Armour, weapons and tech.

Ok the last thing i will post tonight will be about caltrops as i mentioned in the submission.

The caltrop Wikipedia


Caltrops are a nasty little metal devices with 4 sharpened barbed points coming out from a midpoint. These points are angled in such a way that three of the points rest on the ground as a base while one sticks up. These are mostly used to deny an area to the enemy as anything man, horse or even wheeled vehicals will have its foot/hoof/tire stabbed upon stepping on one. Now these points are sharp enough to peirce nearly any shoe we could encounter(the only one i know of irl are the shoes worn on bomb disposal suits) and the barb means that you need a lot of time and decend equiptment to get it out. Now these things are fairly small and will often be dyed/painted brown as well as being coverd by leaves and mulch making fields of them very hard to see,

(If you dont like descriptions of pain/gore i would suggest not reading past this as im going to detail what stepping on one does)
Now the effect on a human stepping on one of these depends if he is wearing shoes or not. If the guy is not wearing shoes and the bard pierces the flesh the person(im going to call him bob) will scream(the surprise/sheer pain makes it unavoidable)but it will also mean that any weight on the foot will shove the barb in deeper so walking on that foot is out. Now if you try to rip a barbed object out its going to take a lot more skin with it going out then when it came in. Leaving a bigger wound to address now untreated this could kill a man via infection/bloodloss if it hits the right spot. That set of actions could make the rest of the guys following him panic if they do they will mostly step on some themselves(the wars over the last hundred years have shown that very rarely do you step on a mine on the edge of a field you are normally dead smack in the middle with your squad).

Now if he is wearing a shoe the impact is less? wrong it only means that not only is this thing doing everything above but you cant remove the shoe without taking out the barb making treatment(the only way to remove the barb without further damage) impossible unless you can cut or damage the caltrop enough to take the boot off(this normally means more damage to the foot).

On a horse it will panic bucking its rider and unfortunatly for the poor thing causing more damage to itself on a car it will burst the tires if it hits em(think a police spike strip).

These things are banned in warfare for a reason and i for one hope they do not make a return.