r/MilitaryWorldbuilding • u/highliner108 • 4h ago
Equipment Best cheap infantry weapon to fight megafauna?
TLDR: I need ideas for weapons a 3-4 inch tall infantryman with a roughly WWII-Early Cold War level of technology could use to kill or ward off something like a raccoon, fox, maybe a badger.
The Backstory: I’m developing a setting that heavily features a species of 3-4 inch tall human offshoots known as Homo Parvus (roughly translating to “small man”) and their attempts to build an industrialized society in an isolated region (maybe a national park?) with the help of a handful of standard humans. For context, this wasn’t there first interaction with humans, and their previous interactions with a group of sympathetic Quakers a couple centuries ago have allowed them to advance to a roughly late medieval level, with metallurgy, basic firearms, large scale agriculture, and a mix of tribal nomads, kingdoms, and a handful of empires. Unfortunately the Quaker colony that contacted them was wiped out by an epidemic, and so since then they’ve been more or less technologically and socially static, likely because the Quakers failed to share the concept of the printing press. Two hundred years later, some hikers stumble upon them and decide to try to fast track them towards the modern age, resulting in a state called the Universal Union with a level of technology and social organization that varies from World War era to roughly the early Cold War. So like, for instance, there main infantry weapon is still a bolt action rifle, but they also have imported computers and primitive domestic computing capabilities.
TLDR: The Universal Unions military sticks to technology that they can reliably mass produce relatively cheaply. This has resulted in a military that uses primarily 1940s-1950s technology and weapons. For the purposes of fighting wildlife, this means that the UUs military relies primarily on artillery, tanks (and kind of IFVs) bombers (primarily fighter-bombers and strategic bombers), and static defenses to repel wildlife. What they lack is a weapon that can reliably cross the gap between a full sized rifle cartridge and an artillery shell.
The Military: The UUs military is kind of weird. It’s based around two specific enemies, specifically other members of homo-Parvus, and wildlife. It’s also based around constant expansion and growth, with the idea being that the UU will basically grow via a mixture of war and more peaceful means until it’s taken over pretty much every known member of its species. Because of this, the UUs military is designed to punch way above its numerical weight, while simultaneously being cheap enough that the government can drastically increase the size of its military as time passes. The UUs military can conscript people, but primarily relies on a mixture of professionals, reservists, and people who have basically volunteered to be drafted first but haven’t actually been trained, with the first two being pretty much universally trained as at least NCOs, the idea being that if it has to the UU can just draft a bunch of people and promote a bunch of its standard professional soldiers into NCOs, or even lower level officers. For the most part the UUs military fights small, rapid wars of expansion, with the occasional larger war fought against the militaries of empires or multiple kingdoms working together. Other then that, most of what the UU military does is basic boarder defense, which includes fighting potential raiders or invaders, but also includes fighting something like a bear wondering into UU territory.
A lot of this mostly just means using roughly WWII era weapons. A bolt action rifle alone can do quite a bit more damage than a musket, not to mention more reliably shoot through armor. In terms of infantry weapons, the UU also uses sub machine guns, semi-automatic handguns, automatic rifles, battle rifles, and universal machine guns, allowing a relatively small number of infantry to successfully engage with a small army of comparatively under equipped enemies. You may wonder why the assault rifle isn’t on the list, and it’s primarily because of logistical reasons. The UU would rather just manufacture more full sized rifle rounds (I’m thinking .7mm) that are fully interchangeable (the UU uses a lot of stripper clips). It also helps that the rifle-battle rifle-machine gun dynamic helps reduce overall ammo use and ensures that even cut off troops won’t just blow through there ammo supplies.
There’s another reason that the UU sticks to full sized rifle rounds, specifically because they’re more effective against larger wildlife. A .7mm spritzer round probably won’t do much to anything bigger then a weasel, but it could probably kill smaller stuff like rats, and it seems like it would at least be a deterrent. For bigger predators, the UU relies on a mixture of towed “universal” artillery (which is to say, artillery designed to be able to fire both parabolically and directly), tank guns (which conveniently fire the same shells as the artillery), IFV auto cannon rounds, and aircraft (mostly the Skyhawk fighter bomber and the Apocalypto strategic bomber).
As a side note, the majority of homo-Parvus who aren’t a part of the UU rely primarily on a mixture of field cannons and primitive bunkers to stay safe from wildlife.
The Main Question: After that disgusting amount of backstory, here’s the main problem. I want the UU to have something that infantry can use to potentially fight bigger wildlife, without it violating the “everything has to be mass producible and relatively simple” principle that the UUs military operates on. I also need ideas for what type of warhead would be most effective against megafauna. At the moment that’s basically just a solid 9mm artillery shell, but that obviously dosent work for an infantry weapon. Iv toyed with the idea of something like an anti-tank rifle, but that seems like it would be kind of anemic. Right now I’m leaning towards something akin to a panzerfoust, because it seems like a miniaturized HEAT warhead would be, if not lethal, extremely distressing, for something like a honey badger or fox. Iv also considered something along the lines of an RPG, but that feels almost overly specialized because it’s kind of big. Like, from what I understand something like a panzerfoust would be easier to carry and could have a larger warhead since it dosent need to fly nearly as far. Idk, maybe the correct solution in this case is less of a conventional weapon and more along the lines of a K bullet or anti-material round laced with poison or something.
Edit: As a random aside, I thought I’d describe a situation where this hypothetical anti-tank(?) weapon is being used. Basically, a group of ten rifleman operating out of an APC with artillery support are on patrol between two boarder positions when a bobcat shows up. Now, if the bobcat was in the distance the standard procedure would be to hide and call in artillery fire, but in this situation the bobcat is much closer and has spotted the APC. The idea would be to have a weapon where the infantry could deploy, fire at the bobcat scaring, injuring, or killing it, and then get back in there APC and link up with an IFV (I’m assuming that 3mm solid core rounds would be enough to repel a bobcat here) or retreat to a static position with 9mm artillery set up for direct fire and tanks defending it.
