Question Could this work against the titans?

[TheOwl]

Hello everyone. I have been hooked on this manga for a while now, although I have not been part of any forum regarding it. So I have been thinking, besides cutting off the nape of a titan's neck, and taking your chances and blowing it's head to kill it, what other means could we use (middle ages or earlier technology)?

I thought that ,considering that titans are biological beings, fire is supposed to work against them. You can say "Can't titans regenerate?". I don't know what the author has to say about this, but setting, let's say, one's hands on fire is different from cutting them. Fire does not rip cells of the body of a living being, like swords or other cutting weapons do, fire just destroys the bonds between molecules and atoms because of the heat. This is why burning wounds are so bad, because the body never fully regenerates from them, unless they are of a very low degree.

But how do we set titans on fire? I thought of a couple of ways, which have been used in two historical sieges in our world; the Siege of Syracuse by the Romans (214 BC-212 BC) and the Great Siege of Malta (1565). What caused the Romans so many casualties during the Siege of Syracuse is still debated, however according to the half-myths surrounding it, Archimedes had invented several war machines that impressed the Romans. Of of them was a primitive sort of death ray. In the high wall of the city soldiers took mirrors and used them to reflect the light of the sun to the roman ships, which set many of them on fire. This has been experimented many times with normal mirrors, and it worked, but it did not have the devastating effects the roman historians described.

On the other hand, during the Great Siege of Malta, the Knights of Malta used some sort of primitive grenades, who were quite efficient against the Ottomans. I don't know how would they fare against big titans, but they would probably make short work of the smaller ones.

I would like to know your thoughts and other hypothetical ways to defeat the titans, when you have access only to medieval and earlier technology.

 

[kkck]

I don't think burning them would be effective. The issue here is that fire would not really kill them instantly. Assuming they start to burn they would also start regenerating pretty soon. As they regenerate they release vapor. Vapor would theoretically put the fire out. Now, if we ignore that fire is still a terrible idea at large. What do you do while a titan is burning? It will without a doubt take a while for it to die at large. Meaning that while it burns you don't only have a huge ass titan eating everyone, you have a huge ass FLAMING titan eating everyone. Imagine a titan in a city? It would eat people and burn the city to the ground... forest of giant trees? It would burn the trees to the ground. You are in the plains? Is it preferable for a normal or a burning titan to try to eat you? I'd take the normal one. Even if fire did eventually cause enough damage to kill a titan I would think it would still be at large a weapon which could be used in a extremely limited fashion. Any proper weapon to fight a titan has to be quick, prolonged fighting with any one titan means death.

 

[Utsune]

Hey welcome to the forum!

I don't think it's effective either. We see Sasha desperately attempting to cut into the nape with an axe, but the regeneration rate, while it varies from one to another, is fast enough to prevent her from cutting in too deep. Although the fire damage is ongoing and conductive, the damage is too little and a titan can probably regenerate very quickly as their 'cells' die off. Not to mention we've still yet to find out the true composition of Titans. One related piece of information is that, their body temperature underneath the skin is incredibly hot. And somehow, the skin isn't hot/as hot. Something very dodgy is going on, I wonder if we'll ever see an explanation to that. The only reason I can think of is that, there's something mixed in with the skin material, possibly air, and/or that they're just less dense in general, which in turns gives it a good heat-insulating property. If I assume this to be true, damage by heat-conduction is not effective at all.

We also see blood-spills evaporating off really quickly, something tells me their composition should have been in a gas state, but a certain chemical somehow keeps the gas bound. Something that very much resembles amorphous solids if you would like (or in layman's term, pseudo solids.) That's why Hanji says "They're not as they appears to be" while describing their incredibly light bodies.

As an aside, the method they currently use are mostly to do with slicing off a chunk of flesh, hence the design of the blades (at the tip of the blades, I think they're meant to fit/line-up together tip-to-tip, and used to forcibly carve out a whole strip of flesh.)

 

[TheOwl]

I don't think burning them would be effective. The issue here is that fire would not really kill them instantly. Assuming they start to burn they would also start regenerating pretty soon. As they regenerate they release vapor. Vapor would theoretically put the fire out. Now, if we ignore that fire is still a terrible idea at large. What do you do while a titan is burning? It will without a doubt take a while for it to die at large. Meaning that while it burns you don't only have a huge ass titan eating everyone, you have a huge ass FLAMING titan eating everyone. Imagine a titan in a city? It would eat people and burn the city to the ground... forest of giant trees? It would burn the trees to the ground. You are in the plains? Is it preferable for a normal or a burning titan to try to eat you? I'd take the normal one. Even if fire did eventually cause enough damage to kill a titan I would think it would still be at large a weapon which could be used in a extremely limited fashion. Any proper weapon to fight a titan has to be quick, prolonged fighting with any one titan means death.

Ah, you are correct, but I forgot to mention that these weapons should be only used by soldiers on top of the walls (Not that they would do much against the Colossal Titan). The strategy should work like this : Scouting Legion draws the titans to the walls and then retreats. The Garrison comes then into play with it's mirrors and medieval grenades. In the cities they can't be effective due to the confined spaces, and the need of prep time.

Hey welcome to the forum!

I don't think it's effective either. We see Sasha desperately attempting to cut into the nape with an axe, but the regeneration rate, while it varies from one to another, is fast enough to prevent her from cutting in too deep. Although the fire damage is ongoing and conductive, the damage is too little and a titan can probably regenerate very quickly as their 'cells' die off. Not to mention we've still yet to find out the true composition of Titans. One related piece of information is that, their body temperature underneath the skin is incredibly hot. And somehow, the skin isn't hot/as hot. Something very dodgy is going on, I wonder if we'll ever see an explanation to that. The only reason I can think of is that, there's something mixed in with the skin material, possibly air, and/or that they're just less dense in general, which in turns gives it a good heat-insulating property. If I assume this to be true, damage by heat-conduction is not effective at all.

We also see blood-spills evaporating off really quickly, something tells me their composition should have been in a gas state, but a certain chemical somehow keeps the gas bound. Something that very much resembles amorphous solids if you would like (or in layman's term, pseudo solids.) That's why Hanji says "They're not as they appears to be" while describing their incredibly light bodies.

As an aside, the method they currently use are mostly to do with slicing off a chunk of flesh, hence the design of the blades (at the tip of the blades, I think they're meant to fit/line-up together tip-to-tip, and used to forcibly carve out a whole strip of flesh.)

Damn, I'm speechless. Truly. Never gave a thought to what titans could be made of, but now that i think of it pseudo solids are a plausible explanation for the molecular structure of titans. Still this is partly a sci-fi setting so an accurate explanation may never come. I highly doubt it though, as the author clearly has either been helped by experts or he knows his shit when it came to horses, the 3DMG and the distances between the walls.

 

[kkck]

From what I recall the scouting legion does have something like steam punk grenades.... Maybe they were sound of flash grenades though. Anyways, even then I have a hard time picturing them burning titans from above the walls. Right now their equipment for defending the walls already consists of cannon balls which explode on contact which on top of meaning that their cannon balls are already better than the real life counterpart it should also do well more damage than just being burned. Burning the titans, assuming it is possible, would be less efficient IMHO.

 

[gnut]

well mixing that fire with a substance/accellerant like oil or plastic could work...there's no putting that fire out

 

[TheOwl]

From what I recall the scouting legion does have something like steam punk grenades.... Maybe they were sound of flash grenades though. Anyways, even then I have a hard time picturing them burning titans from above the walls. Right now their equipment for defending the walls already consists of cannon balls which explode on contact which on top of meaning that their cannon balls are already better than the real life counterpart it should also do well more damage than just being burned. Burning the titans, assuming it is possible, would be less efficient IMHO.

Actually potting something on fire through the reflection of light, may be a slow process in comparison to others (it takes 1 or 2 minutes), but it is much more accurate. You can't dodge light and considering how it does not take a genius to direct reflected light at a certain target through mirrors, there is no chance that your usual titans can do anything about it. I'm not saying that humanity should dismiss cannons in favor of mirrors, but I'd rather have ,let's say, 10 titans killed using both effective and not that effective ways, rather than 7 using effective ways only.

 

[Sigma]

well mixing that fire with a substance/accellerant like oil or plastic could work...there's no putting that fire out

It might be effective to use something like that to fire into the titan's eyes, blinding it and making it much easier to kill. I believe at one point it was mentioned that it takes roughly 30 lives to fell one titan on average. Something like this could drastically improve that ratio. It would really only be a matter of making this device portable, like maybe a special round inserted into their flare guns. I'd assume a napalm like substance would hinder the regeneration process, similar to how Jason and the Argonauts used fire to keep the hydra from regenerating.

 

[TheOwl]

It might be effective to use something like that to fire into the titan's eyes, blinding it and making it much easier to kill. I believe at one point it was mentioned that it takes roughly 30 lives to fell one titan on average. Something like this could drastically improve that ratio. It would really only be a matter of making this device portable, like maybe a special round inserted into their flare guns. I'd assume a napalm like substance would hinder the regeneration process, similar to how Jason and the Argonauts used fire to keep the hydra from regenerating.

Nice example, that's what I thought of originally, but according to Utsune, considering how the skin of a Titan can take the heat of the insides of a titan without problem, that means that it is heat-insulating. While that does not make Titans fire-proof, it would make it harder to set one on fire, perhaps to the point where it would be generally ineffective against Titans much like cannons. As for flare guns, the Byzantine Navy had this sort of weapon, called Greek fire. Too bad it's formula has been lost.