Id love to see the math on the amount of iron in a person’s blood, because I find it HIGHLY questionable that there’s enough iron in only 300 people to make a full iron sword. I’m too lazy to do it myself though.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longsword
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composition_of_the_human_body#Elemental_composition_list
The numbers roughly check out. Not sure how much one can extract by just draining the blood though.
You’re both in luck! Someone else linked to an article that breaks down how it could work in reality: https://startrek.website/comment/9430643
All three of you are in luck! Someone made a video attempting to actually forge a sword this way!: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
XcQ
Gotta hide it better than that chief
What an awful video! You should be ashamed! I should be ashamed just for watching it!
It’s a great video. My friends and I have watched it many times
These are the required elements for making steel:
- Iron
- Carbon
- Manganese
- Chromium
- Phosphorus
- Sulphur
- Nickel
- Molybdenum
- Titanium
- Copper
- Boron
Source: https://www.cliftonsteel.com/education/11elementsfoundinsteel
So, iron is only step 1. Humans are carbon based lifeforms, so I’m guessing that carbon is also sorted, that’s step 2.
There’s plenty of other elements in the human body, like phosphorus and sulphur, but I’m guessing that it’s going to take more than 300 adults.
Source: https://sciencenotes.org/elements-in-the-human-body-and-what-they-do/
Source: https://sciencenotes.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/PeriodicTableHumanBody.png
Yes
Someone else did the math, accounting for waste made during forging. https://www.wearethemighty.com/mighty-gaming/blood-iron-sword-myth-explored/
This is extremely helpful, and fits perfectly into my secret plan
Secret plan
I will use this info as background for a BBEG in my TTRPG game
This is the MVP-comment! Thank you for that source!
Fucking awesome, exactly the comment I was looking for in this thread
Steel requires only iron and up to about 2% carbon
Rest are minor alloying elements used mainly in modern steel alloys to improve the steel beyond what just carbon steel could do like for example stainless steels
- Your link says these are elements commonly found in steel, not that they are all required. In fact it says of phosphorus and sulphur that they are generally undesirable.
- We don’t need to make a steel sword, an iron sword could do.
Either way you would definitely need carbon, but as you say that’s pretty easy. I don’t think any of the other elements are absolutely required.
Steel requires only iron and up to about 2% carbon
Rest are minor alloying elements used mainly in modern steel alloys to improve the steel beyond what just carbon steel could do like for example stainless steels
Those are all of them, but that’s for a lot of different types of steels. You don’t have to have all of those metals to make steel. You really just need iron and a tiny bit of carbon. A few of your ingredients help with purity, and the rest are additives for different steel properties you may want. Like a touch of nickel for stainless steel.
I searched for ingredients for making steel. I’m obviously not a metallurgist, nor do I pretend to be one on the internet :)
The meme triggered my interest into discovering just what might be involved.
Clearly I’ve just scratched the surface …
This thread is giving me massive deja vu. I’m pretty sure I read almost this exact thing six months ago.
Beep boop are you a bot?
Me, nope, just bored.
You only need iron and carbon the rest is already alloyed steel. You can definitely make a good blade out of only iron and carbon, it won’t be stainless, it might be difficult to harden just right, but it will be flexible and hold a keen edge if forged right. The smiths of ole dealt with nastier steels containing all kinds of things making it worse, not better (such as excessive amounts of sulphur and phosphorus) so I’d say they’d manage.
Well, the non-metals and Manganese are way more available than iron anyway (probably molybdenum too). But it will be really difficult to create high-quality steel.
ok, but humans also regenerate blood, very slowly but it does happen. So theoretically, you could contract your family members to draw blood to be used to make a longsword out of your family’s bloodline. And have it become an heirloom.
imagine, over the centuries of blood donation, the sword slowly grows from a knife, into an absolutely huge dragonslayer behemoth
the living sword
Listen. If they used surplus blood to do this (blood that was expired) and then held a raffle at the end of each year where all blood donors were entered to win a knife or sword made from the expired human blood iron, I bet they’d see blood donations skyrocket.
Somebody call NileRed asap
This is more of a NileBlue job though
I think we should keep this color coded. Nigel Blue can do the copper sword made from the blood of 30000 horseshoe crabs.
After completing all these steps, the result was a little anticlimactic and disappointing. But still, I realized there was one thing left to do: taste it.
I want The Red Cross to hire you for marketing asap so this can actually happen.
You could also get a big sword-shaped ice cube mold, a chest freezer and probably not even a whole enemy.
You would have to do battle in freezing climates too though in order for it to remain physically effective
Though I imagine the psychological effectiveness might persist a bit longer
I’d suggest a warhammer mold, just for stability.
But then you’d have to paint it.
Mythbusters did this on their first episode: ice bullet. I think a sword might also be too brittle unfortunately.
Listen there’s definitely enough carbon in the body to boost that into a steel sword.
If we can make diamonds out of corpses, we can make steel.
I was curious how long it would take to make a sword out of your own blood. If my math was correct(it probably isn’t lol) the human body contains around 4.7 to 5.5 liters. And then you can apparently donate like 470 millileters every 8 weeks.
So take 4.7(assuming the smallest people) X 300 = 1410 L total blood
1410(total needed) / 0.47(donation amount) = 3000 donations X 8 weeks = 24,000 / 52 = 461.54 years
New mythology curse just dropped.
And then you can apparently donate like 470 millileters every 8 weeks.
Safely. You could probably speed it up a bit if you have a higher risk tolerance.
True! I would assume a larger person would be able to give up more at once, too.
A larger person might want a larger sword, though!
That’s a good point. You couldn’t have someone like Shaq with a 3 foot sword. It would look too tiny! Gotta size it proportionally.
Or if your enemy has been thoroughly dispatched
This estimate was for your own blood, not your enemy’s, so probably best not to thoroughly dispatch yourself.
So about 3150 pints of blood (10.5 being average for an adult).
Sounds doable XD
Edit: New ethical dilemma just dropped - kill 300 to forge the sword, or deny 3150 people blood in an emergency to forge the sword…
New ethical dilemma just dropped - kill 300 to forge the sword, or deny 3150 people blood in an emergency to forge the sword…
New ethical dilemma just dropped - kill 300 to forge the sword, or deny 3150 people blood in an emergency to forge the sword…
deleted by creator
Here’s the plan: we kill 330 people, save 330 people, the rest is free sword!
P.S. math may not be perfect
deleted by creator
You know there’s a writer reading this meme somewhere: here; where ever it came from; where ever it will be reposted; and adding it to the story they are working on. Wonder where we’ll come across it first?
Glory.
You could even use the carbon from their flesh to make the steel!
My very rough calculations using 85kg as an average adult weight, results in 153gr of iron
My problem is, that i dont have any expectations as to how heavy a longsword is but i’d assume it to be a lot heavier!
After further research it looks like the more appropriate number of humans needed to make an average longsword would be closer to 25.000
Males of average height have about 4 grams of iron in their body, females about 3.5 grams; children will usually have 3 grams or less
300 * 3g = 900g.
300 * 4,5g = 1350g
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longsword
and weighing approximately 1 to 1.5 kg
It’s close enough, I’d say. OP’s maths that is.
Chingis Khan approves.
Genghis Khan* in English
Correcting just so that others would understand
Akshually Chingis is much closer to the mongolian pronunciation. 😁
I know, right? :D
English dudes just ruined it
