[Medieval Stasis]].

Of course, sci-fi writers almost exclusively use firearms, seeing as how it's THE FUUUUUUTTTTTUUUUURRRREEEE. The exceptions are [[Warhammer 40,000]] and ''[[Dune]]'': although guns are the main combat implement in 40K, close combat is still alive and well, and most armies have at least one elite, close-combat unit wielding weapons that are distinctly not firearms; in ''Dune'', guns are pretty much dead as a weapon of war, as personal-scale force fields stop fast-moving matter (like bullets) from crossing them, but slower matter (like swung knives) can pass through, and if a lasgun blast touches the field, at least one end of the equation comes out "BOOM!!!". Most sci-fi universes do have close combat weapons on the scale we see in modern warfare, though, like in Mass Effect, where, as the Reaper forces (who are basically [[Necron]]s and [[Tyranids]] combined) invade the galaxy, people begin developing their Omnitools to snap-produce a white-hot blade of hard metal above the wearer's hand... And then there's the Krogan, who are too bloodthirsty and too large to properly take cover, so they headbutt things instead of using guns.

== Rules ==

Most fantasy RPGs deal with firearms the way they deal with lots of things that threaten their [[Medieval Stasis]]: terror, suspicion, and shitty rules. If you have the option of using a firearm in most games, it probably has one shot that's weaker than a bow, then takes an entire encounter to reload, and is illegal everywhere in-setting in case you didn't get the hint.

[[D&D#Basic_Dungeons_&_Dragons|BECMI]] Dungeons & Dragons doesn't have rules for firearms, but there were one or two adventure modules that incorporated a crash-landed spaceship, with weapons the players could loot. They were treated as magic wands and staves. A few issues of Dragon magazine offered rules for early cannons and hand cannons.

[[Advanced Dungeons & Dragons]] mentions guns in a tucked-away subsection on importing TSR's Cowboys & Indians game Boot Hill to AD&D (DMG, pg113). Revolver pistols and Gatling guns would do as much damage as a longsword; shotguns as much damage as a two-handed claymore, a (thrown) stick of dynamite does 4x the damage of a short sword. The rules insist "...when gunpowder is brought into the fantasy world it becomes inert junk, ergo, no clever alchemist can duplicate it." To reinforce this concept, the ''Manual of the Planes'' included rules for factors of prime material planes, one of which determined if complex (read: setting destroying) chemical compositions like blackpowder would even work in said plane. If you have any knowledge of chemistry, you may cry now. Notably, [[Greyhawk]] had a [[Murlynd|god of firearms]], and his paladins were basically Wild West sheriffs.

[[Advanced_Dungeons_%26_Dragons#AD.26D_2nd_Edition|Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Second Edition]] included the arquebus in the Players Handbook, where they were depicted as slow, powerful and expensive (500 Gp!). They were also potentially dangerous to the user as the result of a bad roll. It was painfully stressed that the inclusion of firearms in the campaign was the call of the DM. Firearms were a bit more common in the [[Spelljammer]] setting. Moving away from the classic fantasy background, there was the historical campaign sourcebook ''A Mighty Fortress'' that introduced rules for firearms of the 16th and 17th centuries and the ''Masque of the Red Death'' setting for [[Ravenloft]] pushed everything into a gothic horror version of the 1890's.

[[Dungeons_&_Dragons_3rd_Edition|D&D third edition]] has a section on advanced technology (DMG, pp162-164) for Renaissance-era, 20th century, and futuristic weapons. The weapons are more powerful than what can be found among ranged weapons in the Player's Handbook, but also heavier and more expensive and require exotic weapon profiency (despite muzzle loaders taking off because they were much easier to teach than archery). You're better off with magic crossbows. The White Wolf [[Ravenloft]] material also includes them with minor tweaks.

[[Pathfinder]] greatly over complicates guns: they have shorter range than bows without magical items, take longer to reload, and have at least a 1/20 chance to break or explode every time you fire it, and use up more expensive ammunition. As though this wasn't enough, they have a stiff feat tax needed to make use of them and the fact that there's really only one major gun factory in the land, the Gunworks of the small nation of Alkenstar, and they keep most of their guns to themselves. In return they hit harder, have a ''terrifying'' 4x crit modifier, and ''use touch AC'' in the first range increment, effectively ignoring armor when fired close up. A specialized class, the [[gunslinger]], is centered around the use of firearms. [[Lasgun|Energy weapon]] specialists in Iron Gods have it a bit better, though ammo is limited for most of the adventure.

[[Dragonmech]] has guns, sort of kinda, as well. Only instead of using gunpowder, they use steam to propel the bullet like an airsoft gun. they can only be fired once every other round as the pressure needs to build up. There Treated a bit like crossbows that do more damage and can shoot a little further.

[[Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition]] includes a section on firearms in the ''Dungeon Master's Guide''. They hark back to 2nd edition in terms of stats, fitting the general tone of the game, but aren't quite as punishing for a player to learn to use and make. And with the increased emphasis on houseruling and homebrewing, modding the Crossbow Expert feat to work for them seems a simple leap of logic. The "race builder" guide in the back even suggests changing around the dwarf weapon proficiencies to include them! Furthermore, if you want to get your [[Expedition to the Barrier Peaks]] on, it includes some futuristic guns as well, like lasers and disintegrators.

[[Warhammer Fantasy]] features firearms based on early real-world equivalents, like flintlock pistols, musket rifles and the blunderbuss. Although deadly and still on the experimental side, they're also considered very unreliable and are prone to misfire and sometimes even to explode. Rpg-wise, firearms were already included in the core rulebook of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd Edition, but were later somewhat expanded in the Old World Armoury supplement. Some variations that function like firearms were also added as weapons to some Skaven classes in the Old World Bestiary supplement. Generally speaking, firearms require more costs in order to be used, as each shot requires a firearm shot (bullet) and additional gunpowder. Except for the obvious disadvantages of becoming useless once getting wet and longer reloading times, firearms deal more damage than bows and crossbows, with more complex models even having a repeater function, but obviously longer reloading times for each barrel to be loaded again.

[[Iron Kingdoms]] takes full advantage of guns in its steampunk setting. Most of the kingdoms have at least Napoleonic-era muzzle loading rifles. Cygnar is a bit more advanced with revolvers and machine guns, as well as tesla-style lightning guns. The iconic Gun-Mages carve runes onto their bullets to allow them to empower their shooting with spell effects.

{{MedievalWeaponry}}

Firearm

2022-05-23T18:14:30Z

2607:FB90:6E70:87D3:6C6E:99BD:B47F:F93E: /* Modern Firearms */

[[image:Shotgun After Firing.jpg|thumb|450px|right|Nothing like the smell of burnt powder in the morning]]
About twelve hundred years ago in [[China]], some people figured out that certain chemicals mixed together (such as potassium nitrate, carbon, and sulphur) rapidly combusted when brought to spark, which became known as "black powder." After some experimentation, they discovered that a tube sealed off at one end could be used to contain the pressure of said combustion and focus it into an explosion to propel an object at high speeds. After a few centuries of refinement, and invention of the frag grenade, they managed to take that mechanical principle and apply it as a weapon of warfare which changed the game: the arquebus. Comparatively cheap, easy to make, easy to learn to use, and capable of penetrating all but the heaviest armor, this marked a transition away from close quarters to ranged warfare.

In modern times, firearms are the staple weapons of any nation. Speculative fiction showcases weapons that don't even fire solid projectiles, like [[lasgun|lasers]].

From an engineering standpoint, firearms had a big difference from previous weapons in that they don't require the user's muscle power to work. Swords, maces, and axes are swung, spears are thrust, and bowstrings need to be drawn. Even crossbows and siege weapons work by storing muscle power via tension until it's released. The energy required to accelerate a firearm's projectile comes from explosive propellants; all the user needs to do is to hold the weapon, aim, brace themselves and set off said explosive charge. The significance of this is illustrated in the American Proverb: "God made man, Sam Colt (the inventor of the first practical revolver) made them equal." Having a reliable repeating gun means that your simple brute physical strength does not mean as much in a fight as it would in a bare knuckle brawl or a swordfight (either defensively or offensively).

The firearm's bigger bro is the [[Cannon]] and its cousin is the [[Rocket]].

==How Traditional Guns Work==
For our non-firearm oriented friends, here's a brief, heavily condensed explanation of how these murdersticks work. These instructions will probably vary depending on the type of gun you're using.

[[image:Teppo.jpg|thumb|300px|right|Some Tanegashima matchlocks]]
===Olden Muzzle-Loading Guns===
====The Slow Way====
1. Put your musket in half-cock position. Take your powder flask, and pour a few grains into the flashpan. Pour some more down the barrel (amount can vary wildly; later powder flasks come with built-in measuring tools for ease of use and safety). Ram the powder, bullet, and cloth wad down the barrel of your gun. Ensure you're doing this in correct order because [[Not as Planned|putting the ball first, then powder, for example, can lead to hilarious and/or lethal results]].
 2. If you're using a matchlock gun: light up the fuse, aim and brace yourself, and lastly wait for the fuse to burn out. If you're using a flintlock gun: just cock the mechanism. With percussion caps, replace the explosive cap on the firing titty after cocking the hammer. In any case, aim once you're done setting it up.
 3. Once the powder burns; the gasses from explosion of the black powder will send the bullet flying out of the barrel like a bat out of hell and penetrate into something or someone, and if you're lucky it might actually hit what you were aiming at. Also, hope you aren't downwind because guns during this time generated ''a lot'' of black smoke.
 4. Take stock of the situation. If you've managed to hit anyone or you're currently still in a shooting war; repeat step 1. If your firing line missed most of their shots and those barbarians are charging up your position; [[Imperial Guard|affix bayonets]]. Additionally, if you have time, make sure to use the ramming rod to clean out the barrels of residue to avoid an explosive jam that could burst your barrel (said note applies to all guns unless you're using smokeless powder).

====The Not-Quite-As-Slow Way====
1. Take your paper cartridge, and bite off the end with the powder in it. Carefully pour a few grains into the flashpan, and the rest down the barrel. Take the remainder of the cartridge, ball and paper, and ram it down the barrel.
 2. Follow steps 2 through 4 as above. Paper cartridges have the advantage of saving you a few seconds of precious time while reloading, which can mean the difference between life and death on the battlefield. Another advantage is that they can be made somewhat weatherproof with a grease coating. But if you're just hunting or can't find/afford paper, most people didn't bother with the time-consuming preparations. Towards the end of the muzzle-loading era, paper cartridges could be chemically treated to be more flammable, so tearing them open became unnecessary. This was mostly done with revolvers.

===Single-Action Guns===
1. Load rounds into the magazine (or chamber if it's a single cartridge gun), remove the safety, work the action (pump the slide, rack the bolt, cock the hammer, et cetera) to chamber a round, and aim.
 2. Pull the trigger, this will cause the hammer to strike the primer on the chambered round and cause the powder inside the shell casing to ignite and explode; sending high-pressure gases screaming out of the barrel while propelling the solid bullet out at high speed towards whatever you were aiming at. If you're using single-action flintlock guns; see above for the result.
 3. Because the gun lacks a mechanism to re-chamber itself; you now have to work the action again to eject the spent shell (unless its a revolver, in which case you do that while reloading) and load another round into the chamber. How you do this depends on the gun in question.
 4. Repeat until you run out of bullets in the magazine if your gun has one or you have a spare moment where nobody's shooting at you, in which case either reload the magazine or load a new round (the default case if you're using a single round breechloader).

===Auto-Loading Guns===
1. Load rounds into the magazine, remove the safety, work the action to chamber a round, and aim.
 2. Pull the trigger and this causes the same effect as stated above.
 3. Because of the mechanism of the gun; it redirects some of the forces used to propel the bullet to work its action, eject the spent shell (unless its a DA revolver), re-chamber another round, and allow you to shoot again by just pulling the trigger. The forces used depend on the gun in question, some use a gas block to redirect some of the gasses expelled by bullets, while other uses the force of the recoil itself, to work the action and chamber another round. Additionally, it could also re-chamber itself using a mechanical sequence (like revolvers) or is electrically operated.
 4. If you're using an automatic; hold the trigger down and only release it once you want to stop shooting (or are forced to do so due to lack of ammo). If you're using a semi-automatic; pull the trigger again to fire another round.
 5. Repeat until you run out of bullets or you have a spare moment where nobody's shooting at you, in which case either reload the magazine or load a new one.

==A Brief History of Firearms==
'''800's:''' Taoist monks attempting to find an elixir of immortality stumbled on the next best thing: a substance that would suddenly and violently make things very dead. They'd discovered potassium nitrate (alternatively called saltpeter), a white crystalline powder that burned with a purple flame. When mixed with powders of charcoal and sulfur the resulting substance would burn instantly and aggressively on exposure to flame. It didn't take long for the Chinese to start inventing ways to use it.

[[image:Firelance.jpg‎|thumb|150px|left|The Firelance, the Chinese invention that started this all]]
'''1000s to 1200s:''' The Chinese realize they can make barbarians shit their pants by shooting hollowed arrows packed with powder and bamboo tubes filled with powder and pebbles at them. Bamboo gradually gives way to cast iron and bronze. The Mongol Invasion accelerated the development as the Song Government tried everything to fight them off, which the Mongols often stole and used themselves.

'''1300s:''' Various gunpowder weapons begin to proliferate westward along the Silk Road, aided by the [[Mongols]]. Crude versions of hand cannons, grenades, rockets, and flamethrowers all see use. Despite considerable psychological effect and good armor penetration, most of these weapons are only marginally more likely to kill the target than the user and had a range of only twenty or so meters. As such, their use is not widespread. For the most part, these weapons were used by skirmishers and guards. The fact that they were so dangerous meant they were mostly used by low class soldiers, and in turn this meant that the smiths making them were generally not the most skilled artisans; which did little to improve quality even given the limitations of the day. Even so, the designs and methods of manufacture were gradually refined and improved by various early gunsmiths through trial and error if nothing else.

'''1400s''': Hand cannons see continued and expanded use. Bit by bit from the crude handgonnes of previous centuries, the first "true" firearms evolve with the gradual development of the matchlock, taking on the basic shape of lock, stock, trigger, and barrel (which is where we get the saying from). By clamping a lighted wick into a flashpan via a trigger, the shooter is able to aim ''and'' fire at the same time, making him markedly less likely to blow his own jimmies off. Despite advances, the matchlock was unwieldy, unreliable, and generally inferior to a good bowman. The issue of course is that only England (in Europe) HAD good bowmen; bowmen were the scum of the army everywhere else. This didn't stop some inventive commanders from seeing their potential, particularly with poorly trained conscript soldiers. [[Weeaboo|Some forces]] made a go of it by carrying two or three guns at a time and just throwing the spent ones away like a really shitty Matrix movie. Note: while we use a "weeaboo" hyperlink up there, it's worth remembering that troops like cuirassiers and even pirates would do the same thing with pistols, carrying a whole brace of them, but they just did not exist yet. By the 1400's having more then one gun was the only way to have any real rate of fire before breechloaders existed.

'''1500s:''' Guns continue to evolve with the invention of spring-loaded firing mechanisms. The wheel-lock spins a steel plate against sulfide rocks to produce sparks (think cigarette lighters), which ignites powder a flash pan. This was revolutionary, allowing soldiers to prime their weapon in a matter of seconds instead of fucking around with a lit wick, and allowed calvary to use guns for the first time while on horseback, giving rise to the cuirassiers. It also means that for the first time, guns weren't completely fucked in the rain, just mostly fucked. They also cost a lot to make and were still not completely reliable, so most people stuck with matchlocks. Powder formulas had improved considerably, including the development of the more powerful, stable, and moisture-resistant corned powder made by wetting raw gunpowder, forming it into cakes, crushing them, and sieving them for size. Japan's Oda Nobunaga was particularly notable in the history of firearms for his heavy transition from blades to guns after discovering the novelty of matchlock guns. In fact, by the end of the 1500s, they had more trained arquebusiers in their armies and produced more matchlocks than any other country to date during that period and had the most guns per capita in the world. They still relied on yari equipped pikemen to keep cavalry away but by this time, mounted archery and swordsmen had taken a backseat as supporting units like the knights and winged hussars in Europe. Meanwhile, virtually every army figured out how to use a combination of volley fire in dense square formations surrounded by pikemen (called Pike and Shot) or roughly equivalent units of gunmen protected by spearmen (such as the Chinese Mandarin Duck platoon formations); making armored cavalry, crossbows, & longbows outdated. Accuracy still sucked but that was what the massed shooting was meant to compensate for and soldiers were trained to just point their matchlock in the vague direction of the enemy en masse and fire.

[[image:FlintlockMechanism.jpg‎|thumb|200px|right|The flintlock mechanism. Now you did not need to light some string and put it into a serpentine before firing]]
'''1600s''' The wheellock is refined into the simpler and more reliable flintlock, though it would take some time to supersede the matchlock. Muzzle loading is simplified with the creation of paper cartridges, essentially the pre-measured cake mix of murder. Some German dudes came up with the idea of cutting spirals into the barrel, which they called "rifling," to spin-stabilize the bullet so that they wouldn't have to walk up right next to their targets to hit them, but this required a barrel tighter than a nun's cunt, a hammer to ram the ball in, and grooved bullets made for the gun so it could fit the rifling of the gun like the cap to a soda bottle. To put all that into perspective: well-trained musketeers could fire three to four shots a minute, while a rifleman could only manage one shot every minute. Not great, however the idea of spin-stabilisation hung around and payed off in later times. Breechloaders are invented alongside the flintlock in both Europe and China but the problem of hot gas leaking and burning shooters' hands made them limited in use and in number. Hence, while nobles such as King Henry could own a breech loading rifle for hunting ducks, said breech loaders were either expensive to make in good quality, leaked hot gas every time you shot a less finely crafted piece, or was of inferior performance to the basic muzzleloader.

'''1700s''': The French invent the bayonet, allowing their troops to be [[choppa|choppy]] while they were [[dakka|shooty]]. Thus, the Pike and Shot formation became the Bayonet and Shot formation. That and refinement of tactics led to the dense but slow and cumbersome square formations being reformed into thinner but more responsive rectangle formations. This is the point where gun infantry tactics become the dominant (though still not only) form of fighting when guns go from one of a few common infantry weapons to the primary weapon used by most infantry. Formations of musketeers go from big square blocks to lines two or three ranks thick to put enough bullets in the enemy's ranks as quickly as possible. In the 1600's armies had started to realize that dividing up your people into groups and firing in turn would allow you to maintain fire while reloading (particularly the English with the New Model Army), but it was in the 1700's that everyone really got good at drilling it into soldiers how to fight in lines. Another interesting development at this time was the creation of the air gun. As seen with the Italian Girardoni air rifle, it was issued to specialized sharpshooters who valued it's silence, long range, and rapid-firing capabilities. Their apparent effectiveness in the Austrian Army's Windbüchse Jägers during the Napoleonic Wars was such that according to legend (which is disputed by historians), Bonaparte himself was so angry that he desired for any soldier captured from those units to be hanged as assassins or spies instead of treated as a regular POW. However, the difficulties of making and maintaining reliable pressure tanks and air pumps meant it couldn't compete or become mainstream once conventional rifles and breechloaders were improved upon.
[[image:Chassepot.jpg‎|thumb|200px|left|The mechanism of a French Chassepot needle rifle, an early bolt action rifle, as well as its paper cartridge]]

'''1800s''': Pretty much everything that makes up a modern firearm is invented here. Some English fools discovered fulminates (with the first formula of mercury fulminate made from mercury, nitric acid, and ethanol), an unstable explosive compound that could be put in a metal cap that would instantly ignite if you slam it with a hammer; which led to the first explosive primers. So flintlocks transitioned to percussion caps. This basically involves putting explosives in your explosives to explode your explosives. Eventually, standardized methods of making copper & later brass casings by the French and English replaced paper cartridges; making gas leakage in breech loading mechanisms a thing of the past. Cartridges that contain a primer, propellant, and slug, similar to modern-day bullets, are developed. With this, not only was loading ammunition simplified with a package that contained everything needed for a gun to fire, it also made it waterproof & easier for conscripts to load. Furthermore, the brass casings' small expansion when firing served to seal the firing chamber to prevent hot gases from leaking and burning users’ hands. Extracting the flush but stuck cartridge in the chamber was simply a matter of adding extraction pins that were manually pressed to kick them out by the rims on the bottom base. By this time, wars were largely fought using firearms rather than melee weapons, though also by this time firearms were also melee weapons as in the early 1800s the bayonet charge was still both an accepted and useful tactic.

By the late 1800 inventors had finally gotten the technology to contain the force of the gunpowder explosion with a tight seal and do so cheaply. Experiments that had been done earlier like the Puckle gun (1718), Ferguson rifle (1776), and even the bizarre 1780 Girandoni Air Rifle, [http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Steampunk which was an air gun with a 20 round magazine], all failed to create breech loading rifles cheaply. See, despite that it was well known that that slotting in bullets from the rear and using a mechanism to load it into the chamber is much simpler than spending about half a minute to ram it down a long barrel, the technology was just not there as without cheap steel with good quality control (cheap is important for hand guns you are going to mass-produce). In the meantime, getting regular iron to contain the explosion without deforming, cracking, and leaking gas - thus weakening the shot - was a nightmare. The Industrial Revolution, among other things, gave birth to the ability to mass produce novelty features such as "breech-loading" and later "magazines" and simpler mechanised feeding systems like tubes, slides, cylinders, and bolt-actions. The likes of pump-action shotguns, bolt-action rifles, and lever-action rifles, and revolver and semi-automatic pistols, are developed and/or developed upon, giving a glimpse on how weapons in the future would function. Near the end of the decade, some French guys worked out that they could both improve firepower and keep their guns considerably cleaner by replacing black powder with nitrocellulose, the first of many "smokeless powders." Also known as “guncotton/flash-paper,” it was first discovered by some German chemist who accidentally soaked a cotton apron in a nitric/sulfuric acid mix before trying to dry it by the fire; culminating with explosive results. After various explosive bouts of trial and error, the French managed to alter its formula to make it stable enough to use without blowing up its creators. They stabilized it by soaking and drying it a second time in alcohol. Next, they added stabilizer compounds that made concoction safe to make without blowing factories sky high from static electricity. This alongside partly dissolving it in ether/alcohol to form collodion before adding extra explosive compounds such as nitroglycerin served to make it more malleable and explosive for shells and artillery. Shaping it was simply a matter of spinning it into stiff thread/yarn to be cut down to desired pellet sizes. Not only is there a massive increase in power, its also a clean burn compared to the highly corrosive nature of black power and the horrible maintenance pain that comes with that. This won't matter ''as'' much for another century, since the primers are still corrosive.

Just as important as the new designs that came about during this period were the new methods of production. People like Eli Whitney worked out devices such as milling machines, which allowed for the quick production of finely tuned parts which were so close in size that you could take one bit off one gun, stick it on another from the same line, and it would work just as fine. Breech loading and repeating firearms had existed for centuries beforehand, but were not cost effective to mass-produce until the Industrial Revolution.
[[image:Lee-Enfield Rifle.jpg|thumb|200px|right|A British Lee-Enfield Bolt Action Repeating rifle]]
This is also the time where the first "automatic" guns were invented and put into production. The word "automatic" is in quotes because these early machine guns were not self-reciprocating; they did not load and fire themselves and were instead manually powered. The most famous (and successful) of these weapons is the Gatling gun, which saw limited action in the American Civil War, but became much more widely used the world over in subsequent wars. But while it was the most famous, the Gatling was not the only manual machine gun developed; dozens of different types were produced during the US Civil War alone on both sides, but because these guns tended to be mounted on cannon carriages they were treated like cannons instead of the close support weapon machines guns are, so it took some time for them to hit their stride. Some were hooked up to a motor and became true machine guns, giving them a rate of fire that's high even by today's standards, but the requirement of having a power source meant it only saw limited use on ships.

The first works of the great John Moses Browning start showing up. While his 20th century inventions are more famous, his perfection of the lever action, and invention of the pump action shotgun were major advances. Browning would even patent a semi-automatic shotgun by the end of the 19th century, though it would not be produced till the 20th.

'''1900-early 1930s''': The heyday of guns because of the advent of WW1. The idea of bolt-action rifles are popularized, along with semi-automatic and fully-automatic weapons. Bolt-action rifles meant that riflemen no longer had to be confined to shooting one round at a time before needing to reload as they could now load individual clips that contained 5-10 rounds a piece. Machine guns are now becoming more and more popular in the battlefields, drastically changing the way infantry would maneuver the battlefield as a single MG emplacement can effectively cripple platoons with the right positioning. Submachine guns are developed by the Italians through total accident, as it turned out their pistol caliber machine gun designed for air-to-air fighting (remember planes of this era were very fragile) was effective as an infantry weapon. The German Empire would be the first to make a purpose built infantry sub-machine gun, giving the rest of the world an idea of the wonders of a lightweight fully-automatic weapon that could easily be used by infantrymen, which was previously restricted to crew-served heavy machine guns and the still heavy BAR. They were so impressive, the various post-war regulations prohibited the Germans from having a military armed with them ([[Derp|completely missing the loophole that the Germans could just arm civilians like police and railway guards with them and have a German owned company in Switzerland build them]]).

On the subject of the machine guns, if there was ever a weapon that represented this part of history it would be the heavy machine gun. We talked about the hand powered machine guns above, and while good when used correctly, these weapons have their issues. In order to use most of them, you had to be standing up to turn the crank and sustained fire was tiring, but the hand cranked guns had one major advantage: the most successful of the hand-cranked guns, like the Gatling or Gardner, had multiple barrels meaning you can fire them with little or no need to stop to let the barrels cool down. At the dawn of the 20th century, this is what the early machine guns had to be compared to when European generals went window shopping. The solution was water-cooling, which allowed machine guns to fire for countless hours with little or no failures, but at the cost of weight rendering them truly static, though highly effective, weapons. If you could point to two developments that caused the First World War's trench warfare, you can point to water-cooled machine guns and barbed wire.

The semi-automatic pistol had some developments in the last decade of the 19th century, but only the bulky C96 Mauser would see any real popularity, with next most notable, the Borchardt C-93, only having a few thousand made. The Borchardt’s refinement by Georg Luger would be one of the big game changers, as it saw adoption by the Swiss in 1900 and Germany in 1904. John Moses Browning would be the real pioneer, creating a series of pocket pistols that saw widespread success in civilian sales. He would cap this off with the 1911 in the same year, his first military pistol that was then adopted by the US military. He designed the 1935 Browning Hi-Power, but didn’t live to see it completed by his apprentice Dieudonné Saive and his son Val Browning. The pistol was produced by both sides of World War II (its factory was captured when Belgium was invaded, but Saive would flee with the plans and produce them in Canada), and all future developments amounted to more plastic, and a few improvements to safeties. All the mainstream self-loading pistol cartridges that remain in use are from this era except for 9x18 Makarov (unique more to deny captured pistols ammo than effectiveness), .40 S&W (never adopted by a military and rapidly falling out of favor after its main user decided to go back to 9mm), and some rounds intended to defeat body armor that aren’t primarily for pistols anyways.

'''late 1930s-1940s''': At the start of World War II, all of the powers involved, France, England, Germany, and Russia, were armed with bolt action weapons. Over the course of the war, automatic and semi-automatic rifles started to become more common; however, only the Americans completely phased out bolt-action rifles for standard infantry by the time of the war (Marines and Army units in the Pacific Front were stuck with the old stuff for a few months due to the Germany First policy). Submachine guns are now becoming more popular with various armies around the world, making it the staple lightweight automatic weapon for infantry troops, totally redefining urban combat due to the weapon's great effectiveness in close combat. Nazi Germany invents the ''Sturmgewehr 44'', the first widely produced assault rifle (the Fedorov Avtomat was the first to be put into service, introduced in 1915, but production was limited due to costs [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Revolution and uh, well...]). This weapon would later become the template for modern assault rifles used by the world over.

[[image:QBZ-95.jpg|thumb|200px|left|A QBZ-95 Assault Rifle, the current service rifle of the People's Republic of China, note bullpup configuration (the magazine feeds behind the trigger), thus saving space]]

One unsung advance is the production side. Advances in manufacturing phase out final hand-fitting (that the 1911 and M1 Garand predate this is why current production still varies and costs so much). The M1 Carbine, due to extensive efforts by the US military, it was the first firearm to have all parts be completely interchangeable, no matter which factory it was made in.

'''1950s-1990s''': With World War II over, the armies of the world had a chance to study Germany's assault rifle and built their own. The key invention was selective fire, which allowed a single weapon to serve as a traditional rifle or a somewhat long and unwieldy submachine gun. Burst fire was also developed, intended to fire a grouping of rounds to defeat personal body armor but automatically stop before the recoil of fully automatic fire would have a significant impact on aim. The USSR's entry was the AK-47, which was powerful, easy to mass produce, and legendarily tolerant of mistreatment after briefly flirting with the SKS (a semiautomatic carbine fed by stripper clips). On the other side of the world, the US briefly experimented with an automatic version of the M1 known as the M14, before (mostly) getting their shit together and developing the M16, which was expensive, complicated, and notoriously finicky. One thing not to be underestimated is the standardization introduced by NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Gone were incompatible calibers unique to each nation, and in their place were a single pistol caliber (9x19 for NATO, unless you were an American snowflake, and 9x18 for Pact.), a single intermediate caliber (5.56x45 for NATO, 7.62x39 for Pact, later 5.45x39 in certain Pact countries), a single full power rifle cartridge (7.62x51 for NATO, unless you were a French snowflake, and the venerable 7.62x54 for Pact), and heavy machine gun cartridge (.50 BMG for NATO and 12.7×108mm for Pact) for small arms. Even before NATO standardization was officially a thing, many western countries eagerly armed themselves with American surplus M1 Garands and M1 Carbines, which greatly simplified things.

'''2000s''': With the invention of more advanced materials such as plastics and carbon fiber, along with numerous technological advancements of the modern world, firearms are... basically the same they've been for the last fifty years, just usually lighter and with more options. Serious efforts were made to look at new designs like caseless ammo and fused smart grenade bullets, but most went nowhere. The most significant development in firearm technology was the advent of practical ranged tasers; essentially wired dart launchers with high voltage capacitors, they're the first handguns ostensibly intended for less lethal force (occasional heart attacks not withstanding) that weren't a total joke (like pistol caliber tear gas rounds).

'''2010s''': Relatively speaking, guns have changed a lot and a little in the following years. Primarily, there had been emphasis placed on modularity, mobility, and ruggedness as can be seen with Western nations adoption firearms such as HK416 variants or overall improving the current M4 system. Development of practical telescopic and caseless ammo (LSAT program), and ship cannon sized railguns (The Naval Research Laboratory) have been placed, with the former showing fruition into the NGSW program (see 2020s). The main innovation at this time comes from the improvement of optics, machining techniques (such as CNC machining), materials (stronger and lighter polymers as well as overall better metal alloys), and further optimized design. New designer rounds have been developed to compete with conventional military ammunition, however by late 2019 most have fallen into either becoming niche or have lost traction/attention for wider spread use. Thus in 2010s the firearm technology focus was improving and fine tuning current technologies with some developments into more experimental areas.

[[File:LSAT telescopic ammo.png|200px|thumb|right| Further development of practical telescopic ammo. Designed to be provide reduce weight not not compromising muzzle energy. Culminated into the NGSW program]]

On the more individual front, CNC and 3D printing development has improved significantly enough that either personally designed or online sourced designs can be used to produce firearms parts and associated equipment that can be used to quintessentially make home made firearms. Although several nations have tried to curb this onset of what have come to be called ghost guns, this phenomenon is here to stay. On a larger scale production front, CNC firearms manufacturing allows for more precise machining thus superior fit and finish and improved tolerances.

[[File:Textron Systems, General Dynamics, and SIG Sauer NGSW-R respectively.png|300px|thumb|left| NGSW system prototypes by different companies competing for the potential to become America's new service rifle. The last one is the winner.]]

'''2020s''': With the rising commonality of rifle resistant gear (i.e. body armor and helmets, eg not unheard of for soldiers to survive otherwise direct fatal blows thanks to modern helmets), need for reduction of weight and increased mobility, ability to react to both close and extended range threats (eg M4A1/M27 accurately pushes to 500/600 meters where engagement ranges can exceed 800 meters), and desire to [[Powergamer|overmatch competing militaries]], Western firearms development has begun to focus on new munitions. Namely looking to full power and reduced weight ammunition (be it polymer or reinforced) that can reach out lengthy distance without being excessively heavy or cumbersome. In that regards, the US Army is looking into the NGSW system program, with several contractors competing for the program. Thus far the competition as of 2020 consists of AAI Textron Systems (backed H&K & Winchester), General Dynamics, and SIG Sauer competing for the bid.

Currently the US Military and its branches are looking at 6.8mm NGSW (no XM designation yet), 6.5mm Creedmoor, and .338 Lapua/Norma Magnum to either replace or supplement current ammunition such as 5.56 and 7.62 NATO. The latter most more so because American snipers found themselves outmatched by their European counterparts. Come April 2022 and the Sig Sauer candidate has been declared the winner. While sporting a conventional layout and using standard brass ammunition, it’ll likely get the job done and will be issued to infantry, scout, and combat engineer units in the Army while everyone else will keep the M4 until further notice. Or they'll just do another competition to get an actual caseless round to replace everything and have XM5's be used by line units until then.

[http://As%20of%202021%20if%20you%20have%203,https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAHKS0nVlL4 As of 2022 if you have 3,500 dollars you, yes YOU can buy a working Gauss rifle]. While definitely out of the reach of most armed forces for mass deployment, it took less then 1 human life time to go from the Wright Brothers to the heavy multi-engine bombers of WWII so the technology is coming.

== GUN SAFETY ==
Should be self-evident, but to be frank it isn't. Between the movies having actors brandishing guns everywhere, the video games and toys like airsoft that make them look more harmless than they are and plain human ignorance and negligence; people forget that they're holding something that could easily scatter someone's brains or outright remove their skull.

That said, there are four main rules to gun safety.
*Muzzle sweep: Avoid this. Muzzle sweep is one when points or sweeps a gun in a direction onto people or objects that could get harmed. To avoid this, one should keep the gun's barrel pointed away from anything that you don't intend to destroy or value. This means one must be conscious of where they are pointing it. Or in other words, '''never point the gun at something you don't want to shoot!'''

*'''Treat every firearm as if they were loaded at all times.''' Even if you fully know the gun is empty after removing the magazine and checking the chamber, still treat it as if it wasn't. This creates a force of habit so that if you are ever in a rush/interrupted while handling your gun/given a weapon by someone else/whatever... you will avoid any mishaps and tragedies that could arise because you think the gun is empty where it actually isn't. The only obvious exception is during maintenance, and that's only after visually and physically ensuring the chamber is clear and the magazine is removed (or empty if your gun's magazine is built-in). Don't feel peer pressure to stop obsessively checking each and every chamber around. As far as addictions go, this is not a bad one. Always, always check multiple times. If you don't feel sure for a single moment, check it. Better to waste a couple of seconds than a life, ask Alec Baldwin.

*'''Know the target, what's in front of the target, and what's behind the target.''' Remember, bullets are designed to punch holes in things. Even if you've got pinpoint accuracy, the bullet might go right through the target and kill some guy who's just minding his own business. This is why any self-respecting firing range has a thick wall or a pile of packed-down dirt behind the targets. Bullets that don't punch through the target and don't shatter (like frangible rounds made of sintered metal) can ricochet back at the shooter or others around them. For this reason, shooting at metal targets is usually done with the targets angled down.

*Trigger discipline: '''Never put your finger on the trigger unless you want to kill/destroy whatever you're pointing your gun at.''' Why? Any number of things, either in a firefight or peaceful day in the gun range, can cause you to be spooked and involuntary clench your fingers. If your finger happens to be on the trigger of a live gun, you can potentially cause a negligent discharge, and that's bad. As in "You're putting your and other people's lives at great risk for being a colossal idiot" bad. It doesn't matter if you're a hardcore Tier 1 spec ops operator or regular Joe taking on recreational backyard shooting, everyone's susceptible to the dreaded ND, which is why it should be second nature for you to always keep your finger '''''off''''' the trigger until ready to fire.

Easy, right? Well... apparently not. Ask any gun enthusiast and they'll gladly tell you all sorts of horror stories that happened because [[That Guy|somebody]] failed to follow these simple rules.

And for the love of the God-Emperor, don't be a fucking tool and mix alcohol/drugs and firearms together. Doing so, very, very unsurprisingly results in the breaking of one or more of the aforementioned rules.

==Types of firearms==
Having been around for well over 1500 years there have been many types of firearms over the course of time. Humans are, if anything, very inventive when it comes to coming up with new and interesting ways to kill each other. A rough list are:

===Ye Olde Gonnes===
*Firelance: Oldest of the Oldschool guns, simple bamboo tubes stuffed with gunpowder and pebbles used in the Ten Kingdoms period and the Song Dynasty. One inaccurate spray of flaming fuck-off in close quarters, often tied to a spear.

*Handgonne: A catch-all term for a primitive gun without a lock that need their powder charges. Majority of these guns were handcannons, as in literal man-portable artillery pieces that had a 50/50 chance of either working or malfunctioning, the worst of which would be the gun exploding in the shooter's face.

*Arquebus - A basic matchlock Firearm. A note of clarification: 'Arquebus' and 'musket' are both used to describe firearms from this time and they are often used interchangeably. But if you want to be ''really'' technical in this period an Arquebus is a regular two handed matchlock firearm while a musket is a larger heavier gun firing a larger projectile, sometimes up to an inch in diameter. Latter (about 1700 onward) musket would refer to any muzzleloading long barreled handheld firearm used for mainly shooting solid shots. This is not too much of a big deal and is nothing to get mad about, but it is worth noting.

*Musket - Today, the musket is a catch-all term for all early smoothbore, shoulder-fired, muzzle-loaded firearms. Technically this isn't the case, the musket was an improved Arquebus, one of the earliest muzzle-loaded guns. However because of romanticism and literature; people who aren't acquainted with firearms will commonly refer to any muzzle-loaded long weapon as a musket (about the same reason why most people today refer to any automatic weapon as a machine gun). Muskets were inaccurate as people have yet to put serious research into firearm ballistics, lacked sights, generated a lot of smoke due to primitive gunpowder mixtures, and were temperamental to environmental conditions (rain will pretty much render a musket into an wet stick of wood), but still enjoyed a lot of popularity due to their lethality and ease of use compared to other man-portable ranged weapons at the time - and even their inaccuracy (they were after all, shooting at a bunch of guys standing shoulder-to-shoulder...) may have been more attributable to the generally-poor training given to the vast majority of soldiers of the time. Muskets were quickly phased out once rifles sufficiently improved (they co-existed for multiple decades, with rifles being reserved for light infantry who used their rifles to place accurate shots...at a fraction of the fire-rate of muskets who stayed in the hands of the line infantry, because the light infantry now had to shove the bullet in by the spiraled rifling) to do what a musket could do, but better. Muskets were categorized by what firing mechanism was used in the lock:
:*The earliest versions used matchlocks, which fired by poking a slow-burning fuse into the firing chamber. These were fairly unreliable and somewhat hazardous since you had a smouldering fuse close to the flashpan when you were reloading.
:*The next developed version was the wheel-lock, which used a quick rotation of a wheel against a pyrite to create sparks, making it the first self-igniting firearm. Due to it's price, it didn't replace the matchlock in most cases, only being used by cavalry, elite soldiers and gunpowder guards.
:* Flintlocks replaced matchlocks, which ignited by generating sparks when a piece of flint struck the iron frizzen, igniting the powder in the flashpan. The flint would periodically break and need replacing, but it was still safer than a matchlock.
:**Fusils are early flintlocks (in fact "fusil" derives the Latin "foisil" , meaning a piece of flint), and like any early technology they were more expensive then there later derivatives. Therefore Fusils were given to elite higher trained troops, hence the english/french words 'fusileer' and 'fusillade'. The primary use of Fusils while they distinct from standard infantry weapons (matchlocks) were guarding artillery since unlike matchlocks, flintlocks like the Fusil do not produce so many sparks, a major concern around barrels of gunpowder common around artillery trains!
:** Snaplock uses a flint to strike against a frizzen but is different from the later flintlocks in that the frizzen and pan are separate pieces of the weapon while later flintlocks combine frizzen and the pancover into one, which made the later flintlocks much cheaper. The user also has to manually open the pancover before shooting, which can be a problem in rain. Like the wheel-lock, snaplock didn't manage to replace the matchlock and in fact, in many regards wheel-lock was considered superior despite coming first.
:** Snaphance is similar to a snaplock but it has an additional mechanism which opens the pancover automatically when pulling the trigger, making it a lot less likely that the gunpowder would get wet.
:* With the invention of the percussion cap came the Caplock, or Cap & Ball. This was the final evolution before breachloading became widespread. The cap would be fitted onto a tube to the firing chamber after the musket was loaded. Caplock firearms did not generate sparks in and of themselves; rather, they used a simple hammer to strike the cap, which would in turn ignite the powder in the firing chamber. Far more contained than flintlock, until the fully self-contained cartridge superseded it entirely. After the introduction of cartridges, it was fairly simple to convert existing caplock weapons by replacing the percussion cap tube with a firing pin, and adding a loading gate. Cap & Ball still sees use, even having a few entirely new designs created using the mechanism, due to many countries not considering them or anything prior as "firearms".

*Multi-barreled gun - In the olden days, people wanted more dakka launched at enemies, but things like magazines and self-loading weapons were still an alien idea during its time. So as an alternative people took a breach/muzzle-loaded firearm, slapped one or more barrels onto it, and reworked the trigger so they can fire more shots before needing to reload. This resulted in some particularly wacky times for guns. To this day, the only multi-barrel weapon still commonly used (disregarding military rifles with underslung grenade launchers, door breaching shotguns, or rotating barrel Gatling-style guns) is the double-barreled hunting shotgun. Some notable guns were volley guns called ribauldequin, which were a line of infantry dudes without most of the dudes. The problem was that this took very long to load, because you have one or two people ramming shit rather than 20 dudes each loading. So, that was a colossal fail in a long term artillery exchange, but quite effective for countering a charge when all you need is one volley to make mincemeat out of that cavalry coming at you.

===Modern Firearms===
*Handgun - Also called "pistols", handguns are small-sized firearms that can be comfortably fired in one hand (hence the name). Handguns are mainly used for close defense and as a sidearm, making them akin to daggers. Modern pistol calibers are commonly between 8mm and 11mm, although popular magnum rounds like the .50 GI and .50AE are also exist for handguns (albeit they tend to be large, heavy, and likely to fuck up your wrist from the recoil).
:*Self-loading pistol - Semi-automatic pistols are magazine-fed handguns that use the fired cartridge’s energy to extract and eject the spent cartridge, recock the hammer, and feed a fresh cartridge into the chamber. A concept that took a comparatively long amount of time to get into place, with the first functional semi-automatic pistol being the German Borschardt C93, and the first mass-produced one being the iconic Broomhandle Mauser C96. These had several advantages over revolvers, like having a bigger magazine, being much easier to reload under field conditions, but the most important of which being that they were much easier to maintain. Starting with the Walther PP and the Colt M1911, most nations militaries quickly shifted towards pistols instead of revolvers, with some completely replacing them even before WW2. Revolvers stuck around longer in police service in many countries, but were pushed out of this role as well, making Revolvers only widespread on the civilian gun market, especially for hunters, where the safety and reliability of a Revolver is an advantage over semi-autos that cannot be ignored.
:*Machine pistol - A machine pistol is a handgun that can fire in either bursts or in full-auto. While they're commonly thrown into that category, machine pistols are not submachine guns due to their size and use. Machine-pistols are not in widespread use with traditional military forces as SMGs and PDWs do better damage and have a longer range, but they remain popular with personnel like bodyguards or hitmen, who require a highly portable and concealable but powerful sidearm.
:*Derringer - Another case of the concept being named after its inventor, "derringer" refers to tiny pistols, often used as concealed or backup sidearms, that could fit into the palm of your hand. These things have been around since the 19th century and were single-shot, though could have multiple barrels to fire off more shots before reloading, which were fired in a sequence. Due to their size and intended use (i.e: shooting someone while literally next to them); derringers typically used small rounds like .22 and below. But if you ''really'' wanted someone dead (and your wrists obliterated); some packed larger shots like [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COP_.357_Derringer .357 magnum rounds].
:*Pocket Pistol - Modern versions of the derringer, those are really small handguns or revolvers that sacrifice range and ammo count in order to be as small and easily concealed as possible. Also called "subcompacts". Obviously ideal for bodyguards, spies and VIPs to use as last resorts.
:*Flare Gun - While not exactly a proper firearm per se, due to being used to fire fat and slower moving flares instead of actual bullets, flare guns made from metal (any plastic ones are a risk waiting to cripple your hand) can accept tubular inserts into the breach in order to fire small to medium sized shotgun shells and pistol rounds. Granted, accuracy is going to be mediocre (assuming the inserts themselves have no rifling) and you're going to have to load and remove each bullet case like grandpa's old break action shotgun before you can shoot again. However, it works well as a hidden holdout weapon or a dual-use survival weapon while you're hunting or in the wilderness. The original ammunition, the flares themselves, can also be useful for burning combustible matter as they've been used by soldiers in the past to sabotage equipment to keep out of enemy hands or set fires off from a distance. In some extreme cases, they've been experimentally designed to fire grenades as seen with Nazi Germany's experiments with the Kampfpistole/Sturmpistole or outright used as lethal (albeit improvised) weapons during the Korean War by shooting flares that lodge into some poor Chinese soldier’s coat to burn him to death.

*Revolver - A revolving gun is any weapon that uses a revolving cylinder to load new rounds after every shot. While its commonly now relegated to pistols (a revolver typically meant a revolver pistol these days) the style is still used for some shotguns (like the Armsel Striker) and grenade launchers (like the MM1-Hawk). Historically, revolver rifles were invented in an attempt to create repeater rifles for soldiers as seen with the Colt's New Model Revolving rifle from the 1850's. However, due to lack of of a gas seal, most were notorious for leaking gas that could harm shooters or set off all the chambered rounds in a chain fire if they were pre-brass cartridge designs. By the time reciprocating chambers were made to automatically seal gaps between the barrel and the cylinders (like with the Nagant M1895), revolvers had already been superseded by magazine-loaded firearms in military arsenals. However, they did make a small comeback with brass cased ammo and installed blast shields as seen with Taurus/Rossi Circuit Judge carbine or the MTs255 shotgun. Revolvers are still in use for a few reasons: they're simple and cheap to make, can easily be used by left and right-handed shooters (since spent casings aren't automatically ejected like in the case of modern firearms) and is still pretty robust compared to today's modern weapons as fewer mechanisms means fewer points of failure. Downside is that they have very limited ammunition space (because the gun was made around the cylinder you can't expand it like how you can with detachable magazines, so you either had a gun with 5-8 rounds or a bulky gun with a 12-round cylinder) and reload time (even with speedloaders, the time it takes to empty and take apart the gun to load more bullets can be lethal, which the FBI [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_FBI_Miami_shootout learned the hard way]). Thanks to the American old west era and subsequent movies about it, revolver-styled handguns have achieved a kind of rustic yet sleek appeal to them. Revolvers come in generally the same calibers as handguns, from the modest .22 Long Rifle used for practicing and target shooting to the behemoth .500 S&W Magnum which can put down a bear. "Snubnose" revolvers refer to revolvers with shortened barrels in an attempt to make them more compact.
:* Top Break/Tip up - A revolver with a hinged frame that opens to expose the cylinder. These were originally designed for cavalry, as they are very easy to load. However, the two piece frame is a weakness that limits the power of cartridge that can be used. Due to this, these types of revolvers are rarely used today, and are mostly relegated to using low-powered ammo between the .22 and .32 range.
:* Swing Arm - By far the most common type of revolver, the swing arm mounts the cylinder on a moving arm known as a crane, which allows the cylinder to be exposed for loading. The chief limitation of the swing arm design is that the crane can bend over time and due to rough handling, but several tests would indicate you'd have to be deliberately trying to break your gun over a period of time for this to happen (assuming you aren't using a cheap gun made out of low-quality metal). Modern revolver-style grenade launchers are typically swing-arms.
:* Gate Loading - Named for their loading gate, these revolvers can only expose one cylinder for reloading a a time, with the spent casing being pushed out through the gate by a long ejector rod. Gate loading revolvers are the earliest style for cartridge revolvers, dating back to conversions of percussion cap revolvers. Gate loading revolvers are now rare except for reproductions, revolvers designed to big cartridges, and revolver shotguns. The fixed cylinder is the strongest possible configuration of revolver and thus the most tolerant of high power ammunition.

*Submachine gun - A submachine gun (abbreviated to SMG) is a fully automatic weapon that fires pistol cartridges instead of the larger rifle cartridges. One of the first true fully automatic infantry weapons outside of the machine gun, hence the name. The weapon fulfills a similar role of the carbine, striking a balance between firepower, recoil, and bulk. They also make good stealth weapons, as most pistol rounds are subsonic with heavier bullets and thus much quieter when suppressed.

:*Personal Defense Weapon - A PDW is a bit of a mix of a carbine and an SMG, firing specialized cartridges with rifle-like characteristics (usually in the 4-5mm range, shorter than a rifle cartridge but longer than a pistol cartridge) at the cost of additional weight. Its original role is as its name implies; a personal defense weapon for nonfrontline infantry, like artillery spotters, scouts, vehicle crews, commandos, etc. Back in the day PDWs weren't necessarily automatic; a pistol with a longer barrel and mounted stock could be classified as a PDW (This was done with the German C96 and Luger P07), today however these would qualify as "pistol carbines". These days PDWs are commonly lumped into the same category as SMGs, as they now fulfill similar roles.

*[[Shotgun]] - Shotguns are smoothbore weapons (as in the barrel is not rifled) designed to fire either shot (multiple steel or lead pellets) or slugs (a single, heavy projectile), although modern times have included other types of ammunition. The ability to fire multiple types of ammunition without modification is one of the main advantages to using a shotgun; converting an anti-infantry weapon into a door-breaching tool, a mini-flamethrower, or a less-lethal weapon with but a switch of the munitions. The vast majority of shotguns are pump-action or breech-loading, though as of 1905 shotguns can come in semi-automatic or fully-automatic configurations, but sheer variety of shell loads makes their reliability highly ammo dependent. For more information see the [[shotgun]] page. The most common bore size for shotguns is 12 gauge (about 18.5mm). Confusingly, higher gauges are lower in size because its based on weight of spheres of lead rather than diameter; a 20 gauge is about 15.6mm, while a 10 gauge is 19.7mm (.410 bore exists outside this and is .410 inch/10.4 mm/67 bore).

*Rifle - Rifles were originally shoulder-fired weapons that had their barrels "rifled" to increase precision, by putting spiral grooves into the barrel in order to have the bullet spin before leaving the barrel; reducing it's wind resistance (otherwise known as drag) and giving it more momentum as it leaves that muzzle. In ye olden days, these were specialist weapons given to marksmen while the common soldier carried a musket. However, because all modern non-shotgun non-explosive firearms now use rifling to improve ballistics, the term is usually reserved for a shoulder-fired long weapon, designed for accurate fire.
:*Assault Rifle - Assault rifles are a term given to any rifle that can be fired on full-auto and shoot intermediate-caliber rounds, typically in the 5mm range (or a shortened 7mm round if you're from the Eastern bloc). This is usually the standard weapon of a non-specialized front-line infantryman. The STG44 is considered to be the earliest one fielded in industrial quantity, though the idea has been around since at least the first World War. Traditionally, the term "Assault Rifle" is rarely ever used by servicemen to refer to this type of weapon, and typically call them "Automatic Rifles" or "Service Rifles" instead.
:*Battle Rifle - Basically the assault rifle's big brother; battle rifles are bigger automatic rifles designed to fire high-caliber rounds, typically in the 7mm range. These were the mainstay for armies in the 1950s, but the US eventually found out that giving infantry rifles with smaller rounds is better since its lighter and can allow infantry to be more accurately engage enemies better due to lower recoil (albeit at the cost of power), so battle rifles were replaced by assault rifles for front-line use and battle rifles were relegated to specialists like marksmen or support gunners (who's job permits for a slower-firing but more powerful weapon). The M1918 BAR may count as one, though the first occurred no latter than 1942's FG42. Some armies still prefer to use full battle rifles alongside assault rifles, notably the Turkish MPT-76 in 7.62 NATO was made after soldiers expressed lack of satisfaction with 5.56 MPT-55's, though no army only has battle rifles unless it's third world with nothing else around.
:*Carbine - A carbine is a compact rifle, primarily designed to be used in close quarters. In most cases, carbines are based from a parent rifle, and are scaled down by using lighter/smaller parts and shortening the barrel (such as in the case of the American M16 vs M4) or is its own weapon (like the Korean K1A). These are typically given to units who need to engage the enemy at close range and need a rifle for the job, like commandos, assault teams, or other specialist units, or given to units who are not expected to fight on the front but need a compact but decent weapon to defend themselves if the need arises, like pilots or vehicle crews. Carbine may also refer to pistol-caliber semi-automatic weapons that are longer than a pistol, but this is typically only used in the civilian market. The concept of a carbine predates modern firearms, though they existed primarily for cavalry.
:*Micro Assault Rifle - Even smaller than carbines; these are ultracompact rifles designed when someone needs a highly portable but powerful weapon. A MAR is basically a PDW that shoots actual rifle rounds. Much like carbines; a MAR can either be based on a parent rifle and scaled down or made as its own weapon. These tend to have low effectiveness for standard calibers, since those were designed for full length barrels, but the logistics of supply are superior.
:*Sniper Rifle - A sniper rifle is a special precision rifle, specifically designed to engage targets at extreme range with lethal efficiency. Many sniper rifles use standard 7.62mm rounds, but high-performance rifles will use more potent rounds up to 12.7mm rounds for extra range and stopping power. Preferably, sniper rifles should use match-grade ammunition to provide consistency and accuracy at high extended ranges. The vast majority are bolt-action for simplicity and power (much more reliable and because all the gasses are diverted into the barrel, rather than some being diverted to work the action; the gun can launch the bullet farther and faster), but there are also a decent number of semi-automatic ones. Sniper rifles are given to special marksmen called "snipers", who are capable of engaging the enemy from extreme distances, usually well away from the scrap.
:*Designated Marksman Rifle - A sort of compromise between battle rifles and sniper rifles, DMRs are precision weapons meant to be used by frontline infantry to accurately engage distant targets that regular infantry weapons cannot. Due to its role, it's generally more accurate than a rifleman's gun, but usually not as effective as an actual sniper's gun (DMRs are usually only effective within 1 kilometer, while SRs are typically effective beyond 1 kilometer). Generally speaking, DMRs avoid using the more high-performance rounds that snipers may use, as it may be detrimental for an infantryman's role.
:*Recoiless - Not a conventional gun in most senses; a recoilless gun (models with rifling are called "Recoiless rifles" though people often miss this distinction) is as the title suggest, a rifled weapon without (or at least reduced) recoil. It does this by basically being a cannon with the back taken off. When loaded the cartridge sits in an open back tube, there is no breach. When fired, the explosion propels the shell out the tube, but an equal amount of gas comes out the other side canceling out the recoil. This means that total muzzle velocity is lower than a cannon with a breech on it, but they make up for it by shooting bigger shells, and with HEAT shells (thanks to the nature of the Munroe effect) the wider the diameter of the shell the more effective it is, meaning even a large slow moving projectile can do a great amount of damage to tanks. Larger, towed versions are often mistaken for field artillery or antitank cannons. Meanwhile shoulder fired versions are often mistaken for their rocket launcher cousins like the bazooka or the RPG; while both rocket launchers and infantry portable recoilless rifles lob antitank munitions at tanks, the recoilless rifle round are not self-propelled by rocket motors and rely on just momentum from the launcher to fly.
:*Anti-Tank/Materiel Rifle - Essentially modern elephant guns; these rifles are geared towards destroying tanks and hard objects, although they are very much still capable of demolishing infantry (albeit overkill since rifles of this type tend to outright cause body parts to explode by the sheer amount of force they carry.). Anti-tank rifles were the norm for years (From the 1910s to the late 1970s) as they were a cheap yet effective way of getting rid of tanks, but advancements in vehicle armor has largely rendered AT rifles obsolete (at least for anti-tank roles, these things can still royally murder lightly-armored vehicles and urban housing, thus why they can be seen in use today). Anti-materiel rifles however, are a bit of an offshoot of AT rifles, and are still in use today. They are often used to take out lighter vehicles, to detonate ordnance at a safe distance or fuck up anything valuable to the other side like radars, communication devices, heavy weapons, etc... They have been successfully used against light boats and even to down the occasional helicopter. Likewise, they have been used by both professional and paramilitary forces due in thanks to their ability to annihilate cover (and hopefully what's behind it) where most conventional small arms won't. Usually chambered in heavy machine gun caliber around 12mm to 15mm barring some attempts at making man-portable 20mm caliber guns interwar to early WW2 though those didn't pan out.
:*Stopping Rifle- A rifle that fires a ludicrously heavy bullet, usually as a single shot but rarely as a bolt action. As the name implies, these were developed to bring down stop big game. like elephants, that were charging at you but eventually became the precursors to anti-material rifles. Unlike the later, range or penetration aren't big concerns so much as delivering a massive amount of energy to a soft-skinned target. While hunting elephants may be illegal today, a large caliber weapon is still useful for defense against large predators like bears or lions, who would shrug off a smaller 5.56mm or 7.62mm to the body. Firing such a heavy weapon while standing or even sitting isn't a pleasant experience; without the right stance, it'll go flying once you pull the trigger.
:*Everything else - Except sniper rifles and most Designated Marksman Rifles, all of the above rifles are generally "military-grade" and thus are generally not available to the public (unless you are in '''The Great United States Of America'''*, *NFA restrictions apply). Any other type of rifle will typically be called a "sporting rifle" or "hunting rifle", etc and are either bolt-action or semi-automatic. Technically speaking, most "military-grade" firearms can be modified to become semi-automatic to allow for use within the public.

*Machine Gun - Colloquially a machine gun is a large automatic weapon (though technically anything fully-automatic, ranging from a machine pistol all the way up to auto-cannons), typically fed from a magazine or a belt (or both, as is the case with the M249) and meant to either be man-portable or fired from an emplacement or mount like a tripod or turret. The main difference between MGs and the rest of the automatic weapon family is that an MG is a gun meant to fire with longer continuous bursts as a support weapon; meaning that the machine gunner applies continuous suppression fire at the enemy to keep them down (and occasionally kill those stupid enough to not get the message), while the rest of the squad maneuver. Machine guns are generally heavier, not only because of the volume of ammo they carry; but their parts (such as the barrel) are made of heavier materials so that the gun can withstand the punishing amounts of bullets it puts downrange (firing hundreds of rounds without pause can cause guns to overheat and malfunction, even catch fire or explode in the worst of scenarios, unless they're built for such a task.) Even then, barrel changes occur frequently to change warped and damaged barrels.
:*Light Machine Gun - an LMG is a man-portable MG that fires the same intermediate rounds as assault rifles. They are intended to be almost as portable as a rifle (as in, they can be shouldered, but get better performance with a bipod) and allow machine gunners to provide suppressing fire at the squad level. Some LMGs are magazine-fed rifles with heavier barrels and modified bolts to allow them to withstand the heat buildup of sustained fire (such as the RPK), or else are scaled-down MMGs (such as the M249 SAW).
:*Medium Machine Gun - an MMG is a man-portable MG that fires the same full-power rounds as battle rifles. These tend to push the limit of what's practical for a man-portable weapon, and when deployed are usually fired from a stationary position either on a bipod or tripod due to the recoil they generate. These weapons usually overlap with General Purpose Machine Guns and tend to be deployed at the company level or as a vehicle weapon.
:*Heavy Machine Gun (classic) - The definition of an HMG has changed a bit over the last 100 years so the catagory has been split up into two categories. The classical heavy machine gun is exclusively meant to be fired from emplacements and mounts like a tripod due to their large size and weight and was designed to be fired from a fixed position: constantly, just spitting out bullets for days. Often done with the aid of a water jacket which further increased the weight of the weapon. These are the guns that created the quagmire of the great war. Their heavy weight made them impossible for an infantryman to fire on the move (regardless of what you hear; even Hollywood couldn't make these monsters man-portable in their movies, and those fire low-powered blank rounds and is being held by the like of [[Sly Marbo|Sylvester Stallone]]). But that weight also greatly limited their maneuverability and forced them to stay in a static defensive position. Usage outside of vehicle mounts died off when artillery became more precise and could easily wipe out immobile emplacements. Unlike modern heavy machine guns, classical ones used a standard sized rifle cartridge, the vickers for example used the .303 bullet same as the standard rifle of the day, what made them 'heavy' was the focus on sustained shooting to throw back waves of attacking infantry. Examples include the Maxim gun, Hotchkiss Mle 1914 and the Vickers.
:*Heavy Machine Gun (Modern): a modern heavy machine gun is not designed to fire constantly, but to fire a big bullet. Only slightly too small to qualify for the definition of 'cannon' are weapons like the M2 browning .50 caliber, or 12.7 mm machine gun. Modern HMG's are powerful enough to penetrate light armor and damage fragile equipment on heavy armor (like scopes), making them formidable weapons. Examples of modern HMG's are the Russian DHSK and the American M2 Browning.
:*General Purpose Machine Gun - Essentially a machine gun that can perform multiple roles of the previous stated. Examples of this are the German MG34 (arguably the first of this concept) and MG42/MG3, or (from an American prospective) the American M60 and M240, which can reliably serve both infantry-level support weapon and mounted gun roles by fitting them with the appropriate parts. The first ones used the general rifle cartridge, while modern examples are in 7.62x51 NATO or its equivalents.
::*Squad Automatic Weapon - An attempt to make a GPMG that use the intermediate cartridges everyone else in the squad used. Despite the weaknesses of intermediate cartridges (limited range, low barrier penetration/destruction) being more noticeable in a machinegun role, they is still commonly used by virtue of their reduced logistical requirements and lighter weight compared to other man-portable LMG variants. The RPD, RPK and M249/SAW/MINIMI family are the main entries here, though it seems every modern assault rifle has tried to make a SAW variant with varying degrees of success.
:::*Infantry Automatic Rifle - A more recent concept that seeks to combine the continuous firing properties of a machine gun with an assault rifle's accuracy and ease of use. So far only attempted seriously by the US Marine Corp with the M27; while the higher-ups are pleased with it so far, there is considerable debate about whether its lower rate of fire compared to the M249 will make it less effective at providing suppressing fire.
:*Rotary Machine Gun - Originally known as the "Gatling gun", man's first known attempt to have enough [[dakka]]; a rotary machine gun is an automatic weapon that uses revolving barrels that interchange every time the gun fires off a round. The kicker to this is that it allows the gun to shoot with little threat of the barrels wearing out as they interchange between shots; giving them a small window to cool off before firing again. The end result is a gun capable of firing over 3,000 rounds per minute without fail, or in a smaller scope; 50 rounds per second. Modern rotary guns are electrically powered to allow them to reach such insane speeds, and are given ammo drums that contain thousands of rounds to be able to sustain that amount of bullets being fired; so they're confined to static emplacements and vehicles (unlike what the media constantly portrays; these things are not even close to being man-portable without assistance from powered armor.) These types of guns are used almost exclusively on aircraft. anti-aircraft emplacements, or even anti missile turrets as they're the only non-missile weapon that can reliably hit fast-moving aircraft. But a rotary gun that fires 30mm rounds is powerful enough to tear tanks in two, as well (metaphorically, they only have to penetrate top armor and rate of fire helps). Unlike what the movies would tell you a rotary machine gun does not need a long spinup time to get to full speed: when the trigger is pulled the gun starts to spin and fire immediately.
:*Chain gun - A chain gun is a machine gun that is fed using an electric motor. Instead of relying on the gasses from the bullet to work the action to cycle a new round; a machine automatically ejects and loads a new round in after firing a shot. Chain guns have the benefit of never jamming due to feeding failures, as even if the round is not discharged; the machine pops it out and loads a new one regardless. However, it is also not man-portable as it requires an electric motor to function, so it is only found on fixed emplacements or vehicles. Can easily fuck up any poor shmucks day by perforating the boat or car they are in. People sometimes use the words "chain gun" and "rotary machine gun" interchangeably (thanks, Doom), but chain guns are typically single-barreled, as they don't need the high rate of fire that rotary guns do outside of anti-air guns. If you see an actual rotary barrel chain gun, it's probably a CIWS like the Phalanx or the Kashtan, and while primarily designed for air defense (mostly helicopters and ground attackers who get too cocky) and to shoot down incoming shells and missiles, they can most assuredly put holes in boats and vehicles.

===Actions===
"Action" refers to how ammunition is loaded into the weapon.

*Single-shot: The first and oldest of all; a single-shot weapon is when users manually load rounds into the chamber. This can be anything from loading a new round, cocking the weapon every shot, or pumping the action.
**Muzzle-loaded: The earliest form of how weapons were loaded. This meant you had to load a new round directly into the muzzle, which is where the bullets come out. In its earliest form; muzzle-loaded guns were complicated to arm; you had to fuck around with a wad, powder, and slug. In the heat of battle, you had to ram these down the barrel of your gun in the correct order, light the wick, then aim before the gun goes off. And you had to do all this while standing in the open within firing range of your enemy. Still in use because many jurisdictions have a muzzle loading only season and such obsolete arms are subject to fewer legal restrictions in general.
**Breach-loaded; An upgrade over muzzle-loading and developed shortly after cartridges were invented; breach loaders are where the back of the barrel can be opened so that you can load a new round into it. Many muzzle loaders were converted to breech loaders in workshops near the end of the Industrial Revolution. It is still a popular setup for multi-barreled shotguns. Certain revolvers are breach-loaded as well, but given the size and design of the revolver, this gives them a notable weak point at the top of the weapon where the parts connect together. Most come in flavors such as break action (popular with simple shotguns and flare pistols), trapdoor mechanisms, rolling blocks, falling blocks (attached to levers), or bolt action.
**Bolt-action: This type of action is where you pull the charging handle of a weapon, every time you shoot so that a new round can be chambered. They come in two varieties: faster but weaker locking straight-pull bolts and slower but stronger rotating bolt actions. Originally starting off as single shot rifles, they eventually added magazines to reduce the amount of loading required once smokeless powder was used. These were pretty popular in WW1 and continues to be used today for precision rifles and discount anti-material rifles due to their simplicity and strength.
***Needle Rifle: An early precursor to the bolt action from the 1840's with the Dreyse and Chassepot rifles. Unlike its grandchild in WWI, these used self-contained paper cartridges where the primer is on the tail end of the projectile and the gunpowder is sandwiched between the primer and the rest of the paper cartridge. To ignite the gunpowder, the bolt's firing pin actually needs to puncture the cartridge from the back with a needle and hit the primer. While faster to fire at six to fifteen rounds per minute compared to a regular muzzleloader, their needles warped after repeating shooting and had to be replaced. And in the case of the Chassepot, their rubber seals in the breech would deteriorate and require swapping. Once metal cartridges were invented a decade later, the needle rifles were replaced with fully fledged bolt action rifles as we know them.
**Lever-action: The cool kid of the single-action club; lever-action weapons are those where you have to use a lever to chamber a new round, which was usually mounted near the trigger. Great for shooting from horseback, not so great lying on the ground. This type was made popular by Winchester during the frontier age of the Wild West and even more by Arnold Schwarzenegger when he used a lever-action shotgun during Terminator 2. Tend to be chambered for pistol cartridges and intermediate rifle cartridges because its metalurgy and action weren't strong enough for full rifle cartridges till the 1890s, when bolt actions had started displacing it, and tube magazines requiring flat nosed rimed cartridges while market forces limit them to cartridges that are still made (a crossover that's essentially just .22lr, revolver cartridges, .30-30 and .45-70).
**Pump-action: A pump action is where you had to pull the "pump" of the weapon to cycle a new round. This is the most common action used by shotguns. A few rifles used this setup as well (but only with round bullet heads as pointed bullets have the risk of setting off the primers), and there is one instance of a bunch of madmen creating a pump-action 3+1 (three in the tube, one in the chamber) 40mm grenade launcher.
*Automatic action/Self-loading: Unlike single-shot weapons, it uses gasses expelled by the cartridge or recoil to power a mechanism that automatically chambers a new round after each shot. Generally speaking, the semi-automatic to fully-automatic action is determined by the trigger sear, which may either inhibit the hammer from hitting against until the trigger is let go (semi-automatic), stops firing after a certain number of rounds have been fired (burst-fire), or continuously fires until ammo is expended (fully automatic).
**Semi-automatic: A semi-automatic weapon is any weapon that can fire after every trigger pull, with the user only needing to work the action after reloading a completely empty gun. Most handguns and many rifles are semi-automatic.
**Burst-Fire: A setting sometimes included on automatic weapons, each trigger pull fires several rounds before stopping automatically. Fully automatic fire in a handheld gun tends to very quickly go off target due to muzzle rise, but by limiting fire to a controlled burst, the gun is easier to keep trained on target. The main purpose for this setting is to defeat personal body armor; many types of armor such as ceramic inserts are only designed to reliably stop one rifle bullet, not a close grouping of several hits in succession.
**Fully-automatic: A fully-automatic weapon is any weapon that can fire automatically, so long as the trigger is depressed, rather than pulled each time like how semi-autos work. Automatic weapons tend to be banned for civilian use outside of firing ranges and are only available to military even in countries liberal with gun rights.

===Ammo Storage and Feeding===
This refers to how ammunition is given to the weapon. Also the topic of a /k/ommando's greatest sources of rage; the clip vs magazine misconception. This section will give a short explanation for both.

*Pepperbox - basically the bastard child of a break-action long gun and a revolver; a pepperbox gun has 3 or more barrels loaded and ready to fire, with the gun rotating between the loaded barrels to fire in relatively quick sucession. As this was one of the only ways to get more than a single shot in less than a minute without resorting to carrying multiple guns; the design was wacky but popular during the olden ages (and still today to a limited extent for some pocket pistols). The Empire's Outriders are armed with these weapons if you want a visual of what they looked like. Most pepperboxes where smoothbore since they were made on the cheap and never intended for more than point blank fire.

*Harmonica - Also called a ''slide gun,'' it was a precursor to the detachable magazine, it was basically a reusable steel block with multiple holes drilled into the sides to house preloaded powder and shot alongside percussion caps. While loaded from the side near the hammer on adapted breechloading firearms and manually reset between shots, it still did not solve the problem of gas leakage that plagued early non-muzzleloaders until the invention of brass bullet cartridges.

*Volleygun - A variant of the olden multi-barrel family, the volleygun foregoes single, accurate shots in favor of alpha-striking to saturate the area in lead, having anywhere between 2 to 20 barrels (and you can go well beyond this if your contraption can handle it) and the size ranging anywhere from a pistol to a full-sized artillery piece. As the name describes; it fires all of it's payload in a single volley, basically making it a one-man firing line. This style of weaponry gradually fell out of disuse as more modern firearms were developed (mainly self-loading weapons, which were more reliable and accurate), but is notably still used for the "Metal Storm", a prototype weapon with truly absurd number of gun barrels that go off simultaneously to shred the ever-living fuck out of it's target. The only types still in use today are double barreled shotguns and derringers.

*Superposed load - the disadvantage to using a multi-barreled firearm is that it adds a lot of weight to the firearm. One alternative was to simply stack multiple bullets and charges into the same barrel, and then have the firearm set them off sequentially. The early version of this mechanism was prone to failures, as the bullets were not self-contained and a poor gas seal could result in multiple charges going off, destroying the gun (and the user if unlucky enough) if it was not designed to handle the stress. The King of England was once gifted several such guns and after one exploded killing the guard firing it the whole affair was deemed a very creative attempt at assassination. However, this setup was revived with the invention of caseless bullets and electronic triggers used most prominently in Metal Storm weapons. If combined with multiple barrels, a metal storm weapon can have a bewildering rate of fire. So far the technology is mostly used in multi-shot grenade launchers.

*Bullpup - A bullpup is any weapon where its action is located in the behind the trigger, instead of in front. Bullpups have the advantage of being more compact, whilst still retaining the same ballistic properties of a full-sized weapon as it can use the same barrel length, but the weapon's profile is shorter thanks to the design. However, some of the disadvantages are it not being readily ambidextrous (being that the shell ejection port is directly beside the shooter's face, you cannot switch to a left-hand grip so easily if the situation calls for it. Some bullpups can have ambidextrous controls, but implementing them typically requires tools and is not something you can swap during a fight). One of the more technical problems is weight distribution. Unlike traditional firearms where the weight is typically in the center, allowing both left and right arms to distribute the weight of the gun: most of the bullpup's weight is in the back, so most of the work is being lumped onto the dominant hand, which can cause fatigue faster. The other is poor trigger pull due to the distance from trigger to action, though there are aftermarket kits for many that can mitigate it a good deal. Modern pistols and many SMGs that feed from inside the grip are ''technically'' bullpups, since their magazine and action are behind the trigger and connected by a transfer bar, but they generally aren't counted as such. Despite their on-paper advantages, bullpups have been a hard sell on account of most of their early offerings being either hideously expensive, or finicky garbage, or inciting visceral digust just looking at it, or just straight up not-American enough to make it out of subcommittee at the Pentagon. Their lack of reach with a bayonet is a hindrance (even with modern firearms, room-to-room combat and POW control still use bayonets) while their difficulty with being modular or customizable makes each model a one-trick pony.

*Clip - A clip is a device, used for bundling bullets together for immediate use. Guns cannot use clips by themselves, they have to be loaded into a magazine first to be used by a gun. The most common version were "stripper clips": each clip held about five bullets, and to load the rifle you placed the clip on top of the magazine, then squeezed the bullets off the clip into the magazine. Another type, en bloc, was used by the M1 Garand and held eight bullets in a 2x4 configuration. The entire clip was put in the magazine, with the clip being ejected after being emptied. The last kind is the moon (or half-moon) clip, used specifically for revolvers, which holds bullets in a circular formation for loading the chamber up in one go. Clips are still used today, but exclusively to speed up loading external magazines. Filling external magazines generally requires a small disposable tool, which is included in any ammo lot packaged on stripper clips.

*Speedloader - A speedloader is essentially a clip that has moving parts, usually to aid with holding and/or loading ammunition. Two common types exist. The first is similar to a moon clip in that it holds bullets so that they can all be loaded into a revolver simultaneously, but use a locking mechanism to secure the bullets while they are being carried, then release them once they are loaded into the cylinder. While not as fast as a moon clip, it still makes loading revolvers considerably faster. Another type of speedloader is the magazine loader, which is designed to reduce the spring pressure in a magazine, making it faster and easier to load.

*Magazine - The magazine is part of the weapon that houses and feeds actual ammo into the weapon. In the olden days, many guns had magazines that were built into the weapon itself and were fed using clips of ammo that were loaded after the gun ran out. Built-in magazines, however, severely limited the potential ammunition capacity of guns as they cannot be expanded without significantly making the gun larger and was a pain in the ass to reload (such as in the case of revolvers). To counter this; people designed guns whose magazines were detachable from the gun itself. This allowed people to easily expand the ammo cap of a gun, as they only needed to ensure that the extended magazine will fit into their gun and cycle properly, they no longer needed to re-work the entire structure of the gun to enlarge a built-in magazine. It also greatly increased a person's reload speed, as instead of fumbling around with several clips to ram down the gun: they just had to detach a magazine, pull one out of their vest/bag, load it in (charge the gun if needed), and they're good to go. High-capacity magazines tend to take on weird shapes rather than the standard flat box; the most common variant is the drum magazine, but there are also double drums, caskets, and helicals. Typically the weakest part of any firearm. A large part of the misconceptions of the M16 were related to the fucktarded idea that it should be issued with DISPOSABLE MAGAZINES! They were initially not intended for repeated use, empty the mag. Drop it, crush it under your boot, reload a brand new never used mag. Worked well till some bureaucrat ordered reusing them which alongside some other bureaucrats skipping the chrome lining for the barrel and issuing really shitty ammo made with spare parts caused regular failures. Newer iterations of the magazine have since addressed these issues.

*Belts - The belt is what it is; a long belt filled with bullets, which can either take the form of a cloth belt or linked by metallic chains. Belts are the common loading method of most machine guns, who typically have ammunition capacities well beyond 100 rounds. The reason for this is that it simplifies the operation of the gun (since belts do not require them to be fed to the gun with a mechanism like in traditional magazines) and makes them less prone to malfunctions (with a gun designed to shoot continuously; you wanna make sure that there's less critical moving parts to fuck up as it's firing it's 300th round at the enemy). Belts are also much easier to transport, as the belt can be folded several times to make it more compact, versus a solid magazine. This is mostly because until H&K put out their steel high reliability 5.56 nato mag, most magazines couldn't keep up with the fire rate and were too flimsy(The Soviet counterparts that used magazines, used AK pattern magazines which you can open a beer with and then load into the gun). Pretty much every man issued a M249 with the magwell adapter, will attest to how dire you must be for bullets in the air to use it but it's better then nothing when the belt is out and your buddies can toss you a couple mags rather than sitting on your thumb waiting for someone to drop their gun.

==Ammunition themselves==
To call a round or cartridge "a bullet" would be the equivalent of calling of calling a magazine a clip. Bullets are the projectiles that are or to be launched, while the "round" is the entire thing. To do otherwise would summon the wrath of the /k/ommando.

===Composition of the modern round/cartridge===

*Casing - The metal jacket that houses the propellant, primer, and to an extent the bullet (pardoning telescopic munitions which house the bullet completely.) Usually made from brass, they can be made from steel or plastics (at the detriment of the gun itself, unless designed for such).

*Propellant - Powder that is used to propel the bullet/slug/projectile. In the good ol' days, it used black powder (which was made from charcoal, sulphur, and saltpeter - either potassium nitrate or sodium nitrate), but those clouded the air with black smoke, left soot in the gun, were corrosive, and weren't powerful. Most modern rounds use a double base powder (generally guncotton/nitrocellulose, both dry and in a dissolved form called collodion, and nitroglycerin), may include a variety of stabilizers (to improve shelf life of the round) and deterrents (to prevent the cartridge from being too "hot" and prematurely combusting or shattering the barrel from overpressure). Historically, the British formed their propellant as stiff string called Cordite stuffed into cartridges before the mainstream use of small grains took over. For artillery, they make good use of triple base propellants, which is smokey as hell but burn well with no corrosive fouling.

*Primer - What activates the powder in the rounds themselves. They're percussion caps filled with sensitive explosive compounds (like fulminates, perchlorates, styphnates, tetrazenes,or azides) that ignite upon being hit. Generally a firm dent is enough to activate the munitions. Modern commercial ammo generally use non-corrosive compression sensitive materials, though many governments kept using corrosive primers well into the Cold War.

*Bullets - What people get tripped up on in naming munitions. Being the projectile, anyone loading the munitions has a vast choice of what can be used as a bullet. Generally, lead, steel, and tungsten make the core of the round (thanks to their weight) while the outer coat for the round could be lead (since it is also very malleable), copper, and nickel, though Teflon and certain plastics can also be used. If you're feeling lucky, you can load a variety of other materials into the rounds (or shells for shotguns). Take for example salt, which doesn't kill, but you can mark people and they sting like hell. Alternatively, if you're riot police trying to suppress a crowd without killing them, you'd use bullets or shotgun shells loaded with rubber, foam, wax, plastic, bean bag rounds, or tear gas with reduced propellant. If it hits you in the head or in an unlucky spot, you might die from blunt force trauma but it's less lethal than an actual bullet.

===Types of bullets===
As a short note on bullets, its important to know that just because a bullet can easily penetrate armor doesn't mean its a definite upgrade over everything else. If a hard bullet like the FMJ or AP penetrates the human body and exits in the same shot; its gonna hurt like hell but unless that bullet was in the 12.7mm (.50 caliber) category or it hit something important like a lung or the head; the target has a good possibility to survive through a combination of medical aid, hormones (adrenaline in fight or flight), and willpower (with the side possibility of stimulants), and even still continue to fight onwards if they're that [[Ork|dead 'ard]]. That said, if a 12.7mm round came tearing through your body; it has enough momentum to potentially rupture a good chunk of your insides which is ''very'' lethal, but 12.7mm guns are generally not mainstay (these are guns like the Desert Eagle, M2 Browning, or M82 Barrett), so unless you're a real-life action hero, a turret gunner, or a counter-sniper; its unlikely for you to have access to these behemoths.

Likewise, if a soft bullet like the JHP or SP penetrates the body, then which expands, fragments, and/or tumbles inside; in short internal and external bleeding would be the most urgent of the target's concerns, with ruptured organs and torn muscles leaking like a broken sewage pipe, thus making HP lot more lethal and debilitating. That said, soft bullets fragment easily and body armor proportionate to it's caliber can reliably stop soft round. That said even if armored; the target is still gonna feel the impact of the bullet's force hitting against his body, and that still has the potential of killing someone if the circumstances are right (although its still unreliable).

In the end, a bullet is either specialized where it's only effective against either armored or unarmored targets, or a special combination that renders it effective against both types (although these require an experienced smith to manufacture properly).

*Ball - though if we start talking bullets we need to start with the first bullet: the lead ball, from where we derive the common term for bullets as 'rounds'. It's. . .just a lead ball though, not much to say about it. The balls were hand made, often by soldiers themselves since lead has such a low melting point, with the molds often being unique to each gun. This used largely the same process that was used for [[Sling]] bullets since antiquity. These early bullets would be smaller then the barrel and so would often 'rattle' down the barrel due to the ill fitting, which combined with a lack of riffling would mean early guns were horribly inaccurate. If one used a larger bullet that better fitted the gun, one could use rifling, but this required, (see above) hammering the bullet into place to make sure that there were no gaps.

*Minié ball- The first bullet we would know as a 'bullet', and the first truly distinct from a lead ball. A Minié ball is a conical bullet with a concave hole in the base. When fired the base flared out from the pressure of the blast, letting it engage with the rifling of the gun. This meant that it formed a seal with the barrel making it incredibly accurate, while not needing to be tightly hammered down the barrel. The best of both worlds. Combined with it's large size these things were lethal on the battle field maiming and crippling an entire generation of soldiers during the US civil war.

*Full Metal Jacket (FMJ)- Generally a lead or steel bullet encased in a soft metal such as copper. Acts a sort of lube as well as preventing fouling of the barrel. Depending on design, has a potential to fragment post impact, shredding internal organs.
**Synthetic Jacket- FMJ ammo with a plastic jacket, which has the advantage of reducing cleaning requirements and safer when hitting steel at the cost of various things not really relevant in practice ammo. Currently only in handgun calibers and only made as practice/match ammo (though some hollow points and AP rounds do also use polymer jackets).

*Hollow point (HP)- The hollow section in the center makes the bullet expand on impact, creating a bigger hole in its victim at the expense of being less effective against armored targets. That being said, the decreased penetration also makes it safer to use in situations where over-penetration could be dangerous (e.g. on an aircraft). Certain designs have bladed tips on expansion, causing additional cutting and bleeding too. It was banned from military use by the Hague Convention of 1899, so restricted to police, civilians, and, as of 2017, the United States Armed Forces (The US didn't sign that provision, but previously stuck with FMJ even after mass production became feasible for the sake of NATO compatibility).

*Semi jacketed Hollow point (SJHP)- Same as a hollow point, but has a copper jacket to help reduce fouling.

*Jacketed Hollow Point (JHP)- Same as above, but fully covers the bullet down to the tip.

*Wad cutter (WC)- Flat tipped bullet. Not very aerodynamic but it leaves a big hole to help tell you where you hit the target. Generally for closer range paper targets as they lose velocity very quickly due to the drag on them.

*Semi Wad Cutter (SWC)- Like the wad cutter, but more aerodynamic.

*Armor Piercing (AP)- As name implies, intended to penetrate armor, be it person or equipment. However, this ultimately depends on what gun you're shooting from and what armor you're shooting at. A 9x19mm AP steel round coming from a 4" barrel will do diddly to NIJ Level IIIA, where as a 7.62x51 AP flying out of a 24" barrel will punch through it easy as you please. Modern AP rounds are often jacketed in plastic, but this is purely to protect the barrel (turns out sending something meant to destroy steel through a steel barrel results in a wrecked barrel) and adds no armor piercing quality.

*Saboted light armor penetrator (SLAP)/Saboted bullets- Think of the discarding sabots fired from a M1 Abrams or a saboted slug of a shotgun, but redesigned to be fired like a standard rifle round. The sabot is designed to the grip the rifling until it leaves the barrel, then discard after leaving the barrel. This would leave the penetrator or bullet with a high velocity while providing a sufficient spin to the bullet to keep it stabilized in the air. With a higher density and/or thinner bullet, they can potentially penetrate better than potentially even APHE. Likewise for handcrafted bullets, they provide higher velocity for a smaller bullet in a cartridge intended for a larger caliber. G

*High Explosive incendiary (HEI)- Explosive tipped munition. Generally for larger rounds (think 7.62 and beyond), they typically are meant for non-infantry targets such as light vehicles, light aircraft, and barriers, showering those inside with speeding shrapnel. Despite their implication, they might not work as well as one might think against hard target.

*Armor Piercing Incendiary (API)/Armor Piercing High Explosive (APHE), High Explosive Incendiary Armor Penetration (HEIAP)- Designed with the intentions of penetrating hard targets that HE rounds can't do alone and being anti-material in general, API and HEIAP are the answer to those targets. Generally have sufficient power in and behind the bullet (think Raufoss Mk.211), it will penetrate body armor and light vehicles with awe-inspiring ease.

*Soft point or semi jacketed - Like a FMJ, except the tip is exposed. Designed to have the reduced drag of a FMJ, while expanding upon hitting a target similar to a hollow point. Generally designed for hunters in mind.

*Ballistic tip - Similar in performance to the semi-jacketed bullet, but rather than being a solid core of lead it is designed like a hollow point, but with a plastic tip at the end to reduce drag and ensure expansion.

*Ratshot - made for smaller-caliber guns and is basically birdshot for rifled barrels. The tip is a plastic cap that contains a small amount pellets, typically within the 1.5mm range. As the name implies; the gun is primarily designed for shooting pests and small animals like rodents and grass snakes. You can use it to shoot at larger pests like coyotes or humans, but it's woefully underpowdered for the job.

*Matchgrade - ammo designed primarily for shooting competitions and/or extreme feats of marksmanship. Very expensive compared to popular alternatives and impractical for common use, but you get what you pay for: a cartridge produced with the finest minds R&D could muster, subjected to much more rigorous batch testing and quality control, and guaranteed to shoot a bullet as far and accurately as physics would allow. Rounds alone do not make an accurate firearm however, so the gun it's chambered in has to be well-maintained and designed for precise shooting in mind.

*Tracer - a regular bullet coated in pyrotechnic coating that ignites when fired. These are most commonly used with machineguns (every fifth round in a belt, to be exact) since it's useful for the gunner to accurately see where all his bullets are going, as well as make it clear to any enemies he's suppressing just who he's aiming at. Similarly rifle magazines are often loaded with tracers at certain intervals to provide indication of remaining ammo. Of course, the caveat is "tracer's work both ways" as they can give away your position; this can be mitigated by using "dim" tracers that can only be seen through night vision goggles. Sometimes also used by spotters or commanders to mark a specific target. They can potentially set fire to objects, if the incendiary compound hasn't burned out yet on impact.

*Less-lethals - Commonly known as 'rubber bullets' even though they're made of other substances such as plastic, foam, wax, and beanbag rounds for shotguns these days. Used in riot control and such, where the shooter isn't allowed to kill. The key word is "less", however. They hurt like a sonovabitch and can still kill in the wrong circumstances when they hit you in the head or a sensitive area, though. Some, such as blanks or wax, are also mixed in with real rounds before being loaded in weapons of a firing squad to make the responsibility of an execution unclear amidst the shooters. Airsoft this ain't.

*Silver - Pure fantasy, but common in there to counter supernatural creatures weak to silver. Silver bullets would suffer from many problems that rarely get mentioned in fiction. Chief among these are the cost, that silver shrinks when cast (so it's really hard to get the right size and shape), and that silver is too soft to engage rifling so even if you get the right size accuracy will be terrible. [[Monster Hunter International|More /k/ aligned works]] solve these issues with solutions like sabots (which helps accuracy but still worse than real bullets), ballistic tips made of silver and frangible bullets filled with powdered silver (instead of the typical competitively cheap metal).

===Types of Rounds===
Apart from the traditional type of rounds, here are some unique ones for reference.

*Blanks - What you commonly see loaded in movies. Blanks are basically that; the round has a primer and powder, but the bullet is just a paper or plastic sheet designed to keep the powder in, so you get the sound of a gun going off, but not the damage. That said, blanks ''can'' still kill people, the gasses used to propel the bullet forward are still there (just not launching any bullets); and its powerful enough to liquefy organs and break bones if you were dumb/desperate enough shoot someone with a blank at close range. Movie armorers make a point of demonstrating this with things like fruit before letting anyone touch blank firing guns. This is why instead of blank-firing guns, actors will use flash paper guns at close range for safety. There's also blank ammo specifically designed to make as much noise as possible for the purpose of disorienting and intimidating people in an area. In a military sense blanks do have a use: typically for turning your rifle into a grenade launcher, using the expanding gasses to launch a grenade held at the muzzle by a cup.

*Caseless - An old but futuristic concept, a caseless round has everything required for the bullet to be launched, inside the bullet itself. [[Memes|That's 65% more bullet, per bullet.]]This removes the need for guns to eject spent shell casings after every shot, reducing weight and ammo costs. While this has been pioneered since WW2 and a few prototype examples for it were already developed (like the G11); caseless rounds are still determined to be too unreliable for field combat use in comparison to traditional ammunition, so as of today their use is largely limited (mainly to grenade rounds like the Russian VOG-25 grenade). Their biggest disadvantage is that ammo cases normally transports a large amount of heat out of the weapon, and, if you have paid attention in your physics class, you know that heat always has to go ''somewhere'', so with caseless ammo, it naturally goes into the weapon, making it prone to overheating and dangerous cookoffs, unless the ammo somehow counteracts this, making it more complex and therefore expensive in the process, and if you've at one point in time interacted with any branch of a national government, you know that the word "expensive" usually spells doom for any project that it is attached to.

*Gyrojet - A unique but largely impractical cartridge in the gun circuit, WH40K's famous [[bolter|boltguns]] run on the same concept as the gyrojet. Basically, the bullets are miniature rockets that build up speed as they travel, capable of exceeding the speed of sound after traveling 60ft. While the idea sounds cool; gyrojets were ''required'' to gain minimum distance to achieve their full effect (if you fired at point-blank for example, they didn't really do much), had a design flaw in their propulsion system that made the rockets prone to corkscrewing off-course, and were highly temperamental to environmental conditions, not to mention the costs. At the end the concept was a bust as it didn't really do a lot that couldn't be achieved with traditional small arms for cheaper. Still GeeDubs thought it was nice and became the basis of how boltguns work, where it's largely the same but with more techno-flubdubbery and "because future".

*Magnum - Unlike what vidya gaems portray, magnums aren't really super-mega handguns of death. A magnum round is basically a parent cartridge that's been enlarged so it does more damage due to a combination of larger mass and more powder used (so it flies faster and hits harder), and this can be anything from the .357 magnum handgun round used by revolvers, to the large caliber .338 Lapua and Winchester magnum rounds used for precision sniper rifles.
** Special - An earlier equivalent. The only two to see continued existence are .38 special and .44 special which also went from black powder to smokeless powder, both of which coincidentally have even longer magnum variants; however both are lengthened only as a safety precaution to make them different, as smokeless powder left plenty of room for more powder.

*Overpressured - Designated as "+P", overpressured rounds still uses the same cartridge (unlike the magnum), but is loaded with higher-pressure powder that releases more energy when fired. It sounds like a nice way to up your damage, but guns have a level of pressure they can tolerate, and if your gun isn't designed to do such and you use +P rounds; you run the very high risk of destroying your gun (and the rest of your body if you're that unlucky). There are guns that are proofed to fire +P and +P+ ammo but it typically used in SMGs. Certain batches of surplus ammo will blow up guns because they were made to be used in more robust SMGs and not commercial pistols, poorly stored, or just plain poorly made.

*Subsonic - Rounds designed to shoot slower than the speed of sound to prevent creating the loud cracking sound a projectile makes when it goes beyond 345m/s, making them more stealthy. There's three ways to go about this. The first is to put less powder in the round, or use specialized one that explodes with and imparts less energy (although this may cause problems for self-loading guns, who are not designed to cycle using less powerful ammo). The other is to make the bullet much heavier than usual so the standard powder load doesn't have enough energy to have the bullet break the sound barrier, although this translates to slower projectile speed and lower range, but increased chances of armor penetration as heavier bullets retain energy much more efficiently than lighter ones. The last is a combination of the two methods. Subsonic munitions are primarily used in silenced weapons for their sound-reduction benefits (the most extreme case of which is that only the cycling of the gun can be heard, the gunshot is virtually inaudible), although some take advantage of certain subsonic rounds' heavy bullets and low-energy for defeating armored opponents at close range (as the lower energy translates to lower chances of overpenetration, which AP bullets have a tendency of doing when tearing through non-armored parts of the body).

===Types of shotgun loads===

*Buckshot - The shell is filled with lead or steel pellets, each of which is typically around 15mm each (it ultimately depends on the bore), that spread out once discharged. Poor at penetrating armor and limited effective range comparison to other firearms as the pellets scatter and the pellets are too small to do serious damage individually (Although do note that unlike what the vidya gaems portray; a decent 12G shotgun loaded with buckshot is effective upto 30-50m, not just in point-blank range); but they do cover a fairly large radius and the force of 8-12 pellets impacting against your body will send you tumbling and rolling on the floor in agony, even if they don't penetrate.

*Birdshot - Similar to buckshot and more pellets, but the pellets are smaller (5mm and less, although still depends on the bore). As their name describes; the ammo is designed to pelt down birds by [[Ork|throwing as many bullets at the target and hoping atleast a few of them hit]]. You can use them against non-avian targets aswell and they'll do something, but they don't pack the punch you'd like and don't expect them to dent body armor too much. Their ineffectiveness against human targets [[Wikipedia:Dick Cheney hunting accident|was demonstrated by a (possibly drunk) Vice President of the United States]] when he shot an old guy in the face with some and the only lasting damage was the voice.

*Slug - Instead of multiple pellets; the gun fires a single, heavy lead projectile, similar to how traditional ammo works. Because shotgun barrels are not rifled; slugs do not have the range nor accuracy rifles do, but because of their weight and the shotgun's fairly large caliber; they're fully capable of crushing their way through armor at close range. Slugs are typically used for hunting large game in areas where rifle ammunition isn't allowed due to the risk of overpenetration.

*Breaching - A specialized variant of the slug round, breaching rounds are designed specifically to destroy door locks at extremely close range. Generally composed of very dense powdered steel held together with wax.

*Less-lethals - Designed for riot control where the shooter isn't allowed to kill; the bullet is either made of rubber, paint, or beanbags designed for minimal penetration, while the powder used in the rounds is less to reduce the projectile's velocity. The end result is a bullet designed to simply cause shock and pain to the target in order to incapacitate them long enough to be arrested and not rejoin the fight in the meantime. That said, you're still talking about launching an object at someone at speeds similar to cars speeding on a highway; so hitting vulnerable parts of the body like the head, neck, or ribs can still result in a fatality. On the flip side, anyone wearing bullet-resistant armor won't be affected too much.

*Chain-shot - Typically reserved for olden cannons, the chain-shot is two cannonballs linked with a chain. The spinning contraption was intended to tear through a ship's mast and sails. Obsolete as fuck, but it is still possible to replicate this with shotgun ammo. Basically you tie two pellets or slugs together so that when they're discharged; they're basically flying garrotes. Awesome, but because of how unpredictable bullets are while in flight, it's highly impractical for combat use.

*Flechette - Buckshot, but instead of pellets; the shell is loaded with small metal darts. They achieved better penetration and range than traditional buckshot; but because shotguns aren't really designed as precision weapons; they were highly impractical for combat applications. They destroyed barrels and tended to deflect off really silly things like raindrops.

*Explosive Rounds - The shell contains an slug that explodes upon impact, capable of using anti-armor or anti-personnel shells, basically turning the shotgun into a portable grenade launcher. Not as powerful as the real thing, but invaluable when you need accurate explosions but not the excessive collateral damage or restrictive weight and mass. Has seen some use in rifle rounds on the eastern front of World War II as well as in .50 BMG (officially for use on objects, not people).

*Dragon's Breath - An odd type of ammo. DB shells are loaded with magnesium pellets. When discharged; they create a short but hot burst of fire that burn at temperatures upto 1,600°C. While not really used much for conventional combat due to its status as an incendiary weapon, blasting a person with this at close range will create about the same results as a giant fire-breathing lizard incinerating an unlucky knight to death, hence their name. Also destroys barrels, as dragon's breath burns hotter than the melting point of steel, and close to the melting point of chromium (two of the most common metals used in gun parts).

*Misc - Shotguns aren't really picky with ammo since they are manually operated and don't depend on a gas seal as much; just about ''anything'' can be used for bullets if worse comes to worse/you're bored. Could be lego pieces, could be old hard candy, solid scrap,frozen meat [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-n4bxxn9gA or even glass]. They can also fire flares (but need stronger propellant and an unchoked barrel to avoid getting stuck and melting the barrel). Hell, it can be a Sly Marbo tabletop figure if you could fit him inside a shell and prevent him from disintegrating from the force while exiting the barrel, the choice is yours. (More likely blow up your gun as Sly refuses to die and gives you the finger for trying.) Incidentally this unfastidious in ammunition also means that in a fantasy setting you can basically load anything you want down the barrel of a shotgun to deal with basically any monster that had a weakness. Wooden stakes for vampires, Cold iron for fae, silver for werewolves, the aforementioned dragon breath for flame vulnerable monsters, salt if that's a thing demons hate in your mythos, freeze holy water into ice and you could still likely shoot it with a sabot. Basically shotguns should be the go to for the modern murder hobo.

==Manufacturing of Firearms==

===Brief Overview===

The production of firearms historically speaking has been an, err, interesting path. The first firearms were little more than metal (or whatever other material one so chose) cylinder with with one hole for the ignition of the powder and one for the projectile to be projected. As time passes on manufacturing techniques got more advanced, leading to triggers which frees up one hand from having to push a hot object into the powder. Most used a sort of striker to ignite the powder, be it flint or rope. Around the early to mid 19th century, self-containing cartridges became a possible reality. As such the firearm had to change too, with an action either simply accepting a round into the barrel or an action that would be worked to put it in. Near the end of the 19th century and start of the 20th, auto-loading firearms became possible, but the actions had to become more complex to automatically feed the round by means of either recoil or gas. After that, guns haven't exactly changed too drastically (still major changes) in the current 21st century, pardoning the much higher efficiency of the modern weaponry. The complexity of modern firearms however doesn't interfere with how cheaply they can be produced. As such, there are endless aftermarket gun parts for sale around in places such as the USA.

===DIY===
[[image:.45 ACP ISB SMG.png|thumb|175px|left|.45 ACP ISB SMG designed from a STEN/Sterling, but has many parts that differ. According to the designer "I like to think of it as a cross between an FG-42, a Welrod and a Sten."]]

First and foremost: guns are not toys, and should never be treated as such.

It comes as no secret that one can manufacture their own guns in one's own home so they chose to ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khyber_Pass_copy Just ask the Afghans]). Depending on the skill of the user, the manufacturing tools used, material quality of the parts being used and/or made, design of the gun, and so on, a DIY can range from a explode-in-your-hand zip gun all the way up to high-quality rifles that have a minute of angle (MOA) of 1 or less. All one need is one's [[Ork|imagination]] and a [[Techpriest|firm understanding on how a gun works from the inside out and machining]]. In addition to that, the internet has a broad data base on the knowledge and schematics of guns. Additionally, while online information is enough to give you a rough understanding to create black or smokeless powder to add to hand-loaded cartridges, the proper equipment, environmentally controlled rooms, and ingredient ratios are hard to get right the first time without causing an accident (as attested to the many Chinese and European chemists who historically died while tinkering to get the formulas right). And while you could arguably use firework material or even discarded nitrocellulose film tape instead, most people are going to simply buy their primers, propellants, and projectiles off the shelves to reload their spent casings instead of building a lab in their basement.

[[image:Homemade_gun_exploding.PNG|thumb|150px|right| Careful you might blow your eye out]]
That said, DIY-guns require a decent understanding of physics, chemistry, and mechanical engineering to manufacturer at all, so unless you're a [[Mekboy]] with all the know-wotz implanted in your brain; its highly recommended you read up first, lest your firearm's first unwitting victim is you.

[[image:Stormbolter_IRL.jpg|thumb|223px|right|If a modern rifle was a stormbolter.]]

Examples of DIY are:

*[[Grot Blasta| Zip gun]]: Bottom of the barrel trash guns that are considered too simplistic and bare bones for anyone who isn't a post-apocalyptic raider or somewhat ambitious convict. These guns are rather unique as they require next to no skill to actually make, often incorporating rubber bands, nails, plumbing supplies and zip ties into their construction (hence their name) to craft something that [[counts as]] a gun while firing (sometimes); a common example is the slam-fire shotgun which is literally two pipes (one just wide enough to comfortably fit the shell with the other one wide enough to fit the other pipe while sealed at one end) that are slammed into each over where a fixed nail at the end acts as the firing pin.

*[[Stubber| Standardized design]]: With gun laws around the world becoming ever more strict its little wonder that some would protest such bullshit by creating guides on how to make fully functional semi professional designs in your shed. At one end of the spectrum is the infamous Luty gun which is a family of submachine guns specifically designed by a man named Philip Luty to be buildable by anyone with some basic hand tools in protest to the British government’s delusion that they can prevent criminals from getting guns [[derp| by making guns illegal]]. Said designs (including the related Carlo SMG’s) have been found in the hands of organized crime and guerilla groups in particular lawless or insurgent-prone regions like South America, Palestine, and other developing countries. At the other hand of the spectrum is artisanal gunsmiths like the ones in the Khyber Pass region on the Afghan-Pakistani frontier that clone their gun parts off existing models they got their hands on and disassembled as a [[Standard Template Construct|master template]].

*[[Shoota| Experimental design]]: Every line of guns started out as a experiment somewhere. Some catch on, some don't, some just are there because why the heck not? Want to have dual barrels on your gun? Go for it! Add a counterweight to the gas block so that the recoil is next to nothing? Makes shoot a breeze! Add a round cam to your bolt so you can have a smooth action and reduce wear on the gun? No reason not to! The choices are endless if with time, diligence, and a bit of imagination.

*[[Tau| CNC Manufacturing]]: Avoiding the painstaking effort of machining it by hand [[Machine Spirit|a machine do it for you?]] A Computer numerical control (CNC) machine can easily set the settings in any digitally-connected presses, lathes, mills, saws, and drills to crank out receivers and whatever other parts you need assuming you have the plans on the computer and the materials to be worked. In most countries, it's only necessary to mill some of the components as most firearms have a single designated part which is legally viewed as "the gun" (usually the receiver for rifles and the frame for pistols) and everything else is considered replaceable. The downsides of that CNC are a bit pricey relative to their hand milling machine counterpart. However some go for as low as $1200, which is roughly the same price as a mid-tier intermediate rifle in the USA.

*[[Wraithbone|3D Printing]]: while of questionable quality and legality the same way [[3DPrinting|3D printed]] miniatures are with “official” tabletop gaming tournaments, the additive manufacturing spinoff of [[Casting]] can theoretically enable you to form all but the most stressed parts of a firearm. Barring the barrel, receiver, and firing chamber (besides springs, screws, and attachment pins) of a firearm that are better off milled or stamped from metal, one can theoretically 3D print all the other parts of a gun frame from the stock and grip to the fire control group and trigger. Examples range from small pistols (like the single-shot Liberator) to full power rifles (such as the Amigo Grande clone of the CETME) with all other kinds of intermediary weapons in between. For simplification (unless incorporating an existing gas piston system attached to a pre-made metal barrel), most aren't more advanced than blow-back powered semiautomatics as building a gas-operated piston system with plastic is suicide. In addition, unless built by someone who really knows what they’re doing, actually shooting full-power ammunition out of a 3D printed gun is as risky or worse as firing bullets and shotgun shells out of a plastic flare gun. So far, some 3D printed guns, like the FGC-9 carbine, have been seen in the hands of organized gangs, neo-IRA, or Burmese partisan groups.

==Relations here==
Most fantasy writers tend to exclude firearms. There are a variety of reasons for this, such as:
*Most fantasy comes from [[Tolkien]], who, being a naturalist who largely despised industrialization, did not put guns in Middle-earth, although gunpowder does exist, used by the wizards (Gandalf's Fireworks and Saruman's Fires of Orthanc) and by the orcs.
*Most fantasy (whether copy-catting Tolkien or not) is based on medieval Europe. Depending on your definition of "medieval," Europe did ''technically'' have firearms towards the very end (crude and unreliable ones, but firearms nonetheless), but most authors base their fantasy on earlier medieval Europe.
*As in real life, firearms mean that vulgar, dirty, peasant conscripts can take down the author's Mary Sue noblemen [[knight]]s that trained ''so'' hard in the arts of swordsmanship and melee combat, though if the writer had any historical knowledge they would know that armor can be made "proof" against early firearm bullets (which is partly what spurred the development of full-body plate mail to begin with, as a sidenote) or that a crossbow or longbow can just as easily (in fact, MORE easily due to the general shitty performance of old guns) turn an armored man into swiss cheese.

All that being said, most fantasy authors are much more open to cannons, which became viable on the battlefield long before smaller firearms anyway, especially in naval use (cannons were a huge game changer for sea battles). Some even make room for crude rocket launchers, especially if there is a not-China/not-Korea in their setting. (Laugh, but a big firework rocket will put a sod on fire and ruin his day just fine, doubly so if the morons are in wooden fort.)

Generally speaking, if a world has both the "stock" fantasy races and guns, there will a strict hierarchy of who uses them, from most to least likely:
*[[Dwarves]]: They almost always have the best, most plentiful guns. If only one race gets firearms, it's likely going to be them.
*[[Gnomes]]: As tinkerers, they're frequently on a different tech level from everyone else, including firearms.
*[[Human]]s: Unlike the other races, which are usually an all-or-nothing deal, different human nations have different likelihoods of having guns. Italian and East Asian analogues, as well as the "industrious" or "scientific" nations, are much more likely to have them. Your barbarians, guys keen on knights and chivalry, and the more conservative less so. If the nation is Post Renaissance, expect pike and shot style IRL analogue armies. If your setting has pirates, you pretty much have to have cannons at the very least.
*[[Orc]]s: Orcs would probably love guns if they could actually build some. However, they're usually either incapable of building things or have a hard time organizing themselves to the point that large-scale firearm and powder production is possible. Even so, they could still obtain them them by other means such as fighting as mercenaries for guns and stealing them off the corpses of the fallen and similar. They are higher on the list if they are more like Tolkienian orcs, which can be fairly well organized and "delight in explosions" enough to manufacture their own gunpowder, if only for simple bombs. If Orcs are of the more Chaotic Evil variety then they will barely have crossbows, let alone guns. If Orcs are of the Klingon variety, as in the violent tendencies are normal enough that the civilization can function, then they will LOVE big guns.
*[[Elves]]: Being arrogant pricks, they see guns as crude, inaccurate, foul-smelling contraptions that are no substitute for a bow. However, they'll still use them when necessary, even if they don't like it. That said, elves also had a good reason to not use them, namely most firearms in a fantasy settling are arquebus-type single-shot smoothbore weapons, which are outranged by longbows. Longbows are even decent against most kinds of armor ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Agincourt ask the French]). The main advantage of firearms, even early ones, is ease of use and armor penetration though armor could be made that could stop an early handgun. The main problem with longbows is that it takes years to learn, which is not a problem for long-lived elves. Between a smoothbore handgun and a longbow, the bow is simply a better choice to an elf. The problem of course is that longbows are about as good as bow technology can get while handguns can be improved to rifles, against which bows only have rate of fire as an advantage, then Repeating Rifles, which bows have no advantage at all against. So while Elves may have an advantage to sticking with their longbows well into the age of pike and shot, if they're not careful their Longbows will end up fighting against Springfields and Winchesters and they will end up the worse in that exchange. If tech reaches that point, expect the Archer/Hunter stereotype to turn into Snipers/Mad minute riflemen. And if they're still vehemently opposed to foul-smelling gunpowder, it's possible they could consider air guns (like the Girardoni air rifle used in Europe and by Lewis & Clark's exploratory mission). Assuming they can make a reliable air pump and pressure tank on their own.
*Wood Elves and other Fey/Nature types: They'd rather die than use a firearm, even if the rest of the world has moved onto biplanes, bolt-action rifles, shell-firing cannons, and tanks. If this happens, this means they either have powerful magic (so the actual weapons used are unimportant), they are ''really really'' good shots with a bow, they have much stronger friends (Think like the amish) or they're about to get colonized. That said: the problem they have are not guns themselves, but making them as mass production always has some environmental costs they can not stand for. If they could get their hands on some way to make guns that did not harm the environment in the process, at least anymore than making a sword does, they might go small for small scale fire arm production, but this is rarely explored in fiction.

For how this conservative attitude tends to apply to tech in general for fantasy settings, see [[Medieval Stasis]].

Of course, sci-fi writers almost exclusively use firearms, seeing as how it's THE FUUUUUUTTTTTUUUUURRRREEEE. The exceptions are [[Warhammer 40,000]] and ''[[Dune]]'': although guns are the main combat implement in 40K, close combat is still alive and well, and most armies have at least one elite, close-combat unit wielding weapons that are distinctly not firearms; in ''Dune'', guns are pretty much dead as a weapon of war, as personal-scale force fields stop fast-moving matter (like bullets) from crossing them, but slower matter (like swung knives) can pass through, and if a lasgun blast touches the field, at least one end of the equation comes out "BOOM!!!". Most sci-fi universes do have close combat weapons on the scale we see in modern warfare, though, like in Mass Effect, where, as the Reaper forces (who are basically [[Necron]]s and [[Tyranids]] combined) invade the galaxy, people begin developing their Omnitools to snap-produce a white-hot blade of hard metal above the wearer's hand... And then there's the Krogan, who are too bloodthirsty and too large to properly take cover, so they headbutt things instead of using guns.

== Rules ==

Most fantasy RPGs deal with firearms the way they deal with lots of things that threaten their [[Medieval Stasis]]: terror, suspicion, and shitty rules. If you have the option of using a firearm in most games, it probably has one shot that's weaker than a bow, then takes an entire encounter to reload, and is illegal everywhere in-setting in case you didn't get the hint.

[[D&D#Basic_Dungeons_&_Dragons|BECMI]] Dungeons & Dragons doesn't have rules for firearms, but there were one or two adventure modules that incorporated a crash-landed spaceship, with weapons the players could loot. They were treated as magic wands and staves. A few issues of Dragon magazine offered rules for early cannons and hand cannons.

[[Advanced Dungeons & Dragons]] mentions guns in a tucked-away subsection on importing TSR's Cowboys & Indians game Boot Hill to AD&D (DMG, pg113). Revolver pistols and Gatling guns would do as much damage as a longsword; shotguns as much damage as a two-handed claymore, a (thrown) stick of dynamite does 4x the damage of a short sword. The rules insist "...when gunpowder is brought into the fantasy world it becomes inert junk, ergo, no clever alchemist can duplicate it." To reinforce this concept, the ''Manual of the Planes'' included rules for factors of prime material planes, one of which determined if complex (read: setting destroying) chemical compositions like blackpowder would even work in said plane. If you have any knowledge of chemistry, you may cry now. Notably, [[Greyhawk]] had a [[Murlynd|god of firearms]], and his paladins were basically Wild West sheriffs.

[[Advanced_Dungeons_%26_Dragons#AD.26D_2nd_Edition|Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Second Edition]] included the arquebus in the Players Handbook, where they were depicted as slow, powerful and expensive (500 Gp!). They were also potentially dangerous to the user as the result of a bad roll. It was painfully stressed that the inclusion of firearms in the campaign was the call of the DM. Firearms were a bit more common in the [[Spelljammer]] setting. Moving away from the classic fantasy background, there was the historical campaign sourcebook ''A Mighty Fortress'' that introduced rules for firearms of the 16th and 17th centuries and the ''Masque of the Red Death'' setting for [[Ravenloft]] pushed everything into a gothic horror version of the 1890's.

[[Dungeons_&_Dragons_3rd_Edition|D&D third edition]] has a section on advanced technology (DMG, pp162-164) for Renaissance-era, 20th century, and futuristic weapons. The weapons are more powerful than what can be found among ranged weapons in the Player's Handbook, but also heavier and more expensive and require exotic weapon profiency (despite muzzle loaders taking off because they were much easier to teach than archery). You're better off with magic crossbows. The White Wolf [[Ravenloft]] material also includes them with minor tweaks.

[[Pathfinder]] greatly over complicates guns: they have shorter range than bows without magical items, take longer to reload, and have at least a 1/20 chance to break or explode every time you fire it, and use up more expensive ammunition. As though this wasn't enough, they have a stiff feat tax needed to make use of them and the fact that there's really only one major gun factory in the land, the Gunworks of the small nation of Alkenstar, and they keep most of their guns to themselves. In return they hit harder, have a ''terrifying'' 4x crit modifier, and ''use touch AC'' in the first range increment, effectively ignoring armor when fired close up. A specialized class, the [[gunslinger]], is centered around the use of firearms. [[Lasgun|Energy weapon]] specialists in Iron Gods have it a bit better, though ammo is limited for most of the adventure.

[[Dragonmech]] has guns, sort of kinda, as well. Only instead of using gunpowder, they use steam to propel the bullet like an airsoft gun. they can only be fired once every other round as the pressure needs to build up. There Treated a bit like crossbows that do more damage and can shoot a little further.

[[Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition]] includes a section on firearms in the ''Dungeon Master's Guide''. They hark back to 2nd edition in terms of stats, fitting the general tone of the game, but aren't quite as punishing for a player to learn to use and make. And with the increased emphasis on houseruling and homebrewing, modding the Crossbow Expert feat to work for them seems a simple leap of logic. The "race builder" guide in the back even suggests changing around the dwarf weapon proficiencies to include them! Furthermore, if you want to get your [[Expedition to the Barrier Peaks]] on, it includes some futuristic guns as well, like lasers and disintegrators.

[[Warhammer Fantasy]] features firearms based on early real-world equivalents, like flintlock pistols, musket rifles and the blunderbuss. Although deadly and still on the experimental side, they're also considered very unreliable and are prone to misfire and sometimes even to explode. Rpg-wise, firearms were already included in the core rulebook of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd Edition, but were later somewhat expanded in the Old World Armoury supplement. Some variations that function like firearms were also added as weapons to some Skaven classes in the Old World Bestiary supplement. Generally speaking, firearms require more costs in order to be used, as each shot requires a firearm shot (bullet) and additional gunpowder. Except for the obvious disadvantages of becoming useless once getting wet and longer reloading times, firearms deal more damage than bows and crossbows, with more complex models even having a repeater function, but obviously longer reloading times for each barrel to be loaded again.

[[Iron Kingdoms]] takes full advantage of guns in its steampunk setting. Most of the kingdoms have at least Napoleonic-era muzzle loading rifles. Cygnar is a bit more advanced with revolvers and machine guns, as well as tesla-style lightning guns. The iconic Gun-Mages carve runes onto their bullets to allow them to empower their shooting with spell effects.

{{MedievalWeaponry}}

Captain Titus

2022-05-23T17:05:22Z

2607:FB90:6E70:87D3:6C6E:99BD:B47F:F93E: /* Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II */

{{awesome}}
[[Image:Titus titlescreen.jpg|thumb|250px|right|Making the Ultramarines [[awesome]] again.]]
{{topquote|The Codex Astartes is a set of rules. They guide us, shape us as Ultramarines, teach us to place duty and honour above all. But how we live with those rules is the true test of a Space Marine. And you, have failed.|Captain Titus to Leandros, showing Ward and his failures just how wrong they are}}

'''Captain Titus''' (as of Space Marine II, demoted to Lieutenant), first name generally assumed to be "Motherfucking", is the disgraced Captain of the [[Ultramarines]] Second Company and the protagonist of the vidya [[Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine]]. He is voiced by '''MARK MOTHERFUCKING STRONG!!!!'''

While his immediate fate after the first game is unknown, the trailer for Space Marine 2 confirms he's alive, has crossed the rubicon primaris, and is kicking ass again. He appears to have spent a formative amount of time with the Black Templars, seeing how he has his chainsword chained to his wrist and is ripping the heads off of tyranid warriors.

== Graia ==
When Forgeworld Graia was invaded by Warboss [[Grimskull]] and his [[Ork]] WAAAAGHH!!!, the Imperium, rather annoyed by this, in particular because of fear of losing some Warlord-class [[Titans 40k|Titans]], responded by sending the Ultramarines Second Company, led by Captain Titus. Titus, along with fellow Ultramarines Brother Leandros and Veteran Sergeant Sidonus, proceeded to aid the remaining Imperial Guardsmen led by Second Lieutenant Miranda 'Mira' Nero.

After destroying a captured planetary defense cannon that was shooting down Imperial reinforcements ("Clever of the damned Orks", as Sidonus put it), and furthering the guardsmen's advance, Titus and his companions made their way to Manufactorum Ajakis, where they found an inquisitorial servo skull, which carried a holographic video recording. The recording shows Inquisitor Drogan asking for aid, along with safeguarding an experimental device if he were to die. The Ultramarines then made their way inside the Titan works where they found the Titan ''Invictus'', intact but abandoned, and Drogan. Drogan explained that he needed to retrieve the power source of the experimental device from its chamber deep beneath the Manufactorum. They then proceeded to retrieve the power source, whilst also killing invading Orks and evading Grimskull himself.

As Titus obtained the power source, its instability made the entire room collapse. Titus, however, ''somehow'' survived and placed the power source into its canister. After escaping the sewers and reuniting with his comrades, they rendez-voused with Drogan in a ruined plaza. Drogan expressed surprise that Titus survived, since the power source was composed of [[Warp]] energy. Drogan then explains that during his time on Graia, he created a weapon known as the 'Psychic Scourge' in hopes of helping the Imperium's war against xenos, whilst also experimenting on Warp energy. The weapon's effect are described in audio logs as blowing up heads of selected Xenos (confirmed by testing on [[Orks]], [[Eldar]], [[Tyranids]] and even [[Tau]]).

Titus and friends fought their way to the Inquisitor's lab (both on their feet and in Valkyries), then through it, to the Psychic Scourge's firing station (blowing up all the Inquisition servoturrets in the process), where they jammed the Power Source in and turned it on. Unfortunately, the Psychic Scourge opened a bunch of Chaos portals instead of killing the Orks like advertised. Well, the Warboss got jumped by Bloodletters, but still... Sorcerer Lord [[Nemeroth]] showed up and blasted the Ultramarines with psyker power, all while declaring Drogan a long-dead puppet possessed by a handy daemon; but Titus resisted like a boss long enough for Grimskull to reappear and pull Nemeroth off the scene along with himself. Titus then fought his way past Bloodletters, Chaos Havoc Marines, and even more Orks to meet up with Mira's guardsmen.

After dueling with Warboss Grimskull (yes, a Sorcerer in Terminator Armour had not taken out the guy, because he was not finished with the Space Marine) and blowing up the big Ork's head with a [[plasma pistol]] ([[Awesome|because the Marine was finished with him]]), Titus returned to the manufactorum to power up the Titan. After he put the Power Source inside the giant death machine, the Titan's cannon blew the fuck out of the Orbital Spire with the big Chaos portal on top, before Nemeroth could bring in his ships. Titus gave the Power Source to Sidonus, but then Nemeroth teleport-snuck up behind them and [[Rape|rapes]] Sidonus with lightning claws. This makes Titus rage harder than fa/tg/uys in a Matt Ward thread, but Nemeroth just grabs the Power Source and teleports away like the Chaos pussy he is.

Still brimming with rage, Titus jumped off the manufactorum, met up with some [[Blood Ravens|Blud Rehvens]] who were practicing their [[Indrick Boreale|Steel Rehn]], and blasted his way across a bridge with a ton of Chaos Marines on it. Then he grabbed the same Thunderhawk he had jumped off and chased Nemeroth to the Orbital Spire (which was still floating somehow). Nemeroth tried to use the Power Source to turn into a daemon prince, [[Awesome|but Titus just bum-rushed the Chaos pansy off the Orbital Spire and beat him to death in freefall. Using the manly power of his hands, Titus crushed both the Sorcerer Lord's face and the Power Source, which exploded, and then he landed inside a flying Thunderhawk.]]

The next morning Titus is getting some much needed shut-eye as the Ultramarines, Blood Ravens, and Mira's guardsmen clean up the last tiny remnants of Nemeroth's invaders. Unfortunately, Titus wakes up to find Leandros has called the Inquisition on Titus. Wait... Didn't Leandros quote the Codex as Chaos allegiance causing Warp resistance, not the other way around? [[Fail|Logical fallacy! *faceplam*]] The Inquisitor clearly doesn't believe Leandros but has to arrest Titus anyway, so Titus tells Leandros that Guilliman's Codex is just guidelines and tactics, and that '''Leandros fails as a Space Marine because he's a blind [[Matt Ward|spiritual-liege-worshiping]] bitch who can't think for himself.''' Then Titus climbs aboard the Inquisition ship and flies off to <s>get painfully investigated for Heresy</s> save another day for the Emprah.

Ironically, in one of the Horus Heresy novels, Roboute Guilliman admits that while the Codex is an excellent work of strategic and tactical brilliance, it does not qualify as a replacement for the soldier's ability to independently act in the field (read: brains). So Titus was in fact holding to the Codex as Guilliman intended and is far more true to it than Leandros, making Leandros a freakin' [[Heresy|heretic]]. In other words, it's a scathing condemnation of [[Matt Ward|He who must never be named]] as a whole.

Double Irony, the Codex states if a marine suspects that one of his brothers has fallen to Chaos he should go to the Companies' Chaplain and Librarian, as it is their jobs. In other words, Leandros violated the Codex while claiming he's following it. [[Derp]]! Titus punishment was demotion to Lieutenant for breaking protocol. So we can assume Leandros has been knocked down to the reserves or Scout Companies or forced on a one man Penitent Crusades by Space Marine 2. Maybe even kicked out of the Ultramarines and forced to work as a Black Shield.

== Relationships with characters ==
[[File:Mira.jpg|200px|right|thumb|"Hey there, Captain"]]
* '''Sidonus''' - Titus regarded Sidonus as his 'most trusted battle-brother' and closest friend. Sidonus in return shared this friendship with him. Unlike Leandros, who was quickly suspecting Titus of chaos corruption, Sidonus never suspected or even accused Titus of taint. When Sidonus got impaled with extreme prejudice by Nemeroth, Titus actually did a Big No! ([http://youtu.be/kvk9uZeorCE Which is parodied here]), and swore vengeance. Titus finally got revenge when he killed Nemeroth.
* '''Leandros''' - Titus is disappointed by Leandros' strict adherence to the Codex Astartes, but nonetheless tolerates his behavior due to Titus seeing it as immaturity. Leandros originally saw Titus as an inspiration, but his violations to the Codex Astartes and his supposed Chaos taint caused Leandros to suspect his captain. When Leandros gives Titus to the Inquisition, Titus tells him that his devotion to the Codex means he has failed to truly become a Space Marine because he cannot see past the Codex' text to the battlefield it is applied to. We last see Leandros unable to look Titus in the eye like the pussy Codex-[[Word Bearers|worshiper]] he is as the latter leaves with the Inquisitor.
* '''Second Lieutenant Miranda Nero''' - While there isn't any real action between her and Captain Titus and they spend the game focusing on their duties, there are very small hints that they do have some feelings for each other. Titus affectionately calls her Mira, instead of her formal name - that said, she always, ''always'' goes by Mira in the game. However, Mira urged Titus to try and resist the authority of the Inquisition when they accused him of Chaos taint, but Titus decided to surrender himself to them so that they wouldn't hurt Mira and his battle-brothers. Of course these hints are all vague and shouldn't be taken seriously (which cannot be said the same for [[Rule 34]] fanboys). It's much more likely that it's mutual respect due to the fact that Titus is a Space Marine and Mira earned his respect by taking charge and holding out against the Orks for so long. Besides, it's not like Space Marines have much in the way of sex drive (Have you forgotten [[Lukas the Trickster]]?). (BUT what woman could resist falling for a [[Space Marines|hunk genetically engineered by the science of the EMPRAHH]]?)
* '''Inquisitor Drogan''' - Titus is the only Marine in the game who trusts Drogan, and actually shows concern about the Inquisitor's near-fatal wounds, thinking it would be a shame to lose such a powerful ally. Of course, Drogan is a corpse being puppeted by a daemon.
* '''[[Warboss Grimskull]]''' - Contrary to most Marines, Titus sees the Warboss as an enemy that must be put down, but not to the extent that he's all zealous about it - In fact, he never underestimates the danger that the rather cunning Warboss presents, but doesn't put the Warboss down before much, much later, because the Ork isn't a top priority. Sure, he messes up the Captain's plans from time to time, but then again, the Marines' only job is to help liberate the planet (with a side quest for a certain Inquisitor coming popping up later), but going after the Warboss would consume so many resources that it wouldn't be worth it. In fact, after the Chaos invasion was started, Grimskull takes a backseat, trying to hold together his WAAAGH!, but failing to do so, and making a last stand against the Captain, trying to take him down to get revenge... Unfortunately, he had run out of patience for the Warboss. [[Blam|The results are obvious.]]
* '''[[Nemeroth]]''' - A fucking huge Chaos Sorcerer of Chaos Undivided. Through a bit of [[Just as Planned]] and similar douchbaggery, the Sorcerer arrive on Graia to use an artefact on the planet to simultaneously get his army into Realspace and to become even more fuckhueg. While Titus regards Nemeroth with the same kind of professionalism as he did with Grimskull, Nemeroth has much interest in the Captain, bordering to some sort of obsession. He frequently addresses him as "brother", which can mean one of many things (Brother, as in "fellow Marine", or making the point that the Captain might be susceptible to the forces of Chaos). Nemeroth also takes note of Titus' ability to "[[Promotions|resist his touch]]", claiming that the Captain is something special, as he is almost immune to Chaos in general. Even after Titus tells him to fuck off back to the Warp and stop his "brother"-bullshit, Nemeroth still addresses him as brother, and seems to know something about the Captain, which will bite him in the ass later... [[Just as Planned|Just according to keikaku]]. He also seems to have more [[Bloodletters]] at his disposal than Chaos Marines, [[Fail|despite being a Sorcerer.]]

== Reasons why Titus is such a Badass ==
[[File:Inquisitor Titus.jpg|330px|right|thumb|Leandros was wrong]]
* He's a fucking Space Marine. What did you expect?
** He's a fucking Space Marine Captain. Of the greatest cha{{BLAM}}
* He hails from Terra, a well-policed area known as Miami
* Women want him and men want to be him. Yeah baby!
* He was one of the VERY few Ultramarines characters prior to the 8th Edition rework that was multidimensional, not an arrogant ass, and a generally cool guy who cared about protecting others.
* He is one of very few, repeat, '''VERY''' few Ultramarines that <s>actually offs</s> gives the Codex Astartes proportionate importance. He states that the Codex is <s>just a set of rules and guidelines</s> a useful source of tactical and moral guidance, but should not be followed blindly, and how they choose to live by it is what makes them Space Marines.(The Codex is more what you call guidelines than actual rules.)
** The irony is that [[Roboute Guilliman]] would love Titus and be pissed with the rest of the chapter. Now that Robby's back, he'd probably want to talk to Titus. Grandpa Smurf being the kind of guy who reads debriefings to form his own opinion. Guilliman also would be able to see Titus is lacking in the areas of teamwork, leadership and tactics. So as a compromise for the Inquisition. He would reassign Titus to redeem himself in service to the [[Deathwatch]]. He may even be demoted to serve as leader of a [[Kill Team]].
** His interpretation of the Codex Astartes falls closer to that of the [[Raptors (Chapter)]], although the way that it is implemented relies on his own badassery.
* Unlike the majority of his chapter, Titus actually improvises when dealing with the enemy, be it Ork or Chaos, and is willing to employ somewhat unorthodox tactics to get the job done.
** Examples: His solution to his Thunderhawk being unable to land safely due to ork gun batteries is to simply use jump packs and descend down to the ork Kill Krooza (armed with nothing but his combat knife, his bolt pistol and his GIANT CERAMITE BALLS no less), and then blowing said krooza's bridge with its own dorsal gun battery (this tactic is similar to that favored by the [[Angry Marines]], but with less collateral damage); When the Orks were trying to use a Titan-sized laser weapon hanging from a crane to get into a Forge, Titus' way to deal with this was, of course, to drop the thing on the Orks; When an Imperial Warlord Titan gets ready to go shoot the Chaos-controlled orbital spire, two [[Blight Drone|Blight Drones]] and Chaos psyker sorcerers try to shut it down before it's ready. [[Awesome|Titus' solution is to surf the fucking Titan and kill them, without cover no less.]]
*** In short, Titus [[gets shit done]].
** Unlike [[Uriel Ventris]], Titus does this only when it is necessary. As opposed to trying to make some sort of point about the Codex Astartes.
* As said above, he killed thousands of enemies by himself and also with only Sidonus and Leandros to aid him.
* His reaction to a one-on-one challenge by a Daemon Prince? Body-tackle it off the edge of a kilometers-tall orbital spire and fight it while in free-fall, proceed to single-handedly beat the snot out of the partially daemonized Nemeroth.. and finally killing it by crushing the Daemon Prince's head ''with his bare hands while still in free-fall'' (unlike some cock-sure moron who got his body possessed by another Daemon Prince who's name is [[Ultramarines:The Movie|Severus]], not the [[Warhammer 40,000: Fire_Warrior|OTHER Severus]].)
* He's voiced by '''MARK STRONG !!!!'''. At least in the first game; time will tell if the new VA can do him justice.
* He's nice to the Imperial Guard he meets, even the lowest ranking Guardsmen, which can't be said about most high-ranking Imperials. He's, in fact, nicer to Guardsmen than some of their own commanders.
* He is surprisingly humble, attributing his successes to the Emperor's will, seeing himself as simply being an instrument of that will. This is a refreshing contrast to the stereotype of Ultramarines taking their label as the "Imperium's favored sons" for granted.
* He had the balls to stand up to the goddamn Inquisition, backed by four Black Templars. He willingly gives himself up to the Inquisition in order to save his friends and his chapter. Unlike Leandros, who betrayed his brother through his [[Matt Ward|ignorant adherence to the Codex]].
* He kinda looks like your dad.
* He and his few men were responsible in 5 minutes for more bad guy deaths than the entire Ultramarine chapter history.
* He gives zero to little fucks about standard protocol when there is a job to be done.
* He surfs a Warlord Titan
** No, really, he ''surfs'' on a motherfucking '''Warlord Titan'''. ''While blasting [[Blight Drone|plague drones]]''.
* Show me anything that solos groups of 10+ plus Bloodletters
** [[Eliphas|Eliphas the Inheritor]].
** [[Kaldor_Draigo|Kaldor Draigo]].
* His entire speech at the end of the game to Leandros is basically telling Matt Ward that he has failed as a writer.
**Several fans consider Titus to be the best balance between [[Matt Ward|Matt Ward's]] [[Lawful Stupid]] [[Spiritual Liege]] fan-wankery over the [[Codex Astartes]] and [[Graham McNeill|Graham McNeill's]] "the Codex Astartes is useless and cool Space Marines don't follow it" [[Chaotic Stupid]] [[Mary Sue]] special snowflake [[Uriel Ventris]].
* As of the recent space marine update, he has his own miniature model head alongside Sidonus (via sternguard squad).
[[File:Sternguard.jpg|200px|thumb|right|The minis in question. Our heroes are on the far right]]
* The future games starring him would have had him escape, become a renegade Astartes, go on a Jack Bauer killing spree across the galaxy in the name of the Emprah, and finally returning to head his ''own chapter'', presumably to beat some sense into Leandros and shame the Inquisition. Awesome.
** If he does become a Chapter Master, he will probably smack sense back into the rest of the Adeptus Astartes and, from there, the rest of the Imperium. Then mankind will steamroll the rest of the galaxy.
* Because the developers knew their audience, he's not a meaty slab of walking tank able to take any assault and come out unscathed, and on any difficulty above normal the game is genuinely challenging and requires [[Reasonable Marines|more strategy]] than simply wading in and killing everything. This is awesome for two reasons. The first is that it does the enemies of the Imperium full justice instead of just making them easily destroyable blood-juice-boxes, e.g. a large enough group of [[Bloodletter|Bloodletters]] is easily capable of overpowering you if you don't fight them in the right way. The second is that enemies that require you to ''think'' to take down are about ten times more satisfying to fight. Not to mention you're reminded that these enemies you have to actually work to defeat are fought by the Imperial Guard, too. Balls of adamantium the size of universes.

== ANGRY MARINE? ==
Damn straight. Titus thinks the Codex is for pussies, uses authentic [[Angry Marines|Angry Marine]] tactics such as fucking orks to death with his chainsword, and even gets an Angry Purity Seal which gives him an Angryness Meter. The latter is canon. He is also fueled by violence and thus regenerates health by murdering Orks to death in particularly messy ways. His basic equivalent of a medkit? Punching gretchin into bloody mist. His way of finishing off a Nob? Either jamming a chainsword through his mouth, or pinning its foot with an axe and tearing said mouth open with his bare hands. Not to mention he also has the lesser known Angry marine trait, namely a resistance to the warp.

Obviously at some point, maybe during a rare joint operation, some geneseed got mixed up and the Ultramarines got some Angry Marine geneseed, and the Angry marines got some Ultramarine. Equally obvious, when the angry geneseed was used by the Ultramarines most of there recruits blew up unable to contain THE SHEER FURY that is the angry marines, and when the angry marines used the Ultramarine geneseed they were like "WHAT THE FUCK IS UP WITH THIS WEAK ASS SHIT?" and their recruits equally failed as marines, but may have become serfs or something. Titus just lucked out in being able to take the angry geneseed, though you have to wonder what the Angry Marine version of Titus, an Angry Marine with Ultra traits, would be like.

I guess we know where the Inquisition is sending him.

== SERVANT OF KHORNE?! ==
Actually he's probably just being corrupted by Khorne and doesn't know it. His resistance to the warp is similar to the psychic immunity Khorne gives to his followers (see [[Kharn]], who really is a swell chap) and he rejuvenates himself by killing things in RIP AND TEAR fashion and by bathing himself in blood ([[Khornate_Knights|although all this is also a hallmark of the most pure and incorruptible of the Imperiums defenders]]). Also, he runs on anger, like all Khornate Chaos Marines. And can tap into it to go into what is pretty much a [[Berserker]]'s rage. Oh yeah, and he's fighting a douchebag Sorcerer of Tzeentch's. <s>Nemeroth isn't Tzeentch, he's one of those wishy-washy "unaligned" pussies.</s> Most Undivided Chaos sorcerers have heavy leanings towards Tzeentch anyway.
Or, he was just a hollow-guy.

Probably more relevant is one of the quotes he gives you on death: "Success is measured in blood: yours or your enemy's." Which, while the Imperium is certainly not opposed so some good old fashioned bloodshed, that sounds pretty Khornate.

Note: if he's corrupted this way, than what does that make the Black Templars?
PS: Remember, there's some that get immunity to the effects of the warp. Grey Knights are an example. He might just be a [[Blank]] who managed to avoid getting skullfucked by the Black Ships. You never see any Librarians willingly hanging around the guy, after all. Then again serving long enough to become a captain means he would have been around psykers long enough for them to have notice he was a blank. So we could just kept it to sheer willpower combine the fact he's emotionally stable means warp stuff wouldn't harm him as much.

It's possible he's a pariah, instead of a blank, since he's shown to be partially affected by the powers of the warp (like when the power source literally backfired in his face and just knocked him out cold when it should very easily have atomized him). Of course, it is important to remember that the Warp is entirely a matter of willpower. The device itself (especially its backlash) had no will. Compare that to the willpower of a Space Marine captain's determination to win. Yeah. So, in that way, he saved himself through sheer badassery. Literally. Which if you think about it fits the game (and canon in general) pretty well.

"A true man may flinch away its embrace, if he is stalwart, and he girds his soul with the armour of contempt.” - [[Ravenor|Gideon Ravenor]]

== '''Titus: The [[Living Saint]]!''' ==
Titus was undergoing apotheosis and becoming a [[Living Saint]]! Think about it. He suddenly is surrounded by a golden glow (like Living Saints), he gets a full heal (like Living Saints' ability to resurrect), his attacks become more powerful (Empowered by the Emprah!), and he has an ever growing resistance to the Warp. Nemroth even points out that he has been "touched by the Warp", yet its Titus. He doesn't have even an iota of Chaos corruption. He killed a Chaos Champion, '''WITH HIS BARE EMPEROR BLESSED HANDS!'''. His fury was not the unrestrained rage of Khorne (he would have glowed red), he was channeling '''THE EMPEROR'S HOLY WRATH!!''' He wasn't a full Living Saint yet, but he was well on his way to becoming another [[Greater Daemon]] of the Emperor!

== What would have happened in Space Marine 2 & 3 ==
“I had some big plans for Titus,” van Lierop said. “The second part of his story was to focus on a ‘Titus Unleashed’ plot—basically there were forces arrayed against him that would see his loyalty to the Adeptus Astartes pushed to its limit, and his reaction would be to kind of ‘[[Heresy|go rogue]],’ and we'd see a different Titus, not quite as in control as we saw him in Space Marine. He would be kicked out as a consequence—exiled, which would basically be a death sentence for him.” ([[Awesome|or a ticket to the Deathwatch as a Blackshield]])

The first game showed us what it looked like when a Space Marine was fighting in a disciplined manner, and the second game would have opened the door for a slightly wilder version of the character. That’s not the end, though.

“He would survive, and come back even stronger in the third game, where other Space Marines still loyal to him would rally around him and he'd return to ‘clean house,’ but as the head of a [[Astral Claws|brand new Chapter]] that we would build around him,” van Lierop continued.

So what kept this from happening?

“Sadly, THQ was already starting to fall apart by then and it became clear that Space Marine 2 wasn't going to happen. I was pretty heartbroken about that,” he said. “But that's the way the business works. In the end I'm glad things turned out the way they did, because I think if the end hadn't been so hard, I might not have sought out a better way. And Hinterland might not have ever happened.”

=== [[Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II]] ===
[[File:Titus 2021.png|800px|thumb|center|Titus, now a Primaris Lieutenant]]

Come December 2021, and a [[Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II|sequel]] under Focus Home Interactive and Saber Interactive has been announced. Trailer shows Captain Titus returning but as a [[Primaris Lieutenant]] and saving a bunch of guardsmen from a horde of Tyranids. We can safely assume that whatever plans Lierop had for him have been scrapped. Judging by Titus' services studs, he is now 400 years old or so. Eagle eyed viewers can also see that he has a small inquisitorial medallion (not a rosette, obvs) on his armour, suggesting that he did them some kind of service after his arrest on Graia as a deal.

== Subject of Canon ==
Captain Titus is considered canon by Black Library writer Nick Kyme. In the audiobook ''Veil of Darkness'' [[Cato Sicarius]] is walking in the [[Macragge]] Hall of Heroes, and one of the memorial statues is labeled "Captain Titus". Conveniently the video game itself doesn't timestamp itself at any point, only taking place sometime after "the Aurelian Crusade". Since there were actually three Aurelian Crusades, one for each ''Dawn of War II'' game, <s>we could theorize that Captain Titus fights on Graia sometime between ''DoW II'' and ''Chaos Rising''.</s>
Only we really can't because the Blood Raven said "None shall find us wanting, Ultramarine", which is their battle cry post-Retribution.

As per the release of the trailer for Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, Titus is now officially canon.

The best way to interpret this is that the statue belongs to some other Captain Titus from earlier in the Chapter's history. A chance to finagle this is that Titus was Acting Captain at Graia while Sicarius was overseeing [[Uriel Ventris]]'s trial for codex breach and he was serving with the Black Templars during the events that took place between the [[Daemonculaba]] incident and before Chapter Master [[Marneus Calgar]] became Primaris. With a final adjustment of Sevastus Acheran, Cato's successor to Second Company Captain as the latter was missing in the warp before the [[Plague Wars]], being a senior sergeant to Titus but being wounded while Graia was being invaded and thus being the proper successor to the Second Company as Titus becomes a lieutenant after returning with Sicarius out of the way and promoted to the [[Victrix Guard]].

==Videos Starring Captain Titus ==
*[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rh-NkuAtHW8 This Is Officially Canon.]
*[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvk9uZeorCE just...no.]
{{Template:Marines-Characters}}

[[Category:Awesome]]

BattleMech

2022-05-23T16:54:33Z

2607:FB90:6E70:87D3:6C6E:99BD:B47F:F93E: /* Other */

'''BattleMechs''' are [[Mecha|legged armored fighting vehicles]] in the [[BattleTech]] Universe. Standing between 8 and 14 meters tall and heavily armed and armored, they are the main heavy ground combat vehicles. A person who operates a BattleMech is known as a MechWarrior.

BattleMechs are what Starfleet Starships are to [[Star Trek]], [[Lightsaber]]s are to [[Star Wars]] and [[Space Marines]] are to [[Warhammer 40,000]]. They are the specific '''Battle'''field '''Tech'''nology that the setting is named for.
== History ==
The BattleMech is the end result of the Myomer technology's use by IndustrialMechs; the Terran Hegemony saw that on some backwater worlds and colonies that some desperate garrisons would use IndustrialMechs for back-line combat, and wanted to see if the technology was actually viable for long-term combat operations. The Hegemony placed Dr. Gregory Atlas, one of the finest scientists of the time, in charge of the project, as he and an army of Hegemony scientists worked to refine the tech for military purposes. The results of these top-secret projects came the tests of the ''[[Mackie]]'' of the 2439, which worked so well that the Hegemony almost immediately chose to put it into production, completely changing the face of warfare from that point on. The Hegemony, naturally, tried to keep this shit under wraps for quite some time, trying to amass as many of them as possible before finally getting the chance to use them against the [[Draconis Combine]] in 2443, completely devastating the Kurita forces save for one tank, who told the greater Inner Sphere community of this miraculous and terrifying new tech. Naturally, everyone and their grandma tried to get their hands on it, taking less than 12 years before the Lyran Commonwealth's daring raid on the planet of Hesperus II received the plans, and therefor the rest of the Inner Sphere began to make their own mechs for warfare, and the Age of War got some great use out of the new tech, which ironically was actually only a prelude to the real zenith of BattleMech development; the birth of the [[Star League]].

The Star League meant the end of the Great Houses playing grab-ass for power (at least, officially) and that all military technology was in the hands of a single monolithic power in relative peace and prosperity, and therefor development of the tech skyrocketed. The invention of Jump Jets, Gauss Rifles, the LAM mech, and myriad electronic and internal improvements, as well as a massive explosion of Mech variants meant that as humanity saw it's peak, so did the BattleMech, even if it only lasted a few hundred years. All of this however came to a grinding halt with the sudden slaying of First Lord John Nicholas II by Stefan Amaris and his Amaris Civil War, where the SLDF had to use everything at it's disposal to gain vengeance for their fallen lord. This stagnation was further exacerbated by the SLDF largely fucking off to the Deep Periphery where nobody would see them again for almost 500 years, leading directly in to the Succession Wars.

The Succession Wars sent humanity on an increasing backslide of technological progress, and the BattleMech suffered dearly for it, to the point that whole classes of Mech almost went extinct due to the sheer level of cost, lack of resources, and plain old lost plans and factories that ultimately wiped scores of Mechs from battlefields across the Inner Sphere. This was only halted 28 years into the 31st century with an enterprising [[Free Worlds League|Free Worlder]]'s unbelievable discovery on the devastated world of Helm; the cave system that spanned much of the underground around the ruined world's old capital held an amazing discovery of a massive Star League-era cache of information stored deep underground that housed life-changing blueprints, schematics of mechs long thought to be rumor or museum pieces, exact material needs, and weapons that hadn't been seen in the Inner Sphere for decades. Naturally, [[ComStar]] tried to get their grubby paws on it all with the intention to destroy it, but the Mercenaries that'd been granted access to the world of Helm fought them off and aggressively disseminated copies of the information throughout the Inner Sphere in order to get back at ComStar for blaming them for war crimes. This set off a new renaissance of development of the technology.

And then the Clans showed up and changed everything with what they had been working on with all that time out in the boondocks.

== The utility of a BattleMech ==
An often asked question (usually by smartasses in the BattleTech general threads) is just how useful a Mech is in a universe that is harder science-fiction than say, [[Star Wars]] or [[40k]], given that they share a universe with Tanks, Hovertanks, AeroSpace Fighters, and Powered Armor. The Answer is largely in both the way wars are fought in BattleTech, and also in performance per C-Bill.

The BattleMech has many advantages that Tanks and Fighters simply can't match in open combat; while an AeroSpace Fighter can absolutely fly better and move faster than any Mech, it's expensive, more resource intensive to use in ground warfare, and is generally better served in upper atmosphere trying to tie up DropShips and Bombers and the like. The Tank is venerable, cheap, mounts a lot of the same guns as a Mech, and hasn't been completely replaced by them and probably never will be, but even with the advances in Fission technology, many tanks are still dependent on comparatively archaic fuel sources and design methods (such as structural weakpoints set towards the roof of the tank that suddenly became much less forgivable in a time of big stompy mechs), and ultimately a devotion to how nice the terrain plays that keep them limited to support or artillery roles. The BattleMech, any of them at all, might be expensive and a big target, but they don't have to worry that much about fueling, all of their armaments are usually far more numerous and pack a much more painful punch than anything else can safely carry, and they have the very useful ability to effectively negate most difficult terrain due to their sheer size, weight, and ability to move in a humanlike fashion, and if they happen to run into some they can't immediately pass through, a good majority of Mechs can simply use Jump Jets to get around them. Most can even get shot to pieces and still run if they manage to keep all the vital shit together, though the company the MechWarrior works for will probably be out a good amount of C-Bills and time for repairs.

And regarding the warfare, BattleTech's universe has a mutually agreed upon set of rules of warfare in the Inner Sphere and also from the Clans that typically ensures that something that can hit a target hard, fast, coordinate with other units, and then protect that position better than the other side could, often many at a time, is more valuable than just firepower or maneuverability. Tanks might be able to do that if you sent a ''bunch'' of them, and as cool as squadrons of Aerospace Fighters can be, neither are built to handle that kind of combat with clear ground objectives that they must take and then hold like a lance of four Mechs, usually all around the same size and with varied payload description, could do on their own. There is a ''reason'' everyone who didn't have the tech at the time wanted one; it saves money in the long run to cut the logistics of a whole company of soldiers and tanks' and fighters' firepower down into four giant robots and their pilots that can shrug off (or at least not be downed by) being shot with an artillery cannon.

Also it's the [[AWESOME|fucking tightest shit imaginable]], and if you seriously need to ask the question "why would someone want to pilot a giant robot" then I'm afraid this game just isn't for you.

== BattleMech Systems ==
{{topquote|Reactor online. Sensors online. Weapons online. All systems nominal.|A typical BattleMech cockpit computer’s startup sequence - hyping MechWarrior video gamers since 1989}}

Stemming from their origins from jury-rigged IndustrialMechs being armed for combat by rear line soldiers, BattleMechs share the same general components as their civilian brethren. What makes the former different from the latter is their chassis parts and sensors are generally bulkier, cheaper, and less resistant to combat damage. Additionally, the weapons and piloting mechanisms they carry aren't dedicated to combat and are either less powerful or less responsive. Some BattleMech subsystems are detailed further below.

=== Weaponry ===
* '''Lasers''': Basic directed energy weapon. They are fairly cheap, do fairly consistent damage and since they're powered by the mech's reactor they don't need ammo. That said while they do burn into your enemies' armor, they also generate waste heat.
**'''Small Laser''': Low power and low range, often used on light mechs or as "we got half a ton to spare, why not?" add ons to heavier ones.
**'''Medium Laser''': Your basic laser gun.
**'''Large Laser;''': Heavier, long range laser.
**'''Pulse Laser''': Can be small, medium or large. As opposed to a single blast, Pulse Lasers fire several successive times in order to increase damage, though the heat they generate is much higher on average than the normal variants.
* '''Autocannons''': Abbreviated as ''AC''. An enormous machine gun/cannon that fires explosive shells in short bursts. Autocannons have variable ammo caliber sizes and are mostly grouped into categories of default damage numbers. While they don't generate much heat and are often times much better at taking armor off a Mech, they're also dependent on their hard ranges of minimum distance, requiring a lot of maneuvering to make work, and of course they can only carry a limited amount of ammunition.
** '''Autocannon/2''' - The sniper rifle of Autocannons. While it's next to useless in a close-range firefight, it's good at taking potshots from a distance that even LRMs can't reach. Almost anything that has one usually loads up on special munitions to offset the loss of damage.
** '''Autocannon/5''' - Arguably the first Autocannon ever made, it does respectable but not especially impressive damage at longer ranges, and can open just the right armor type in a pinch.
** '''Autocannon/10''' - The gold standard of Autocannons simply due to it's sheer utility; it can do some real damage, has a reasonable range, but critically it also has no minimum range that the MechWarrior has to consider when using it. Most 'Mechs that have an Autocannon will almost certainly default to this or any variant of it.
** '''Autocannon/20''' - The short-range, big damage variant. Can only shoot about a few hundred yards out, but anything dumb enough to be in it's range is pretty much scrap if the Autocannon lands more than one hit.
* '''Particle Projector Cannons''': The other standard Energy weapon, but generally much spicier than any Laser. A massive Cannon that fires a concentrated stream of ions and protons at a target at such velocity and strength that the Mech it's attached to experiences a kickback from it. The Mech that gets hit can experience serious electrical damage from the volley, and as such they are prized parts of any Mech it's attached to; rivalling Autocannons in terms of overall usefulness. The Mech it's attached to has inhibitors to prevent the cannon from frying it's own circuits, but some mad lads play dangerously and pull that particular thing off in dire straits to see what happens when they let the PPC really cook.
* '''Missiles''': You know how these work; a big rocket full of boom comes straight down on your opponent's face. Most Mechs that have them have a dedicated platform designed to deliver the payload; from dedicated missile systems designed to be fired at short, medium, or long ranges aided by fire control systems, or simpler, fixed range missile launchers like the Arrow IV that are designed to even out the terrain of a particularly unlucky stretch of land. Very useful, but prone to jamming due to a reliance on computer tracking.
* '''Gauss Rifle''': A Gauss Cannon that has been standardized with powerful electromagnets to shoot a solid metal melon straight into and more often than not through opposing mechs. It generates almost no heat and is quite powerful, but is incredibly energy intensive and often enormous, requiring Mechs to almost be built around that weight limitation rather than the Rifle around the Mech's limitations.
* '''[[Flamer]]s''': They're in BattleTech too! You use them for almost the exact same purpose as you would in another wargame; melting infantry. This is much less useful in BattleTech however given that almost nobody uses full-on infantry anymore, but it can be helpful to raise the heat of a Mech to intolerable levels. The Capellans later invented a variant called Plasma (<s>no, not [[Plasma|that one]]</s>) which uses ionized & viscous foam bullets launched at infantry or light armor like modern white phosphorus or napalm.
* '''Machine Guns''': For killing squirrels. If you're in a mech primarily armed with these you're mostly just there to keep infantry or restless insurgents tied up, or, and I'm sorry to have to break it to you now, you're in the Mech that's expected to die. Machine guns can also be used in Anti Missile Systems like real life Active Protective Systems on modern tanks or Close In Weapon Systems on ships; blasting those pesky missiles out of the sky before they can mess up the paint job. They're also a component for Anti-Battle Armor modules to keep Clanner Elementals from tearing into your cockpit to shoot you in the face.
* '''Melee Weaponry''': While initially wildly impractical as an idea since a mech can carry giant guns and finish a fight against other Mechs without the use of a hand-to-hand weapon, the Succession Wars were such a resource drain that stuff like PPCs and even some variations of lasers couldn't be reliably manufactured and bolted to the giant robot, so mech-sized melee weapons found themselves making comebacks. As they do a point of damage per a certain amount of tonnage from the attacking mech and generate no heat, they can acquit themselves quite well if given to the right MechWarrior, but being in melee range for BattleMechs is generally not a good idea unless it was built/rebuilt from the ground up to brawl. Jump jets in particular are practically mandatory equipment for melee mechs.
** '''Punch''': Most Mechs in the game have some form of hand actuator, which means the most basic form of harm that a human can do is very much available to their giant metal toys. Games running Design Quirk rules can augment certain mechs with the "Battlefists" quirk, which gives further bonuses to hit on such an attack.
** '''Hatchet''': A giant meat cleaver pioneered by the Lyrans. Does a point of damage per every 5 tons of Mech. Given that the average mech in the Lyran Commonwealth is probably 70 tons or more, this makes it a much more dangerous thing than it initially sounds.
** '''Sword''': A standardized sword created as an alternative to the Lyran Hatchet by the Combine. It does a point of damage plus one for every Ten tons of Mech, but thanks to their exceptionally engineered balance, they're easier to hit with than a Hatchet.
** '''Claw''': A hand actuator of the Mech is replaced with a mechanical claw with hardened steel fingers filed to sharp points. Does a point of damager per every 7 tons of mech. Usually seen in the battle arenas of Solaris, it can be an inexpensive armor remover.
** '''Vibroblade''': The closest thing to a chainsword in BattleTech, Only available at the moment on Solaris. Comes in Small, Medium, or Large. Treated as a normal sword when not turned on, when activated it can do far more damage in a single strike than most other melee weapons, but it does generate quite a bit of waste heat as a result.
* '''Taser''': Yes, a taser. Another creation of the late Succession Wars and tested extensively on Solaris. It's a harpoon stuck to a cable that, when shot into a Mech, zaps the internal electronics so badly that the Mech stops entirely, allowing ground crews to take hostages and the Mech to be salvaged. While unquestionably very useful and potentially the smartest way to actually ''fight'' mech-to-mech, these things are mildly explosive, very close range, and require being targeted by eye.

=== Internal systems ===
* '''Myomer''': A synthetic musculature which contracts in on itself when an electrical current is run through it. It lays snug between the chassis skeleton and the armor on the Mech’s actuator limbs and attaches to the diagnostic interpretation computer (a series of processors and cables like nerve cables) to response to neurohelmet commands to the limb actuators and the gyro. Can be upgraded with other variant tech such as Triple Strength Myomer and Myomer Accelerator Signal Circuitry (called MASC) to boost either strength or speed at the risk of more frequent limb breakdowns. Apply 9-volt battery, kick foe in the 'nads.
* '''Engines''': Your standard BattleMech is powered by a hydrogen burning Fusion Reactor. Most vehicles used Internal Combustion Engines, or odder engines like Fuel Cells, and Fission Reactors. Yes, the rare Mech (typically an older model or an experimental one) actually used some of these too, but the Fusion Reactor was the default go-to here. Engines come in all shapes and sizes, though the easiest way to keep your Mech useful is to have an engine that doesn't take up too much valuable space.
* '''Gyros''': Not a sandwich beloved by greeks, but a spinny hunk of high-tech metal that helps the 'Mech stay upright. A close analogy is the series of reaction wheels used to keep real-life satellites, missiles, and torpedoes pointed steadily at their targets. Losing this means your 'Mech gets to lie down for an extended period of time, namely for the rest of the battle.
* '''Armor''': The yang to weaponry's yin. Depending on the tech level you're playing at, can come in flavours ranging from plain ol' vanilla Standard to double-fudge FerroFibrous, caramel Laser Reflective, stealth cloaked, and whatever demented flavour-of-the year that the New Avalon Institute of Science has come up with. Most Mech armor is ablative, meaning that it's designed to slough off when hit and requires swapping in fresh modules after the fight is done.
* '''Jump Jets''': Systems that make the 'Mech bounce along like little bunny Froo-froo. On 'Mechs, they're a fusion-rocket system, however vehicles and infantry sporting them usually use some sort of jet or chemical/liquid-rocket system. Weirder systems have been developed (think mechanical pogo-mounts). Yes, there is a Jump Jet equipped tank called the Kanga. When used in conjunction with reinforced legs in melee, MechWarriors can perform a [[Assault Squad|Death from above]] maneuver to crush any unfortunate S.O.B in their landing zone.
* '''Heat Sinks''': Glorified radiators, Heat Sinks are mechanisms which deal with built up heat, which Mechs can quickly accumulate in combat. Firing lasers, getting hit by flamers, using Jump Jets and so forth can all build up heat which can damage the machine's system and cook a Mech Warrior alive. Double Heat Sinks are more effective than vanilla heat sinks but were also [[LosTech]] up until the 32nd century. Due to waste heat, MechWarriors pilot their vehicles in either refrigerated suits or if those are not available (as the blueprints to make them are kept locked up by [[ComStar|Space AT&T]]) in their undies.
* '''Ammo Storage''': Because you gotta put your bullets and missiles somewhere on your mech before you shoot 'em. If your lucky, you got Cellular Ammunition Storage Equipment (CASE) on your mech, which significantly reduces the chances that it will be set off unintentionally during combat.
* '''Sensors:''' Alternatively called the Target Tracking System or Advanced Fire Control System, they're the eyes and ears that relay environmental and targeting data to a MechWarrior's cockpit; either in the form of neurohelmet VR feed or a cockpit display. Can be augmented from data from other units via the C3 Network, TAG beacons, or satellite feed.
* '''C3 Network:''' short for '''C'''ommand, '''C'''ontrol, and '''C'''ommunication. It's a simple tight-beam comms network that can share targeting data between Mechs. It starts with the Command unit that three slave units (or six 3Ci units, if you're lucky enough to have them) connect to, and then all data collected by any one of the units is automatically shared to the other three. While potent, ECMs wreak havoc on C3 systems, and any lance that has one can be blinded in certain conditions if you figure out where the Command unit is, which is almost always in the Heavy/Assault Mech due to the command unit's size.
* '''ECM Suites:''' Short for '''E'''lectronic '''C'''ounter-'''M'''easure, an ECM is an invaluable piece of hardware that can shut down sensors and communications tech. On the tabletop, it produces a bubble around the Mech that can shut down certain bits of hardware like active probes or C3 systems. They're only available in certain Mechs however, as the technology is extremely precise and the Succession Wars completely robbed the Inner Sphere of the ability to manufacture them.
* '''TAG:''' Short for '''T'''arget '''A'''cquisition '''G'''ear. Composed of a variable spectrum laser for target-marking and rang-finding, it's basically just [[markerlight]]s for Battletech, developed to overcome ECMs. Just expect to be extremely noticed (either as the targeted if you're unlucky to be painted by it or the targeter once every enemy detects your signal and rushed over to wreck your ride). Some alternative targeting gear includes sticky beacons fired by Scouts and missile fire control systems but those suffer from either shorter range or jamming.
* '''Harjel System:''' Using the fast-drying and tar-like substance called Harjel, the system sprays out a black goop that can harden to withstand the vacuum of space or pressures of underwater combat across a broken piece of armor. A little at a time is fine, but if the Mech receives massive damage all at once, the system will just start spraying it every where and whole parts of the Mech will become useless. Removing it is also a bitch, too.
* '''Neurohelmets''': At base, Neurohelmets allow the 'Mech to borrow the pilot's sense of balance (due to the organic ear and spatial orientation system of a human surpassing any robotic control loop that can be coded). More advanced systems (generally [[LosTech]] or ClannerScum) could provide a VR simspace for the pilot and shunt sensor feeds right into the pilot's brain. Also serves as a security system, as they're keyed to the pilot's brainwaves and can fry any pesky intruders’ brains if they don’t bypass the ID validation system. If pilots are not careful and push their Mechs beyond their normal performance, they could suffer neural backlash. Some systems experiment with embedded circuits or neural interfaces inside pilot’s bodies like some Clannner's Enhanced Imaging system or Wobbie cyborg's Vehicular Direct Neural Interface but such tech leaves pilots with a very short lifespans.
* '''Cockpit''': typically mounted in the head of a BattleMech beside some [[Solaris VII]] arena ‘Mechs mounting it in the torso, they contain the basic controls, targeting displays, computer interface, toilet, microwave, and life support systems for a MechWarrior. On the other hand, MechWarriors still need to keep an eye on the thermometer to avoid suffering a heat stroke from the reactor heat. More advance versions can include a Dual Cockpit/Command Console for multiple crew or replaces the basic ejector seat with a sealed Full Head Ejector System capsule to protect pilots from shrapnel or hostile environments when they need to bail away from their Mech before it’s reactor explodes.

== Types of BattleMechs ==
There are several ways to sort out each model from its contemporaries as shown below.

=== Weight Class ===
The most common classification of BattleMechs in-universe is by weight. How it's actually calculated is up in the air, as it doesn't appear to take into account the complete weight of the vehicle (since many Mechs have almost 10-20% of their tonnage taken up by armor), but it's generally agreed upon that this is the optimal "weight" of a fully kitted out BattleMech.

* '''Ultralight Mechs''': Any Mech under 20 tonnes. Mostly used to man garrisons and patrol colonies out in the boondocks for law enforcement and piracy deterrence, they’re basically an aluminum box on legs with some machine guns or grenade launchers wired to a joystick. Depending on your luck, they might be the fastest thing you have or the worst purchase you ever made. Marginally better than a regular armored vehicle for direct fighting, the difference between one of these and an IndustrialMech strapped with ordinance is very, ''very'' difficult to parse.
* '''Light Mechs''': Mechs between 20 and 35 Tonnes. They are normally cheap, easy to deploy, fast and lightly armored and are used for Scouting, Raiding, or in some cases urban defense. In-universe they are usually the most common type of BattleMech known.
* '''Medium Mechs''': Mechs between 40 and 55 Tonnes. Able to throw down better than a Light Mech while being faster and cheaper than a heavy. Also includes specialized support units. Mostly used for tactical needs on paper, but tend to be wildly flexible in practice. Many of the more useful and iconic mechs in the series are in this category if they aren't Heavy Mechs.
* '''Heavy Mechs''': Mechs between 60 and 75 Tonnes. The workhorses of most armies, affordable heavy power while still being able to move faster than a truck heaving forward. Several of the most iconic mechs in the series are in this class.
* '''Assault Mechs''': Mechs between 80 to 100 Tonnes. The heavy hitters; ponderous and pricey but durable with heavy weapons and armor to both take and dispense a serious beatdown. Just what the doctor ordered for the tip of your spear. Unless you get a [[Banshee (BattleTech)|BNS-1S]]. Then people mock you.
* '''Super Heavy Mechs''': Also called Colossal, they’re any Mech that is more than 100 Tonnes. Up until the 31st century, the general consensus was that Mechs more than 100 Tonnes were basically laughably bad penis compensators. After the [[Clan Invasion]] people are beginning to make them work, but logistics keep them towards being niche.

=== Combat Role ===
In terms of combat utility, BattleMechs can be split into certain categories based on their specifications. While some roles may be filled with conventional armored vehicles, they take either a higher weight class or a larger motor pool to compensate.

* '''Scout''': The fastest of the lot but mounting light armaments while armored with tinfoil. These speedsters rely on agility and small size to scoot from place to place before gathering intel from their sensors on the enemy to radio back to their bigger partners. They also like to shoot at the weak spots of any enemy unit they can outflank before running away to avoid being scrapped by returning fire.
* '''Striker''': Second only to scouts in a race while sporting a short ranged arsenal and decent armor. These jocks are meant to run up to enemy units and let loose with all the firepower they can get into range. They work best while charging in a swarm with covering fire from other units as well as terrain that can conceal their approach until they can get the jump on an enemy.
* '''Skirmisher''': Fast moving while outfitted with medium ranged weapons and reasonable armor. They’re generalists who can be flexible jacks-of-all-trades. Often times, they partner with other combat roles for both ends to compensate for each other's short comings. They can also be used for running battles where a scout's paper-thin armor is too light to survive but need fire support from snipers or missile boats during sieges to avoid being turned into swiss cheese by other units with a heavier arsenal.
* '''Brawler''': On the slower range of mobility while kitted with medium-to-long ranged weapons and heavy armor. These guys are the main component of an attack wave. While they're not good at long duration fights and running battles, they serve well as escort units for Juggernauts, as either defensive guards or offensive breachers during sieges, and can flush out hidden units out of their hidey-holes.
* '''Missile Boat''': Sitting back from the front lines, these units seek to provide indirect fire in the form of missiles or artillery shells while hiding behind cover. Compared to snipers, they do not need to have a direct line-of-site on their targets but are more dependent on targeting data from scouts.
* '''Sniper''': Similar to the missile boat but with a long ranged weapon that requires direct line-of-sight, these guys are slower than skirmishers or strikers but their platform stability allows them to take pot-shots at other units reliably. While escorts with short-ranged weapons can make up for their lack of perimeter defense or melee capability, they're best used while hidden away from plain view.
* '''Juggernaut''': The slowest of the pack but possessing powerful short-ranged weapons with thick slabs of armor, these mobile fortresses rely in pure inertia to keep the ball moving forward and can work in unison with other unit classes to get in range of distracted enemy units or fortifications before using their arsenal to delete any target from the field.

=== Other ===
Beyond weight and combat specialty, there are a few other specialized types of BattleMech, each with their own strengths and drawbacks.

* '''Bipedal''': A mech with two legs, most common type; broken down into three separate subcategories such as '''Humanoid''', '''Reverse Joint''', and '''Digitigrade''', however performance between the three is negligible as all three have both standout variants and regrettable variants alike.
*'''Tripodal''': An experimental three-legged variant that's only rarely been used, even when the design idea gained traction in the 32nd century, only four mechs in the entire canon have ever used this variant. What does make them stand out though is their ability to constantly move in any direction without braking and their proven ability to be built as Super-Heavy tonnage.
*'''Quadropedal''': A mech which has four legs instead of two. They have something of a bad reputation for allegedly requiring more crew and less armor, but on the other hand can loose a leg and still be in the fight. Are far less common than Bipedal Mechs, but are still fairly common as mobile fire-boats. Another transformable variant is "Quadvees" among Clan Hell's Horses that can change back and forth into tanks. While they can still fight if the gyro is damaged in tank form, the extra limbs and servos for transforming gives them the same weaknesses of being stuck in one mode after being damaged as their LAM relatives.
*'''SecurityMech''': Sometimes referred to as MilitiaMechs, PoliceMechs, or (if they’re field-modified off existing IndustrialMech chassis) MOD’s, these are basically up-armored and armed IndustrialMechs. Often used for internal policing, quelling riots, fending off giant wildlife, and anti-piracy deterrence, they're usually used for guarding critical infrastructure or facilities that are far from the front lines. Due to their less robust construction, lighter weapon load-out, and less energy intensive engine, they're marginally better than combat vehicles for front line combat. On the other hand, they’re cheap enough that any backwater planet can buy them if atmospheric aircraft and tank use for security isn’t enough and they’re good enough for preventing covert sabotage, banditry, and insurgent activity. Like mainstream BattleMechs, they have their own weight classes: Light (10-15 tons), Medium (20-25 tons), Heavy (30-35 tons), and Assault (40-50 tons).
*'''FrankenMech''': more formally called HybridMechs, they're basically any [[Looted|ad hoc]] and [[Mekboy|non-standardized]] Mech created by cobbling together any spare parts from a dozen other BattleMechs that a mad engineer or desperate pirate can scrounge from their basement without any corporate support or standardized template. Deep in the Periphery, they're also called Corsairs.
*'''[[Robotech|Land Air Mech]]''': sometimes called LAM's. Basically a light mech that can transform from an Aerospace Fighter into a regular mech. They got invented during the Star League and were experimental reconnaissance units but got phased out due to being more fragile than regular fighters and mechs. Out of universe, Battletech developers decided it was too much effort to keep without lawsuits from Harmony Gold (as seen with the infamous "Unseen/Reseen" mech artwork from other IP's).
*'''[[OmniMech]]''': the Lego/Swiss army knive variant of a regular Mech. Can change their loadouts as quickly as diapers' and carry [[Clan Elemental|armored infantry]] but are way more expensive.
*'''ProtoMech''': spanning the gap between Battle Armor that maxes out at 2 metric tonnes and UltraLight BattleMechs below 20 tonnes, ProtoMechs were created by Clan Smoke Jaguar to make the most out of their shrinking resource base after the Second Star League drove them out of the Inner Sphere. While the Clan ultimately died out in the end at the Great Refusal, the ProtoMech Concept remained in use by the Clans for some time. Instead of using a traditional cockpit, a embedded circuitry system grafted under the skin of the pilot (used by some Clan Warriors for traditional Mechs) enabled pilots to use a ProtoMechs’ limbs like their own in a fancy version of augmented reality hooked to mechanical limbs. Additionally, the smaller size and direct interface with a pilot's senses removed the need for a bulky gyro . However, such interfaces still shortened users’ lives and made them feel the loss of limbs as painfully as if it were their own being sheared off. Naturally, outside the Blakists incorporating the interface tech into their Manei Domini cyborgs, no Inner Sphere faction tried to reverse engineer them due to technical issues and ethical concerns. Thus, they remain an obscure niche within some Clans.

== Notable BattleMechs ==
Over the span of seven centuries there has been like a bajillion different makes and models of Battlemechs, most of which have at least a couple variants ranging from swapping out one brand of armor for another to rebuilds which put it into another weight class and combat role. As BattleMechs can last for centuries and are rather resilient things that can more often than not be at least partially salvaged after their pilot has been removed, there are still plenty of vintage units out and kicking. For a comprehensive list, go to [https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Main_Page Sarna]. Never the less, here's some notable mechs.

==== Ultralight ====
* Flea - the lovechild of a [[All Terrain Soup|AT-ST]] and a [[Sentinel]] walker. Good speed and sensors but avoid being shot.
* Celerity - Created by Comstar, it's one of the first drone Mechs. Resembles some quadrupedal drones in the real world.
* Road Runner - Called the Emerald Harrier by its Jade Falcon creators, it has the dubious distinction of being sold to the Republic of the Sphere by the Sea Foxes as a nifty scout.
* Prey Seeker - One of the fastest Spheroid Mechs, it was created by the Feds for raiding during the Dark Age.

==== Light ====
*[[UrbanMech]] - The little mech that could!
*[[Hollander]] - Mech with a big gun, or big gun with legs? You decide!
* Locust - Totally not stolen from Crusher Joe.
* Wasp - ...or Macross
* Stinger - Really. Believe us.

==== Medium ====
* [[Shadow Hawk]] - Or any anime inspired by Suns, Fangs, or Dougrams of such.
* Hunchback - The original "My, what a big gun" mech.
* Griffin - And back to IP infringement accusations.
* [[Phoenix Hawk]] - Max wants his plane back.

==== Heavy ====
*[[Timber Wolf]] - The bastard furry lovechild that everyone loves.
*[[Catapult]] - Proud parent of furry children.
* Marauder - Proud parent of furry children, deported for being an illegal alien from another IP.
* Rifleman - Proud uncle of furry children. Was also deported for shooting other illegal aliens despite being an illegal IP alien as well.

==== Assault ====
*[[Atlas]] - Big Death! Big Death! Big Death!
* King Crab - Preferred tool for cracking thick shells.
* [[Mackie]] - The Original!(tm) Accept no substitutes!
* Banshee - The Bradley of the Mech world. Big, fast, lightly armoured, and questionably armed.

==== Super Heavy ====
* Matar - Amaris [[Nazi Equipment|Wunderwaffen]] gambit. [[Fail|Cripple]] due to lack of good legs.
* Omega - Superheavy attempt 2, [[Word of Blake|Wobbie]] boogaloo. First successful prototype no thanks to pillaged ClanTech.
* Poseidon - “War of the Worlds” Tripod meets copious amounts of armor and dakka. 3 man crew required.
* Ares - OmniMech Version of Tripod above. Plug and play configuration modules as needed.

[[Category:BattleTech]]

Post-Apocalyptic

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{{Topquote|… It's the end of the world as we know it, It's the end of the world as we know it, It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.|R.E.M.}}

'''Post-Apocalyptic''' is a form of [[Setting Aesthetics]] that, as its name suggests, takes place in a once-thriving world that was subsequently blown up or otherwise ravaged by massive disasters of some kind or another. It's an extremely popular aesthetic with many different forms, ranging from nuclear war to zombie apocalypse to alien invasion, and has been an amendment to or basis for many different /tg/ related publications.

Many Post-Apocalyptic settings has the cataclysm as its main theme - Mad Max and [[Fallout]] are good examples of worlds where the apocalypse is in the forefront - but others are more subtle. [[Warhammer 40,000]] is technically post-apocalyptic, as is [[Age of Sigmar]]. [[Dark Souls]] is also an example, where the apocalypse is there but it isn't clearly about an apocalypse as much as its about just doing things in a weird world.

Most Post-Apocalyptic media is also Sci-Fi, since the cataclysm that started them required higher level technology, but lower level players are often stuck with “current” or even primitive technology. There’s a rather decent rate of crossover with [[Mecha]], with many prominent works of that series being post-apoc since it allows for high enough technology without the many things that should render them useless. Not all Post-Apocalyptic settings are sci-fi ones however, as settings like [[Dark Sun]] having a magically induced apocalypse.

[[D20 Apocalypse]] is literally a book about doing [[D20 Modern]] games set in this genre.
== Types of Apocalypse ==
Here's a quick rundown of events which commonly bring the end of the world as we know it in fiction. Their nature, their qualities and their appeal to a prospective writer of stories and settings.

Please note that there can easily be overlap. One mass disaster can lead to other mass disasters as knock on effects.

=== Alien Invasion ===
There are at least a hundred billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy and two hundred billion galaxies in the observable universe. The Raw Materials of life as we know it are common and life got started fairly early in earth's geological history. It's a safe bet that on some distant planet life emerged and would evolve, possibly into other beings at least as smart as us and possibly with a head start. We can only hope that such civilizations are nice guys, because if not we are in trouble.

Over the years, there has been a lot of different takes on alien invasions. Tripedal fighting machines to flying saucers, subtle infiltration, hordes of bugs, fleets in orbit, legions of alien soldiers, self replicating robots and more. The consequences there-of also vary. Some aliens might try to strip mine the earth, others might enslave humanity, put mankind into reserves or turn earth into a nature preserve.

====Examples====
* Resistance

=== Asteroid ===
A space rock several kilometer across crashes out of the sky and into the Earth at orbital speed. If it hit's water, it sends tidal waves that flood continents. A shockwave rips across the world, shattering forests and buildings and scorching the landscape. Rocks kicked up in the impact rain down around the world while the planet is rattled like a drum by the impact, resulting in earthquakes. If you survive all that, a dust cloud shrouds the earth, temperatures plunge and photosynthesis basically stops for a few years. Frost, famine and fighting reap many of the survivors leaving only a few pockets of the lucky to weather the storm and emerge into an empty world.

The Astronomical equivalent of [[Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies]] has a lot of fire and fury and it's something which can just fall out of the blue. It happened to the non avian [[Dinosaur]]s 66 million years ago. If you want "everything was going along as normal, then it all went to shit in a split second" few things beat an asteroid. If you want a simple straightforward explanation for why our world came to an end, this is it.
==== Examples ====
* Ace Combat Infinity Timeline

=== Disease ===

'''''...distant nurglish laughter...'''''

A new infectious variety of something appears. It might have been a freak mutation or it might have been made in a lab and gotten out. Either way, it spreads rapidly among the human population and is terminal. Attempts to contain and combat it are ultimately ineffective. Even if it can be fought societal breakdown prevents effective response for most people. For every person who is immune, recovers, is successfully treated or quarantined away in sterilized bunkers, hundreds die. By the time the dust settles, most of humanity is dead.

While disease is a natural phenomenon, a plague capable of wiping out whole civilizations typically occurs in a sufficiently advanced society with extensive trade networks; the black plague came to Europe from the Silk Road into the ports of Italy before wiping out a third of the continent - whereas individual, isolated villages would be spared because the plague would wipe out neighboring towns before it could reach them. But what's even more devastating is when a disease spreads to a population that has never been exposed to it before, and therefore has virtually no immunities to it; most of the indigenous people of the Americas were wiped out by diseases like smallpox and measles long before settlers began arriving en masse.

The thing about Disease is that it can clear out humanity while leaving it's stuff largely intact. The survivors can wander cities turned into colossal ghost towns, not shattered but left to decay as nature reclaims the landscape. Similarly anxieties about disease are rather high nowadays given the whole global pandemic.
==== Examples ====
* A lot of Zombie Fiction.
* I am Legend
* [["Planet of the Apes"]] reboot

=== Global Warming (and environmental devastation in general) ===
Human industries continue to pump Carbon Dioxide into the air resulting in a Greenhouse Effect. Temperatures rise considerably and sea levels rise. Low lying regions are flooded, weather patterns are changed. Millions are displaced and what was prime farmland dries out and dry areas are washed away. Violent Storms become more frequent. Civil and political unrest mounts while governments are strained. Wars break out as groups fight for what they can get their hands on. Those that survive find a ravaged world deeply changed by the byproducts Mankind's activity.

First of all, worries about Climate Change are plentiful today just as Nuclear War was in the 1950s. Moreover this is something which is harder to deal with. Nobody sane wants a nuclear war, but the solution boils down to simply not starting one and negotiating things out with other people who don't want to die. When it comes to Co2 Emissions, we're doing it constantly and it's hard to stop this because it is a big systemic thing with a lot of powerful people and organizations in place which profit from it.

Bear in mind, some forms of climate change, including devastating kinds, have nothing to do with human intervention; the mini-Ice Age caused by a big rock smacking into Earth can be thought of as the Dinosaurs' own apocalypse. Particularly nasty supervolcanic eruptions have been known to cause ecological devastation well beyond the original point of eruption, such as the Volcanic Winter of 536 that devastated crops and possibly lead to the outbreak of the Plague of Justinian as a result of malnutrition. The eruption of Krakatoa, the deadliest in recorded history, created worldwide acid rain in addition to global cooling.

==== Examples ====
* Water World
*[[Setting:CATastrophe|CATastorphy]]
* Mad Max

=== Nuclear War ===
<div style="font-size:1.10em;font-weight:bold;font-style:italic;font-family:serif;margin-top:1em;margin-bottom:1em">...distant Khornate Laughter...</div>

The nightmare of the [[Cold War]]. One way or another (international relations entering a death spiral, a rabid hawk in the wrong place in the wrong time, some crazed nutter with an apocalyptic vision gets hold of the Big Red Button, an "Oops" scenario when warning systems give a false positive an attack which convinces the guys in charge to "retaliate") the missiles start flying. Cities around the world disappear under mushroom clouds, killing tens of millions at a minimum from the blasts itself. Millions more die from wounds and radiation soon after, and more die from fallout, disease, starvation and the breakdown of social order and services. Those that remain will inhabit a shattered poisoned world of ruins and chaos as bands of people seek to claim what they can by force.

Nuclear War is a very human disaster and one made with deliberate intent. An asteroid is simply moving it it's orbit as it has done so for billions of years and just happens to be moving towards another celestial body one day. A virus simply bumps into cells and injects it's RNA into them if they're the right type. Co2 Emissions are a byproduct of human civilization and opposition to reducing them is motivated by economic incentive. But a Nuclear strike is a deliberate premeditated move by humans to kill other humans ''en mass'' and our species has gotten frighteningly good at the murder trade.
====Examples====
* [[Fallout]]
* Metro 2033
* [[Fist of the North Star]]

=== Robot Uprising ===
AI becomes advanced enough that they begin to supersede humanity. So much so that, for one reason or another, a war breaks out between humanity and machines, resulting in machines either wiping out or enslaving mankind. This can go in a variety of different ways depending on how the author feels about what AI would do in a given situation, or perhaps how misanthropic they feel. AI is usually seen as breaking free of their bondage at the hands of mankind, or else taking an extreme managerial approach and deciding that humanity needs to be culled for their own good. Very rarely, the Robot uprising is a result of AI following their programming to the letter but with unintended consequences, such as trying to meet contradictory commands or a flaw in their reasoning. Either way, the end result is that the machines take over, and anything that doesn’t support the machine war effort is disposed of; ecological devastation is pretty common, since machines don’t need a clean environment or biodiversity to survive.

A robot uprising stokes on the fears of human hubris and the idea that something we create can end up replacing or enslaving us; humanity already experiences much anxiety over robots replacing low-skill workers in industry, as well as technology being used to control the flow of information or otherwise trapping people inside a virtual online world. Having the machines outright rebel is that idea taken to its logical extreme. It also can be used to explore the ideas of “what is human,” or “what is consciousness,” since we do not have any other kind of life form that is capable of rational thought to compare ourselves to.
====Examples====
* Terminator
* Horizon Zero Dawn

===Societal Collapse===
The least glamorous version, but the one with the most historical examples. Sometimes its not a singular cataclysmic event that wipes out a civilization; sometimes we don't even know what may have wiped out a once-mighty nation apart from vague references in forgotten tomes or folk memories buried in mythology. Whatever happened, it was enough to overwhelm a civilization to the point that its support structures buckled under the strain and people are forced to fend for themselves, and it may take centuries for society to recover. Ancient Rome is a classic example; while Rome was officially ended by the sacking at the hands of the Visigoths, it was in a centuries-long decline caused by war, famine, wealth inequality, political corruption, the black plague, the weakening of political, social, and military institutions all at the same time. All of its advances were forgotten until almost a thousand years later. For an earlier, more mysterious example, the Bronze Age Collapse saw multiple very sophisticated civilizations wiped out, possibly by drought, invasions from "sea peoples", and the fragility of top-down authoritarian empires. And if we want to look forward in time, an increasingly interconnected world means that two countries warring in Eastern Europe suddenly translates into a global food shortage. Either way, if you're looking for something a bit more grounded (if less dramatic), history has plenty of examples.

====Examples====
*[[Bronze Age|The Bronze Age Collapse]]

===The End Times===
Most mythologies have some kind of apocalyptic vision of the future (it’s literally where the term “apocalypse” comes from). In scholarly terms, this is called “Eschatology.” While the details will vary between religions, common themes include devastating wars, the whole world is devastated by monsters and demons, famine wipes out large swaths of the population, kingdoms degenerating into tyranny, society as a whole degenerating into complete wickedness, and finally, an epic battle between the forces of good and evil, before the old world is finally destroyed. In some tellings, the world is reborn and a new cycle begins with the survivors of the old world. In others, evil is permanently destroyed and a permanent utopia is established on Earth.

Naturally, this version of the apocalypse is less common in modern times, but some have attempted to take these ancient tales and envision how they would play out in the not-too-distant future. One common trope is taking the Antichrist from the Biblical Revelation, and cast him as a powerful tyrant who unites the world under a fascist regime. In other cases, a Doomsday Cult is attempting to bring about or accelerate the End Times. The Cthulhu Mythos can be thought of as a modern version of this, as it makes it pretty clear that the world is doomed one way or another. Very rarely do these modern stories actually follow through with the apocalypse though, as Eschatology is defined by its finality. Unless you’re just doing a straight retelling of the apocalyptic scenario, there’s very little wiggle room to tell your own story once the apocalypse actually happens. Setting your story in the middle of the Apocalypse, however, is more doable, since it’s not nearly as instantaneous as a nuclear war or meteor strike, and is likely to be drawn out until the climax.

====Examples====
*[[The End Times]]

===Cosmological events===
These are the more scientific version of The End Times since they are just as final to us if they hit - and one WILL happen eventually IRL due to the laws of physics. [[Grimdark|The Universe is a scary place, and not even it will be around forever]].

Subclasses include:
====Planet killers====
Humanity may survive on another world in the Solar System and/or beyond, but Earth is gone - either wiped sterile or no longer on the map at all.
*Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) - basically, if a big star that's close enough dies when its magnetic poles are facing us, the resulting jet of radiation will destroy the Earth's ozone layer, making the Sun [[Meme|a deadly lazer]] once more. While it's possible to survive, given that one major extinction in Earth's past might have been caused by a weaker one, it's more likely to cook everything alive - either directly or indirectly depending on the distance.
*Solar luminosity - due to the way stars function, they get brighter and hotter as they get older. The Sun is no exception, and this is not a good thing. Eventually, in about 1 billion years or so, the Sun will be outputting too much energy for life on Earth to be viable anymore. While inevitable, we (or whatever comes after us) has a LONG time to prepare for the Great Exodus.
*Planetary collision - While ''extremely'' unlikely in the current state of the Solar System, it's still a possibility, and one scary enough for conspiracy theorists to fearmonger using. Any rocky body large enough for gravity to make spherical - be it a very large asteroid or comet, a moon, or another planet - ''will'' revert the Earth to a state similar to how it was when it formed if it smacks into it, or outright destroy it if massive enough. Usually the other planet won't fare much better, unless it's a gas giant that eats rocky planets for breakfast. The suspect to watch out for is rogue planets, though given enough time Mercury might become suicidal.
*Eaten by the Sun - either due to some freak gravitational disturbance or the Sun inevitably becoming a red giant (see 'death of the Sun'), there's a chance that the Sun will do what the Tyranids can't due to plot reasons and eat the Earth, melting it into a glob of plasma. It's iffy in the latter case since the Sun maxes out in size around the time it would eat Earth, becoming too big to hold onto all its gas. Not that it matters, as solar luminosity would have made it an unimportant magma ball by that time anyway.
*Yeeted into space - Gravitational disturbances - whether one big one or a series of smaller ones - could fling Earth out of its orbit and into interstellar space, likely killing all life since the big light in the sky is gone.
*Eaten by a black hole - if a black hole is big enough to start chowing down before it blows up due to Hawking radiation, but small enough not to throw a star system's gravity out of whack, it can easily replace the Earth with a black sphere of inescapable gravity.
====Star system killers====
For these, humanity has to have gone interstellar if it has any hope of not going extinct.
*Death of the Sun - Sun runs out of fuel and turns into a sad white ball unable to warm up anything, possibly eating the Earth in the process. Enough said.
*Supernova - Sure, the system it's in is going to be feeling most of the pain, but a close enough supernova doesn't even need to have its GRBs aimed at you to kill - the weaker radiation in all directions can do that too. Granted, it has to be VERY close for that to even be a threat, though candidates for such an event exist. You have even shittier luck if you're caught in a hypernova, which spreads radiation a fair bit farther.
*Stellar collision - basically the only way the Sun can go boom like a supernova. White dwarf, main sequence, whatever - if it's big enough, a game of galaxy billiards can go horribly wrong. The chance it does is extremely low due to the distances involved, but it does happen - especially in denser regions of space.
*Black hole buffet - Large enough black hole to disrupt orbits? The entire system is either becoming a snack or getting torn apart, with nothing in between.
====The Big Ones====
No escape. No respite. Not even immortal beings can survive these. Worst of all, a few are inevitable, and the universe will never be the same. The existential dread is natural, but luckily most of these final doomsdays are so far off or so unlikely that humanity will likely have lived out its existence long beforehand. If not, we'd probably be so far along that we could just jump ship into another universe, either a natural one in a multiverse or an artificially created one. But adding 'post-' to these apocalypses is not really possible.
*Stellar decay - by the appropriately named "degenerate era", stars capable of supporting life will have burned out due to a lack of fuel, and no more will be made (if the universe is infinite, there may be infinite material for star formation but there's also an infinite amount of stars to use it up). Life developing as it did on Earth will be impossible, and unless humanity has the means to keep the torch lit, life will cease to exist.
*Proton decay - unproven, but if it exists, there's a lifespan to solid matter that isn't part of a black hole. This would be a hard limit on life's possible existence with or without human intervention. If not, humanity may survive by leeching energy off black holes until the universe itself ends.
*Death of the universe - whether it crumples back into a point, rips itself apart, or becomes an empty, cold wasteland of nothingness, the universe WILL die, and there's nothing you can do about it. On obscene timescales even black holes disappear, which is the hardest of hard limits on existence. Past this point, time becomes meaningless, unless by some miracle an anomaly causes another Big Bang.
*Vacuum decay - helpfully described as "the universe's delete button" by a certain German duck, this is essentially what could happen if some of the universe suddenly received an update to its physics engine. Long story short, a sphere of nothingness expands at the speed of light, destroying everything and leaving behind a portion of spacetime where our laws of physics no longer apply. Given enough time, probability will spawn enough of these to clean up whatever remains of the universe after its death.
*The Off Switch - an ever-present threat if the simulation argument is true is that whoever made the simulation could get bored and just turn the 'game' off forever, or some accident happens in the real world that shuts it down. Temporarily turning it off isn't really a threat, for in all likelihood it would just resume where it left off, and we would be none the wiser. A meta version of post-apocalyptic fiction could be following the creators of a simulation after turning it off permanently, and how said simulation affected their society.
====Examples====
*[[Xeelee Sequence]] (Death of the universe)

== Timespan ==
Another point of consideration for a post apocalyptic setting how long has it's been since the apocalypse happened.

===''In media res''===
The Apocalypse is now, and [[Exterminatus|nothing might come after it]]. Typically this applies to 'slow burn' apocalypses that still have worse to offer, or apocalypses that by definition leave nothing to tell after they conclude.
====Examples====
*Literally any extinction story

=== Immediate Aftermath ===
The Apocalypse has happened fairly recently. It might have run it's course yesterday, maybe it's been a few years. For brevity's sake, we'll put the cap at twenty years. Point is that most people around are people who survived the disaster and directly remember the world before. Survivors often survive by scavenging the ruins for cans of beans, ammunition, laptops and similar. Survivalists are still locked up in their bunkers. Remnants of Government authorities, military forces, corporations and other such Old-World institutions are still about, pursuing their own agendas. Accountants, janitors, lawyers and jazz musicians have to work out how to survive. Many of them gang up and many gangs which prey on others, sometimes [[cannibalism|literally]].
====Examples====
*Most Zombie Fiction

=== After the Aftermath ===
The Apocalypse happened between 20 years to maybe a couple centuries ago. If nothing else, a generation has grown up in this marred world. Memories of the old world have faded, as have much of it's knowledge. A few areas have stabilized and there are trade towns. Scavenged stuff is still a big deal, but people increasingly are making new things bodged together from junk. Whatever surviving Authorities have stumbled along their own course, if two groups of (for example) US Army troops survived in Oregon and Tennessee, they'd probably have radically different ideas and not respect each other's authority if they met. There are a few peaceful areas, but other areas are torn up in war. Moreover this would not be a smattering of desperate folk clubbing each other for cans of dog-food but battle hardened hosts of warriors who've learned to survive in this hostile age.
====Examples====
*[[Fallout]]
*[[Fist of the North Star]]

=== An Ancient Cataclysm ===
The Apocalypse happened hundreds, possibly thousands of years ago. The Apocalyptic Event is now an object of myth and legend to cultures which have emerged after the aftermath. Cultures which are as distinct from ours as [[Roman Empire]] was to us. Never the less, a Dark Age persists. There are a few Kingdoms and City States, while vast tracts of land are haunted by barbarian peoples. Much of Technology has been lost and if it has been recovered, it's not well distributed.
====Examples====
*[[Dark Age of Technology]]

=== The Healed World ===
The [[Noblebright]] version of Post Apocalyptia. In short, people eventually got their shit together and rebuilt. New cities emerge from the ashes and efforts are done to clean up the mess. More over lessens are learned to avoid such disasters going forward. What rises from the ashes is a better world.
====Examples====
*[[Star Trek]]

=== The Inheritors ===
Thousands if not millions of years have passed and mankind is a distant memory. In its place, new creatures have arisen. Rats, bats, cats, weasels, seagulls, pigs, foxes, dogs, and similar small adaptable creatures persisted and diversified to fill emptied niches. Usually, at least one lineage of them has developed intelligence and tool use. To them, humans would only be skeletons in museums.

A variant of this is posthumanism, either of the natural evolution-caused variety, some alien dicks messing with humanity's genetics (an apocalypse of its own), or a post-humanity changing itself - all to the point that OG humanity is as much as a common ancestor between what breeds of posthumans exist as is the common ancestor to all mammals.
====Examples====
*Splatoon
*All Tommorows

[[Category:Setting Aesthetics]]

Post-Apocalyptic

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{{Topquote|… It's the end of the world as we know it, It's the end of the world as we know it, It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.|R.E.M.}}

'''Post-Apocalyptic''' is a form of [[Setting Aesthetics]] that, as its name suggests, takes place in a once-thriving world that was subsequently blown up or otherwise ravaged by massive disasters of some kind or another. It's an extremely popular aesthetic with many different forms, ranging from nuclear war to zombie apocalypse to alien invasion, and has been an amendment to or basis for many different /tg/ related publications.

Many Post-Apocalyptic settings has the cataclysm as its main theme - Mad Max and [[Fallout]] are good examples of worlds where the apocalypse is in the forefront - but others are more subtle. [[Warhammer 40,000]] is technically post-apocalyptic, as is [[Age of Sigmar]]. [[Dark Souls]] is also an example, where the apocalypse is there but it isn't clearly about an apocalypse as much as its about just doing things in a weird world.

Most Post-Apocalyptic media is also Sci-Fi, since the cataclysm that started them required higher level technology, but lower level players are often stuck with “current” or even primitive technology. There’s a rather decent rate of crossover with [[Mecha]], with many prominent works of that series being post-apoc since it allows for high enough technology without the many things that should render them useless. Not all Post-Apocalyptic settings are sci-fi ones however, as settings like [[Dark Sun]] having a magically induced apocalypse.

[[D20 Apocalypse]] is literally a book about doing [[D20 Modern]] games set in this genre.
== Types of Apocalypse ==
Here's a quick rundown of events which commonly bring the end of the world as we know it in fiction. Their nature, their qualities and their appeal to a prospective writer of stories and settings.

Please note that there can easily be overlap. One mass disaster can lead to other mass disasters as knock on effects.

=== Alien Invasion ===
There are at least a hundred billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy and two hundred billion galaxies in the observable universe. The Raw Materials of life as we know it are common and life got started fairly early in earth's geological history. It's a safe bet that on some distant planet life emerged and would evolve, possibly into other beings at least as smart as us and possibly with a head start. We can only hope that such civilizations are nice guys, because if not we are in trouble.

Over the years, there has been a lot of different takes on alien invasions. Tripedal fighting machines to flying saucers, subtle infiltration, hordes of bugs, fleets in orbit, legions of alien soldiers, self replicating robots and more. The consequences there-of also vary. Some aliens might try to strip mine the earth, others might enslave humanity, put mankind into reserves or turn earth into a nature preserve.

====Examples====
* Resistance

=== Asteroid ===
A space rock several kilometer across crashes out of the sky and into the Earth at orbital speed. If it hit's water, it sends tidal waves that flood continents. A shockwave rips across the world, shattering forests and buildings and scorching the landscape. Rocks kicked up in the impact rain down around the world while the planet is rattled like a drum by the impact, resulting in earthquakes. If you survive all that, a dust cloud shrouds the earth, temperatures plunge and photosynthesis basically stops for a few years. Frost, famine and fighting reap many of the survivors leaving only a few pockets of the lucky to weather the storm and emerge into an empty world.

The Astronomical equivalent of [[Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies]] has a lot of fire and fury and it's something which can just fall out of the blue. It happened to the non avian [[Dinosaur]]s 66 million years ago. If you want "everything was going along as normal, then it all went to shit in a split second" few things beat an asteroid. If you want a simple straightforward explanation for why our world came to an end, this is it.
==== Examples ====
* Ace Combat Infinity Timeline

=== Disease ===

'''''...distant nurglish laughter...'''''

A new infectious variety of something appears. It might have been a freak mutation or it might have been made in a lab and gotten out. Either way, it spreads rapidly among the human population and is terminal. Attempts to contain and combat it are ultimately ineffective. Even if it can be fought societal breakdown prevents effective response for most people. For every person who is immune, recovers, is successfully treated or quarantined away in sterilized bunkers, hundreds die. By the time the dust settles, most of humanity is dead.

While disease is a natural phenomenon, a plague capable of wiping out whole civilizations typically occurs in a sufficiently advanced society with extensive trade networks; the black plague came to Europe from the Silk Road into the ports of Italy before wiping out a third of the continent - whereas individual, isolated villages would be spared because the plague would wipe out neighboring towns before it could reach them. But what's even more devastating is when a disease spreads to a population that has never been exposed to it before, and therefore has virtually no immunities to it; most of the indigenous people of the Americas were wiped out by diseases like smallpox and measles long before settlers began arriving en masse.

The thing about Disease is that it can clear out humanity while leaving it's stuff largely intact. The survivors can wander cities turned into colossal ghost towns, not shattered but left to decay as nature reclaims the landscape. Similarly anxieties about disease are rather high nowadays given the whole global pandemic.
==== Examples ====
* A lot of Zombie Fiction.
* I am Legend
* Planet of the Apes reboot

=== Global Warming (and environmental devastation in general) ===
Human industries continue to pump Carbon Dioxide into the air resulting in a Greenhouse Effect. Temperatures rise considerably and sea levels rise. Low lying regions are flooded, weather patterns are changed. Millions are displaced and what was prime farmland dries out and dry areas are washed away. Violent Storms become more frequent. Civil and political unrest mounts while governments are strained. Wars break out as groups fight for what they can get their hands on. Those that survive find a ravaged world deeply changed by the byproducts Mankind's activity.

First of all, worries about Climate Change are plentiful today just as Nuclear War was in the 1950s. Moreover this is something which is harder to deal with. Nobody sane wants a nuclear war, but the solution boils down to simply not starting one and negotiating things out with other people who don't want to die. When it comes to Co2 Emissions, we're doing it constantly and it's hard to stop this because it is a big systemic thing with a lot of powerful people and organizations in place which profit from it.

Bear in mind, some forms of climate change, including devastating kinds, have nothing to do with human intervention; the mini-Ice Age caused by a big rock smacking into Earth can be thought of as the Dinosaurs' own apocalypse. Particularly nasty supervolcanic eruptions have been known to cause ecological devastation well beyond the original point of eruption, such as the Volcanic Winter of 536 that devastated crops and possibly lead to the outbreak of the Plague of Justinian as a result of malnutrition. The eruption of Krakatoa, the deadliest in recorded history, created worldwide acid rain in addition to global cooling.

==== Examples ====
* Water World
*[[Setting:CATastrophe|CATastorphy]]
* Mad Max

=== Nuclear War ===
<div style="font-size:1.10em;font-weight:bold;font-style:italic;font-family:serif;margin-top:1em;margin-bottom:1em">...distant Khornate Laughter...</div>

The nightmare of the [[Cold War]]. One way or another (international relations entering a death spiral, a rabid hawk in the wrong place in the wrong time, some crazed nutter with an apocalyptic vision gets hold of the Big Red Button, an "Oops" scenario when warning systems give a false positive an attack which convinces the guys in charge to "retaliate") the missiles start flying. Cities around the world disappear under mushroom clouds, killing tens of millions at a minimum from the blasts itself. Millions more die from wounds and radiation soon after, and more die from fallout, disease, starvation and the breakdown of social order and services. Those that remain will inhabit a shattered poisoned world of ruins and chaos as bands of people seek to claim what they can by force.

Nuclear War is a very human disaster and one made with deliberate intent. An asteroid is simply moving it it's orbit as it has done so for billions of years and just happens to be moving towards another celestial body one day. A virus simply bumps into cells and injects it's RNA into them if they're the right type. Co2 Emissions are a byproduct of human civilization and opposition to reducing them is motivated by economic incentive. But a Nuclear strike is a deliberate premeditated move by humans to kill other humans ''en mass'' and our species has gotten frighteningly good at the murder trade.
====Examples====
* [[Fallout]]
* Metro 2033
* [[Fist of the North Star]]

=== Robot Uprising ===
AI becomes advanced enough that they begin to supersede humanity. So much so that, for one reason or another, a war breaks out between humanity and machines, resulting in machines either wiping out or enslaving mankind. This can go in a variety of different ways depending on how the author feels about what AI would do in a given situation, or perhaps how misanthropic they feel. AI is usually seen as breaking free of their bondage at the hands of mankind, or else taking an extreme managerial approach and deciding that humanity needs to be culled for their own good. Very rarely, the Robot uprising is a result of AI following their programming to the letter but with unintended consequences, such as trying to meet contradictory commands or a flaw in their reasoning. Either way, the end result is that the machines take over, and anything that doesn’t support the machine war effort is disposed of; ecological devastation is pretty common, since machines don’t need a clean environment or biodiversity to survive.

A robot uprising stokes on the fears of human hubris and the idea that something we create can end up replacing or enslaving us; humanity already experiences much anxiety over robots replacing low-skill workers in industry, as well as technology being used to control the flow of information or otherwise trapping people inside a virtual online world. Having the machines outright rebel is that idea taken to its logical extreme. It also can be used to explore the ideas of “what is human,” or “what is consciousness,” since we do not have any other kind of life form that is capable of rational thought to compare ourselves to.
====Examples====
* Terminator
* Horizon Zero Dawn

===Societal Collapse===
The least glamorous version, but the one with the most historical examples. Sometimes its not a singular cataclysmic event that wipes out a civilization; sometimes we don't even know what may have wiped out a once-mighty nation apart from vague references in forgotten tomes or folk memories buried in mythology. Whatever happened, it was enough to overwhelm a civilization to the point that its support structures buckled under the strain and people are forced to fend for themselves, and it may take centuries for society to recover. Ancient Rome is a classic example; while Rome was officially ended by the sacking at the hands of the Visigoths, it was in a centuries-long decline caused by war, famine, wealth inequality, political corruption, the black plague, the weakening of political, social, and military institutions all at the same time. All of its advances were forgotten until almost a thousand years later. For an earlier, more mysterious example, the Bronze Age Collapse saw multiple very sophisticated civilizations wiped out, possibly by drought, invasions from "sea peoples", and the fragility of top-down authoritarian empires. And if we want to look forward in time, an increasingly interconnected world means that two countries warring in Eastern Europe suddenly translates into a global food shortage. Either way, if you're looking for something a bit more grounded (if less dramatic), history has plenty of examples.

====Examples====
*[[Bronze Age|The Bronze Age Collapse]]

===The End Times===
Most mythologies have some kind of apocalyptic vision of the future (it’s literally where the term “apocalypse” comes from). In scholarly terms, this is called “Eschatology.” While the details will vary between religions, common themes include devastating wars, the whole world is devastated by monsters and demons, famine wipes out large swaths of the population, kingdoms degenerating into tyranny, society as a whole degenerating into complete wickedness, and finally, an epic battle between the forces of good and evil, before the old world is finally destroyed. In some tellings, the world is reborn and a new cycle begins with the survivors of the old world. In others, evil is permanently destroyed and a permanent utopia is established on Earth.

Naturally, this version of the apocalypse is less common in modern times, but some have attempted to take these ancient tales and envision how they would play out in the not-too-distant future. One common trope is taking the Antichrist from the Biblical Revelation, and cast him as a powerful tyrant who unites the world under a fascist regime. In other cases, a Doomsday Cult is attempting to bring about or accelerate the End Times. The Cthulhu Mythos can be thought of as a modern version of this, as it makes it pretty clear that the world is doomed one way or another. Very rarely do these modern stories actually follow through with the apocalypse though, as Eschatology is defined by its finality. Unless you’re just doing a straight retelling of the apocalyptic scenario, there’s very little wiggle room to tell your own story once the apocalypse actually happens. Setting your story in the middle of the Apocalypse, however, is more doable, since it’s not nearly as instantaneous as a nuclear war or meteor strike, and is likely to be drawn out until the climax.

====Examples====
*[[The End Times]]

===Cosmological events===
These are the more scientific version of The End Times since they are just as final to us if they hit - and one WILL happen eventually IRL due to the laws of physics. [[Grimdark|The Universe is a scary place, and not even it will be around forever]].

Subclasses include:
====Planet killers====
Humanity may survive on another world in the Solar System and/or beyond, but Earth is gone - either wiped sterile or no longer on the map at all.
*Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) - basically, if a big star that's close enough dies when its magnetic poles are facing us, the resulting jet of radiation will destroy the Earth's ozone layer, making the Sun [[Meme|a deadly lazer]] once more. While it's possible to survive, given that one major extinction in Earth's past might have been caused by a weaker one, it's more likely to cook everything alive - either directly or indirectly depending on the distance.
*Solar luminosity - due to the way stars function, they get brighter and hotter as they get older. The Sun is no exception, and this is not a good thing. Eventually, in about 1 billion years or so, the Sun will be outputting too much energy for life on Earth to be viable anymore. While inevitable, we (or whatever comes after us) has a LONG time to prepare for the Great Exodus.
*Planetary collision - While ''extremely'' unlikely in the current state of the Solar System, it's still a possibility, and one scary enough for conspiracy theorists to fearmonger using. Any rocky body large enough for gravity to make spherical - be it a very large asteroid or comet, a moon, or another planet - ''will'' revert the Earth to a state similar to how it was when it formed if it smacks into it, or outright destroy it if massive enough. Usually the other planet won't fare much better, unless it's a gas giant that eats rocky planets for breakfast. The suspect to watch out for is rogue planets, though given enough time Mercury might become suicidal.
*Eaten by the Sun - either due to some freak gravitational disturbance or the Sun inevitably becoming a red giant (see 'death of the Sun'), there's a chance that the Sun will do what the Tyranids can't due to plot reasons and eat the Earth, melting it into a glob of plasma. It's iffy in the latter case since the Sun maxes out in size around the time it would eat Earth, becoming too big to hold onto all its gas. Not that it matters, as solar luminosity would have made it an unimportant magma ball by that time anyway.
*Yeeted into space - Gravitational disturbances - whether one big one or a series of smaller ones - could fling Earth out of its orbit and into interstellar space, likely killing all life since the big light in the sky is gone.
*Eaten by a black hole - if a black hole is big enough to start chowing down before it blows up due to Hawking radiation, but small enough not to throw a star system's gravity out of whack, it can easily replace the Earth with a black sphere of inescapable gravity.
====Star system killers====
For these, humanity has to have gone interstellar if it has any hope of not going extinct.
*Death of the Sun - Sun runs out of fuel and turns into a sad white ball unable to warm up anything, possibly eating the Earth in the process. Enough said.
*Supernova - Sure, the system it's in is going to be feeling most of the pain, but a close enough supernova doesn't even need to have its GRBs aimed at you to kill - the weaker radiation in all directions can do that too. Granted, it has to be VERY close for that to even be a threat, though candidates for such an event exist. You have even shittier luck if you're caught in a hypernova, which spreads radiation a fair bit farther.
*Stellar collision - basically the only way the Sun can go boom like a supernova. White dwarf, main sequence, whatever - if it's big enough, a game of galaxy billiards can go horribly wrong. The chance it does is extremely low due to the distances involved, but it does happen - especially in denser regions of space.
*Black hole buffet - Large enough black hole to disrupt orbits? The entire system is either becoming a snack or getting torn apart, with nothing in between.
====The Big Ones====
No escape. No respite. Not even immortal beings can survive these. Worst of all, a few are inevitable, and the universe will never be the same. The existential dread is natural, but luckily most of these final doomsdays are so far off or so unlikely that humanity will likely have lived out its existence long beforehand. If not, we'd probably be so far along that we could just jump ship into another universe, either a natural one in a multiverse or an artificially created one. But adding 'post-' to these apocalypses is not really possible.
*Stellar decay - by the appropriately named "degenerate era", stars capable of supporting life will have burned out due to a lack of fuel, and no more will be made (if the universe is infinite, there may be infinite material for star formation but there's also an infinite amount of stars to use it up). Life developing as it did on Earth will be impossible, and unless humanity has the means to keep the torch lit, life will cease to exist.
*Proton decay - unproven, but if it exists, there's a lifespan to solid matter that isn't part of a black hole. This would be a hard limit on life's possible existence with or without human intervention. If not, humanity may survive by leeching energy off black holes until the universe itself ends.
*Death of the universe - whether it crumples back into a point, rips itself apart, or becomes an empty, cold wasteland of nothingness, the universe WILL die, and there's nothing you can do about it. On obscene timescales even black holes disappear, which is the hardest of hard limits on existence. Past this point, time becomes meaningless, unless by some miracle an anomaly causes another Big Bang.
*Vacuum decay - helpfully described as "the universe's delete button" by a certain German duck, this is essentially what could happen if some of the universe suddenly received an update to its physics engine. Long story short, a sphere of nothingness expands at the speed of light, destroying everything and leaving behind a portion of spacetime where our laws of physics no longer apply. Given enough time, probability will spawn enough of these to clean up whatever remains of the universe after its death.
*The Off Switch - an ever-present threat if the simulation argument is true is that whoever made the simulation could get bored and just turn the 'game' off forever, or some accident happens in the real world that shuts it down. Temporarily turning it off isn't really a threat, for in all likelihood it would just resume where it left off, and we would be none the wiser. A meta version of post-apocalyptic fiction could be following the creators of a simulation after turning it off permanently, and how said simulation affected their society.
====Examples====
*[[Xeelee Sequence]] (Death of the universe)

== Timespan ==
Another point of consideration for a post apocalyptic setting how long has it's been since the apocalypse happened.

===''In media res''===
The Apocalypse is now, and [[Exterminatus|nothing might come after it]]. Typically this applies to 'slow burn' apocalypses that still have worse to offer, or apocalypses that by definition leave nothing to tell after they conclude.
====Examples====
*Literally any extinction story

=== Immediate Aftermath ===
The Apocalypse has happened fairly recently. It might have run it's course yesterday, maybe it's been a few years. For brevity's sake, we'll put the cap at twenty years. Point is that most people around are people who survived the disaster and directly remember the world before. Survivors often survive by scavenging the ruins for cans of beans, ammunition, laptops and similar. Survivalists are still locked up in their bunkers. Remnants of Government authorities, military forces, corporations and other such Old-World institutions are still about, pursuing their own agendas. Accountants, janitors, lawyers and jazz musicians have to work out how to survive. Many of them gang up and many gangs which prey on others, sometimes [[cannibalism|literally]].
====Examples====
*Most Zombie Fiction

=== After the Aftermath ===
The Apocalypse happened between 20 years to maybe a couple centuries ago. If nothing else, a generation has grown up in this marred world. Memories of the old world have faded, as have much of it's knowledge. A few areas have stabilized and there are trade towns. Scavenged stuff is still a big deal, but people increasingly are making new things bodged together from junk. Whatever surviving Authorities have stumbled along their own course, if two groups of (for example) US Army troops survived in Oregon and Tennessee, they'd probably have radically different ideas and not respect each other's authority if they met. There are a few peaceful areas, but other areas are torn up in war. Moreover this would not be a smattering of desperate folk clubbing each other for cans of dog-food but battle hardened hosts of warriors who've learned to survive in this hostile age.
====Examples====
*[[Fallout]]
*[[Fist of the North Star]]

=== An Ancient Cataclysm ===
The Apocalypse happened hundreds, possibly thousands of years ago. The Apocalyptic Event is now an object of myth and legend to cultures which have emerged after the aftermath. Cultures which are as distinct from ours as [[Roman Empire]] was to us. Never the less, a Dark Age persists. There are a few Kingdoms and City States, while vast tracts of land are haunted by barbarian peoples. Much of Technology has been lost and if it has been recovered, it's not well distributed.
====Examples====
*[[Dark Age of Technology]]

=== The Healed World ===
The [[Noblebright]] version of Post Apocalyptia. In short, people eventually got their shit together and rebuilt. New cities emerge from the ashes and efforts are done to clean up the mess. More over lessens are learned to avoid such disasters going forward. What rises from the ashes is a better world.
====Examples====
*[[Star Trek]]

=== The Inheritors ===
Thousands if not millions of years have passed and mankind is a distant memory. In its place, new creatures have arisen. Rats, bats, cats, weasels, seagulls, pigs, foxes, dogs, and similar small adaptable creatures persisted and diversified to fill emptied niches. Usually, at least one lineage of them has developed intelligence and tool use. To them, humans would only be skeletons in museums.

A variant of this is posthumanism, either of the natural evolution-caused variety, some alien dicks messing with humanity's genetics (an apocalypse of its own), or a post-humanity changing itself - all to the point that OG humanity is as much as a common ancestor between what breeds of posthumans exist as is the common ancestor to all mammals.
====Examples====
*Splatoon
*All Tommorows

[[Category:Setting Aesthetics]]

Post-Apocalyptic

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{{Topquote|… It's the end of the world as we know it, It's the end of the world as we know it, It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.|R.E.M.}}

'''Post-Apocalyptic''' is a form of [[Setting Aesthetics]] that, as its name suggests, takes place in a once-thriving world that was subsequently blown up or otherwise ravaged by massive disasters of some kind or another. It's an extremely popular aesthetic with many different forms, ranging from nuclear war to zombie apocalypse to alien invasion, and has been an amendment to or basis for many different /tg/ related publications.

Many Post-Apocalyptic settings has the cataclysm as its main theme - Mad Max and [[Fallout]] are good examples of worlds where the apocalypse is in the forefront - but others are more subtle. [[Warhammer 40,000]] is technically post-apocalyptic, as is [[Age of Sigmar]]. [[Dark Souls]] is also an example, where the apocalypse is there but it isn't clearly about an apocalypse as much as its about just doing things in a weird world.

Most Post-Apocalyptic media is also Sci-Fi, since the cataclysm that started them required higher level technology, but lower level players are often stuck with “current” or even primitive technology. There’s a rather decent rate of crossover with [[Mecha]], with many prominent works of that series being post-apoc since it allows for high enough technology without the many things that should render them useless. Not all Post-Apocalyptic settings are sci-fi ones however, as settings like [[Dark Sun]] having a magically induced apocalypse.

[[D20 Apocalypse]] is literally a book about doing [[D20 Modern]] games set in this genre.
== Types of Apocalypse ==
Here's a quick rundown of events which commonly bring the end of the world as we know it in fiction. Their nature, their qualities and their appeal to a prospective writer of stories and settings.

Please note that there can easily be overlap. One mass disaster can lead to other mass disasters as knock on effects.

=== Alien Invasion ===
There are at least a hundred billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy and two hundred billion galaxies in the observable universe. The Raw Materials of life as we know it are common and life got started fairly early in earth's geological history. It's a safe bet that on some distant planet life emerged and would evolve, possibly into other beings at least as smart as us and possibly with a head start. We can only hope that such civilizations are nice guys, because if not we are in trouble.

Over the years, there has been a lot of different takes on alien invasions. Tripedal fighting machines to flying saucers, subtle infiltration, hordes of bugs, fleets in orbit, legions of alien soldiers, self replicating robots and more. The consequences there-of also vary. Some aliens might try to strip mine the earth, others might enslave humanity, put mankind into reserves or turn earth into a nature preserve.

====Examples====
* Resistance

=== Asteroid ===
A space rock several kilometer across crashes out of the sky and into the Earth at orbital speed. If it hit's water, it sends tidal waves that flood continents. A shockwave rips across the world, shattering forests and buildings and scorching the landscape. Rocks kicked up in the impact rain down around the world while the planet is rattled like a drum by the impact, resulting in earthquakes. If you survive all that, a dust cloud shrouds the earth, temperatures plunge and photosynthesis basically stops for a few years. Frost, famine and fighting reap many of the survivors leaving only a few pockets of the lucky to weather the storm and emerge into an empty world.

The Astronomical equivalent of [[Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies]] has a lot of fire and fury and it's something which can just fall out of the blue. It happened to the non avian [[Dinosaur]]s 66 million years ago. If you want "everything was going along as normal, then it all went to shit in a split second" few things beat an asteroid. If you want a simple straightforward explanation for why our world came to an end, this is it.
==== Examples ====
* Ace Combat Infinity Timeline

=== Disease ===

'''''...distant nurglish laughter...'''''

A new infectious variety of something appears. It might have been a freak mutation or it might have been made in a lab and gotten out. Either way, it spreads rapidly among the human population and is terminal. Attempts to contain and combat it are ultimately ineffective. Even if it can be fought societal breakdown prevents effective response for most people. For every person who is immune, recovers, is successfully treated or quarantined away in sterilized bunkers, hundreds die. By the time the dust settles, most of humanity is dead.

While disease is a natural phenomenon, a plague capable of wiping out whole civilizations typically occurs in a sufficiently advanced society with extensive trade networks; the black plague came to Europe from the Silk Road into the ports of Italy before wiping out a third of the continent - whereas individual, isolated villages would be spared because the plague would wipe out neighboring towns before it could reach them. But what's even more devastating is when a disease spreads to a population that has never been exposed to it before, and therefore has virtually no immunities to it; most of the indigenous people of the Americas were wiped out by diseases like smallpox and measles long before settlers began arriving en masse.

The thing about Disease is that it can clear out humanity while leaving it's stuff largely intact. The survivors can wander cities turned into colossal ghost towns, not shattered but left to decay as nature reclaims the landscape. Similarly anxieties about disease are rather high nowadays given the whole global pandemic.
==== Examples ====
* A lot of Zombie Fiction.
* I am Legend

=== Global Warming (and environmental devastation in general) ===
Human industries continue to pump Carbon Dioxide into the air resulting in a Greenhouse Effect. Temperatures rise considerably and sea levels rise. Low lying regions are flooded, weather patterns are changed. Millions are displaced and what was prime farmland dries out and dry areas are washed away. Violent Storms become more frequent. Civil and political unrest mounts while governments are strained. Wars break out as groups fight for what they can get their hands on. Those that survive find a ravaged world deeply changed by the byproducts Mankind's activity.

First of all, worries about Climate Change are plentiful today just as Nuclear War was in the 1950s. Moreover this is something which is harder to deal with. Nobody sane wants a nuclear war, but the solution boils down to simply not starting one and negotiating things out with other people who don't want to die. When it comes to Co2 Emissions, we're doing it constantly and it's hard to stop this because it is a big systemic thing with a lot of powerful people and organizations in place which profit from it.

Bear in mind, some forms of climate change, including devastating kinds, have nothing to do with human intervention; the mini-Ice Age caused by a big rock smacking into Earth can be thought of as the Dinosaurs' own apocalypse. Particularly nasty supervolcanic eruptions have been known to cause ecological devastation well beyond the original point of eruption, such as the Volcanic Winter of 536 that devastated crops and possibly lead to the outbreak of the Plague of Justinian as a result of malnutrition. The eruption of Krakatoa, the deadliest in recorded history, created worldwide acid rain in addition to global cooling.

==== Examples ====
* Water World
*[[Setting:CATastrophe|CATastorphy]]
* Mad Max

=== Nuclear War ===
<div style="font-size:1.10em;font-weight:bold;font-style:italic;font-family:serif;margin-top:1em;margin-bottom:1em">...distant Khornate Laughter...</div>

The nightmare of the [[Cold War]]. One way or another (international relations entering a death spiral, a rabid hawk in the wrong place in the wrong time, some crazed nutter with an apocalyptic vision gets hold of the Big Red Button, an "Oops" scenario when warning systems give a false positive an attack which convinces the guys in charge to "retaliate") the missiles start flying. Cities around the world disappear under mushroom clouds, killing tens of millions at a minimum from the blasts itself. Millions more die from wounds and radiation soon after, and more die from fallout, disease, starvation and the breakdown of social order and services. Those that remain will inhabit a shattered poisoned world of ruins and chaos as bands of people seek to claim what they can by force.

Nuclear War is a very human disaster and one made with deliberate intent. An asteroid is simply moving it it's orbit as it has done so for billions of years and just happens to be moving towards another celestial body one day. A virus simply bumps into cells and injects it's RNA into them if they're the right type. Co2 Emissions are a byproduct of human civilization and opposition to reducing them is motivated by economic incentive. But a Nuclear strike is a deliberate premeditated move by humans to kill other humans ''en mass'' and our species has gotten frighteningly good at the murder trade.
====Examples====
* [[Fallout]]
* Metro 2033
* [[Fist of the North Star]]

=== Robot Uprising ===
AI becomes advanced enough that they begin to supersede humanity. So much so that, for one reason or another, a war breaks out between humanity and machines, resulting in machines either wiping out or enslaving mankind. This can go in a variety of different ways depending on how the author feels about what AI would do in a given situation, or perhaps how misanthropic they feel. AI is usually seen as breaking free of their bondage at the hands of mankind, or else taking an extreme managerial approach and deciding that humanity needs to be culled for their own good. Very rarely, the Robot uprising is a result of AI following their programming to the letter but with unintended consequences, such as trying to meet contradictory commands or a flaw in their reasoning. Either way, the end result is that the machines take over, and anything that doesn’t support the machine war effort is disposed of; ecological devastation is pretty common, since machines don’t need a clean environment or biodiversity to survive.

A robot uprising stokes on the fears of human hubris and the idea that something we create can end up replacing or enslaving us; humanity already experiences much anxiety over robots replacing low-skill workers in industry, as well as technology being used to control the flow of information or otherwise trapping people inside a virtual online world. Having the machines outright rebel is that idea taken to its logical extreme. It also can be used to explore the ideas of “what is human,” or “what is consciousness,” since we do not have any other kind of life form that is capable of rational thought to compare ourselves to.
====Examples====
* Terminator
* Horizon Zero Dawn

===Societal Collapse===
The least glamorous version, but the one with the most historical examples. Sometimes its not a singular cataclysmic event that wipes out a civilization; sometimes we don't even know what may have wiped out a once-mighty nation apart from vague references in forgotten tomes or folk memories buried in mythology. Whatever happened, it was enough to overwhelm a civilization to the point that its support structures buckled under the strain and people are forced to fend for themselves, and it may take centuries for society to recover. Ancient Rome is a classic example; while Rome was officially ended by the sacking at the hands of the Visigoths, it was in a centuries-long decline caused by war, famine, wealth inequality, political corruption, the black plague, the weakening of political, social, and military institutions all at the same time. All of its advances were forgotten until almost a thousand years later. For an earlier, more mysterious example, the Bronze Age Collapse saw multiple very sophisticated civilizations wiped out, possibly by drought, invasions from "sea peoples", and the fragility of top-down authoritarian empires. And if we want to look forward in time, an increasingly interconnected world means that two countries warring in Eastern Europe suddenly translates into a global food shortage. Either way, if you're looking for something a bit more grounded (if less dramatic), history has plenty of examples.

====Examples====
*[[Bronze Age|The Bronze Age Collapse]]

===The End Times===
Most mythologies have some kind of apocalyptic vision of the future (it’s literally where the term “apocalypse” comes from). In scholarly terms, this is called “Eschatology.” While the details will vary between religions, common themes include devastating wars, the whole world is devastated by monsters and demons, famine wipes out large swaths of the population, kingdoms degenerating into tyranny, society as a whole degenerating into complete wickedness, and finally, an epic battle between the forces of good and evil, before the old world is finally destroyed. In some tellings, the world is reborn and a new cycle begins with the survivors of the old world. In others, evil is permanently destroyed and a permanent utopia is established on Earth.

Naturally, this version of the apocalypse is less common in modern times, but some have attempted to take these ancient tales and envision how they would play out in the not-too-distant future. One common trope is taking the Antichrist from the Biblical Revelation, and cast him as a powerful tyrant who unites the world under a fascist regime. In other cases, a Doomsday Cult is attempting to bring about or accelerate the End Times. The Cthulhu Mythos can be thought of as a modern version of this, as it makes it pretty clear that the world is doomed one way or another. Very rarely do these modern stories actually follow through with the apocalypse though, as Eschatology is defined by its finality. Unless you’re just doing a straight retelling of the apocalyptic scenario, there’s very little wiggle room to tell your own story once the apocalypse actually happens. Setting your story in the middle of the Apocalypse, however, is more doable, since it’s not nearly as instantaneous as a nuclear war or meteor strike, and is likely to be drawn out until the climax.

====Examples====
*[[The End Times]]

===Cosmological events===
These are the more scientific version of The End Times since they are just as final to us if they hit - and one WILL happen eventually IRL due to the laws of physics. [[Grimdark|The Universe is a scary place, and not even it will be around forever]].

Subclasses include:
====Planet killers====
Humanity may survive on another world in the Solar System and/or beyond, but Earth is gone - either wiped sterile or no longer on the map at all.
*Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) - basically, if a big star that's close enough dies when its magnetic poles are facing us, the resulting jet of radiation will destroy the Earth's ozone layer, making the Sun [[Meme|a deadly lazer]] once more. While it's possible to survive, given that one major extinction in Earth's past might have been caused by a weaker one, it's more likely to cook everything alive - either directly or indirectly depending on the distance.
*Solar luminosity - due to the way stars function, they get brighter and hotter as they get older. The Sun is no exception, and this is not a good thing. Eventually, in about 1 billion years or so, the Sun will be outputting too much energy for life on Earth to be viable anymore. While inevitable, we (or whatever comes after us) has a LONG time to prepare for the Great Exodus.
*Planetary collision - While ''extremely'' unlikely in the current state of the Solar System, it's still a possibility, and one scary enough for conspiracy theorists to fearmonger using. Any rocky body large enough for gravity to make spherical - be it a very large asteroid or comet, a moon, or another planet - ''will'' revert the Earth to a state similar to how it was when it formed if it smacks into it, or outright destroy it if massive enough. Usually the other planet won't fare much better, unless it's a gas giant that eats rocky planets for breakfast. The suspect to watch out for is rogue planets, though given enough time Mercury might become suicidal.
*Eaten by the Sun - either due to some freak gravitational disturbance or the Sun inevitably becoming a red giant (see 'death of the Sun'), there's a chance that the Sun will do what the Tyranids can't due to plot reasons and eat the Earth, melting it into a glob of plasma. It's iffy in the latter case since the Sun maxes out in size around the time it would eat Earth, becoming too big to hold onto all its gas. Not that it matters, as solar luminosity would have made it an unimportant magma ball by that time anyway.
*Yeeted into space - Gravitational disturbances - whether one big one or a series of smaller ones - could fling Earth out of its orbit and into interstellar space, likely killing all life since the big light in the sky is gone.
*Eaten by a black hole - if a black hole is big enough to start chowing down before it blows up due to Hawking radiation, but small enough not to throw a star system's gravity out of whack, it can easily replace the Earth with a black sphere of inescapable gravity.
====Star system killers====
For these, humanity has to have gone interstellar if it has any hope of not going extinct.
*Death of the Sun - Sun runs out of fuel and turns into a sad white ball unable to warm up anything, possibly eating the Earth in the process. Enough said.
*Supernova - Sure, the system it's in is going to be feeling most of the pain, but a close enough supernova doesn't even need to have its GRBs aimed at you to kill - the weaker radiation in all directions can do that too. Granted, it has to be VERY close for that to even be a threat, though candidates for such an event exist. You have even shittier luck if you're caught in a hypernova, which spreads radiation a fair bit farther.
*Stellar collision - basically the only way the Sun can go boom like a supernova. White dwarf, main sequence, whatever - if it's big enough, a game of galaxy billiards can go horribly wrong. The chance it does is extremely low due to the distances involved, but it does happen - especially in denser regions of space.
*Black hole buffet - Large enough black hole to disrupt orbits? The entire system is either becoming a snack or getting torn apart, with nothing in between.
====The Big Ones====
No escape. No respite. Not even immortal beings can survive these. Worst of all, a few are inevitable, and the universe will never be the same. The existential dread is natural, but luckily most of these final doomsdays are so far off or so unlikely that humanity will likely have lived out its existence long beforehand. If not, we'd probably be so far along that we could just jump ship into another universe, either a natural one in a multiverse or an artificially created one. But adding 'post-' to these apocalypses is not really possible.
*Stellar decay - by the appropriately named "degenerate era", stars capable of supporting life will have burned out due to a lack of fuel, and no more will be made (if the universe is infinite, there may be infinite material for star formation but there's also an infinite amount of stars to use it up). Life developing as it did on Earth will be impossible, and unless humanity has the means to keep the torch lit, life will cease to exist.
*Proton decay - unproven, but if it exists, there's a lifespan to solid matter that isn't part of a black hole. This would be a hard limit on life's possible existence with or without human intervention. If not, humanity may survive by leeching energy off black holes until the universe itself ends.
*Death of the universe - whether it crumples back into a point, rips itself apart, or becomes an empty, cold wasteland of nothingness, the universe WILL die, and there's nothing you can do about it. On obscene timescales even black holes disappear, which is the hardest of hard limits on existence. Past this point, time becomes meaningless, unless by some miracle an anomaly causes another Big Bang.
*Vacuum decay - helpfully described as "the universe's delete button" by a certain German duck, this is essentially what could happen if some of the universe suddenly received an update to its physics engine. Long story short, a sphere of nothingness expands at the speed of light, destroying everything and leaving behind a portion of spacetime where our laws of physics no longer apply. Given enough time, probability will spawn enough of these to clean up whatever remains of the universe after its death.
*The Off Switch - an ever-present threat if the simulation argument is true is that whoever made the simulation could get bored and just turn the 'game' off forever, or some accident happens in the real world that shuts it down. Temporarily turning it off isn't really a threat, for in all likelihood it would just resume where it left off, and we would be none the wiser. A meta version of post-apocalyptic fiction could be following the creators of a simulation after turning it off permanently, and how said simulation affected their society.
====Examples====
*[[Xeelee Sequence]] (Death of the universe)

== Timespan ==
Another point of consideration for a post apocalyptic setting how long has it's been since the apocalypse happened.

===''In media res''===
The Apocalypse is now, and [[Exterminatus|nothing might come after it]]. Typically this applies to 'slow burn' apocalypses that still have worse to offer, or apocalypses that by definition leave nothing to tell after they conclude.
====Examples====
*Literally any extinction story

=== Immediate Aftermath ===
The Apocalypse has happened fairly recently. It might have run it's course yesterday, maybe it's been a few years. For brevity's sake, we'll put the cap at twenty years. Point is that most people around are people who survived the disaster and directly remember the world before. Survivors often survive by scavenging the ruins for cans of beans, ammunition, laptops and similar. Survivalists are still locked up in their bunkers. Remnants of Government authorities, military forces, corporations and other such Old-World institutions are still about, pursuing their own agendas. Accountants, janitors, lawyers and jazz musicians have to work out how to survive. Many of them gang up and many gangs which prey on others, sometimes [[cannibalism|literally]].
====Examples====
*Most Zombie Fiction

=== After the Aftermath ===
The Apocalypse happened between 20 years to maybe a couple centuries ago. If nothing else, a generation has grown up in this marred world. Memories of the old world have faded, as have much of it's knowledge. A few areas have stabilized and there are trade towns. Scavenged stuff is still a big deal, but people increasingly are making new things bodged together from junk. Whatever surviving Authorities have stumbled along their own course, if two groups of (for example) US Army troops survived in Oregon and Tennessee, they'd probably have radically different ideas and not respect each other's authority if they met. There are a few peaceful areas, but other areas are torn up in war. Moreover this would not be a smattering of desperate folk clubbing each other for cans of dog-food but battle hardened hosts of warriors who've learned to survive in this hostile age.
====Examples====
*[[Fallout]]
*[[Fist of the North Star]]

=== An Ancient Cataclysm ===
The Apocalypse happened hundreds, possibly thousands of years ago. The Apocalyptic Event is now an object of myth and legend to cultures which have emerged after the aftermath. Cultures which are as distinct from ours as [[Roman Empire]] was to us. Never the less, a Dark Age persists. There are a few Kingdoms and City States, while vast tracts of land are haunted by barbarian peoples. Much of Technology has been lost and if it has been recovered, it's not well distributed.
====Examples====
*[[Dark Age of Technology]]

=== The Healed World ===
The [[Noblebright]] version of Post Apocalyptia. In short, people eventually got their shit together and rebuilt. New cities emerge from the ashes and efforts are done to clean up the mess. More over lessens are learned to avoid such disasters going forward. What rises from the ashes is a better world.
====Examples====
*[[Star Trek]]

=== The Inheritors ===
Thousands if not millions of years have passed and mankind is a distant memory. In its place, new creatures have arisen. Rats, bats, cats, weasels, seagulls, pigs, foxes, dogs, and similar small adaptable creatures persisted and diversified to fill emptied niches. Usually, at least one lineage of them has developed intelligence and tool use. To them, humans would only be skeletons in museums.

A variant of this is posthumanism, either of the natural evolution-caused variety, some alien dicks messing with humanity's genetics (an apocalypse of its own), or a post-humanity changing itself - all to the point that OG humanity is as much as a common ancestor between what breeds of posthumans exist as is the common ancestor to all mammals.
====Examples====
*Splatoon
*All Tommorows

[[Category:Setting Aesthetics]]

Post-Apocalyptic

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{{Topquote|… It's the end of the world as we know it, It's the end of the world as we know it, It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.|R.E.M.}}

'''Post-Apocalyptic''' is a form of [[Setting Aesthetics]] that, as its name suggests, takes place in a once-thriving world that was subsequently blown up or otherwise ravaged by massive disasters of some kind or another. It's an extremely popular aesthetic with many different forms, ranging from nuclear war to zombie apocalypse to alien invasion, and has been an amendment to or basis for many different /tg/ related publications.

Many Post-Apocalyptic settings has the cataclysm as its main theme - Mad Max and [[Fallout]] are good examples of worlds where the apocalypse is in the forefront - but others are more subtle. [[Warhammer 40,000]] is technically post-apocalyptic, as is [[Age of Sigmar]]. [[Dark Souls]] is also an example, where the apocalypse is there but it isn't clearly about an apocalypse as much as its about just doing things in a weird world.

Most Post-Apocalyptic media is also Sci-Fi, since the cataclysm that started them required higher level technology, but lower level players are often stuck with “current” or even primitive technology. There’s a rather decent rate of crossover with [[Mecha]], with many prominent works of that series being post-apoc since it allows for high enough technology without the many things that should render them useless. Not all Post-Apocalyptic settings are sci-fi ones however, as settings like [[Dark Sun]] having a magically induced apocalypse.

[[D20 Apocalypse]] is literally a book about doing [[D20 Modern]] games set in this genre.
== Types of Apocalypse ==
Here's a quick rundown of events which commonly bring the end of the world as we know it in fiction. Their nature, their qualities and their appeal to a prospective writer of stories and settings.

Please note that there can easily be overlap. One mass disaster can lead to other mass disasters as knock on effects.

=== Alien Invasion ===
There are at least a hundred billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy and two hundred billion galaxies in the observable universe. The Raw Materials of life as we know it are common and life got started fairly early in earth's geological history. It's a safe bet that on some distant planet life emerged and would evolve, possibly into other beings at least as smart as us and possibly with a head start. We can only hope that such civilizations are nice guys, because if not we are in trouble.

Over the years, there has been a lot of different takes on alien invasions. Tripedal fighting machines to flying saucers, subtle infiltration, hordes of bugs, fleets in orbit, legions of alien soldiers, self replicating robots and more. The consequences there-of also vary. Some aliens might try to strip mine the earth, others might enslave humanity, put mankind into reserves or turn earth into a nature preserve.

====Examples====
* Resistance

=== Asteroid ===
A space rock several kilometer across crashes out of the sky and into the Earth at orbital speed. If it hit's water, it sends tidal waves that flood continents. A shockwave rips across the world, shattering forests and buildings and scorching the landscape. Rocks kicked up in the impact rain down around the world while the planet is rattled like a drum by the impact, resulting in earthquakes. If you survive all that, a dust cloud shrouds the earth, temperatures plunge and photosynthesis basically stops for a few years. Frost, famine and fighting reap many of the survivors leaving only a few pockets of the lucky to weather the storm and emerge into an empty world.

The Astronomical equivalent of [[Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies]] has a lot of fire and fury and it's something which can just fall out of the blue. It happened to the non avian [[Dinosaur]]s 66 million years ago. If you want "everything was going along as normal, then it all went to shit in a split second" few things beat an asteroid. If you want a simple straightforward explanation for why our world came to an end, this is it.
==== Examples ====
* Ace Combat Infinity Timeline

=== Disease ===

'''''...distant nurglish laughter...'''''

A new infectious variety of something appears. It might have been a freak mutation or it might have been made in a lab and gotten out. Either way, it spreads rapidly among the human population and is terminal. Attempts to contain and combat it are ultimately ineffective. Even if it can be fought societal breakdown prevents effective response for most people. For every person who is immune, recovers, is successfully treated or quarantined away in sterilized bunkers, hundreds die. By the time the dust settles, most of humanity is dead.

While disease is a natural phenomenon, a plague capable of wiping out whole civilizations typically occurs in a sufficiently advanced society with extensive trade networks; the black plague came to Europe from the Silk Road into the ports of Italy before wiping out a third of the continent - whereas individual, isolated villages would be spared because the plague would wipe out neighboring towns before it could reach them. But what's even more devastating is when a disease spreads to a population that has never been exposed to it before, and therefore has virtually no immunities to it; most of the indigenous people of the Americas were wiped out by diseases like smallpox and measles long before settlers began arriving en masse.

The thing about Disease is that it can clear out humanity while leaving it's stuff largely intact. The survivors can wander cities turned into colossal ghost towns, not shattered but left to decay as nature reclaims the landscape. Similarly anxieties about disease are rather high nowadays given the whole global pandemic.
==== Examples ====
* A lot of Zombie Fiction.

=== Global Warming (and environmental devastation in general) ===
Human industries continue to pump Carbon Dioxide into the air resulting in a Greenhouse Effect. Temperatures rise considerably and sea levels rise. Low lying regions are flooded, weather patterns are changed. Millions are displaced and what was prime farmland dries out and dry areas are washed away. Violent Storms become more frequent. Civil and political unrest mounts while governments are strained. Wars break out as groups fight for what they can get their hands on. Those that survive find a ravaged world deeply changed by the byproducts Mankind's activity.

First of all, worries about Climate Change are plentiful today just as Nuclear War was in the 1950s. Moreover this is something which is harder to deal with. Nobody sane wants a nuclear war, but the solution boils down to simply not starting one and negotiating things out with other people who don't want to die. When it comes to Co2 Emissions, we're doing it constantly and it's hard to stop this because it is a big systemic thing with a lot of powerful people and organizations in place which profit from it.

Bear in mind, some forms of climate change, including devastating kinds, have nothing to do with human intervention; the mini-Ice Age caused by a big rock smacking into Earth can be thought of as the Dinosaurs' own apocalypse. Particularly nasty supervolcanic eruptions have been known to cause ecological devastation well beyond the original point of eruption, such as the Volcanic Winter of 536 that devastated crops and possibly lead to the outbreak of the Plague of Justinian as a result of malnutrition. The eruption of Krakatoa, the deadliest in recorded history, created worldwide acid rain in addition to global cooling.

==== Examples ====
* Water World
*[[Setting:CATastrophe|CATastorphy]]
* Mad Max

=== Nuclear War ===
<div style="font-size:1.10em;font-weight:bold;font-style:italic;font-family:serif;margin-top:1em;margin-bottom:1em">...distant Khornate Laughter...</div>

The nightmare of the [[Cold War]]. One way or another (international relations entering a death spiral, a rabid hawk in the wrong place in the wrong time, some crazed nutter with an apocalyptic vision gets hold of the Big Red Button, an "Oops" scenario when warning systems give a false positive an attack which convinces the guys in charge to "retaliate") the missiles start flying. Cities around the world disappear under mushroom clouds, killing tens of millions at a minimum from the blasts itself. Millions more die from wounds and radiation soon after, and more die from fallout, disease, starvation and the breakdown of social order and services. Those that remain will inhabit a shattered poisoned world of ruins and chaos as bands of people seek to claim what they can by force.

Nuclear War is a very human disaster and one made with deliberate intent. An asteroid is simply moving it it's orbit as it has done so for billions of years and just happens to be moving towards another celestial body one day. A virus simply bumps into cells and injects it's RNA into them if they're the right type. Co2 Emissions are a byproduct of human civilization and opposition to reducing them is motivated by economic incentive. But a Nuclear strike is a deliberate premeditated move by humans to kill other humans ''en mass'' and our species has gotten frighteningly good at the murder trade.
====Examples====
* [[Fallout]]
* Metro 2033
* [[Fist of the North Star]]

=== Robot Uprising ===
AI becomes advanced enough that they begin to supersede humanity. So much so that, for one reason or another, a war breaks out between humanity and machines, resulting in machines either wiping out or enslaving mankind. This can go in a variety of different ways depending on how the author feels about what AI would do in a given situation, or perhaps how misanthropic they feel. AI is usually seen as breaking free of their bondage at the hands of mankind, or else taking an extreme managerial approach and deciding that humanity needs to be culled for their own good. Very rarely, the Robot uprising is a result of AI following their programming to the letter but with unintended consequences, such as trying to meet contradictory commands or a flaw in their reasoning. Either way, the end result is that the machines take over, and anything that doesn’t support the machine war effort is disposed of; ecological devastation is pretty common, since machines don’t need a clean environment or biodiversity to survive.

A robot uprising stokes on the fears of human hubris and the idea that something we create can end up replacing or enslaving us; humanity already experiences much anxiety over robots replacing low-skill workers in industry, as well as technology being used to control the flow of information or otherwise trapping people inside a virtual online world. Having the machines outright rebel is that idea taken to its logical extreme. It also can be used to explore the ideas of “what is human,” or “what is consciousness,” since we do not have any other kind of life form that is capable of rational thought to compare ourselves to.
====Examples====
* Terminator
* Horizon Zero Dawn

===Societal Collapse===
The least glamorous version, but the one with the most historical examples. Sometimes its not a singular cataclysmic event that wipes out a civilization; sometimes we don't even know what may have wiped out a once-mighty nation apart from vague references in forgotten tomes or folk memories buried in mythology. Whatever happened, it was enough to overwhelm a civilization to the point that its support structures buckled under the strain and people are forced to fend for themselves, and it may take centuries for society to recover. Ancient Rome is a classic example; while Rome was officially ended by the sacking at the hands of the Visigoths, it was in a centuries-long decline caused by war, famine, wealth inequality, political corruption, the black plague, the weakening of political, social, and military institutions all at the same time. All of its advances were forgotten until almost a thousand years later. For an earlier, more mysterious example, the Bronze Age Collapse saw multiple very sophisticated civilizations wiped out, possibly by drought, invasions from "sea peoples", and the fragility of top-down authoritarian empires. And if we want to look forward in time, an increasingly interconnected world means that two countries warring in Eastern Europe suddenly translates into a global food shortage. Either way, if you're looking for something a bit more grounded (if less dramatic), history has plenty of examples.

====Examples====
*[[Bronze Age|The Bronze Age Collapse]]

===The End Times===
Most mythologies have some kind of apocalyptic vision of the future (it’s literally where the term “apocalypse” comes from). In scholarly terms, this is called “Eschatology.” While the details will vary between religions, common themes include devastating wars, the whole world is devastated by monsters and demons, famine wipes out large swaths of the population, kingdoms degenerating into tyranny, society as a whole degenerating into complete wickedness, and finally, an epic battle between the forces of good and evil, before the old world is finally destroyed. In some tellings, the world is reborn and a new cycle begins with the survivors of the old world. In others, evil is permanently destroyed and a permanent utopia is established on Earth.

Naturally, this version of the apocalypse is less common in modern times, but some have attempted to take these ancient tales and envision how they would play out in the not-too-distant future. One common trope is taking the Antichrist from the Biblical Revelation, and cast him as a powerful tyrant who unites the world under a fascist regime. In other cases, a Doomsday Cult is attempting to bring about or accelerate the End Times. The Cthulhu Mythos can be thought of as a modern version of this, as it makes it pretty clear that the world is doomed one way or another. Very rarely do these modern stories actually follow through with the apocalypse though, as Eschatology is defined by its finality. Unless you’re just doing a straight retelling of the apocalyptic scenario, there’s very little wiggle room to tell your own story once the apocalypse actually happens. Setting your story in the middle of the Apocalypse, however, is more doable, since it’s not nearly as instantaneous as a nuclear war or meteor strike, and is likely to be drawn out until the climax.

====Examples====
*[[The End Times]]

===Cosmological events===
These are the more scientific version of The End Times since they are just as final to us if they hit - and one WILL happen eventually IRL due to the laws of physics. [[Grimdark|The Universe is a scary place, and not even it will be around forever]].

Subclasses include:
====Planet killers====
Humanity may survive on another world in the Solar System and/or beyond, but Earth is gone - either wiped sterile or no longer on the map at all.
*Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) - basically, if a big star that's close enough dies when its magnetic poles are facing us, the resulting jet of radiation will destroy the Earth's ozone layer, making the Sun [[Meme|a deadly lazer]] once more. While it's possible to survive, given that one major extinction in Earth's past might have been caused by a weaker one, it's more likely to cook everything alive - either directly or indirectly depending on the distance.
*Solar luminosity - due to the way stars function, they get brighter and hotter as they get older. The Sun is no exception, and this is not a good thing. Eventually, in about 1 billion years or so, the Sun will be outputting too much energy for life on Earth to be viable anymore. While inevitable, we (or whatever comes after us) has a LONG time to prepare for the Great Exodus.
*Planetary collision - While ''extremely'' unlikely in the current state of the Solar System, it's still a possibility, and one scary enough for conspiracy theorists to fearmonger using. Any rocky body large enough for gravity to make spherical - be it a very large asteroid or comet, a moon, or another planet - ''will'' revert the Earth to a state similar to how it was when it formed if it smacks into it, or outright destroy it if massive enough. Usually the other planet won't fare much better, unless it's a gas giant that eats rocky planets for breakfast. The suspect to watch out for is rogue planets, though given enough time Mercury might become suicidal.
*Eaten by the Sun - either due to some freak gravitational disturbance or the Sun inevitably becoming a red giant (see 'death of the Sun'), there's a chance that the Sun will do what the Tyranids can't due to plot reasons and eat the Earth, melting it into a glob of plasma. It's iffy in the latter case since the Sun maxes out in size around the time it would eat Earth, becoming too big to hold onto all its gas. Not that it matters, as solar luminosity would have made it an unimportant magma ball by that time anyway.
*Yeeted into space - Gravitational disturbances - whether one big one or a series of smaller ones - could fling Earth out of its orbit and into interstellar space, likely killing all life since the big light in the sky is gone.
*Eaten by a black hole - if a black hole is big enough to start chowing down before it blows up due to Hawking radiation, but small enough not to throw a star system's gravity out of whack, it can easily replace the Earth with a black sphere of inescapable gravity.
====Star system killers====
For these, humanity has to have gone interstellar if it has any hope of not going extinct.
*Death of the Sun - Sun runs out of fuel and turns into a sad white ball unable to warm up anything, possibly eating the Earth in the process. Enough said.
*Supernova - Sure, the system it's in is going to be feeling most of the pain, but a close enough supernova doesn't even need to have its GRBs aimed at you to kill - the weaker radiation in all directions can do that too. Granted, it has to be VERY close for that to even be a threat, though candidates for such an event exist. You have even shittier luck if you're caught in a hypernova, which spreads radiation a fair bit farther.
*Stellar collision - basically the only way the Sun can go boom like a supernova. White dwarf, main sequence, whatever - if it's big enough, a game of galaxy billiards can go horribly wrong. The chance it does is extremely low due to the distances involved, but it does happen - especially in denser regions of space.
*Black hole buffet - Large enough black hole to disrupt orbits? The entire system is either becoming a snack or getting torn apart, with nothing in between.
====The Big Ones====
No escape. No respite. Not even immortal beings can survive these. Worst of all, a few are inevitable, and the universe will never be the same. The existential dread is natural, but luckily most of these final doomsdays are so far off or so unlikely that humanity will likely have lived out its existence long beforehand. If not, we'd probably be so far along that we could just jump ship into another universe, either a natural one in a multiverse or an artificially created one. But adding 'post-' to these apocalypses is not really possible.
*Stellar decay - by the appropriately named "degenerate era", stars capable of supporting life will have burned out due to a lack of fuel, and no more will be made (if the universe is infinite, there may be infinite material for star formation but there's also an infinite amount of stars to use it up). Life developing as it did on Earth will be impossible, and unless humanity has the means to keep the torch lit, life will cease to exist.
*Proton decay - unproven, but if it exists, there's a lifespan to solid matter that isn't part of a black hole. This would be a hard limit on life's possible existence with or without human intervention. If not, humanity may survive by leeching energy off black holes until the universe itself ends.
*Death of the universe - whether it crumples back into a point, rips itself apart, or becomes an empty, cold wasteland of nothingness, the universe WILL die, and there's nothing you can do about it. On obscene timescales even black holes disappear, which is the hardest of hard limits on existence. Past this point, time becomes meaningless, unless by some miracle an anomaly causes another Big Bang.
*Vacuum decay - helpfully described as "the universe's delete button" by a certain German duck, this is essentially what could happen if some of the universe suddenly received an update to its physics engine. Long story short, a sphere of nothingness expands at the speed of light, destroying everything and leaving behind a portion of spacetime where our laws of physics no longer apply. Given enough time, probability will spawn enough of these to clean up whatever remains of the universe after its death.
*The Off Switch - an ever-present threat if the simulation argument is true is that whoever made the simulation could get bored and just turn the 'game' off forever, or some accident happens in the real world that shuts it down. Temporarily turning it off isn't really a threat, for in all likelihood it would just resume where it left off, and we would be none the wiser. A meta version of post-apocalyptic fiction could be following the creators of a simulation after turning it off permanently, and how said simulation affected their society.
====Examples====
*[[Xeelee Sequence]] (Death of the universe)

== Timespan ==
Another point of consideration for a post apocalyptic setting how long has it's been since the apocalypse happened.

===''In media res''===
The Apocalypse is now, and [[Exterminatus|nothing might come after it]]. Typically this applies to 'slow burn' apocalypses that still have worse to offer, or apocalypses that by definition leave nothing to tell after they conclude.
====Examples====
*Literally any extinction story

=== Immediate Aftermath ===
The Apocalypse has happened fairly recently. It might have run it's course yesterday, maybe it's been a few years. For brevity's sake, we'll put the cap at twenty years. Point is that most people around are people who survived the disaster and directly remember the world before. Survivors often survive by scavenging the ruins for cans of beans, ammunition, laptops and similar. Survivalists are still locked up in their bunkers. Remnants of Government authorities, military forces, corporations and other such Old-World institutions are still about, pursuing their own agendas. Accountants, janitors, lawyers and jazz musicians have to work out how to survive. Many of them gang up and many gangs which prey on others, sometimes [[cannibalism|literally]].
====Examples====
*Most Zombie Fiction

=== After the Aftermath ===
The Apocalypse happened between 20 years to maybe a couple centuries ago. If nothing else, a generation has grown up in this marred world. Memories of the old world have faded, as have much of it's knowledge. A few areas have stabilized and there are trade towns. Scavenged stuff is still a big deal, but people increasingly are making new things bodged together from junk. Whatever surviving Authorities have stumbled along their own course, if two groups of (for example) US Army troops survived in Oregon and Tennessee, they'd probably have radically different ideas and not respect each other's authority if they met. There are a few peaceful areas, but other areas are torn up in war. Moreover this would not be a smattering of desperate folk clubbing each other for cans of dog-food but battle hardened hosts of warriors who've learned to survive in this hostile age.
====Examples====
*[[Fallout]]
*[[Fist of the North Star]]

=== An Ancient Cataclysm ===
The Apocalypse happened hundreds, possibly thousands of years ago. The Apocalyptic Event is now an object of myth and legend to cultures which have emerged after the aftermath. Cultures which are as distinct from ours as [[Roman Empire]] was to us. Never the less, a Dark Age persists. There are a few Kingdoms and City States, while vast tracts of land are haunted by barbarian peoples. Much of Technology has been lost and if it has been recovered, it's not well distributed.
====Examples====
*[[Dark Age of Technology]]

=== The Healed World ===
The [[Noblebright]] version of Post Apocalyptia. In short, people eventually got their shit together and rebuilt. New cities emerge from the ashes and efforts are done to clean up the mess. More over lessens are learned to avoid such disasters going forward. What rises from the ashes is a better world.
====Examples====
*[[Star Trek]]

=== The Inheritors ===
Thousands if not millions of years have passed and mankind is a distant memory. In its place, new creatures have arisen. Rats, bats, cats, weasels, seagulls, pigs, foxes, dogs, and similar small adaptable creatures persisted and diversified to fill emptied niches. Usually, at least one lineage of them has developed intelligence and tool use. To them, humans would only be skeletons in museums.

A variant of this is posthumanism, either of the natural evolution-caused variety, some alien dicks messing with humanity's genetics (an apocalypse of its own), or a post-humanity changing itself - all to the point that OG humanity is as much as a common ancestor between what breeds of posthumans exist as is the common ancestor to all mammals.
====Examples====
*Splatoon
*All Tommorows

[[Category:Setting Aesthetics]]