Star Wars Mandalorian VIBROBLADES - Pop-culture weapons analyzed

[Music] greetings i'm shad sword enthusiast as well as fantasy adventurer and with that in mind you can probably understand that i'm always deeply interested if there is a new weapon that arises that could do its job better thanks to maybe a special design a material that is made out of a fantasy magical enchantment or indeed an advanced science fiction technology which brings us to the topic of this video and that being vibro blades as seen in styles expanded universe canon but now in the more mainstream canon thanks to its appearance in the disney plus series the mandalorian so to kick us off i'm going to briefly describe what the vibro blade is according to star wars canon main source being wikipedia i'm going to see if there's any precedent for such a concept that could exist in the real world based on real world technology and then even expanded a bit to technology we haven't developed that might still be possible and then once we kind of lay that foundation i want to see how effective it would be and if its use in star wars canon main source being the mandalorian reflects how it would really operate if you could actually make a vibro blade in real life now the reason why i'm going to be focusing on the mandalorian because yes vibroblades appear in the expanded universe quite a lot unfortunately the expanded universe cannon was mostly decanonized thanks to disney but also there's a general acceptance that anything outside the mainstream movies are generally not considered full proper canon yet originally that was because george lucas wanted to maintain control over the skywalker continuity but unfortunately disney portrayed that completely because they didn't give a stuff about canon either in many instances of the sequel trilogy but personally for me i don't even consider the sequel trilogy styles canon it's just really bad fan fiction made by solas corporation but then why is the mandalorian being considered or accepted more even by myself as more established canon in the styles universe than say the sequel trilogy and in just to share a small opinion here i think it's primarily because of respect it shows to pre-existing star wars continuity both the continuity that exists in the you know star wars mainstream movies but also star wars law that exists outside and the vibra blade is a classic example of this as i mentioned vibro blades appear in the expanded star wars universe quite a lot one of the first times i actually came upon vibra blades in the styles universe was when i was playing knight to the old republic and vibro swords were one of the main weapons that you could get before you upgraded to lightsabers and the mandalorian series instead of just ignoring or even contradicting pre-existing star wars law and canon it's actually been respecting it and incorporating it which just has added more fun and enjoyment for fans of the star wars universe and in contrast that to say the bad fan fiction sequels well they have shown tremendous disrespect to establish star wars canon like their characters the utility of hyperspace in combat scenarios and stuff like that and or many other reasons and obviously i'm not a fan if you're a fan all power too yeah but i think there is a very distinct reason why the mandalorian is so popular at the moment okay so what are vibro blades according to wikipedia they are essentially a regular type of knife or obviously it has a technology component somewhere in there but there's a core blade which is very similar to a ring knife but it has an addition called it's not supersonic i think it's ultrasonic an ultrasonic vibration generator and according to its subscription the ultrasonic vibration generator increases the cutting capacity of the knife or sword very considerably but in actual reality it does a lot more than that because it says with this effect it can actually cut through things like jurisdil and even biscar armor which is crazy because i would assume that most vibro blades swords or knives are made out of dura steel and usually metal implements cannot or at least have tremendous difficulty cutting through objects of the same material hardness and strength or metal the same type and durasteel is pretty prominent in the world and if vibroblades can cut through duracell and they're made out of dura steel that means this ultrasonic vibration effect is actually increasing the strength and resistance of the blade itself now if we were to try and figure out what this description is actually meaning personally i've come to two conclusions as to what it's actually describing the first thing is that the blade itself is moving and vibrating and what type of effect would that have on its cutting capacity more than you might realize you see blades have an interesting property is that even if they're really sharp you're actually far less likely to cut yourself when you put pressure on the blade because it's actually not moving okay for a blade to cut it needs to slide even a small amount along the surface of whatever it's coming into contact with and of course the material it's coming in contact with needs to be softer than the actual bladed instrument itself and so even when you do a strike even if it's with a knife or let's uh take an example of a sword okay so even if you do a flat strike that seems to be have no movement at all there is still microscopic movement on the impact which caused the cut and then if you do a draw cut actually draw it in the cut is going to be far more effective and so movement on the edge of any bladed instrument increases cutting capacity now if the blade itself was vibrating really really fast that means it's going to create a sawing like effect but not exactly in actual fact it's more of a cutting like effect because you need to understand a distinction between what a cut is and what a soaring motion is a saw doesn't technically cut it has tooths that scrape along the surface of material and gouges the material out this is why when you saw and you actually get really stuck into it material is getting removed as it continues to soar so see all the sawdust flying off now why does a saw need to operate that way well for the simple fact that there needs to be enough room for the actual blade to pass through if it didn't remove material the blade would get stuck right in the material it's trying to cut through the problem that swords have is that when they cut into something they actually have to instead of removing material push the material apart to make room for the blade for it to cut through and as a result many swords can actually get stuck in the thing that you're trying to cut because of the friction that it you know results as a natural byproduct and so going back to fibroblades then does the actual movement then increase cutting capacity it still would okay but not to the point where it would be remove material and because of that unless you have a lot of momentum behind the strike there is a chance that the blade will still get wedged in whatever you're cutting and even if you have a lot of momentum okay material you're trying to cut into has a lot of resistance okay it's still going to get stuck but that's not to say that's what i saw with me now it's not to say that it's going to be useless because do we have in the real world a similar type of tool and the answer is we actually do electronic carving knives essentially operate on the exact same principle and that is well with this one specifically there are two blades that go like this create a sawing motion and as a result they will naturally cut quite effectively as i will show you right here so cuts through very simple very easily now a vibro blade will essentially have this same effect but enhanced to a much greater degree in fact these ultrasonic vibrations happen at an insanely fast rate which could explain why it's called ultrasonic because they could be moving much faster than the speed of light yes i said speed of light then i obviously meant faster than the speed of sound but there's a bit more to this ultrasonic kind of utility or incorporation which is that second possible interpretation of how vibroblades actually work because even with what i just did right here there's a limitation in you know electronic carving knives because it's still cutting it's not sawing technically it's not removing material so if i grab my block of wood again and try and cut through here it gets stuck it's not moving it's still cutting but it could not go any deeper than that the blades are going really really fast but why wasn't it cutting any deeper it's because it was getting wedged right in the edge of the wood this is the real world limitation that vibroblades would naturally fall into if they existed in the real world now is there any other possible interpretation of how they function that could supersede or overcome this limitation perhaps but the thing is every enhancement that this blade receives from the you know ultrasonic vibration generator does not take away the reality that this blade still has a certain amount of width one of the ways to circumvent this is to make the blade really really thin but was seen in both the expanded star wars stuff and the mandalorian series itself that viral blades aren't particularly thin in actual fact they're about as thick as a regular knife oh and by the way before i continue i will put the caveat that if viral blades can cut through biscuit like wikipedia says they don't in the mandalorian we see them actually slash on you know best car armor and they don't really do a thing so it could be that they either weren't being ramped up to the greatest strength that they could achieve or it's only circumstantial at this like at certain angles they have a chance to cut through but most instances they won't so this limitation i'm just explaining here is a physical limitation that would exist on any blade that has any amount of width the way that you could reduce it is if there was say a type of technology that reduced friction on the sides of the blade so even if you know there's a lot of pressure being pushed in if there's actually less friction as a result there's a much higher chance of the blade going through and even blades that would essentially be indestructible and sharpened to a molecule you know edge would still have that limitation and would not be able to chop through particularly dense materials that would wedge it in and this would apply just as much to say wolverine's claws as a vibro blade but this is not necessarily the only way to interpret how a vibroblade works because there is another description in how vibra blades work on wikipedia that is very odd and it's that any cut made with a vibro blade actually ends up being far more devastating and bigger on the actual target bigger than even the amount of blade contact it had with the target now that is interesting because that implies something far more than mere vibrating at a supersonic speed and at first i was thinking you know there's nothing really that would give that type of effect from the technology that they're describing now is the point in the video we're moving beyond you know real world technology to try and figure this part out we actually need to think about things that could be possible even if we can't technologically achieve them right now so as i was thinking about i was wondering what could actually cause a bladed instrument to cut beyond the surface of its edge and so if i just nick someone it could still cut off an entire arm that's essentially what they're saying vibroblades can do and my first thought is what about extremely fast and condensed and focused jets of air yes they could actually cut but that's an effect of air pressure not sound because this is particularly about vibration but also speed and is that speed referring to something moving faster than the speed of sound or is it referring to an effect from sound waves that was interesting so i did a bit of digging and i looked up to see if sound waves can cut and remarkably i found they can it is under very extreme circumstances the sound waves need to be really really tight and dense and extremely focused and they're well beyond the range of hearing that humans can detect but in that extreme range sound waves can cut that's interesting so there is about the limit of my understanding in the science of sound waves and i have no idea if you could produce such heightened and focused sound waves from a vibrating material perhaps as possible i have no idea but when i think about it because we know vibration can create sound waves but they're usually not nearly as focused as what they would need to be for sound waves to cut and they'll probably emanate all around the blade not in a single straight line yet we are dealing with science fiction and so this is the part where you can use the hand wavy pseudoscience element of world building in a satisfying way if it's founded on a vein of logic that you kind of extrapolating on especially if you're going into a realm where we honestly don't know could a technology like this exist we don't know and so therefore if it's not explicitly contradicted or denied from our understanding of physics right now and technology right now you can incorporate these things into fiction in a really satisfying way the problem arises is when you make up stuff that outrightly does contradict things in the real world you can kind of get away with it if it's in an area of knowledge that most people are unfamiliar with and you can make a pseudo-science explanation people generally accept it but if it's an area that most people already understand say gravity and you're contradicting laws of physics without a satisfactory explanation as to why if it's a certain technology if it's doing something if you're just bull crapping laws of physics of course normal people are going to see that and go that doesn't make sense in addition to this if then you also contradict laws that exist or have been pre-established in canon that can be just as unsatisfying and annoying to the audience as if you're just contradicting the laws of physics and someone starts flying for no reason at all there's no magic there's no force they just fly right they fly now even without backpacks okay so the thing that i'm obviously referencing here is the holdo maneuver now going back to uh vibro blades i don't know how sound waves are created from vibrations but it doesn't seem you know illogical to try and hand wave and say that okay there is a type of feel generated through this ultrasonic vibration generator and you know it could be an energy fuel or something like that which focuses the sound waves that are produced from the vibrating blade and that is vibrating at an insanely fast and you know almost violent rate is just crazy fast and is able to focus and project those sound waves in the two planes in which the blade is facing which is x-axis y-axis but not the you know z-axis i'm probably messing that up but you you get what i'm saying okay it focuses the sound waves in one direction which and if it's were single edged yes and it wouldn't you know focus on the back and this could explain why sometimes single edge fiber blades are preferred because perhaps they can cut better because they focus the sound waves in a more efficient way instead of splitting it into two directions so this could be really cool because if that's the case that means a vibro blade could cut through sound waves in the direction which the blade is facing at a actual distance from the blade there would come a limit a point where the vibrations become unfocused just like with sound waves the more they travel the more they dilute because they're expanding outwards you could kind of do that in the same way this is a possible explanation that has far more logical validity to explain a scientific basis for how vibroblades could possibly work and perhaps could exist if we develop the technology eventually to achieve it the danger with doing this is that my explanation is not canon this is just a fan filling in the gaps to try and think of what's the way in which these could really work because the problem with doing that is that if it's not canon it can be outrightly contradicted in you know future star wars creations or whatever and it's already happened to me okay because case in point cross guards on lightsabers obviously really really useful so why wasn't anyone ever doing it before kylo ren before the sequel trilogy they simply didn't exist and so there was a simple explanation to say it was a limitation in the technology you couldn't split the lightsaber flows i mentioned this in my review of how you know the problems with lightsabers so more detail in that video summarizing here is that you could explain it with a technological limitation and that was satisfying for me and okay because the lack of cross guards on lightsabers aren't a problem come the sequel trilogy around cross guards on lightsabers that just creates a massive plot hole now as to why wasn't anyone else doing it because it wasn't mentioned that this is a special type of technology kylo ren developed it's just he just has it okay and no one else then catches on and makes their own it's just so it screws up my you know fan theory explanation that i inserted into it because nothing was set in stone as to why lightsabers didn't have cross guards and this is the same as to why viralblades could logically function according to their proper you know how the technology could feasibly exist in the real world okay let's now look at the most official canon representation of vibroblades which is in the mandalorian and it seems to be the general you know accepted standard that anything that appears in a live action property of star wars that's official it's a film or something like that is supersedes any other canon that exists in expanded trilogy or expanded universe or something like that which is why if fibroblades operate differently in comic books or in the novel stuff like that different to how they're shown in the mandalorian the mandalorian example just by nature of this unspoken standard seems to supersede any of those contradictions and so now looking at how they operate in the mandalorian does this confirm or do they operate in the way in which they naturally would if they were founded on the technological basis in which i was describing yes and no there's a problem okay and it's that we do see a vibro blade stabbed to the hilt in you know a target the the mud horn and there is no greater cutting ratio from the point in which it's stabbed in which seems to contradict this uh explanation of how vibro blades operate because according to wikipedia they should have a much greater cutting ratio than the actual length of blade itself there should actually be a much wider gash or cut but is there an explanation because there is another big question mark that existed about that scene when i was watching it and it's that the length of blade that the mandalorian has which is even smaller than this would not be able to stab deep enough into such a large animal to kill it okay it only stabbed essentially into the surface fat of that thing and it instantly killed it in the show but if an animal like that actually existed unless that had a specific special instikill artery on its neck you were not going to drop that thing by shoving a knife only that far into its neck unless the cutting ratio of the weapon could actually be extended further away from the blade but we don't see that the entry hole is only the length of the blade but what if you could adjust the projection of these highly focused and intense sound waves okay and the mandalorian and look this is me giving the most charitable interpretation in the world because this is not explained in the show one bit but what if okay it the enviroblade is operating the exact way that i was saying but the mandalorian knowing he needed to stab much deeper into this mud horn to kill it that he simply adjusted the angle or direction in which the sonic waves are being projected from the vibro blade so that when it actually stabbed in the sonic waves were being projected much further in and it actually ended up stabbing that this deep into the mud horn which is a far more lethal penetration than just the length of the blade itself that would explain it okay and it's very satisfactory i think it's founded on a lot of good logic that makes sense but it could be contradicting completely because if we see you know mandalorian in a situation where he needs to use the vibroblade now and it only cuts within the range of the blade itself this would be outrightly contradicting the wikipedia you know explanation that says fibroblades can cut in a much wider range than just the size or angle of the blade okay you do it nick and it causes a really deep cut uh that would have a problem there so he said in this video to people who work on mandalorian styles to try and make it official cannon that this is how viral blades work because if they don't catch on to this there's a much higher chance that they'll just contradict it in later episodes which would be very annoying and that would then mean if viralblades do not actually extend or shoot out a kind of cutting wave of energy through highly intense supersonic whatevers that means that essentially the only other explanation of what a vibra blade is doing is that the blade is vibrating a lot and i mean in the mandalorian we see kind of a shadow outline of the viral blade about that so they might vibrate in a much wider range but only about yay big around the blade and that would only have the result of the vibration itself which means it would operate very similar to an electric carving knife and then would have the same limitation of the blade thickness but hang on would the blade thickness still be a limitation if it had this ultrasonic effect of you know being able to cut much wider than its blade you know size not necessarily because if something gets cut out here it's much easier for something to be wedged apart if the wedging distance is really wide okay and so they the material doesn't need to move apart that much okay the angle doesn't need to move that much to make you know allowance for the blade to pass through which means a uh vibro blade that's cutting in the way that we're kind of describing here that cuts further away from the blade itself has a much higher chance to wedge apart material and cut through then if it was forcing things to be wedged apart much closer to the blade that could result just from the vibration thing and so even you know this problem is lessened by this more i guess uh science fiction hand-wavy example but like i said i think it's based on logic of vibro blade technology so it's a very interesting subject and as you've seen we've been able to kind of explore different theories different uh elements in of physics and principles of weapon technology so you can see why i find it really interesting but if that is the case that is really cool now this video is already pretty lengthy but what yeah if you have seen any of my other videos on chat adversity because there is one other subject i wanted to discuss in regards to viral blade that is the matter of knife first sword because the viral blades let's say yes they are they are just as effective in the most charitable way i've explained in this video with the vibration effect happening much wider why then is a mandalorian not using a vibrobladed sword instead of a virulated knife this is actually not that hard of a question to answer because the same reason you know it's i think it's the answer comes in the same or similar ways in which it happens historically why didn't everyone carry a sword historically because sometimes a knife does the job and it's a lot more convenient okay and with the mandalorian his main weapon is always or should always be his his guns okay and sometimes he uh chooses bafflingly to resort to his other weapons and not his most effective weapon no it's a plot hole right but vibroblades do exist in the star wars universe so why would you use a vibro sword over knives well it comes with you know shielding technology wikipedia and other you know sources i found says that vibro blades are able to appear shielding much easier sometimes like it's not even there in comparison to blaster fire and that would explain it very very neatly but personal shielding is not something we have seen in star wars universe sorry i meant to say the star wars films and tv shows at all apart from particular droids but not on people so that doesn't answer that either sometimes it's to combat lightsabers if you're fighting a jedi who can deflect all your blast to fire and nullifies your range capacity completely well would you do better at fighting them melee usually not because of the jedi's superhuman abilities but if mandalorian has the armor and is particularly well trained and his blast of fire is being nullified okay could he use a vibroblade in some instances because as to if a lightsaber can chop through a vibroblade it depends and it depends on the star wars whatever you're looking at in knights of the old republic they couldn't there was some type of energy field that blocked lightsabers from private blades in other expanded works like in comics lightsabers can chop through fiber blades unless they're made out of a special material that's very rare and was mostly forgotten by the main when the main children really comes about so if you had a fiber blade that could block lightsabers okay a vibro sword could be a very logical option to use in such a situation but there are other situations which a vibro sword would be preferable over a vibro knife in my opinion and that's if you are needing to do far greater damage like with the mandalorian versus the mud horn it looked like his regular blaster fire wasn't able to do enough damage and he lost his main you know pulse cannon whatever thing that was called his disintegration rifle and the flamethrower just seemed to pee it off and so okay resorting to a bladed instrument might be a perfect situation in which you could use that in that situation a vibro sword would be far more effective than a viral blade because think of this okay if um the you know ultra sonic vibration technology enhances the cutting ratio significantly from a knife imagine how much more it would with a blade okay it would increase at the same percentage ratio but because the blade is already so much bigger the ultimate result could be cuts that might be how to chop an x-wing in half or something like that would be flipping awesome to see and what's interesting about this if this is the way vibroblades work they have a unique and profound effect that's even greater than lightsabers we have not seen lightsabers be able to cut anything beyond the length of their saber the beam itself they are limited to their core range just like a real sword but if fibroblades can actually cut things at a distance okay that would be crazy the other i might be extrapolating too far here because the examples usually say you need to make contact with the viral blade and as soon as you make contact then the cut is much greater and so it still works with a mandalorian stabby thing if you focus the things in because it made contact and that can send the ultrasonic vibrations to cut much deeper but it needs that contact to work it's kind of a cool limitation so all right then that means you wouldn't have greater range than the range of the thing but your cutting capacity would be greater even with me not being as generous as i was before and you have to make contact to cut its cutting ratio would still be fastly greater than that of a lightsaber where you nick you know an x-wing and still cut it in half that's that's a crazy advantage and if viral blades work like that in real life that if i was in star wars i would actually pick a vibro sword over a lightsaber if i could defend against lightsabers and perhaps block lightsaber bolts and stuff is that my hot take i think that's my conclusion if vibroblades work the way that they are implied to and based on this you know technological mumbo jumbo we've been talking about in my opinion that would be more devastating and be have greater damage potential than that of a lightsaber unless you wanted to melt a blaster door then you might run into some trouble but there we go and just because i like to i'm going to do one last jedi style flourish because it's cool do i do the uh samurai are you putting in bank anyway thank you for watching guys i hope you have enjoyed this is a really fun subject to cover there was a lot of meat to kind of dive into but share your thoughts in the comments below i'm really interested in hearing your kind of interpretational thoughts on this theory i have shared i look forward to reading them and of course i look forward to seeing you in the next episode of shadowversity so until that time [Music] you

Channel: Shadiversity

Views: 470,674

Keywords: star wars, the mandalorian, mandalorian, mando, lightsaber, vibroblades, vibro blades, skywalker, sword, swords

Id: D0MGaC3lLis

Length: 29min 36sec (1776 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 04 2020