No one knows for sure what the first weapon actually was, but we can assume that it was probably a club: Basically a big heavy stick that somebody used to whack at somebody else.

What it lacks in elegance and sophistication, a club makes up for with ease of use and efficiency. It doesn’t take any skill to swing a club and, because it acts like a lever, it actually multiplies the force applied from your arm to the object being struck.

This means that even someone with relatively little strength is still going to hit harder with a club than their fist.

While the advent of firearms effectively ended the use of clubs as instruments of war, they are still readily available in the sporting goods departments of stores across the country. That’s right, I’m talking about baseball bats.

Although, to my knowledge, no one has ever used a bat in combat, they are used in a number of assaults each year in both the United State and the United Kingdom.

While not all of these attacks are fatal, some are and bat attacks in the U.S. are charged as assault with a deadly weapon.

This article appears in its entirety in Zombie Apocalypse Monthly issue 4 and can be downloaded for free here: http://www.magcloud.com/browse/issue/437984