6 Reasons Archery Features in your Dystopian Future
6 min read
You’re preparing for the end of the world right? Or at least some sort of cataclysmic event that changes the game completely. Maybe a horde of blood-thirsty, bone-crunching zombies surrounds you. You’ll have to fight your way out. Luckily, you have your trusty handgun with you. You take it out, aim, and click. No ammo. No headshot. No you.
You should have chosen a bow and arrow instead.
You laugh now, but you won’t be laughing when your precious shotgun fails you, jamming up in the humid air caused by hyper global warming, failing to protect you and your store of canned goods and bottled water as you are besieged by your crazed neighbors, all signs of decency gone since the complete collapse of American society, probably caused by a particularly nasty Presidential Tweet, or PNPT, as it shall come to be known.
No Infrastructure Means No More Guns
Look, I’m not saying I don’t like guns. Of course I do! I’m not against firearms of any sort, just strongly against their misuse in the wrong hands. What I’m saying here though is once we go through armageddon or some sort of radiation-based apocalypse, guns are going to be hard to find. They’re already hard to find in some parts of the world like the UK. Unless you own a manufacturing plant or live in a foundry, you probably don’t have the means of producing a gun on your own. Once society breaks down and all the WalMarts and Cabellas have been raided and their contents stashed by the greedy, what happens? Sure, the ones you already have will still be there, until they get taken from you or need replacement parts or become damaged, without a solid government and clear social structure I doubt anybody is going to be making and supplying you with any more.
You Can Make Your Own Bow (and Ammunition)
There are lots of different bow types available today, but it is completely possible to make your own bow. How do I know? My 8-year-old nephew made a long-bow in an after-school class called “Crafts for Boys.” It used a length of PVC pipe for the bow and paracord for the string. Shot pretty decently, too. If you don’t have PVC pipe, and you find that all hardware stores have been commandeered by a soviet regime and will no longer sell you supplies, you can also fashion a bow from oak, lemon tree, hickory, yew, teak and many more hardwoods and you’ll need nothing more than a sharp knife to help you. For the string you’d be able to use rawhide, thin rope, hemp cord, fishing line or just ordinary twine.
Arrows are nothing more than sharpened sticks sometimes hardened in fire and the art of fletching them (adding the feathers) is entirely optional depending on how far and accurately you’re trying to shoot. Making your own arrows is also a pretty simple job.
You can find instructional videos to take you through the process. If you’re smart, you’ll watch a YouTube video about how to do it right now. I’m pretty sure the internet won’t be working when most of our infrastructure has been disabled or destroyed.
Hunting!
Hungry? Can’t go to Chili’s; it’s been overrun by mutants with a taste for Southwestern food and your blood. Guess you’ll have to strike out on your own. A bow would be perfect for this situation! You can hunt all sorts of game with a bow, birds, deer, your neighbor’s dog (hey, it’s the end of the world, remember?), all of which will cook nicely on a spit over an open flame. Modern bows with broadhead arrows (lethal looking things, look them up) have been used to takedown elephants, and that is no easy feat, but it shows you the versatility of the bow and why it shouldn’t be discounted.
Ever heard of Bow Fishing?
Live near a stream? If you’ve done your target practice, you’ll be able to spear a fish on the end of an arrow. You can just shoot the thing right out of the water, and the arrow may even stick into the river bed, allowing you to easily retrieve your dinner (Let’s see you do that with a .22). If it doesn’t, no bother really, the arrow will be easy enough to find and if you’re lucky to have the kit handy modern bows like the Sabercome with all the necessary fittings for bowfishing reels which allow you to reel in a freshly speared fish, just like a fishing rod. But with bowfishing not only fish are on the menu, if you can find them in the shallows or some clear water you can hunt eels, alligator, ray even small barracuda and shark all with the same bow and arrow.
Let’s get this out of the way, it’s an armour piercing weapon!
Personally I like to think that due to the fact that archaeologists discovered what they believe to be the first signs of actual bow use somewhere in a well preserved encampment in northern Europe (Stellmoor), and that the signs pointed to those bows being used to hunt reindeer, that bows were developed primarily as a tool to aid in hunting. However, should you need to defend yourself from a swarm of undead, a bow will help you out in that department as well. Just don’t eat your kill in that case. Ew.
A decent broadhead is a lethal and dangerous thing, with modern technology they are surgically sharp, but even a slimmer bullet or field point will pierce soft shell armour, and well…. just who knows exactly what you’ll be up against. I remember once reading a sci-fi book where the protagonists were protected by force fields that no metal or energy based weapon could penetrate and the only thing that would get through was a good old fashioned wooden arrow. That was a long time ago back in school, but the image never left me! I just wish I could remember the name of the book!
The Noise!
When you go to a shooting range, you wear ear protection. (And if you don’t, you really should. You’re damaging your hearing when you don’t.) But let’s say you don’t care about your ears right now because you’re fighting for your life. You’re up against one of them and they’re after you and yours… you shoot it with a firearm. Maybe it goes down, maybe not. But guess what? You’ve attracted the attention of everything within a pretty sizeable radius out there, and they’re now headed your way! In end-of-days scenarios, you always want the most silent weapon. Don’t mess with a gun and a separate silencer. A bow is naturally quiet, the truly silent-but-deadly choice. You can even silence a bow using special string silencers that help to calm the vibration, making you even more undetectable.
In The End
If you agree or disagree feel free to let me know! If you’ve any sense you’ll at least entertain the idea of learning the skill of shooting a bow, and possibly take a look at some of the best beginner recurve bows available in the market today. Who knows where you’re going to be living and just what you’re going to be up against!
