Another part of the 'efficiency' is that yeoman with the longbow just put a hole in a French knight that required up to 300 peasants to support.

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Just to be clear, the adrenaline does NOT improve your balance, coordination, reflexes, or judgement.

It doesn't do that under normal circumstances either. It's not a "skilled action" hormone. It just takes all the safeties off your normal systems. Heart rate and respiration spike, oxygenated blood is shunted to skeletal muscle and away from non-survival-essential equipment (like your forebrain and digestive system).

You might lift a car off somebody, but you may not be able to get the safety off on a firearm or get a key into a lock. You could also pull so hard that you tear muscles and tendons in your own limbs. That increase in HR and respiration can result in passing out from hyperventilation.

It will still do all that while you're drunk, but the fine motor coordination issue will be even worse, sensory feedback will be even duller (increasing injury potential), and god help you if you need to make any decisions.

Archery has been used in combat since prior to written history up until firearms started to get really good in the 1600s. This is a really long time and the bows, the archers that fired them, and the tactics are quite varied. So, it’s difficult to totally generalize.

Ammunition is always a concern, and the amount of mobility the archers needed affected how many they could carry.

Range and accuracy varies a lot. Sometimes archers shot big inaccurate volleys over long range, like longbows. Sometimes they were shorter range and individual accuracy mattered.

The effectiveness of archers also varies over history. Better shields and armor, or swift movements like cavalry could be a hard counter to archers of their day, only for better bows and tactics to bring them back to the fore.

Having better ranged capabilities allows you to better control the engagement. Combined with good positioning, they can force an enemy to begin an attack earlier than they are prepared for, on unfavorable terrain, or to retreat and give up strategic field positioning.

Back then, for every one guy on the front, there were 20+ people behind him carrying supplies or otherwise acting in a support role.

Nowadays it's more like 8 to 1.

What’s a multibillion dollar medieval castle?

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Not all battles came to melee fighting. You had sieges against castles/towns/fortifications. In these, archers are obviously very efficient because close-quarter combat wouldn't happen until the fortifications were broken. You had ambushes or skirmishes where combat was only shooting a few arrows and then retreating. There are plenty of instances where archers are the best or even only option available.

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If it came to close-quarters combat and frontlines engaged, archers would usually stop firing into the melee to avoid friendly fire. But there might be still targets available to shoot at. Infantry rows would be several men deep, sometimes they were so deep that archers could safely shoot at men at the back. There was movement, battalions would move during a fight and this gave the option for archers to target units not engaged in melee with friendlies. And in some cultures, like Japan, archers were also trained with close quarter weapons. Many Samurai used bows and swords or spears. So your archers would just engage in melee fights with their melee weapon.

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Archers carried around 20-100 arrows with them. The standard depends on the exact time and location. But there usually were more arrows available at the supply camp. So if archers ran out of arrows they could just retreat back and get more arrows. Or they would pick up arrows shot by enemy archers. They did not forge hundreds of arrows in advance but thousands of arrows in advance. Historians estimate that the English shot 125,000 to 500,000 arrows at the French at the Battle of Agincourt. So that battle potentially had 1 million arrows in use.

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Accuracy varied a lot from individual to individual. But archers were usually very well trained. In England, someone who couldn't shoot 10 arrows per minute was considered not fit for war. They weren't just peasants with a stick like some pike infantry lines. So their accuracy was rather good. The length of battles varied a lot, some lasted less than an hour, and others lasted the entire day or would even continue over several days.

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Efficient is a difficult word to use in warfare. Archers were expensive but also effective. So a lot depends on the situation at hand. For example, when defending a multi-billion-dollar castle, the cost of individual arrows is irrelevant and you shoot as many as you have. But shooting unarmed peasants probably wasn't efficient. But using archers would also mean fewer casualties on your side. Replacing men tends to be more expensive than arrows, so even against peasants, it could be more efficient to use arrows.

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Dude got lucky as hell, then. Would've figured the aftermath of a 600 lb concrete slab to the leg was bone confetti.

To add to this, if there is one question that almost everyone got wrong, that can get thrown out too.

Most that I have had that grade on a curve are setting x% as an "A", "B", C" and so on. Oddly this is how my employer does raises. A certain percentage of each department is going to get an "Exceeds" a certain percentage is going to get an "Improvement Needed" each evaluation cycle.

Well, historical archers weren't exactly looking for accuracy. Bows have draw weights, it dictates how hard it is to pull the string and what force will be applied to the arrow.

Historical bows have absurd draw weights. They are incredibly hard to shoot accurately, but the arrows will travel a long distance. They were rarely shooting in a straight line, but were rather facing the sky such that the arrow will draw a curve through the air.

They used to create archer groups and shoot arrow barrages, that is a rain of arrows falling on the enemy troops.

There are exceptions. Some asian archers, especially, used to shoot arrows from horseback. They had the height and advantage and engaged in mid range combat that way.

What's funny, though, is how movies/games depict archers as some skinny guys. That's certainly not true. You had to be really fit to shoot such heavy bows.

That all depends on the teacher. Grading on the curve doesn't really employ any complex math. It is just suggesting that they push the pass/fail line up or down based on what the teacher thinks it should be set at.

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Long bows could be effective over a very long distance (comparatively) and even if you don't hit death blows arrows are still annoying if the stick in you.

Sort range you would have swords or knives.

They would have many arrows but you could also scavenge from your enemies arrows

Real curves adjust the grades to fit the mathematic bell curve standard distribution.

Most teachers "curve" just by adding points so that the highest score is a 100. If the class takes a test, highest score is a 97, the curve is 3 points added to everyone's scores.

ahhh the bellcurve makes sense! i think i was imagining it as just a regular upswing curve, but that clears it up for me a lot - thank you!

And as long as you never meet anyone there.

They are sequences of DNA so if you can break them Little chains they might change their proprieties.

Viruses are basically little shells with the code inside. They need to be able to inject their code into your cells to reproduce

If you break the shell, then you can get at the code which is fragile an inactivate/kill them. That's how heat, and certain chemicals work i.e. pure alcohol, because they break the structure of the virus

You can also have things that bind to the shell and stop them from being able to get into you cells (that's essentially how antibodies work) so other things (like enzymes) can break then down

Yes, your understanding is correct. They're just free floating bits of DNA or RNA code that eventually bump into a cell and hijack it's machines to copy itself.

Anything that disrupts that code will "kill" it...render it inactive. Harsh chemicals can break the DNA/RNA. UV light can. Too hot or too cold can. Physically crushing them can. DNA/RNA isn't a particularly durable moledule.