Using Slums As A Military Defense

Did you miss the link I posted showing how an adobe structure would burn?

We're just going in pointless circles. Lock this thread and move on.

edited 31st Dec '13 2:32:28 PM by Somber

Somber, it's not your thread to declare dead. Dial it back...

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

Somber:And you missed the fact it isn't the adobe itself burning but other materials that are amazingly not adobe. Doesn't negagte my point in the least. Stuff in side burns nicely including the the bottoms of the exposed beams and whatever you have inside including oil, flour, wood or fuel for your fire place, clothes etc. Adobe itself does not burn or burns very poorly.

They make kilns and ovens out of it without those structures burning at all. We are talking devices used to create fire hardened or fire baked bricks and other construction materials which is then covered in plaster. They get quite notably hot especially firing kilns. They are made with the exact same materials as the buildings. Yet those kilns and ovens do not burn down. The bricks themselves do not burn up in the kilns either. The reason is very simple. Adobe itself does not burn or burns very poorly. Which means you need to do something different agains that kind of structure.

Adobe is almost entirely composed of soil you know something that is not known to burn outside of some very intense and powerful incendiary weapons. Sand, clay, water, some local dirt, maybe animal dung or some straw mixed in. The bricks are sun baked or baked in a kiln then covered with plaster like material. That makes very poor fuel. You need a lot of heat and lot fuel to do anything meaningful. Last i checked none of these guys have access to modern incendiary weapons with their refined fuels and additives.

If you try and light that with a torch your going to be standing around for a long time. You might cause some heat damage and cracking if you set a wall or roof on fire with oil but your not going to do much else. Most buildings like that, as I pointed out already, need to be burned from the inside. In fact it is far mor effective to put torches through the windows then to sling incnediaries at the roof or sides.

Adobe buildings use plaster or adobe brick for roofing instead of the wood slats, thatch, or tar paper found in various other constructions. Which unlike adobe burn very nicely. Tar and other materials were also often used to water proof wood roofs and were frequently impregnating the wood with an incnediary accelerant.

Even the buildings in Boston with Brick walls had wood roofs or wood roofing tiles, wood floors, and wood supports. Fire jumped from roof to roof and then got inside the building burning through the roof and its wooden supports. Then there is all the nice flammable stuff inside which then catches from burning material falling onto it from above.

Even with the shelling of Coppenhagen the British first used shot and shell to crack open the buildings, damage walls, break open roofs, and otherwise compromise buildings that would be hard to burn before firing incendiaries or congreve rockets into them. They used an army of 25,000 troops and 22 Naval Warships. We are talking about no small amount fire power but quite a lot of it. Copenhagen was not even close to completely destroyed.

These are not some peasant huts made of straw out in the rural areas with thatch you can walk up and throw a torch on the roof and it will catch. Sorry but you need a bit more effort then that.

Getting inside to burn things like furniture, bedding, clothing, and stored goods is not only more effective but you are far more likely to succeed then trying to set a brick and plaster wall on fire.

This fact was well known by the time of WWII. Let me share some pictures with you to emphasize my point further.

The first one is a Lancaster bomber dropping the first load of bombs.◊ What you are seeing are the smaller 250lb bombs and the 4000lb "cookie" or "Block buster" bomb.

The purpose of these bombs is to damage the structures made of brick. The cookie cutter does extensive damage being such a large bomb often tearing off roofs, cracking open walls, and doing a lot of damage in general. These damaged buildigns are now much more vulnerable to incendiary weapons and the opened buildings more prone to the spread of fire from another building.

Same bomber seconds later dropping the cluster incendiaries◊ Notice they drop the incendiaries after they drop the explosives.

We are seeing the same thing the British did for the siege of Coppenhagen only done with bombers instead of mortars, cannon, rockets, and howitzers.

It took hundreds of planes and multi-tons of explosive and incnediaries to do that damage to Dresden. Even then there were still remains of structures standing after the fact and were made of brick. The piles of rubble are bricks that did not burn but the insides of the buildings having been gutted collapsed the building. Notice you have to damage the outside before you coudl gut the building with fire.

Hundreds of WWII bombers carrying multi-tons of explosives and incendiaries using multiple air raids were not able to completely level one city. It took thousands of bombs to level even a small city or large town. We are not dealing with that level of fire power or anything close to that.

You are trying to tell me an army with handful siege engines is going to burn down a large swath of buildings made from brick and plaster including their roofs and walls is somehow going to come close to achieving the same thing. I very highly doubt it.

If you had instead suggested using the catapults or siege engines to damage the buildings and then flinging incendiaries before they can be repaired you would have a point. I handed you the information on a platter and you ignored it.

Here is something to chew on. While durable, because of how adobe is contructed, it takes longer to repair damaged structures. So anything you damage will stay damaged far longer then other forms of construction.

I am sorry but you are very very unlikely to just waltz over the settlement with ease, burn it down easily, or smash it down easily. I keep seeing the fallacy of the silver bullet/magical simple solution. The facts of the extent of array of weapons and tactics that are historically noted used in sieges is being blatantly ignored. One solution is magically perfect and spells doom is foolish in and of itself. I am afriad reality is far more harsh and the fact is you need multiple approaches and or efforts to maximize effectiveness.

None of it will be "simple" or "easy". It takes time and effort. Clearing whole towns on foot takes days or weeks with cooperative civilians. With hostile civilians we are talking a whole different ball game.

I can even present a far more reasonable and practical effort for dealing with the slums and it's inhabitants then has presented up to this point.

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Siege engines were a good starting point but you can't rely on just simply knocking buildings down alone. While rubble can provide cover your guys it can also provide cover for the enemy and rubble will impede movement just as effectively as intact buildings.

Depending on the nature of the region ammo for siege engines may not be easily obtained and you don't want to waste your premade and transported ammo on the slums. You want that for the walls so you have max accuracy and effective impact.

The area is likely to have a number of rural structures made of both adobe and undressed stone. Undressed stone is commonly used for animal pens or to protect even small plots of crops. Often it is just stacked stone held together by the weight of the stones or the stones are packed with straw filled mud and dried in the sun.

Send out scouts to locate these structures then send workers to pull them down and haul the rubble to your siege engines set outside of the slum far enough back that archers are mostly ineffective.

Sling your rubble at the edges. Aim to create a reasonably wide area of desruction and clearage. During the day send troops and working parties to edge of the slum. Drag the rubble back to your siege engines. As you break down the houses you are hauling away to rubble to use as ammo and deny your enemy cover to hide in the day and protect them at night. But you don't have to use all the rubble.

You can use your working parties to work on the rubble to make them easier to move around or more useful for something then just ammo. Use that fill in ditches, holes, wells, and to create adhoc roads to make moving siege machines easier to move around.

Hauling away the rubble denies the enemy any cover they can grab from it and provides clear ground for your army to move through. Moving quickly to the wall before hunkering down means you spend less time exposed and it is easier to move all of your siege gear in closer.

Not only does moving rubble deny any civilian guerillas/insurgents/rebels from using them it also denies the army behind the walls protective cover for sallying out and using the rubble to attack from. The army may sally forth at any point but being thorough and removing the possible cover minimizes any advantages they can take from the urban sprawl outside their gates.

Leave a bit of rubble at the leading edge of where you will attack from. At that point anyone in that will be easily cleared off and you can then use it for cover.

Before you advance smash buildings along the route of the approach on the flanks. Then use your incendiaries on the now opened houses. The no longer intact houses will be far less sturdy and resistant to the fire attack and even the stuff under the rubble piles will likely burn.

If you need to send troops after a house don't charge in. The bulk of all urban combat casualties occur on entry or in the buildings themselves.

In tight quarters troops who train to maneuver in a formation for their strength are going to not have that strenght and will need to rely on their combat ability alone. That gives the defenders a more level playing field. Deny them that advantage and don't go in. If possible make them come out after you.

Go up with a small flask of oil and some torches. These buildings will likely have windows and doors. Put the oil through a window then send a torch in after or save the oil and put torches in through every window and door you can get to. Don't go in let the fire do the work and kill anyone running out. H

ave a couple guys along with work hammers and picks to knock holes in walls if you can't readily get to windows or doors and put torches through then.

While trying to set the walls and roofs on fire will be largely ineffective if you put the fire inside the building where all the flammable substances are you get a lot further and deny those materials to the enemy and if anyone is inside they now have to worry about suffocation from smoke or being burned alive.

If the streets are even undressed stone paving get as close as you can before you starting mining and create your own rubble piles to protect the openings. Move your siege engines up as far as you safely can to attack the walls or destroy enemy defenses that are just in range. The shorter the distance you have to dig the less likely you are to have a section of your tunnel cave under render the passage useless for undermining or cover entry.

Guess what. That sort of strategy comes from any number of successful sieges. No siege has ever been just roll up knock something down. They are frequently fare more involved and take a fair amount of time and effort.

Sieges are often an extensive setup and take a long time. The more built up areas you have to move through the longer it will take.

edited 31st Dec '13 6:32:35 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Who watches the watchmen?

Dude, whatever.

Last I checked, no buildings outside of the mediterranean ones have even had adobe roofs, because adobe really doesn't like getting soaked, which occurs quite a lot in middle and northern Europe.

Actually, it matters a lot, urban combat in the 19th century would be completely different to that in the 20th century, and indeed, even between various decades in the 20th century.

Okay, define 'large' (I'm thinking an area 100-200 yards deep), define 'sprawl', hells, define 'dealing with'.

Or much better equipped people, you know, people with swords and armour vs people with knifes.

booby traps are limited, and require a long time to set up in a pre-gunpowder society.

Stalingrad is a completely different scenario than what we're dealing with here, in terms of technology, in terms of environment, and even in terms of aims.

Except a lot of the less violent stuff was done by sympathetic civilians, not the resistance itself. And again, different scenario.

Now try that in a place where the only 'locals' are going to be counted as 'hostiles'.

Not the same, this isn't long-term occupation, it's bloody (if necessary) conquest.

Would you please try to find a scenario even vaguely similar to the one under discussion.

Distance is only a matter of time with mining.

Yeah, dry-stone walls.

Unless you're building a cache, it helps to have stones that can stack.

No, it always has been expensive, in fact it's probably cheaper today than it was back in the middle ages.

That's good enough for cooking, but not so much for baking bricks.

For going through adobe or anything other than dressed stone, a warhammer is good enough.

Unless the defender has mouse-holes of his own, then you're facing militia off against soldiers in a stand-up fight, which will go bad for the militia.

Still only a small portion of the overall population.

And it's the defenders who need the reinforcements.

And adobe is a bad roofing material in any area that naturally sees a lot of rain.

No, but quite a large number of buildings were burned down, many of which had thatch roofs.

No, they're slum huts, built with about the samre amount of care, and packed closer together.

You seem to be under the impression that the slum (a place where poor people live) is going to have the same build quality as a rich city would. Somehow I doubt it.

And I keep seeing the fallacy of slums = bricks, the slums are going to be built of whatever is cheaply to hand that might possibly last, and bricks are not among those materials.

Except we're not clearing whole towns, we're clearing a part of a town.

If you can have stone buildings in poor areas, there's plenty of stone around.

edited 1st Jan '14 12:13:23 AM by MattII

It takes more then simple decent equipment. It takes both time and numbers to secure even a series of small structures. You need a minimum of a man for every room and door and at least one for a roof. That is just to take and thoroughly secure a single building. Do that with a large built up urban area and you are going to need a lot of troops to truly secure it. Never mind surround the areas you are trying to operate in. This is why the size of armies grew rapidly in the middle ages. It took larger and larger armies to take even a simple fortification or large town.

And no booby traps do not take a long time unless you are doing some elaborate. Most booby traps are not all that elaborate. That is why they are widely used. They are often easy and fairly quick to set up with small number of people. Simple ones like a spike in a shallow camouflaged ankle breaker pit can be made in about 20 minutes. you dig a 1 one foot cube hole, put a sharp stick in the bottom and cover it with twigs or debris and cover it with some light debris to hide it. Bam done and very simple. Snares, trip lines, tension traps. They don't take that long to set up. And the more people you have setting up the traps the more quickly they are set up. Even better with a booby trap you don't have to kill your enemy just do them harm they then have to deal with their injured.

Stalingrad is not a completely different scenario it is very similar. The taking and destruction of a built up urban area and it's inhabitants especially when it involves two armies. The fact is urban combat whether medieval or modern share a lot in common because they take place in the same environment. A built up area consisting of any number and variety of structures in which fighting takes place. Civilians, other military, resistance fighters may or may not be present. The original point you tried to make was that you can't move around the city easily. I pointed out that is pretty much moot as it has been done before. Stalingrad is certainly not the first time. It is a lot easier for small groups of resistance fighters then the more clunky and large armies with their formations, supplies, and other baggage to do the same. Try not to distract from actual facts.

A lot of the less violent stuff was also done by the resistance as well including intel gathering and helping downed pilots escape in secret. Running carrier pigeons is definitely rather non-violent which the resistance used to ferry messages across the channel. Last I checked the resistance was civilians operating at varying levels inside a city. Doing everything from passive to active measures. And again the point was even small numbers can prove dangerous and hazardous to a much larger and more superior force. A point which I made multiple times.

If they don't have to hide among a conquered population it certainly simplifies things quite a bit. No need to watch for sympathizers when only the enemy is kicking around the city. Makes the job easier for the local defenders and gives them a lot more free reign in a city. Also gives the invaders a bit of a leg up unless they are running around trying to hack every civilian they see. That seemingly helpless group of civilians you are chasing down that alley could just as easily be leading you into an ambush. Urban combat with irregulars is often like that.

Not the same the but the point is still very similar. Less well trained and equipped amateurs did notable damage to an enemy who held a much larger advantage.

You complained of modern points I provided older ones. They are very similar. Large armies often assailing cities or populations having to deal hostile populations and needing a lot of time and effort to deal with them. Would you please try not move the goal posts and deflect when your points don't hold up.

Distance in digging is a matter of more then just digging and time. You have to dig through any number of unknown underground substances and obstacles. You dig into a stream or water canal your tunnel is done and your engineers and workers dead. You dig into unstable soil or accidentally undermine an unstable building it can collapse in on the tunnel meaning it takes more time and effort to either reopen or dig around. The longer the tunnel the more things can go wrong. Simple fact of statistics and laws of averages. The longer it is the more trouble you will likely run into and the longer it will take as a whole. 100 feet of tunnel can very likely traverse any manner of multiple soil types. You could be one minute be digging through soft soils, then find yourself hacking through hard rock, and since we are in an urban setting possibly digging through unstable rubble remains that have been built over.

Stone walls made with mud, simple mortars, or free standing. My point about undressed stone existing for both housing and other structures still stands.

You don't even need stones to stack perfectly to build a cache. They have been built just fine without them stacking nicely. You don't even need dressed stone for a cache. Stones stacking nicely while certainly nice and making ones job easier is not a necessity.

No dressed stone has not always been expensive. All dressed stone is some rocks someone hacked into a more uniform shape. It doesn't even have to be a nice or perfectly formed shape. The truly expensive stone is the fine dressed stone. It is more expensive today then back then. It's use in green homes or houses trying to "achieve" a certain look has made real quarried and dressed stone expensive for building. Stone masons who make even the cheap dressed stone are far less common they used to be seeing as how we longer do large scale building with stone like that these days. Unless of course you get the far cheaper reformed or pressed "dressed stone" which is pretty cheap.

Dry animal patties work for baking bricks. The Hopi and other locals the world round have used animal patties in kilns. Your not baking some high quality bricks your baking cheap ones try to remember that. It is more important that you keep the kiln heated then the quality of your fuel when making simple bricks.

You don't need decent fuel sources and truly hot kiln fires until you try making ceramic bricks think the red bricks we see eveywhere. Last I checked adobe bricks are not a ceramic brick. You also do not need high temperatures like you do with metal working to bake bricks. That is why you use the kiln to maximize the heat put out by your fuel in the first place.

Also adobe does work for kilns. Adobe Kilns have been made by the very people who make houses out of adobe. The Hopi Indians made Adobe Kilns and cooking ovens from it all the time. Even better you can make more then one type of kiln from adobe. You can make a longer lasting one often made with other adobe bricks in the first place or there is a method that uses dry grasses, palm fronds, and other fuel piled on unfired clay. The outer layer gets a simple adobe layer to trap the heat to fire the pots. It is kept thin. The top layer is then broken up and the remains picked apart and the fired goods pulled out.

No a war hammer is not good enough for beating down walls. They are largely ineffective at it which is why they are never used against it. I don't know what weird fantasy or fiction you are drawing that from but war hammers are very poor at breaking down walls. Soldiers with these weapons didn't use them to beat down walls and doors they used them to beat down enemies. If they wanted to knock down a wall they used some tool more suited to that very purpose not their personal weapons. Last I checked you didn't wear out or damage your weapons trying to knock small chunks out of a wall. You know it is crazy I could have sworn just mentioning the very tools they used to do things like that. Oh yeah work hammers and picks which are built and designed to do just that. Guess what those tools are not well suited to doing? That's right being used as weapons.

There is a very good reason for there being both a tool and weapon version of hammers. The Hammer ones are designed with combat in mind the tools are designed with working on things like breaking apart rocks and bricks.

And militia or professionaly trained has nothing to do with going through or defending narrow hole and you don't need a mouse hole of your own to sit on one side of another and shoot, throw, or stab things through a narrow hole. Sorry it takes almost zero skill to defend a narrow choke point like a mouse hole. At best you can fit one maybe two men through one. More holes the better though means the defenders have to cover more spaces and if you can squeeze enough men in to overwhelm. Enjoy taking your casualties. My earlier comment still stands.

Already covered small units of even amateurs being effective and/or dangerous.

If the defenders need reinforcements then they certainly have an advantage don't they. Seeing as how they control the water ways and have supplies coming into the fortifications from sea. Also the besieging army can use reinforcements as well. The more troops you pile against any form of the defense plus their equipment the better. You can't tell me a group of reinforcements even coming the long way over land with supplies and fresh troops wouldn't be a boon to an army laying siege. Even better if they bring more siege equipment and engineers. More siege engines means whatever you are trying to knock down just might be taken down quicker with more engines firing on it.

Adobe resists rain just fine especially when you put the final coating on and adding slight slope or water drains keeps it from forming standing water on a roof. You have this false assumption that because it is made of earthen materials it will just simply vanish in the first rain storm. Adobe was widely used in coastal regions of Africa for a long time they certainly lasted a long time alongside other structures. Also don't forget even desersts occasionally get a large down pouring of rain. If your houses roof simply fell in every time you got an occasional down pour then they would simply use something different. Fact of the matter is they used adobe roofing. Even more simple mud and straw brick buildings can resist rain. Funny they used that very material in Europe all the time yet peasant houses or their roofs didn't simply fall down when wet.

And many more buildings in Copenhagen had stone or tiles on their roofs. The damage would have been less if they had relied on buildings all having burnable roofs through out the city.

Slum houses built out of a brick and plaster which is much more durable then just a straw or thatched roof hut and a lot more resistant to simply catching fire.

Buildings don't need high quality to be durable kinda the point of adobe buildings in the first place. They are simple and durable because the very materials they are made of give them the properties of durability. We have long standing adobe structures which were made without any fancy money or building codes backing up yet they still exist.

The OP of the thread already stated what the slum buildings are to be made of ie Adobe. Not my fault you skipped the rest of thread or didn't pay attention.

Your clearing out a town outside a fortified city. Even if your only clearing out a portion of town the larger the portion the more time and effort you will need. That time goes up if your dealing hostile or resistant populous. My point still stands.

Note I said some rural structures may have stone not all which implies limited access to stone in the first place. Most rural houses are not overly large, nor are most animal pens around them. My comment about stone ammo still stands.

Who watches the watchmen?

Ah, but once a building is secure, you need far fewer men to keep it secure. Also, if the roof is thatch then you probably don't need anyone up there.

Maybe I missed something, but big battles in the classical era could get well above 100k troops.

If your primary weapon is swords, urban combat is going to be completely different than if your primary weapon is guns.

Always focussing on modern conflicts, and often on occupiers, not attackers.

Now provide an example from before about 1500.

Go down any distance and you hit bedrock, which is usually fairly consistent. I've seen the tunnels at St. Andrews castle (they're well preserved, even if much of the rest of the castle isn't), and they're steep, like 40/45°, which, if that's the usual setup, means that only really heavy stuff actually matter, heavy stuff like castle walls.

Rather easy to bring down though.

So explain why so many medieval buildings used little or no stone then. That's right, 80% of the population couldn't afford even rough-dressed stone, and the people in that slum aren't going to be in even the upper half of that 80%.

crap bricks are fine until someone tries to put another door in your wall.

See previous quote.

We're not talking stone walls here, we're talking adobe ones, so that point, made to bash in armour shouldn't have too much trouble putting a dent in reinforced mud/animal poop.

The attacker is probably going to have a shield though (he is a professional soldier remember), so you're going to have to get through that to get to him, while you militiaman likely won't have that advantage.

With guns and bombs against soldiers with no defences against them, not so much with knives against soldiers who are armoured against them.

Provide one example of an adobe roof in a temperate zone climate.

Downpours aren't such a problem, it's when the weather is consistently damp (such as in most of Europe) that it's a problem.

Many, not all.

Brick roofs don't work, and adobe ones don't work well in temperate zones.

Only because no-one's decided to try and knock them down.

The walls are made of adobe, no word on what the roofs are (few 'adobe' building outside of the middle-east and Africa had adobe roofs).

Most sieges measured in months to years, so a couple more months isn't much of a problem. It's not going to be a large portion you're clearing out.

If they do knock any buildings down, they can use the rubble from them as ammo. Hells I imagine a big lump of adobe wouldn't be pleasant to be hit by, even if it doesn't do the same damage as stone.

OMG Tuefel tell me honestly is there any evidence producible in none infinite time that you would be willing to listen to? I now you like to cherry-pick evidence and it is very clear that you have no idea whatsoever about what medieval warfare looked like. You keep citing WWII even though we are well in middle ages. You keep talking about sturdy, unburnable slums, made out of long lasting materials.

OK you know what here are examples of MODERN slums BURNING DOWN:http://www.indiatimes.com/news/more-from-india/massive-fire-breaks-out-in-mumbai-slum-pics-113057-6.html http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-14904634 http://in.reuters.com/news/pictures/slideshow?articleId=INRTXYJ5J#a=1 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/22/india-slum-fire_n_1618079.html http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia/2012/11/201211188959229987.html.

Matt gave you examples of cites burning down by accident you said that they probably had wooden buildings in them so they don't count. That is another of you logical fallacies, it's called raising the bar. Also do you honestly think that slums are completely made out of nonburnable materiel when normal cities are not?

Matt listen to me Teufel is obviously trolling if you look at last two pages of this thread it is him and us, he constantly ignoring any evidence and even common sense. Why do I even post this is beyond me, maybe it's blind faith in human reason.

Dalex: And if you actually knew anything about the historical construction of those cities they had large numbers of wood buildings. Where as the setting we are dealing lacks wood for building the same types of structure and instead resort to simple bricks and plaster instead.

I also pointed out that even brick walled buildings in those various cities used a lot of wood for the buildings construction in the first place especially roofs, internal supports, and flooring. Never mind the other flammable materials. The brick walls are not what caught fire but the roofs often impregnated with flammable water proofing materials like tar and pitch on the cheap wood roofing.

Even in your example the adobe didn't burn. They had to set the building on fire from the inside and when it was done the bricks were still there. Your not burning bricks without doing something to do break open the outer layer first before flinging incediaries or going up to buildings and putting incendiaries in more directly.

These lessons of the durability of that kind of building had been taken to heart by militaries and they started damaging the more sturdy buildings to break them open and expose the more vulnerable materials inside before launching incendiary attacks.

Here check this out about the boston fire 3rd point down. Whats that? Wood roofs. That isn't even counting the large number of interior wood that was inside each building or cheaper buildings which used more wood then other materials. It didn't destroy the entire city. Quit exaggerating.

Every major non-modern fire tends to involve a large number of structures made of wood or incorporating a lot of wood into the structure in the first place. Even in these cases very few cities were even close to totally destroyed. Was there a lot of damage why yes there was. But it is a gross exaggeration to call them completely destroyed. Case and point the Boston fire of 1872. Roof tops and attics made of wood. With floors and furnishings also made of wood. The upper floors were stuffed things that burn quite nicely like textiles and paper. The fire was noted to jump from roof top to roof top not through wall to wall.

Tack on the fact many of the buildings had internal gas lighting and heating that could not be shut off adding even more problems by exploding or further fueling the fires.

Even modern slums use a lot of wood and cheap plastics in their construction because it is often cheaper and easier to obtain then other materials. The amount of plastics in modern homes is well noted as a common and serious fire hazard.

The big accidental fires and deliberate incendiary attacks all rely on common effect called a fire storm. The fire storm relies on an abundance of easily combustible fuel.

Adobe buildings commonly made with adobe roofs especially in arid environments are noted as being very fire resistant. Most fires that devastate such structures start inside from a misplaced item too near a source of heat inside. Very very seldom does it spread rapidly or out of control like it would in area where wood buildings are prominent thus very very low probability of the fire storm. No fire storm or easy spread of fire no reliability in fire attacks.

You will be lucky to burn down a few such structures just by straight out flinging incendiaries without some sort of preparatory attack like flinging rubble or rocks

Matt:You need at least a man for every door to keep it secure unless you can maintain a dense defensive screen which in unpredictable sprawl can be at best difficult. If the building has solid roof or even small upstairs areas you need someone to at least go in there. One floor buildings with just a ground floor are obviously easiest to secure. Buildings may also have basements. It isn't uncommon for a building to have a cool basement for storage of goods that need a little cool and a upstairs for general storage or place for people.

True on classical armies but sizes of armies rose and fell alternately. For awhile in the early medieval period army sizes shrunk down again. Once people started building large fortifications out of stone again the need for large armies rose again. It pushed for a steady increase in peasant levies. For early periods you were more worried about smaller armies, raiders from the rivers and coasts, and warlords.

There will be some differences between them yes, but there will also be a lot of similarities. You have both melee and projectile weapons as well as any number of purpose made offensive/defensive devices in a medieval type tech. You have a lot of the same problems of needing to secure buildings as you move through. Difficulty in moving large numbers of troops and man or animal powered vehicles. Lots of blind corners and choke points troops can be led into and attacked. Not to mention it is pretty easy to get lost in a tangle of streets you are not familiar with.

I hate to break it to you but small forces causing harm to larger forces is a lot older then modern conflict. It is not something new by any stretch of the imagination.

The Ancient Art of War describes guerrilla warfare, small units, usually less well equipped and less well manned then their full sized army enemy. That is from sometime around 6 bce. Look Under Medieval

More then just heavy stuff matters. Unlike those tunnels you are digging an adhoc tunnel with minimal supports. Your not taking your dear sweet time and building a large corridor with smoothed walls with carefully supporting arches. There is a huge difference from a carefully planned tunnel for use with fortifications and a siege tunnel dug through unpredictable terrain. The tunnels were known to be hazardous and their effectiveness could be limited by building fortification on hard stone alone. Things like moats make undermining harder or make taking on a breach harder if it does succeed. Something else I forgot. The longer the tunnel is the more easy it is to go off target from point of digging to final point. We haven't even touched on counter mining techniques which is digging operations undertaken by the defenders.

Free standing stone yeah if you have a bit of time and inclination wouldn't be too hard to take apart as long as it is just freestanding stone and not held together with pressure of weight of something resting on it which is what dry masonry relies on. If you pick it apart from the top or hit it with something heavy enough you could knock a good portion over. Anything with even simple mortar or mud is going to take a bit more effort and built to be harder to knock over casually or accidentally. But not too hard to pick apart if you have the time and inclination.

I recall a lot of buildings to be made of stone and many of them being dissembled over time to build other things like roads and new buildings. Never mind how many got plastered in WWII. Also peasant houses with crudely dressed stone

Crap bricks will keep out even a smuck with warhammer. Your not going to easily smash through in just a couple swings your going to gouge small chunks out. These are not the hollywood thin walls. Adobe walls tend to be about 4-6 inches thick with an outer layer of plaster. They will be flailing at that wall for a while before they make a hole big enough to crawl through. Now a catapult stone or flung bit of stone/adobe debris yeah your not going to be having a good day at that point.

See all current references to known durability of adobe.

You are going to be flailing at that wall for a while with a war hammer taking small chunks out with its smaller head and points versus using proper purpose made tools like a large work hammers and picks. These tools will take out far larger chunks more effectively and do much more damage to the wall. If your flailing at the wall with this weapon◊ You are going to be at it for a while other wise even four or five people wailing at the wall.

Your enemies have plenty of time to do something to you or escape while you bang up your weapon and waste your energy using the wrong tool for the wrong job. Even the modern military either carry breaching charges, use rocket launchers with HESH heads, or have a vehicle make a hole. But when they need to do it manually you won't seem the hacking at the wall with a trench hawk. They use sledge hammers. Why? Because they work quite well for it. You can even use those hammers to smash open doors. There is a good reason sledge hammers and lump hammers (one handed sledges also sometimes called hand sledges) are used in demolition.

So rather than insisting a warhammer is good as a purpose made tool why waste the large amount of time and energy when the right tool does the job much faster and more effectively? Hell man portable rams would work pretty well for knocking holes in the walls. Takes between two to four men to swing and you are through the wall that much quicker.

Send out your groups you expect to go into buildings with some work hammers or a couple workers to knock holes in the wall rather then bang up weapons picking at sun dried bricks.

Said professional has to still has to squeeze through that hole they made in the wall. Chances are pretty good they are not going to be holding their shield up and marching nicely through. And until you are on the other side of the wall you likely won't see all of the interior. The attacker is at a disadvantage to the defenders. Being inside the building you have the advantage of knowing exactly where your opponent will come from. Flank the hole on both sides. The pro can't cover both his sides with the shield at once. You only have to get lucky once to seriously injure or kill them. And even an amateur with a cheap spear can stick the pro leaving a corpse in the hole. Two or three men can hold a squad at bay for quite some time or force them to spend more time and effort to breach the building in more places or knock it down.

Honestly your better off using trash torches (something burnable wrapped around a chunk of scrap wood) and trying to set the inside on fire by chucking torches in. Lot less blood spilled on your side. The majority of all urban combat casualties occur at points of entry aka natural choke points no reason to push into them.

You don't need bombs and guns. Bows, arrows, fire, and other tools work just fine.

They have adobe in coastal cities in Mexico for starters. Last I checked those areas get regular rainfall and are on the green side of the rain shadow. Same thing in coastal regions in Africa. You can find adobe in Nepal which is on the green side/rain side of the rain shadow. They have enough water the region is fairly green and grows abundant amounts of bamboo.

You have zero proof that adobe roofs don't work in temperate climates. Better yet we have simple mud roofed buildings existing in Europe. Yet despite being little more then mud straw and sticks, no sun baked clay or sand mix with a plaster covering added, they withstood water just fine without collapsing. I find your claim that adobe can't handle regular rain fall lacking in evidence.

Provide proof that adobe roofs can't handle regular rainfall.

And IIRC this is a coastal desert/arid city so even by your measure the buildings should hold up just fine.

I will go tell the Mexicans, the Hopi, and everyone else that has built adobe buildings that no one has ever tried knocking down their adobe houses and structures.

The Op said buildings made of adobe.

And it still takes time and effort for the siegers to clear away houses and not all sieges last that long or are successful. Especially if the army has covered long distances to siege the target in question. The countryside will only yield so many supplies. The city has supplies coming in constantly by sea as well as the access to food the sea provides in the first place. They can afford to wait I doubt the invaders have the same luxury. Unless you want to send off large portions of your army to find food which hurts the siegers more then the besieged.

That was kind of the point of the statement. They would collect that locally gathered stone instead of having to scrounge readily usable stone which would take more time. I did mention slinging rubble at the slum. I of course am assuming said rubble is the chunks of adobe. A basket ball chunk sized piece of adobe will likely make some nice holes in other adobe buildings as well as make a right mess on impact.

Another thought on those walls if they use simple mortar or mud when you pull the walls apart you could leave the chunks intact for larger projectiles. Same for the Adobe. If you break the big pieces into variable sized chunks you could feasibly create ammo more suited to your need at the time.

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I found even better examples of the same substance including the mix of materials used in Europe. There is Cob and "Wattle and Daub".

Wattle and daub fits better though. These structures were used in various places in Western Europe including England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. Eastern Europe apparently used cob on the step lands while the mountain peasants used timber and stone. Sometimes they even made crude dressed stone. Like you noted easier to build durable structures with. More so when you use some sort of plaster.

Back to Wattle and Daub.

They would weave a lattice of thin branches called a wattle and then use more or less the same mix to create a paste and daub it on to the wattle. Sometimes they would use something similar for their roofing. Celtic house◊ Notice the roof is covered in the mud mix. Now this wasn't always done but they were likely used.

Apparently thatch was popular where you had ample vegetation because it is lighter, easier to work with, easy to repair, and pretty effective. You didn't need to build thicker walls or many internal supports if you just used thatching. Some regions though would supposedly apply a thin layer of daub or a similar mix over the thatch to improve its durability. Makes sense especially if you live in a region that is prone to heavy snow falls and you don't have easy access to stone or wood for your roofing and thatching might not be sturdy enough.

The big difference though is unlike building an adobe structure they didn't make sun dried bricks and then cover the bricks with something like daub.

And speaking of kilns. It apparently wasn't uncommon to use what stone could be gathered for kilns for the community to make bricks for their homes. Also that Kilns have been and some still are fired with grass, palm fronds, dry reeds, rice husks, and yes even sun dried animal patties.

And something neat I stumbled on while looking this up. Ceramic houses Boy that is some fuel intensive process but the end result must be pretty neat.

edited 1st Jan '14 11:14:25 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Who watches the watchmen?

Okay, quick question

How would slum dwellers , who are by definition poor, afford complete adobe structures? Abandoned ruins, yes. But creating adobe structures is too expensive for slum dwellers.

No its not expensive at all. Adobe is one of the cheapest building materials you can use aside from making a sod house. You don't have to pay anything for adobe at all. This isn't some fancy green home being built by a contractor where you have to ship your soil from a depot and then pay contract workers to mix it, form it, and lay the bricks. Your not buying the bricks from a depot either. They are doing all the gathering of materials and the labor themselves.

All you have to do is get sand, water, and clay, occ and some sort of fibrous material typically plant material or manure mix it and form it then let it dry in the sun. You can also fire them if you have access to a kiln. The plaster material is the same mix typically sans the fibrous additives.

Peasants have been building such structures for thousands of years. They still build them today at little or no cost. They may add more modern materials like cheap cement to the mix but in general it is still sand, water, clay, and fibrous material of choice.

The peasants will dig their own clay, sand, and collect their own additives and then make their own mixes and form their own bricks. Often neighbors or even a community will work together to do it.

Adobe is as cheap as dirt.

edited 2nd Jan '14 9:58:54 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Who watches the watchmen?

Bear in mind that adobe brick is still brick. Even as common as the materials are it takes back breaking labor to construct a house out of them. When you get down to the costs of mixing the brick, baking them for days in the hot sun, and then stacking them you end up with something that's far outside the cost of the lowest denominator. It's much like masonry, yes the materials are just about everywhere but actually making stuff with it is quite expensive.

Slums normally are made of wood and cloth. Maybe some mud but a slum dweller's priority is a roof over their head for the night so he doesn't die from exposure. Sure he could make something nice but he's also got to find food and pay taxes.

Slums are normally made of whatever is available cheaply or is easily scavenged. There is not one single building method for a slum. A slum is defined by economic and social factors, not building type.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

Does baking bricks in the sun really count as work, though? Maybe I misunderstood, but isn't that one of those things where you can just leave the bricks sitting there unattended for several hours then pick them up later when they're done?

the baking itself, no. However you need to turn them over for an even bake. There's also the matter of having an open space to do this. This means renting someone's open lot, which is at a premium in a crowded city, or finding a spot outside the city that nobody cares about. That means you need to haul the bricks to the drying cite then back into the city.

But you're looking at that from the point of view of someone who has better (you can read that as "more fun", "more interesting", "more profitable" or "less physically demanding", among other ways) things to do with their time. If it's a case of "schlepp the mud out to an open area and schlepp the bricks back later, or don't have a place to live", the schlepping becomes far more bearable. They may not enjoy doing it, but they'll do it.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

Frankly, doing something to stave off starvation would probably rate a bit higher on a slum dweller's priority list than building a solid adobe hut. If your choice is between building an adobe hut for yourself or just maybe making enough as a day laborer to feed yourself for the day, you'd probably be quite willing to settle for a few scraps of wood and sackcloth held up by sticks.

But still, it's not that simple. Where would these slum dwellers get the wood? The forest?

Sorry, they don't own any land, poaching animals and stealing wood is punished with an axe force fully applied to the wrists.

edited 3rd Jan '14 2:56:39 PM by m8e

They are in a region and setting where they lack adequate wood to build wood buildings in the first place. They have enough to do some useful things but building a lot of cheap homes out of wood is not one of them.

Any form of building by hand is labour intensive.

Even working wood is very labour intensive. The process from log to useable construction material even if you plan to use most of the log intact is very labour intensive. Especially when you have to gather and process all the raw materials yourself.

And the labour intensive part has yet to deter peasants and poor people from building adobe structures the world round in the first place.

Labour intensive is not a detterent for doing something that keeps you alive. If it was then most of the world would have starved to death long ago. Farming, herding, tending fields, and other jobs peasants and the poor tend to undertake are all typically labour intensive. Many of them will be working as labourers in the first place.

Also while avoiding starving is nice avoiding dying of exposure is nice too and people will build or find shelters sooner rather then later. If you are a people who know how to build adobe and know it is reasonably sturdy and you know you can get the materials for it locally, guess what you are going to start building your homes out of. Especially those with families. U

nlike wood working adobe needs fewer tools. You can do most of the work by hand. You may need a bucket and a form for the blocks but sand and clay can be gathered with bare hands if necessary. The plaster made of the same mix can be applied by hand by smearing on the wall.

And given the choice between a few days of hard labour to build a small house to shelter in to avoid dying of exposure many are going to be rather willing to work hard for even a small shelter from the elements. No one said it would look nice, be nice, or be comfortable. But the majority of common adobe buildings are sturdy and functional.

Even poor communities tend to work together to build homes because no one is giong to build them for them. Those with large families will put the family to work building a house. Peasants have built their own houses for a very very long time.

M8e: Especially considering these guys are coming to an already established city a lot of local wood will probably be claimed and cut down well before they get there or is used by the city proper for other purposes. Given that they are a port city a lot of that may go into ships.

As for stealing and poaching. Threat of violence doesn't always stop people and they can't catch everyone. Though cutting down a tree is not exactly a quiet process.

edited 3rd Jan '14 4:38:55 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Who watches the watchmen?

Alternatively, they could set up tents. Much quicker and easier. Far cheaper too.

Tents require fabric industry to replace or repair ones that will inevitably wear out and they will wear out a lot sooner then the mud brick buildings.

You need fields to farm for fabric bearing plants of any sort or fields for animals like sheep or goats.

Adobe you need sand, clay, water, and any fibrous material that can even be grazing animal dung.

Even famous nomads had permanent settlements they would visit and rest at. They would also

You can go down to most coastal, lake, or river areas in the world and find all of your ingredients right there near the body of water and can gather it by hand. All you need are a few buckets or containers to put it all in the same area. You can use coastal grasses, dry sea weed, river reeds, etc for your fiber material.

The tents will work in the short term but odds are very good they will wear pretty quickly. Best to start finding something more sturdy and long lasting. Lack of wood means other sources for housing which means back to adobe which uses ingredients used across the world by various cultures to build housing on the cheap and has been used for thousands of years.

There really is no reason for them to not build their new future houses out of adobe.

edited 3rd Jan '14 10:15:53 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Who watches the watchmen?

These aren't all young folk though remember, refugees come in all ages, and many states of fitness. Also, they've probably brought few tools with them. As for raw materials, well no doubt there's enough mud, but fibre is not going to be so easy to come by, even a large city can only contain so many animals, and import so much food for them.

If you have decades to work with, sure, but if it's only a few years, I have my doubts over whether the entire slums would be adobe.

edited 4th Jan '14 1:44:31 AM by MattII

Considering it's a slum though, the average age of death isn't going to be particularly high. And I doubt many elderly would be able to escape the invading army since they would have had to walk all the way from the neighboring countries and cities to this city-state.

And technically it is rather plausible that an army that has lost soldiers from attacking a whole load of other places, enough places for there to be a large amount of gangsters and street crime and to make essentially another city, would be rather worn down and not have too much soldiers. Add in the flooding and the maze like streets full of dead ends and it's easy to see how the invading army would be decimated or lose enough soldiers so that a retreat would be in order. Especially since these gangsters and fit men and women want revenge for losing their homes.

If you're reading this you have 5 seconds to...

If the army has enough troops to consider besieging a walled city, they aren't going to get beaten by a bunch of slums. Also, many of the inhabitants will be perpetually ill, a close community like that with only the most rudimentary toiletry facilities is going to become a breeding ground for illnesses of all descriptions.

That hasn't stopped a large amount of people living in slums in say, Africa. Heck, even London in the Tudor times was a slum in all but the richest areas and never suffered population problems. And the invading army was expecting a city that they were accustomed to battling in seeing as they had done it for quite some time and they were planning to scale the city immediately suggesting that they didn't have enough supplies or had a bad tactician for a leader. They were not expecting a large, dangerous maze the size of a city full of armed, hardened gangsters and refugees bloodthirsty for revenge.

If you're reading this you have 5 seconds to...