There is no doubt in my mind that a crossbow would punch through a skull. Have you seen the power behind those things?! They are monsters. Yeah, Crossbows would be great if it wasn't for the whole.. You know... Being really hard to charge.

That's the issue I was thinking of, yes they may be powerful enough to penetrate a skull, but what about the distance vs reload time?

like if you shootsomeone with a bolt action scoped rifle, all you have to do is move one piece for a second or so to be ready to fire again, with a crossbow you'd have to put a new bolt in and fight against the strain to get it ready to fire.

And I doubt zombies hunt alone :S

A buddy of mine has a 350 tension lbs on the string, and he puts his foot in a holder on the front and pulls it back no problem. I had some trouble, becuase I was not familiar with re-hooking the trigger mechanisim, but buddy Josh can have it reloaded in 10 seconds everytime for 30 shots. I made him a bet and lost 20 bucks....:( I was most impressed when his GF reloaded it too... rather consistently. So, yes 10 seconds vs 1/2 for a bolt or 1/10 for semi auto, the silence and ability to re use the ammo (some times the bolt may break). Also, the Cross bow was as accurate as a rifle at 100 feet. And, if you are good with it and can guess the bolts required arc I have seen (at the firing range) accurate shots at 100 yards. So, the ranges is not terrible, and if it is just 1 zombie, who cares, and you won't say: "Here I am everyone!"

So, Crossbows are good (:
Wonderful

if youre in the middle of nowhere and youre surrounded by zombies, i dont think it really matters how loud you are.. :\

Happens too be a Big Favorite in Wepon choices for me...
PowPow!
Xbox Bolt in your Face..

Xbox Bolt?

i have a little experience with crossbows, the little hand ones anyway. we use it for stringing high wire antennas for amature radio. its only a 70-80lb drawback on a "pistol" style crossbow, and i had no respect for it till i accidently hit a 1/2 inch thick solid brass bird bath. i hit it at an angle and it punched a hole clean through it, it looked like someone hit it with a 38 special. after that little incident ive treated crossbows with the deadly respect they deserve, even the little ones.

i also remember reading somewhere the the penitration on crossbows is rediculas. bags of flour were used in the test. a standerd .45 will shoot through 3 1/2 10lb bags of flour. a 200lb draw crossbow went through 6 bags. and as has already been said by our friend fischer0dude they go up to +350lbs. you can set them to pritty much any lb setting you can handle, and with a foot spike or a winlass you could set them quite high.

availability is a good point too. they are realitivly easy to make, especially the ammo. with an even somewhat well shaped piece of wood you can make regular bows in to crossbows, or at a hardware store all the pieces are readly on hand to make one from scratch. and ammo can literaly anything of the correct length and width, with a little ducktape for fletchings. i am quite serious here, after the birdbath incident i took quite an intrest in crossbows and spend weeks making and trying my own ammo. there is a plant that grows in my yard that makes perfect small bolts, the branches are segmented and break off the perfect size. all i have to do is sharpen one end and ducktape the other. metal things have much more knock down to them though, but are still easily found and made. i have made several bolt types with common household items and naturaly occuring materials, evething from chopsticks to branches, crosching needles to antennas. (there is a good reasion crosching needles arnt allowed on airplanes anymore, it was the most effective, consistanly accrate and reuseable bolt i made.) there is also a repeating crossbow design that is buildable. its of chinese orgin called a "cho-kun-nu" i believe, and is capable of essially automatic fire. i was actually in the desing phase of making a "bolt action" crossbow, i have several parts collected but never built it.

i would highly recomend them as base defences or viechicle mounts. if you have the parts and the knowhow you could build balista sized ones fairly easily. can anyone picture a 3 foot long 10lb 2inch wide projectile with +400lbs of draw behind it mounted in the back of a pickup with a hand crank cleverly built in for easy realoading? you can have several loaded and on standby. crossbows are definetly a good idea.

i got a cross bow and i got arrows specil made for just me if you or anyone else used them they wouldnt be as effective with you but with me they are perfect

Hey nick, nice sig.
In the royal marines they add an extra P

is that the extra P you were refering to?

That is indeed the extra P I was thinking of.

...spears?...swords... or maby you could wake the fuck up and bye a fucking gun.......lazy mother fuckers

Wow, Mike. Your dick-assery level just rose to about 98%. He's not a "lazy mother f*****", over in Europe civilians can NOT get their hands on pistols (legally, at least.) Think about what you are saying before you post it.

Mike i cant have you talking like that for no reason your my friend on here but really that was unnecessary this is a warning

Or pretty piss

Or Pacman's

Or mrs pacman, he still doesn't know about what she gets up to with blinky when he's not around.

video semi related

Lol
I want them to make a pacman live action movie, someone made a trailer for it and put it on YouTube now we just need some one to make t for real

well so much for cross bow talk. thread derailed.

We're hopeless :(

it wasnt so bad with the cig talk, but pacman? really? now if we were talking about shooting a pacman with a cross bow then it would have been ok. :P

and i put a lot of info and thought in my post about the crossbows.....

then i dont even want to go in to mikes retardation.

well back on topic.

How usefull would a bow be if you didnt hit the head. it doesnt shoot steel girders as far as i can tell so a leg shot or arm shot would just end up in a P.O Zed. A good shotgun blast cna easily take out a leg or a high powered rifle. not sure if thats so possible W/ a crossbow.

and another thing im wondering is the spray of the blood. the less spray is Better IMO as it provides less risk for infection and its alot better for morale to have no blood then alot of blood.... usually

the larger bows and most any cross bow should break bones if struck squarely. also broad head arrows are meat grinders on a stick with entry wounds comparable in size and damage to a large caliber slow bullet.

Don't forget, on thing you can do with a crossbow/balista etc that you can't do with a firearm is trail a rope or chain on it. Think about it: you have a cluster of zeds. You fire one bolt out of your balista that is trailing a rope, it passes through multiple zeds and sticks in a nearby wall, you attach the other end to a second bolt and repeat. What do we have? A shit load of completely helpless zeds, that's what. Now, imagine using a compressed air harpoon launcher instead. Scary, that.

ewwww.... that sounds effective. can you think of any way to test that idea?

Watermelons?
Nooo, Let's steal all chiefs resusci-Annie's!

oooohhhh..... you said a bad thing! but we loves chiefy!

he would kill us.

i myself dream of owning a baseball bat fireing harpoon gun. its in alpha testing. poor poor chris...

Yes... Yes he would.

dude harpoons rock thattle be my weapon anyday

you do have to rember that the only way to use it would be to go one on one so if a group was on you you would hope there standing single file line