Fri 18 Jan 2008
Hold on, let me explain. One of the great small pleasures in my life is looking through the referrer logs on my websites — especially the google/etc search-string listings. The logs for Big Big Question are shaping up nicely: we’re a popular stop for those shopping for body parts or examining the ethics of torture, for example, based on previous questions.
But today’s question is from a referrer log search string that asks something I don’t think we’ve even contemplated. So let’s do it!
I’m open to any parameters you care to tweak, including what exactly you’re using for a slingshot, how you’re tracking this animal down, and what the definition of “can” is.
Posted by Josh Millard14 answers so far!
I’m assuming we’re talking about using a really hard rock for this slingshot? Otherwise, you could just load up a big chunk of arsenic or fugu poison or the like, and take down an elephant.
Also, I presume by “slingshot”, we’re talking some sort of conventional slingshot (like the pro slingshots with the arm brace), and not some weird seige-cannon like thing that works on the slingshot principle?
At Boy Scout camp, I helped make and fire a giant, three-man (boy) slingshot made out of surgical tubing. We fired an orange, more or less blindly at another campsite, hitting an entirely undeserving and unsuspecting fellow scout in the thigh. It left a bruise that would make a coroner blanch. I think it may be the worst physical violence I’ve ever inflicted on another human being, and I feel sad just thinking about it.
I’m not convinced there’s any living organism on the planet you couldn’t kill with that thing, sequoias and coral reefs included.
I’m inclined to say yes to giant out-sized slingshots that embrace not just the principle but the form-factor. So an industrial-strength rubber belt affixed between the branching Y of a twisted oak’s limbs? boy howdy, you know it.
Some sort of explanation of the construction of any posited unusual slingshot would be fun, of course.
Even given a conventional, one-person, store-bought slingshot, provided that we’re talking “could kill”, and not “could kill with reasonable consistency”, I think the main thing you should be going for are exposed artery shots. If you can slice open a neck artery or the like, it would take a while, but you could potentially take down pretty big game.
And, bean-plating again, I assume we’re talking “single shot”. Otherwise, with enough time and effort, you could probably just plain bludgeon something to death.
Actually, even with only two shots, you could take out both eyes, and they’d eventually starve. You’d just have to hope that some other predator didn’t kill-steal them before that.
(On preview: Horace Rumple with the case study.)
Standard slingshot with uber-human skill: maybe a horse, if I get lucky and make it through the eye. More realistically, one of those 600 pound tortoises, if he sticks his head out long enough for me to aim. Those shells are impenetrable, but the skull can’t be more than a quarter inch thick. Live to be over a hundred? Not today, sucker. Wham!
If I get to manipulate the size of the slingshot, I’d build one of steel, fifty foot tall, somewhere in Puget Sound. Load up the Kevlar net with a cargo trailer filled to capacity with lead shot. Give it a quick release mechanism and hoist it back with one of those army helicopters that can carry around a tank like a piece of catnip on a string. Then, wait for a blue whale to come in range. Or stick a microphone in the water that makes, I don’t know, blue whale mating sounds to bait them in?
I’m not an engineer, so there may be some flaws in my second scenario. But that tortoise is toast.
I’m pretty sure your second scenario is the cutting-room-floor prologue from Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.
I have your standard $3 in Ensenada, hand-held, forked-stick and tubing slingshot. So I’ll provide an answer for that archetype. With my girlpowered arms and a 1 inch ball bearing, I think I could brain a person, large dog, goat, or any animal under or around 250 pounds, with a lucky shot.
If Marvel is to be believed, the sky’s the limit.
I had an air pistol once, and shot a water snake with it. the poor fucker didn’t die, just got paralyzed about halfway down its body.
Please do not use slingshots to fire at living things.
I once killed kill the mightiest warrior amongst all the Philistines while they were encamped at Judah. My older brother was all, “here, take my armor,” but I was all, “no man, gimme five stones and I can totally take that guy,” and he was all “but dude, he’s like six cubits high,” but his armor totally didn’t fit, so I just got my stones and took off. Anyways I hit the guy so hard that my stone went all the way into his forehead and he just buckled. Then we wailed on those Philistines all the way back to Ekron. After that my brother was kind of a dick and started throwing stuff at me, but that’s another story.
whir, let’s not get crazy here. The question is slingshots.
Meatbomb, I think “none” is an acceptable answer, depending on the definition of “can”.
I was thinking of Ayla in Clan of the Cave Bears. She had a spear slingshot , didn’t she?
So for survival purposes, I’d be looting a slingshot store and making one of these. That sucker looks like it could bring down a very large mammal.
One thing we haven’t really touched on, so far:
What about plants? A tulip, sure, if your aim is decent — but could you take out a rhodie bush? A jungle fern? A doug fir?
Flora seem pretty resiliant vs. slingshot attacks, to my mind.