Just be mindful where you’re slinging. This thing lobs egg-sized rocks 100 meters easily and 200 - 300 meters with practice. Impact from one is painful at best - deadly at worst.
Also, in case you have a dog; this can throw balls as well.
Just be mindful where you’re slinging. This thing lobs egg-sized rocks 100 meters easily and 200 - 300 meters with practice. Impact from one is painful at best - deadly at worst.
Also, in case you have a dog; this can throw balls as well.
Jesus. Imagine if a world leader were assassinated via a sling. Literally a David takes down Goliath moment. Not hard to imagine. The leader holds a public event. There’s security, but a leather sling and stone projectiles don’t set off metal detectors. The assassin just happens to have become a master slinger through years of practice. They spin up their sling, and before anyone can recognize what’s happening, the leader has a stone lodged in their brain. Feel free to imagine this as whatever world leader you most despise.
The only trouble with the scenario is that it’s hard to imagine someone having time to get a sling going before being noticed. Maybe it would be such an unusual sight people wouldn’t recognize what’s happening in time. Plus having enough free space in a crowd to spin up a sling could be difficult. But maybe if the crowd is sparse?
A more realistic scenario would be an assassination via high powered slingshot. That could be done with a single quick motion.
Many sling techniques, such as the “figure 8,” don’t really need a windup. It looks almost the same as throwing a stone by hand, just with many times the range.
They’re not very accurate though. Even with decades of practice, landing a headshot from 100 meters would take a lot of luck. My understanding is that in ancient warfare, slings were used in volleys by hundreds of slingers against crowds of people.
They served nearly the same purpose as most other ranged weapons: depletion of personnel, yep.
More a target spectrum than specificity, really. Deterring livestock predators got more challenging when they started armoring and religifying them. Wolves, you can hit just about anywhere with a slung stone or three and they’ll fuck right off. Bootlickers, conscripts, brotherhoods, etc.? Less so.