Is Captain America's shield an effective weapon by itself?

this episode of shadowversity is brought to you by my stupendous awesome legendary supporters on patreon if you'd like to support shadowversity on patreon visit patreon.com greetings i'm shad and i love looking at how historical weapons are adapted into pop culture whether that is in films television shows video games and there's a lot of videos you might be really interested in such as if you can hang an axe on your back the way kratos does in god of war or if deadpool is using the right kind of swords so in this video we're going to be looking at really the most like it seems to be the most iconic shield in all of pop culture oh yeah captain america's shield baby this is my stand-in for captain america's shield and you might notice something rather conspicuous about it uh it's see-through it's made of a mesh no kick-ass so i hope you could use your imagination a bit and that won't be too distracting but hopefully you could also see it enough for the demonstrations that i'll be doing look if i really need to show something like this i can superimpose captain america's actual shield right like ah there we go we got the shield hey look at that so that'll have to do i could have made something a bit more accurate but i didn't have a lot of time and it's interesting this is the right oval shape okay so in terms of size and dimensions it actually works pretty well and it's the lid of like a fire pit if you're wondering where on earth i got it so what i'm going to be analyzing in this video is how effective would captain america's shield be just by itself without anything else because the rather interesting thing about how captain america uses this shield is that the fact he rarely uses it in conjunction with another weapon now he does on the rare occasion you see in the first captain america movie he uses a handgun and even the comics sometimes he uses like an m16 and his shield that makes a lot of sense but for the most part the shield is a weapon which was rarely ever done historically i'm not saying it's outside of the realms of possibility if you're disarmed but this is not a fit an effective weapon in by itself you could use it to a level of effect and captain america's shield is not your regular shield so that's what we're going to be looking at and because i have to hold a sword at some point in this video ah shields in conjunction with weapons obligatory sword appearance in this video done now we can continue well to kick us off what type of shield is captain america's shield uh in the you know historical community enthusiast community even hema community or all the communities are like shields right we would know this and identify it as a rotella it's got the oval shape as you see here it is strapped onto the arm and size only extends you know a little bit past the elbow and fist not not excessively big contrast that to certain types of viking shields you could call it a skulder or a parma uh but yeah the classic round shield they could be much much bigger so rotella's generally smaller not to say fico shields can get you know a little bit smaller than this as well this is kind of on the large end of the scale but yeah generally much bigger would one of these other shields that you see behind me be a more effective shield for captain america than his classic you know round vibranium on well we'll get to that okay that is something we're going to explore first of all i want to talk about the uh effectiveness that this would be as a weapon in and of itself okay why didn't people use shields as weapons in themselves instead of actually you know a proper weapon well that's because it's very inefficient as a weapon for a number of reasons weapons are made to be force multipliers to increase the amount of damage that you could do by yourself and there's a number of ways that they achieve this one of the big ones is by having the striking end further away from your hand and so thanks to rotational inertia when i strike like this the tip of the sword i'll move back so you can see that the tip of the sword is actually moving a lot faster than just my hand is moving because of the rotation so you know say much faster at the tip than my actual hand moving so because it generates far greater speed it also generates far greater force and there's another difference with specifically a sword in regards to just the damage i can do with my fist when i strike someone with my fist all that force and energy is dispersed over the surface area of my fist contrast that to the edge of a sword all that force that i can generate which is even a lot higher thanks to rotational inertia it's focused on a very very fine edge all that force on such a small surface area is so great that it actually is able to push apart material cut things very effectively so much so that it can actually chop off limbs so this logic of you know extending the striking and further away from yourself is done on so many weapons okay we see it on the axe we see it on pole arms your lethality is so much greater with a weapon like this than if there was smaller now this also applies into weapons that are small like daggers for the reason of you know concentrating that force on a really really fine surface area so does that kind of work with this cut this type of shield well one of the big limitations right off the bat is that nothing on the shield is extended very far away from my hand so i'm not going to get that additional rotational speed that i can with a weapon that is extended so when i strike with the shield i'm generally not going to be able to produce much more force than i could with a regular punch but there is an advantage and that is on the edge okay so all that force i can generate in a punch is focused on a much smaller surface area than i could with my fist so getting punched with captain america's shield is going to hurt a lot more than just getting punched by him regularly yet still if captain america was instead of throwing a punch with his shield was to throw an attack with a sword or an axe or anything like that the amount of damage he could produce on top of what he could have just with his regular shield would be insane like so much greater oh but captain america doesn't necessarily want to kill his opponents he wants to incapacitate them so perhaps that is why he doesn't use a more lethal weapon and this logic actually could fit in quite well because for the shape and size of the shield like it's not necessarily not a very lethal weapon as a result yet of course he has done some insanely damaging things with the edge of this shield when it's thrown and he can chop through metal with it even there is another kind of attack that it seems fairly evident with captain america's shield and that's the one where he just kind of slams people with the face of it just a big old whack kind of thing now generally that's nowhere near as damaging as if you were to strike someone with the edge but because this shield can produce so much damage with the edge it kind of makes sense that captain america gives people slaps more often than kind of you know jabs now interestingly to knock someone off their feet okay because remember about surface area with trying to hit someone with the face of this shield there's a much much wider surface area than before and so it's not going to damage people nearly as much again kind of in line with captain america's non-lethal he is generally non-lethal but there are times he is full on you know kills people interestingly hitting someone with the face of the shield like this would have much higher chances of knocking them off their balance than if he was to jab someone like this so if there was a small thing that hit me right in the guts say the edge of this shield okay all that force is then in my gut and a lot of it is going to be just pushed into my gut and i'll go like this not necessarily be knocked off balance but if that force is you know extended over a much greater area so it's harder for my body to absorb that energy i just can't move back in a smaller area it'll just kind of hit me flat and the only way for me to go is back and so yeah hitting with the flat of the shield much higher chances to knock someone off the balance which is again perfectly in line with captain america style combat the other thing about this is the defensive properties because captain america is like first of all is this even a really effective weapon for to defend captain america not really it's actually a little bit too small it's funny every time captain america is getting shot no one's aiming for his legs okay it's funny there are some points in the movies where he had crouches all the way down protecting trying to protect his whole body because the size of the shield is insufficient there's other times where he's holding like this and runs uh what what's not what is not being covered by the shield at this point yeah my legs so it's not actually that efficient but regards to the position of always having the shield like this it is in the perfect you know he's holding his arm in the perfect position now to do one of his main tacks where he runs up is defending himself you know a bit of a hollywood magic there but he runs up and he gets close enough perfectly in the you know stance position angle just going whack okay knock his opponent for ages but in actual fact i do believe captain america would receive more benefits than detriments by increasing you know the size of his shield even just by a little bit maybe to this circumference maybe maybe even a little bit bigger spartan level maybe the detriment to this would be would it be more difficult to maneuver the shield in close quarters which he kind of does in some situations like the elevator fight scene in captain america winter soldier but for the most part he has a lot more room to move and so a shield of say this size might be a little bit better a lot harder to you know hold on his back that he regularly does maybe it's just for convenience walking around is she this size shield fits on his back a lot easier than say something like this but look at the defensive ability of this you're like you know holding it here it's only my shins really you know exposed but if i extend it out all right how about this okay there's a lot more defensibility defensive capability uh in a shield this size as opposed to his rotella could still be made out of vibranium still be much lighter it could still be ovaled like this one is a little bit and could he have it still strap charms because this is the other thing okay looking at captain america shield there's a big contrast uh or there's a shields fall into generally two categories in how they are held with some exceptions because there are some strap configurations which you can do both which is strapped onto the arm or center gripped the type of shield that generally has a strap configuration which you can either slide through hold it on your forearm or grab it in the center grip is the kite shield kite shoe has the most uh hand-hold configurations out of any other shield historically now i'm looking at this i really do think that they got it right okay the cat american style combat having a strap dawn shield is more advantageous to him than say if he was using a center grip one why well when you hold it on the center grip there's a chance it will rotate now in actual combat that can be a huge advantage i'll try and demonstrate if someone gives an attack and you're holding a centigrape shield and it hits on the side causing it to rotate this could be a huge advantage because when the strike comes in here rotates you push it now the shield is on one side of the opponent they can just push fully out of the way now the opponent is over there generally the back will be open and can strike and this is in so many situations whenever a strike hits on the shield causing it to rotate you just move with the rotation and you can do some really cool things like hitting around on the side this shield is getting in the way but generally yeah you got full mobility because of the shield's ability to move around like this and it enables you to kind of ward away your opponent so a center grip is generally far more versatile in combat than it being strapped on but strapped on gives some advantages of itself that you don't get as much with the center grip first one being much harder to disarm someone with a shield strapped onto their arm than just holding it okay so yeah big advantage the next is you can take harder hits and brace yourself against them because just like i said you know being able to rotate a center grip shield are situations where that can be a disadvantage i think overall it's a great advantage than just vintage but that disadvantage still exists and it doesn't exist with a shield strapped onto your forearm especially striking like this okay his big wax that is hell that is a far more beneficial having it strapped than if a center grip because what would happen if you try to slap someone with a cinder grip shield well if you don't hit the center of the shield and it's off center like here the shield is gonna rotate with your solving leaving yourself open so slapping with is more detrimental in actual fact uh if you really want to hit someone with shield and you're holding a center grip give them a good jab on the edge so yes strapped on works better for captain america so another thing to consider kind of going back to the first part of this video is would capture america want to use a primary weapon in this off hand as opposed to the shield because we did kind of see that a primary weapon would be able to produce greater damage but does he need greater damage because he is able to do a certain a lot of mount especially with the edge the edge can like chop through steel and stuff so perhaps he just doesn't need one specifically he could benefit from one and he does especially with range gunfire and things so perhaps it could just be a matter of practicality what about some different shapes okay because we have the uh heater shield here and we've got the kite shield here the captain america benefit from a shield like one of those designs over his round rotella yes and no you see they these shields especially the kite shield the kite shield offers far more protection the heater shield not necessarily okay so in actual fact no i don't think the heater shield would be any better than this rotella but i quite shield off as far greater protection what it wouldn't do nearly as well is being thrown okay and so this is where we again come back to the round shape uh captain america's round rotella works far better because he can act like a frisbee and that's one of his main attacks with his shield so that again kind of makes the kite shield out of this equation we come back to the shield he really already has though again i do think it could be a little bigger just to protect him a bit more you've got to watch out for his legs but that is not a big difference and for the type of fighting that catch america does where he wants to incapacitate people and doing direct damage and stuff like that his shield is actually a very appropriate weapon and it does give her a decent amount of defense and because it's indestructible on top of that like its defensive capabilities are great it doesn't pretty much but overall i think you know yes captain america's shield is an effective hand-to-hand melee weapon in and of itself without an additional weapon he can use an initial weapon but just by itself it works perfectly well for the type of character and the type of fighting that captain america does so there we go this has been my analysis of captain america shield from a more historical and practical kind of perspective thank you for watching i hope to see you again and it's all that time [Music] you

Channel: Shadiversity

Views: 685,928

Keywords: captain america, shield, vibranium, winter soldier, avengers, marvel, captain marvel, captain, civil war, bucky barns, marvel cinematic universe, dc, comic, comic books, super hero, superhero, movie, movies, analysis, history, historical, shields, kite shield, heater shield, rotella shield, infinity war, thanos, steve rogers, tony stark, iron man, the avengers, age of ultron, top ten, top 10, medieval, middle ages, review, weapon, weapons, sword, swords, black panther, hulk, thor, super, hero

Id: nAM12_Pz288

Length: 14min 55sec (895 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 18 2018