You just made another good point about that as well, [@shylarah]; not having time to think about it in the first place. With the implementation of more advanced weaponry, fights became progressively more chaotic. Sure, it's chaos on the battlefield no matter what, and I'd be lying if I said thousands of troops wielding swords or spears wouldn't have to be constantly on their toes and focused almost exclusively on survival, but when guns get introduced into the scenario... people die in a split second. Since people are usually brainwashed, or at the very least pressured or obligated in older days, to instinctively kill without hesitation, they only get ruined by what's happened after the fact.

No problem about not going into nihilism. I'm always happy to touch on anything heavily rooted in philosophy or psychology because they're some of the fields I specialize in. Nihilism is definitely a very large contributing factor for why people develop psychological conditions that would lack morality or empathy, but, unfortunately, it's also a big cause of people who don't even have these problems ending up developing a mentality that facilitates killing or hurting others, or at the very least not caring about the death or suffering of others. If you view the world as a meaningless place with no value and no true concept or good or evil, and view life as just a pointless single flash in a universe that is largely nothing but death, you very quickly lose the ability to care about anything.

"There's no meaning in this world, and there's no such thing as good or evil, so we might as well go out with a bang and have fun killing people since their lives mean nothing." is one of the most malevolent states of mind a person can end up developing, and it's basically the dark extreme of nihilism that so many fictional villains have tried to represent. It's always important to remember, however, that these fictional characters are representing a very possible mind state a person can develop. There are very harsh consequences for people neglecting the deeper and more meaningful facets of the human mind and conscience.