Stuff You Should Know - Crossbows: They Look Cool

Episode Date: November 22, 2011

Sure, they look cool. It's as if someone put a bow and a rifle together, but in fact crossbows predate firearms by a few thousand years. Learn all about the advantages crossbows bestow, the physics behind them and how to use one with Josh and Chuck. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Flooring contractors agree. When looking for the best to care for hardwood floors, use Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner. The residue-free, fast drying solution is specially designed for hardwood floors, delivering the safe and effective clean you trust. Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner is available at most retailers where floor cleaning products are sold and on Amazon. Also available for your other hard surface floors like Stone, Tile, Laminate, Vinyl, and LVT. For cleaning tips and exclusive offers, visit Bona.com slash Bona Clean. The War on Drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call,

like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid for it. Be sure to listen to the War on Drugs on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant that makes this stuff you should know as if you didn't know. You know. You know. Yeah, we trust you. We work for a website called HowStuffWorks.com and we are going to take an article at random from the site right now. Never seen it before and we're just going to start talking about it. You ready Chuck?

Here, I'm spinning the wheel and stop. Oh, shoot. What is this? It almost landed on the Batmobile. Oh, what is it instead? I can't be bothered to look to the right. Crossbows. Okay. How crossbows work? Yeah. Alright, let's start talking. Just off the top of my head, Chuck. Have you ever seen the TV show Walking Dead? Yeah. Awesome show. And nice choice of weapon. I know you saw it. I just got into it. You mean I watched the first six episodes, the first season? Yeah. That's so good. Have you started season two yet? Not yet. So don't tell me anything. Okay. I don't want to know if Nate Fisher dies. There's still zombies out there. Okay, good. Okay. That's a spoiler. I'll give you. Good. Although I have to say, I'm not very happy with that one subplot of like the sexual tension subplot,

that conflict that's brewing and hasn't really. Yeah, you know. That's the B-line. So, but overall, I think it's an awesome show. And I think, like you said, Darryl Dixon's choice of weapon is pretty awesome. If not very practical, it's pretty awesome. And that is the crossbow. Yeah. Yeah, it is quiet because you don't want to alert the zombies. The geeks. But he has a finite amount of arrows or bolts that he has to go retrieve from the heads of zombies that he's just shot between the eyes after they fall. If I was him, I'd hit up a hardware store or a sporting goods store and get a bunch of those. Like in Red Dawn. Yeah. Load up. Yeah. So every time I watch that show, I keep telling him like they have everything they want. Like it's like a struggle

to get gas or cars everywhere. Yeah. And it hasn't been that long. It's not like 100 years after where everything has been raided. There's still stuff everywhere. Yeah, there's very few people to raid. Yeah, it's fine. Go get some arrows. They're reusable. In fact, the shot in Atlanta, I'll tell them where you can pick some up. I'll send Norman Reedus an email. Where would you send them? Go over to Dick's Sporting Goods. Oh, okay. You go for the change? 10 for a dollar. Not the mom and pop army Navy stores? Yeah, I would go to one of those. Support small business. Exactly. Go to Bob's Bolt House. I love Bob's in the Bolt District. So, Chuck, you've seen a crossbow before then. Yeah, I want to buy one after this. Yeah, I kind of like one too. I don't know that

either of us should be trusted with one. No. Obviously, somebody took a bow, bow and arrow, slapped it on top of a rifle and said, I just made me a crossbow. That's what happened. And that's probably a very recent origin. The end, good night. Not true, Josh. Liar. Archaeologists like Indiana Jones have found crossbows as far back as 2,500-year-old Chinese graves. Isn't that crazy? That is crazy. And they think that it may be as much as 4,000 years old that technology in China. Yeah, 2,000 BC, perhaps. They appeared in the Mediterranean by the 4th century AD. Roman military used them. It was written down in the text. I love this guy's name. Flavius Vigitius. Vigitius. Renatus. Yeah. His family had been in broccoli. They called him

Flav, though. You know, they did. They were all over Europe during the Middle Ages. The crossbow was basically, like you said, rifle meets bow. Right, but this is long before anybody thought of a rifle. Yeah, that's true. But I mean, think about it. That's what you think it is. It's got like a trigger and there's a stock and all that stuff, but it predates the rifle by many thousands of years. Didn't DaVinci draw one of these up, too? Yeah. See? Oh, that was in there. Yeah, it's page zero, Art Chuck. There's a comment among the Mediterranean and the Chinese crossbow were the bow, obviously, the stock, which is also called the tiller, and a groove in the stock or the tiller that the arrow or bolt flew down. Yeah. A trigger. Trigger. But the trigger mechanisms

were different. Apparently, if you were in the Mediterranean, your trigger firing, your trigger triggered the firing mechanism by nut, twisted nut. Right? Okay. If you were in China, it used some bolts and levers, system of levers that fired the or released the string and fired the bolt. And these firing mechanisms are different enough that archaeologists believe that they were independently conceived of in China and in the Mediterranean. That's pretty cool. Yeah. Another common device you see most often is a stirrup. And if you ever look at a crossbow, you'll notice that it has a little steel stirrup on the front of it where you can put your foot. There's no better word for it. I was trying to think of one, but it's a stirrup. So what you do is you put it on the ground and

put your little foot in that stirrup so you can hold it down real tight. And you pull it back, pull the drawstring back with both hands, apparently equally, on both sides. That's important because you don't want it out of whack. No, if it's off balance, the air is not going to fly straight or true meat. And so you pull it back and you hook it on a, you know, they're all different, but you hook it on a little peg device that will be released by pulling the trigger. Yeah. And that's the basic fundamentals. So the crossbow doesn't just look cool. It has some actual, it does look very cool. It has, it poses some actual advantages over the bow. And the bow's been around since before people even knew how to write or knew that there was such a thing as

writing because there wasn't yet. Right. And so what the crossbow does is it takes the bow and all of its disadvantages and says, well, here, let me add this and let me add that. Let me change this a little bit. And all of a sudden now any fat slob can shoot a bow and arrow. Yeah. If you got a bow, if you're not, if you're a traditional bowman or an archer, is bowing even a word? I think it is now. Right. If you're a traditional archer, you are probably pretty strong and you might be sort of tall and you are pretty quick because it's a pretty quick process to draw up the bow. Yeah. Aim it and shoot it. You've seen Lord of the Rings. You've seen Lord of the Rings. But the longer it takes you to aim, the more tired

you're going to, your little arms are going to be, the less accurate you're going to be. Yeah. With a crossbow, you know, you can cock that thing and you're done. Right. It just sits there cocked indefinitely until you pull the trigger. Yeah. I wouldn't walk around like that unless you're like a hunter maybe. Or some jerk. Yeah. But don't do it in your backyard. Um, so it takes that, that need for endurance. Yeah. In, in, you know, holding it, waiting for somebody to come around the bend and it's flat. Yes. And like you said, it also introduced a whole new subpar breed of warrior because if you were a great archer, that means like I said, you're probably strong, probably a little bit taller for the age because people were shorter back then.

Yeah. Longbow was stronger, shot straighter and further. So you want to use a longbow. Yeah. But, uh, you know, if you get a crossbow, if you can pull that thing back, that's all you need to do. But sometimes you didn't even need to pull that thing back. Well, you can pull that thing back generally because you're using a stirrup, right? Which means you're using your foot. Yeah. And if you have a little hook attached to your belt, then you're, you're doing a squat. Yeah. And that's how you're pulling. That's how you're cocking the crossbow. That was a really lacing night. Right. Exactly. Well, I imagine it's probably like a dwarf or maybe an elf. Like, you know, elves are kind of undeveloped. Um, but you're, you're standing up basically to cock the

bow, the crossbow, and, um, you're using your buttocks and your thigh muscles, which are the strongest muscles in your body. That's right. So you could just be like a total upper body wuss, but ripped from the waist down. You're a crossbowman or a cross archer. That's true. But what I was saying was it was the crannokin. Sometimes you didn't even have to pull it back at all because in 14th century Europe, they began making this thing, this device called a crannokin that you could put on your crossbow, had a little toothed wheel and a crank, and it would basically pull the string back for you. Yeah. You're just cranking it like you're opening your grandmother's windows at her house. Yeah. You know, like the little crank thing. But as you're doing that,

it's cocking the bow, but it's cocking a bow that you couldn't possibly cock yourself, which means that you're about to shoot a bolt that can go right through a tree or pretty significantly deep into a tree or better yet, into a war horse or a human being. That's right. The problem is it takes forever to crank the crannokin. And in some cases, some models, you had to crank the crannokin, get it cocked, then remove the crannokin, put the bolt in, and shoot. So it was very powerful, but it was very slow, which is one disadvantage of a crossbow. I wouldn't have wanted one back in the day. No. But if you were in China and you wanted to get some shots off pretty quick, they had a crossbow for you. They had automatic crossbows.

They shot several bolts a second. That's crazy. It had a magazine that would just feed bolts into the crossbow, which would cock through levers. The moment it was cocked, it would shoot the bolt, and then another bolt would come down. And the moment it was cocked, another bolt, it would shoot it, and so on. And so if you were going really fast, you could just reign bolts down on somebody. The problem is it was fast, but it wasn't very accurate, and it wasn't very deadly. But it probably scared the tar out of people who saw it. And the bolt didn't travel that fast. It was fast to shoot, but not fast in flight. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy,

number one, is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2,200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss y'all. The property is guilty, exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. Cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being

robbed. They call civil acid for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. From Wall Street to Main Street and from Hollywood to Washington, the news is filled with decisions, turning points, deals, and collisions. I'm Tim O'Brien, the senior executive editor for Bloomberg Opinion, and I'm your host for Crash Course, a weekly podcast from Bloomberg and iHeart Radio. Every week on Crash Course, I'll bring listeners directly into the arenas

where epic upheavals occur. And I'm going to explore the lessons we can learn when creativity and ambition collide with competition and power. Each Tuesday, I'll talk to Bloomberg reporters around the world, as well as experts in big names in the news. Together, we'll explore business, political, and social disruptions and what we can learn from them. I'm Tim O'Brien, host of Crash Course, a new weekly podcast from Bloomberg and iHeart Radio. Listen to Crash Course every Tuesday on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Did you really, you knew that a bow is basically a spring?

Well, sure. I read that like four times. Really? Yeah. I think that's very neat. So I could take a bed spring. All right. And I heard you. I heard that you used to shoot. I want to know about it. We'll get into that. But I'm just like knee deep in the physics now. I know. You take a spring, you stretch it out. What you've just done is generate, well, you haven't generated it, but you've just somehow amassed elastic energy. Potential energy. Potential energy through the elasticity of the spring. Yes. Okay. As you're holding it, all of that energy is potential. It's like, let me go and I'll do some crazy stuff. So much potential. The moment you let go, the potential energy becomes kinetic energy. I believe we talked a lot about this

roller coasters. Yeah. The same thing with the bow. When you pull a string that's connected to either end of the bow, you're pulling the bow back. You're changing its shape. It's like a spring being stretched out, but in this case, the bow is just being brought together. Yeah, the limbs. And then when you let go, the bow springs back to its original shape, drawing suddenly the string highly taught. You have an arrow attached to that string and it sends that arrow shooting forward at incredible speeds. The physics of a bow also apply to the physics of a crossbow. Yeah. And if you never thought about it, it is interesting because it's not a little toy string that's elastic. The string stays the same length. You're pulling the limbs together. Yeah. And then when you let

go, the limbs go away from you very suddenly. The amount of energy a bow can hold, Josh. You can figure that out actually. It's draw weight is the amount of force required to draw it back. And it's draw length is the distance between the bow string's position at rest and when drawn. And the total amount of energy that a bow can hold is approximately equal to the draw weight times draw length divided by two. Yeah. And then usually that's expressed in jewels, foot pounds or jewels. Oh, is it jewels? Yeah. I was kidding around. No, that's the bow's energy. You can also impress a crossbowman by talking about the arrow's velocity, which is measured in feet or meters per second. That's right. And a lot of things can affect this,

obviously. If you have a long bow, it's going to be more powerful than a short bow because it just makes sense. So the size affects it. The shape affects it. A recurve bow, which is one of the ones I had growing up, is it doesn't just come back in a U. It comes back in a U, then flares back out away from the other direction. Yeah. Yeah. At the top and bottom. Right. And what this does is it shortens the bracing height, which is the distance between the string and the bow when it's at rest, which means that since that's shorter, when you pull the string back and release it, it has a longer distance to travel before it comes to a stop, which means it gives that arrow or bolt a little extra push. That's right. And also the recurved bow makes the bow even

springier. It adds a little spring to it's step. Composition is another thing, Josh. Yeah. Density and tensile strength determine how much energy it holds. And obviously back in the day, they made them from things like U, Y, E, W. Very strong and very elastic. Not you. Not you, but you. Modern bows a lot of times are composite bows, which means when they need it to be rigid, they'll make it out of one material. When they need it to be flexible, they'll make it out of something else. And then they put it all together to make a killing machine. Exactly. To make a zombie killing machine. And then there are compound bows, which I had one of those too. A compound bow uses pulleys, little wheels and pulleys to make it easier to pull back and hold once you get it

there. And that's called the let off once it reaches a certain point. Have you ever shot a compound bow? I have. And that sensation of pulling. And then all of a sudden there's no resistance. I basically, this bow was cocked. It's a very cool feeling. That could hold this all day. Yeah. Not all day. But it is very cool. And I had one of those and I had a regular little recurve. All right. It's Bill. No, my dad, he gets into phases. He got into a bow and arrow phase. He got into an archery phase and built a thing on our property. And you know, as my dad does, he went out and bought like a $700 compound bow. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. But he bought me like a little miniature versions of everything he got. And he was a principal at my school,

like I've mentioned. So he had like, all of a sudden there was an archery program at school. And it was fun, man. I shot a lot of arrows growing up. Did you hunt anything? No, not a hunter. Did you? I hunted targets. Did you have a crossbow? No, never even shot a crossbow, but I had a little compound and a little recurve. That's very cool. But after this article, I'm dying to shoot a crossbow. Yeah, I don't know anybody who has one. I bet you do. Is there like a whole like a group of people that have crossbows? Yeah, I'm not familiar. I bet Matt Frederick has a crossbow. Matt, do you have a crossbow? No, he doesn't have a crossbow. He has a laser gun though, the functioning laser gun. That will just disintegrate you. Let's talk safety, Chuck.

In this article, Tracy turns into Tommy Lee Jones and no country for old men. When she says, do not point one at anything you do not plan to shoot. Yeah, I don't like that rule. I think it should be that and don't point it at any one period. Oh, okay. I was going to say, like it doesn't account for just goofing around. Yeah, that's what they say with every gun is don't point it at someone unless you plan to shoot them. But my rule of thumb is don't point it at anyone. Because a crossbow, I looked it up to see if it was a good home security feature. Your insurance company would be like, wait, what? You want us to reduce it because you have a crossbow? They make little pistol ones too with little short bolts. Chewbacca had a pistol one.

No, he had a bowcaster. It's like a pistol crossbow, right? Then it shoots energy. But it's the shape of a crossbow that's a pistol. I thought it didn't have a stock. I thought it was a pistol. Maybe it's just so big it looked like a pistol on him. We'll hear about this one for sure. Safety, Josh, you want to place the stirrup at the ground. Don't want to point it at you at all. Or have a friend hold the stirrup while you cock. It's terrible. No, I'm saying do not do that. Yeah, do not do that. You want to point it at the ground, put the stirrup on the ground, put your foot in the stirrup. You want to brace it very firmly. Make sure your foot's all the way in there because this is a lot of

energy, potential energy you're building up here. Like I said earlier, you want to grab it, pull it equally on both sides, lock it into place, and the modern crossbow will automatically have a little safety that that happens there. And there may be an additional safety that you can set after that, which is good. You also want to stand out of the way of the front of the bow. And I'm not just saying in the path of the arrow, but that bow, remember, it's stretched toward you when the string is cocked or when the string is pulled back. And when you release it, the bow flies forward and outward. And if your hand's there, it's going to smack it and probably break every bone in it. Yeah. And also, if you're hunting or you're shooting a target from behind

a tree, you don't want the crossbow's bow to smack into the tree or else it's probably going to break the bow. That's right. And pricey. And never dry fire. Yeah, I didn't, I knew that just from common sense, most types of things that you shoot, you shouldn't dry fire. But that means shooting it without a bolt. But it's made to shoot a bolt. It's configured to shoot the weight of a bolt. So when you shoot it dry, that weight's not there. So you could potentially break your bolt. And Tracy points out that dry firing voids nearly all manufacturers warranties. So don't dry fire. And again, never go for the extended warranty. And if you haven't listened to the extended warranty podcast yet, you should go back and listen to it. It's pretty good. Really? Yeah.

Man, I didn't know they were good back then. Yeah, they're good. All right. Yeah, because we just took this completely boring topic and really went to town on it. It was a good one, Chuck. Our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss y'all. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

From Wall Street to Main Street and from Hollywood to Washington, the news is filled with decisions, turning points, deals and collisions. I'm Tim O'Brien, the senior executive editor for Bloomberg Opinion, and I'm your host for Crash Course, a weekly podcast from Bloomberg and iHeart Radio. Every week on Crash Course, I'll bring listeners directly into the arenas where epic upheavals occur. And I'm going to explore the lessons we can learn when creativity and ambition collide with competition and power. Each Tuesday, I'll talk to Bloomberg reporters around the world, as well as experts in big names in the news. Together, we'll explore business, political and social disruptions and what we

can learn from them. I'm Tim O'Brien, host of Crash Course, a new weekly podcast from Bloomberg and iHeart Radio. Listen to Crash Course every Tuesday on the iHeart radio app, apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My last piece of safety advice is get a bolt that is rated for your crossbow. Well, yeah, because you can't just put any size and weight in there. It's figured very specifically. You can't just say, man, look at that big bolt. Let me put that thing in here. Yeah, so when the zombie apocalypse comes, you better know what your crossbow is rated for. And don't drive on the autobahn in tires that are rated for a lower speed than what your car can

drive. Things you should know. If you want to know more about the autobahn, I just changed the name of our show, by the way. If you want, do you want to tell them the real stuff you should know? If you want to know more about the autobahn, extended warranties, and crossbows, you can type any one of those three or all three together and see what comes up in the handy search bar at howstuffworks.com. And that means now, friends, it's time for listener mail. Josh, this is another soldier shout out. We're suckers for those. And the one Norman Torres, the other day we mentioned, I forgot to mention, that's the dude that I sent the jump drive to. Oh, okay. With every single one of our podcasts on it. Man, that must have been a huge

jump. It was about as big as my pinky. And you know, I did it. Because he asked. You are going to be doing that a lot more often. Now I have a feeling you have to prove that you're saving lives in Afghanistan in order to get that. So this is from another dude. This is from Sergeant Gabriel Eberhardt. Greetings from Iraq. I'm writing you today from the center of civilization, aka the Fertile Crescent, Iraq, Mesopotamia. I'm a combat engineer in the US Army on my second combat tour. I've had the opportunity to have wireless internet and have been downloading many of your podcasts and I listen each evening during the day while on patrol in MR AP mine resistant armored patrol. I've heard that. These are like hurtlocker dudes I think. I relate the

podcast I listened to the night before over the headset to the guys. It is great for breaking up monotony of looking for IEDs. Oh yeah, I guess they are hurtlocker guys, huh? And talking about the usual army related stories. My soldiers have learned about many interesting things like human cannonballers, schizophrenia, parkour, and con artists. They especially like to play by play on shrinking human heads. I bet they did. In summary, on behalf of myself and my soldiers, just wanted to extend our thanks to both you guys sitting in a convoy of vehicles with the same dudes for up to 12 hours a day. It's kind of like taking a year long road trip, but on the same roads. Well, sort of like a Twilight Zone episode. And guys in your own way, you're both doing great

things for your country. I don't know about that, but I'll take it. So I told Gabriel Everhart, Sarge, that we would give those guys a shout out. Then the Maison Province of Iraq. So dudes, if you're listening, we love you. Be safe. Come home in one piece. Seriously. And thanks for everything you do. Yeah. For schlubs like us who just run off at the mouth. And we're sorry about the parkour podcast. And if you have a special request, we will strongly consider it. He did actually. Didn't leave that part in, but it was about Mesopotamia, I think. We did that one. Was Mesopotamia the cradle of civilization? Well, there you go. Yeah. Go look it up, man. Done. If you have another one that we haven't done before, send it in. Email Chuck back,

and we'll see what we can do. And if you have a request, special request, let us know why we should entertain it, what it is, and we'll see what we can do. And there's three ways you can contact us, aside from saying hi through our system of Campbell's soup cans and string. Sure. You can tweet to us at syskpodcast. You can visit us on Facebook, facebook.com, slash stuff you should know. And you can send us an email at stuffpodcastathowstuffworks.com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join How Stuff Works staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you?

The War on Drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff, stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the War on Drugs on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Hola que tal mi gente. It's Chiquis from Chiquis and Chill Podcast. Welcome to the show. I talk about anything and everything. I did have a miscarriage when I was 19 years old. And that's why I'm a firm believer and an advocate of therapy and counseling. The person that you saw on stage, the person that you saw in interviews,

that was my mother offstage. Acompanyame every Monday on my podcast, Chiquis and Chill, available on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.