Let's try and have a thread about fortifications. Do you have any noteworthy fortress/fort/castle/remparts/whatever in your area? Any interesting facts about them? If so, please share.
I come from a village next to the city of Angers, in Western France, where there is this massive castle (château) founded in the 9th century by the Counts of Anjou. It was expanded to its current size in the 13th century.
The outer wall is 3 metres (9.8 ft) thick, extends for about 660 m (2,170 ft) and is protected by seventeen massive towers. Each of the perimeter towers measures 18 m (59 ft) in diameter. The château covers an area of 20,000 square metres (220,000 sq ft). Two pairs of towers form the city and landward entrances of the château. Each of the towers was once 40 metres (130 ft) in height, but they were later cut down for the use of artillery pieces, except for one.
It was never taken during the Middle Ages. It was used as an armory through the First and Second World Wars and severely damaged during World War II when a German ammunition storage dump inside it exploded.
Always thought it would make a great anti-zombie fortress.

How quickly could the average construction company break through the defenses of a typical medieval european castle? The castle is defended by medieval troops and the construction company is allowed its heavy equipment (e.g. cranes, bulldozers, excavators, etc)
hard mode: the siege must be OSHA compliant

Thread dedicated to cross sections of every kind,from castles to vehicles and weapons.

Starting with sten guns. Just affix some gun parts together and use handgun cartridges.

What springs to mind when you hear "weapon of last resort"? Any examples, historical or current, of weapons either designed as such or used this way in practice? To open the thread, I offer the obvious:

WW2. The FP-45 was a crude, single-shot pistol designed to be cheaply and rapidly mass-produced. Chambered in .45 ACP, the pistol had just 23 parts.

Due to the inherent limitation of its unrifled barrel, the Liberator was intended for extremely short-range use: 1–4 yards (3.5 m). Its maximum effective range was only about 25 ft (7.6 m). The original delivered cost for the FP-45 was $2.10/unit.

The Liberator was shipped in a cardboard box with 10 rounds of .45 ACP, a wooden dowel to remove the empty cartridge case, and an instruction sheet in comic strip form showing how to load and fire the weapon. The Liberator was a crude and clumsy weapon, never intended for front-line service.

Designer:
George Hyde

Supplier:
Guide Lamp Division of General Motors Corporation

No Built:
1,000,000

First of all, enjoy this Elysium Chemrail /k/ino absolutely mulching that dude.

What's the tech that we're gonna see in the future? Is it gonna be stuff like Elysium or URM (Battle Angel Alita's Unified Republics of Mars)-tier tech?

IMHO the cool stuff could be (or at least I wish it was some of this stuff):

-HMX/CL-20 based propellants (PBX being 95-96% CL-20/HMX). CL-20 is currently being tested as rocket and arty propellant. It's great. Non-polluting, acid free (rifle's gonna love it), solid particulates-free (easy cleaning), and lead-free (which is great). It's also smokeless and has only a faint shock diamond pattern that is visible in the otherwise transparent exhaust (when used in rockets, while in guns is basically invisible). This means that if the rifle has a fairly long flash hider (ex. JP Enterprises JPFH-762L), a soldier may be effectively invisible. The muzzle velocities may be 7,000 to 10,000 ft/s (stuff like 200ksi ammo).

-Additive manufacturing. With the exception of the BCG and barrel (which must resist pressure/force), the rest can be additive manufactured. Potentially, we could make honeycomb structures that weight 1/4th of the original part (and out of steel too).

Another big part may be casings. The same principle of honeycombs (if properly designed) can be applied to casings, allowing troops to carry more ammo.

-Advanced optics with integrated hyperspectral/IR+NVG vision and laser rangefinders.

1/2

I used to think that the RPG-7 was some sort of cultural Arabic assault rifle with the "bulge" being a chamber that bullets would pass through.

Kind of a /k/ spooky thread but also kind of serious. The American interior is massive. There are countless regions where the human population "officially" is zero for hundreds of square miles, even thousands. While we've all heard and have enjoyed stories of cryptids and things such as wendigos and shit. My curiosity shifts more to the realistic, albeit still surreal possibilities that these regions could be host to everything ranging from organized crime running things such as drug labs to outcast groups either politically or religiously motived or just deranged to live out in the middle of nowhere. This possibility leads my imagination into wondering; what if it's true? What if there could be straight up organized crime groups waging guerrilla warfare against each other in the middle of nowhere with even the US military being involved, either sending in SF to kill them and wipe out any evidence to keep the public dark or even funding them CIA style. There could be firefights being waged right now and nobody would know other than those directly involved in said firefights.

The possibility gets even stranger when you factor in weird mystery stories of experienced hikers with years to decades experience going missing, just for the search for these people being conducted in very weird ways, with even Army SF getting involved, searching areas blocked off from local law enforcement to "find them".

What does /k/ think of all of this and what theories and or stories do you guys have to share? Also, just general spoopy thread because why the fuck not?

I am Looking everywhere for an early DP28 barrel with cooling fins but the only people who had them were from Apex Gun parts and they were sold out quickly. I was wondering if one of you gentlemen (preferably one of the Slavic variety) has the measurements/diagrams for one of these OG Degtyaryov barrels. It may be costly but I could pay a gunsmith to turn down several of them for me and sell the surplus online to recoup losses. This sounds stupid/autistic to be looking for cooling fin dimension/measurements but aesthetics are important for firearm design and I want my semi-auto Dp-build to check that particular box. Also, WTF is this cool Knob charging handle was it a feature of the early DP-27 or something the fins added as an extra.

Weapons living second lives. Anything goes, from bubba to museums. Picrel: there's a company doing space launch with starfighters.