Skip to main content
Worldbuilding

You are not logged in. Your edit will be placed in a queue until it is peer reviewed.

We welcome edits that make the post easier to understand and more valuable for readers. Because community members review edits, please try to make the post substantially better than how you found it, for example, by fixing grammar or adding additional resources and hyperlinks.

Required fields*

6
  • $\begingroup$ The video you linked had an impossible mechanism, the string cocked without any energy being put into it - it was purely for a fantasy film with no realistic prospect of working. I.e "no, can't be done" as JBH says. If there's another way of doing it, we'll find it. $\endgroup$ Commented yesterday
  • 5
    $\begingroup$ It takes energy to arm a bow. Where is that energy coming from? In firearms the energy is bled off from a fired round to cycle in the next round. Once you have a energy supply the mechanism is easier. $\endgroup$ Commented yesterday
  • 3
    $\begingroup$ @Escapeddentalpatient. Story canon from VanHelsing (2004) is that the weapon worked on compressed gas. I'm just not sure if even by the end of the Medieval period (~1450ce) that was possible. But a better question is what's the point? If you have the energy to draw the bowstring, you have the energy to directly launch the bolt... right? $\endgroup$ Commented yesterday
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ @JBH Air rifles date to ca. 1580 and saw considerable use in war, so while anachronistic for a da Vinci type, it would be less anachronistic than many things people are willing to credit to fictional da Vincis (tanks, helicopters). But yes, it was simpler and easier (and done) to simply launch the projectile directly without using a bow. $\endgroup$ Commented 20 hours ago
  • $\begingroup$ Not a solution for a single semi-automatic re-arming crossbow, but the real-life solution to "how to shoot more arrows / bolts faster" was simply to have multiple shooters, working in pairs or threes, so that one is aiming and firing while another reloads. Thus the group, as a whole, is pseudo-semi-automatic. $\endgroup$ Commented 9 hours ago