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.

  • WoodScientist@lemmy.world
    151·
    11 days ago

    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.

    • Perspectivist@feddit.ukOP
      8·
      11 days ago

      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.

      • Øπ3ŕ@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        5·
        11 days ago

        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.

  • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz
    14·
    11 days ago

    The awesome part about throwing tennis balls for dogs with a sling is you can put buckets of topspin on the ball so when it hits the ground it kicks forward like a rabbit or something. It really gets dogs hyped up because when they go for the leap catch they have to anticipate/react to the topspin bounce like a tennis player.