Friday, September 30, 2011

Fort Sort

When I was pillaging my way through Norway, Denmark and Sweden, I noticed that a lot of the forts/castles I saw there reminded me of the military designs I would come up with as a kid, when my friends and I would use sand, Lincoln Logs, wood scraps, or whatever to built forts for our playtime wars. Moats were a prerequisite, of course, and our view was that series of walls and bastions protruding at crazy angles was just darn good defensive planning.

So when I was walking through this:



I couldn't help but wonder if the designers of Kronberg were seven years old.

As it turns out, that design is called a star fort, and my earliest visions of defensible fortifications were sort of correct (for a given level of technology, anyway)

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

As a kid, I built steel reinforced concrete bunkers complete with nuclear-biological-chemical defenses.

No need for a moat when you have a minefield in the interlocking fire zones, and class IV energy shield protective dome above the bunker keeps out missiles as well as paratroopers...they sizzle on the shield much like a mosquito in a bug zapper.

Still, nothing could stop the dread Giant Foot Stomp.

Cincinnatus said...

If you are ever in Paris, the military museum (behind Napoleon's tomb in L'Hotel des Invalides if memory serves ) has scale models created of Vauban fortress designs from the 17th century.

Chaon said...

Thanks for the tip. I hope that I'm not the only guy who idly envisions plans of attack as he tours old European castles and forts.

Cincinnatus said...

There is at least two of us.