COULD THE LANCER EXIST? - Gears of War Science pt. 1

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SpacePak

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Published on August 25, 2015 8:29:09 AM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkpjyhkz0tk

Game:

Gears of War (2006)

Duration: 4:52

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In Gears of War, the Lancer Mark II has a chainsaw bayonet. But could the Lancer actually exist?

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In Gears of War, the COG army outfits their soldiers with the Mark 2 Lancer. The Mark 2 Lancer features a chainsaw bayonet as an upgrade from the original Mark 1’s standard bayonet to help get through the thick skin of the locust horde. Not only is this weapon system extremely cool looking, it’s also very effective. With that said, could the lancer actually exist?

Asside from the chainsaw bayonet, there’s nothing really keeping the Lancer from existing in the real world. Aside from the somewhat awkward butt stock,p0p0p0 this weapon can technically contain all the moving parts required to be a fully0 operational automatic rifle...except oddly there’s no discharge port for spent casings. Would it be a particularly effective system? It’s hard to tell. The Lancer has a bulky metal construction and a somewhat short barrel length. It might have been better suited as a bullpup design which would not only lengthen the barrel, but could also introduce a more robust stock. The reduction in weight with a composite shell could have assisted in making the weapon more manageable due to the front heavy chainsaw system reducing vertical recoil. To be fair though, this redesign would introduce a lot of flaws that could take years to re-engineer.

Taking a look at the interior mechanism, it’s clear that some significant modifications would need to be done to allow for a proper feed from the magazine. To accommodate this, a dual sided split magazine was implemented to allow the rounds to pass around the saw blade. Because the saw teeth sit directly where the soldier would traditionally place their hand to grip the front of the rifle, it would be very important to implement a safety feature. Without it, the average number of fingers in the COG army would like be about six or seven. A simple solution would be a pressure plate on the front grip to initiate the saw and a sensor on the pistol grip to validate both hands are safely positioned.

To better understand the chainsaw bayonet, let’s take a deeper look into the guts of the weapon. The front grip would need to house all and any moving components responsible for the main saw mechanism. From an engineering standpoint, a coupled screw gear system would allow for the desired motion to take place in a somewhat small package, though the torque and power requirements may be too great for our current technology. The rear gear would be a specially welded gear consisting of two smaller gears and a single large gear. The large gear would be sandwiched between the smaller gears which would be powered by a two parallel screw gears. This motion would then cause the large gear to to run the chain. Though this gear and screw system seems complicated, it’s used in many applications including your car’s drive shaft, though in a slightly different configuration.

So now that the mechanics are somewhat proven as at least plausible, where would the fuel be be stored? In the game, Emulsion is a glowing substance dense with usable energy. Could emulsion be the fuel used to power the chainsaw? This is a hard question to answer since Emulsion is highly volatile compared even to other liquid fuels and the fact it is a 100% fantasy material, its physical properties are mostly undocumented. In fact, other than the sound and smoke appearing when the chainsaw is reved, there’s no indication that the Lancer even consumes fuel at all. The only other alternative would be electric, though the smoke still remains unexplained.

When you’re talking about future technology, it’s easy to bound the discussion on what exists today. As famously stated, “there are things you know, there are things you know you don’t know, and then there are things you don’t even know that you don’t know”. In the case of the Lancer, there’s a lot there that our technology could piece together and there are some things that come into question, but the solution to the questions may lie within future technology we can’t even conceive yet. Because of that, the Lancer Mark II is not only one of the coolest weapons in modern video games, it’s also one of the most realistic near future weapon (even if it isn’t a practical weapon).

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