Forgotten Weapons

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Tear Gas Revolver - Scheintod Revolver (1900s) (lemmy.world)

submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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First appearing in the decade of so before World War One, the Scheintod guns were designed to fire either flash or irritant cartridges, not lethal projectiles. The word “scheintod”, in fact, translates to something along the lines of “apparent death”, as in something that looks lethal but actually isn’t. They would remain popular as self-defense weapons through the 1920s, and were made in a wide variety of configurations. This one is a particularly large example, with 5 chambers nearly 3 inches in length. It would have fired a round of red pepper, tobacco powder, or other eye and nose irritants.

If you speak German how accurate is Ian's translation of Scheintod?

[5:37] https://youtu.be/2aCvAaGhsFI?si=

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago

Scheintod is an older German medical term for a condition where a person seems to be dead when only superficially examined - cold skin, no visible breathing, no pulse to be felt. Such conditions may often be found in hypothermia where the body reduces all functions to an absolute minimum while still not dead and where the person could be "revived" with the right methods. The discussions around Scheintod helped develop a system where the death of a person could be determined with absolute accuracy. For more information see https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheintod

So I can't give you a better translation but maybe can help you find the appropriate term in your own language?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

This is interesting but I cannot imagine how frustrating carrying this would have been without a trigger guard.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago

The trigger actually folds for carrying on this model.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

Rough literal translation could also be phrased as “seems deadly”. The concept is there. German compound words are pretty wiggly.

To compare another well known german phrase, Zeitgeist has a literal translation as time ghost or time spirit, to imply the actual meaning of general state of social consciousness at a particular time; scheintod seems relatively tame compared to that one.

(And also implies that the idea of spirit to mean both ghost and your own mood or temperament stretches back pretty far, which makes sense)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

German here. Did not wartch the vid. A scheintod person would appear to be dead, with no signs of breathing, heartbeat... like comatose, but only more so, but not dead dead. The word is no longer in active use, and I cannot explain how they differentiated between dead for real and scheintod. The use as a noun to label a product range or company is not really a German thing, seems to me a non native went through a German dictionary and found a nice sounding compound. I'd probably not appear dead with a barrelful of pepper irritant in the face, but rather screaming, vomiting, running away. Could also be that a German wanted to do a play with words, cos the thing appears (scheint) to be a deadly waepon (Tod, [means of] death), but we Germans are usually neither that imaginative, dark humored or funny at all.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

I think it is probably supposed to be word play then. The inventor also put a little skeleton man dancing on the side. So maybe he was also a comedian or wasn't born in Germany.