Worldbuilding: Virtual Samurai

If we ever get actual Sword Art Online style VR up and running, I expect three things: First, a massive jump in the proportion of people who take historical martial arts very seriously indeed. Second, someone’s going to try to recreate the Battle of Sekigahara. Third, there will finally be a Pennsic War in which the archers have their day. Mwah-ha-hah….

One of the problems with any realistic martial arts training is there’s a limit to what moves you can use without someone actually dying. Blows to the throat, naked steel, and just about any use of archery that’s not on an unliving target. All of these can end up with a person in the hospital – or the morgue.

Which is exactly the point. All of these skills were designed to keep their practitioner alive in extreme circumstances, often by making someone else very dead. But it leaves the learner with a conundrum: how can you know what you learn, what you teach, really works?

You can’t. Unless you end up in a situation no one sane wants to be in – fighting for your life.

Actual VR, on the level of SAO or Gundam Build Divers, would change all that. If you could simulate the reactions and weaknesses of a real human body… you could, indeed, train with lethal intensity.

And people would. A surprising number, I suspect. Most would be driven by the urge to compete, like any sport. But there would also be those who’d had or anticipated having encounters with violence, who’d appreciate a hardheaded look at, what am I actually capable of? How can I improve?

I think it’d lower anxiety rates, too. If you’re reasonably confident that if you get into a bad spot you’ll have some idea of what to do besides die, you can go about your day with less free-floating stress.

It might also be great stress treatment on a general basis. The human nervous system is not meant for grinding, day to day “I have to get the project done by X month or I’m fired”. It’s meant to dump adrenaline into your system to survive a life-or-death short battle with a lion, then flop over if you survived. With real VR, you could get through the workday, go home, have that fight – and let your nerves actually relax.

I could see psychiatrists writing X number of to-the-VR-death battles a month as a prescription. It could lower stress-related deaths dramatically, and help mental health more than antidepressants.

Archery would also push VR to its limits. Simulating all the factors that go into a shot – wind, fletching, humidity, grip, probably a dozen more I don’t know about – would take both raw computing power and knowledgeable programmers to get the calculations right. But oh, the possibilities. Who wouldn’t want to try hunting a virtual zombie tiger through an ancient Chinese forest with a compound bow? Just once?

Granted, you’d probably try it and swear off anything else that crazy for life. Nightmares might or might not be optional. Still. I’d like to try. Once.

And then, oh wow, historical recreation; either real events like Gettysburg and Sekigahara, or the more improvised fun of SCA wars. There’s always going to be a group of people who want to do it all for real. But the prospect of adding actual artillery and archery? So tempting.

How would you see VR used in your world? Would someone try to recreate Hiten Mitsurugi Ryu?