Pitstop Before Bed

While weaving some chainmail tonight, I was watching The History Channel. They were showing a program about the evolution of bullets. (I wasn't really interested in the history of bullets, but I had a pair of pliers in each hand, and operating the remote was too great a challenge.) Toward the end of the program, the spokesman for a particular firearms company proudly boasted and demonstrated their creation: a single weapon capable of a rate of fire in excess of one million rounds per minute.

Take a moment, and try to conceive what that really means.

Sixty seconds. One million rounds.

The question that first sprang into my mind was, "What the hell could your target possibly be to cause you to use a weapon like this?" If the object you're shooting toward doesn't die within, say, the first 50,000 rounds (3 seconds), it's a fair bet to say the next 950,000 are just going to piss it off even more.

What really struck me, though, was the zeal, the facial expression of this company's representative, as he spoke proudly about their technical achievement. He was absolutely thrilled that they were capable of producing it, and from a purely scientific perspective, I suppose it really is a technical marvel. But I don't think there is a single person on the planet who would argue that this device will, in any way, benefit humanity. The engineers who design things like this are probably paid substantial sums to do their work, and this is where failure of conscience is evident. People who put human conscience before them could not possibly create these things. This is the type of job at which I would put down my drafting pencil, and simply walk away.

Chainmail armor has been proven completely ineffectual against bullets from any era, regardless of the armor's material composition, weave density, weave style, and assembly method.