Crossbows are as versatile as guns when you shoot. You can shoot sitting or kneeling, being camouflaged. Unlike a gun, there is almost no recoil when you shoot a crossbow. They are also quieter, giving you a chance to make another shot if you miss.
Narrow forest? Deer pressed? Here are three situations where you do better with a crossbow. The howling blizzard limited the duration of my stand to about three hours. When deer activity subsided around 10 o'clock. Both the gun and the crossbow are great options for use in survival situations.
Both weapons have their fair share of advantages and disadvantages. And your choice of the ideal weapon should depend on the type of SHTF situation you're facing. Bows are generally treated as much less powerful than crossbows and are therefore more likely to receive the Annoying Arrows treatment. In contrast, leaf springs tend to show up as having adequate stopping power when they hit and are generally shown to be more lethal.
One of the reasons for this disparity probably has to do with movie props. Prop crossbows can be made with high-stretch weights closer to historical crossbows, as their extension devices allow virtually anyone to draw them. Prop bows, on the other hand, tend to have little shooting weight, like most target and beginner shooting bows, since they have to be usable by actors who lack specific muscle development and form training to draw heavy bows. As such, the bows seen in movies tend to be much less powerful than most historical hunting and war bows.
Also note that medieval European crossbows were less mechanically efficient than the long crossbows of the time due to factors such as their short power stroke (~6 in. for a long bow) and the energy wasted by moving their heavy limbs and strings instead of just the bolt; in particular, crossbow prods made of steel made it easier to manufacture heavy crossbows compared to those using a horn-tendon compound, but the high density of steel caused a loss of efficiency, and steel struts could not flex as much as wood or composite without risk of breakage. Therefore, to achieve as much projectile energy as a longbow of a given draft weight, a crossbow needed to have a draft weight many times greater. Note: These energy comparisons do not necessarily apply to all non-European crossbows.
For example, Chinese crossbows were more like a normal bow mounted on a frame and had a long force stroke. Modern crossbows are much more efficient than their medieval ancestors thanks to improved materials and design, note such as a long power stroke, compound or reverse traction mechanisms, and lightweight bolts, ropes and limbs to achieve greater projectile energy than old crossbows despite having less drawing weights. I also think you're on to something with the logistical cost of a gun vs. Splicing was another specialized skill that was A) expensive and B) difficult.
And it also played an important role in the accuracy of the weapon in question. Therefore, in terms of supplying an army in the field, bows and crossbows had an additional cost that was reduced with the introduction of gunpowder weapons. But then again, gunpowder itself was something quite new, and it took a lot of innovation to make gunpowder cheap, effective and transportable. Fights for shooting in a crossbow can be homemade, if not purchased, saving on the cost of hunting with a crossbow.
Based on the fact that men are stronger than women on average, fictional stories sometimes depict men wearing crossbows and women wearing bows, the idea is that crossbows are utilitarian and brutal, while bows are elegant and based on finesse rather than brute force. Crossbows were the first of the two to disappear from the European war, since in the 16th century the arquebus had stolen its place as a massive point-and-shoot weapon from the battlefield; crossbows continued to roam as recreational and hunting weapons. As legitimate crossbow hunters will tell you, the maximum range of a crossbow falls between 25 and 50 yards. Another aspect that is often seen in fiction treats crossbows as sneaky weapons because they are marginally more concealable than bows, and because of persistent cultural ideas that the possibility that large numbers of serfs armed with crossbows could pierce aristocratic knights who own land is of some unjust and contrary to the natural order of things.
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