Swords to Plowshares

"Let Us Beat Swords into Plowshares'", a sculpture by Evgeniy Vuchetich at the United Nations Headquarters, New York City

"And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up their sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more."

— Isaiah 2:4, The Bible (KJV)

Great news! The war is over! Now, what do we do with all these leftover weapons? Turn them into things civilians can use! All that scrap steel can make heavy machinery or be used in construction. Those nuclear weapons? Fuel rods. TNT? Use it for earth-moving. Factories that built bombers and warships? Use 'em to build cars! Just imagine all the possibilities!

A variation of this is when a simple tool in the current era is revealed to have been a weapon in the past. Perhaps it's due to modern people finding a Lost Technology or alien tech without knowing its real purpose, only understanding that it's a useful tool in some way.

If a weapon of war doesn't even require conversion to be used for civilian purposes, then it doubles as an example of Mundane Utility. If the weapon is merely stored away end ends up returning to use later, that's Break Out the Museum Piece. Compare and contrast with Not the Intended Use. Also compare Call to Agriculture, which is this trope for characters rather than items. Contrast with Training the Peaceful Villagers and Superweapon Surprise.

Most inversions of this trope fit under Improvised Weapon or MacGyvering, with Gardening-Variety Weapon being a particularly common inversion. There's also Torches and Pitchforks when a group (usually an Angry Mob) converts their farm implements into weapons. See also The Rule of First Adopters, where sex and porn helps in spreading a new fledgling technology far and wide.

Note: The mention of the phrase "Swords to Plowshares" alone isn't enough for this page. Such examples listed without further context are Zero-Context Examples and will be removed.

Examples:

Anime & Manga

• A variant in +Anima; Harden, an Ultimate Blacksmith, gave up on making weapons of war when he realized War Is Hell, and instead devoted all his smithing skills to making practical domestic tools for him and his wife to use in their daily lives, deciding to never make anything that can't be used for a practical, non-violent purpose again. Despite this, he is still sought after by the army to keep making weapons for them. Eventually, he grants their wish by giving them a box full of... kitchen knives and scissors. The leader of the army is furious, but the soldiers end up admitting that they're very well made and decide to keep them for practical purposes anyway.
• In Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, some Tachikoma are repurposed into civilian roles after Section 9 is "disbanded". One works in a care home, and another is used in high altitude construction sites, etc. The one in the care home is "gifted" an explosive shell from a Shell-Shocked Veteran and sets off to rescue Bateau in the finale.
• Girls und Panzer has World War II-era tanks repurposed for an intramural sport called Tankery. It's somewhat like mock battle, using "special" shells that can blast an engine block to flinders but will do no worse than jiggle and smudge the girls inside. The sport relies on team-building, tactical analysis, and resource management, which is Oarai Commander Miho Nishizumi's forte: her Ragtag Bunch of Misfits combine to disable a superheavy Maus tank during the final match.
• Played for Laughs in Sleepy Princess in the Demon Castle when the princess turns a bunch of high-level weapons into a hammock.
• Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans: After the Calamity War ended, several of the 72 Gundam Frames found peaceful uses in the post-war world. For instance, the Gundam Kimaris was used in various ceremonies as a symbol of Gjallarhorn before being locked in the Bauduin family treasury, and the Gundam Barbatos was used as a power generator for Chryse Guard Security's base due to its two Ahab Reactors. However, both of these mobile suits had to be returned to combat once the primary conflict of the series began.

Clothing

• Japanese school uniforms were inspired by 19th-century military uniforms, with sailor suits being used as the basis for girls' uniforms and Prussian cadet uniforms as the basis for boys'.
• Although neckties have been a civilian article for centuries, its ancestor, the cravat, was worn by Croatian mercenaries fighting for France during the Thirty Years' War. France (being France) adopted the styles, and the rest is history.
• Trenchcoats, for their namesake, were originally worn by officers and soldiers in the trenches during World War One to protect them from rain and cold. Today, they've been adopted by civilians, private detectives, and the occasional exhibitionists or children standing on each other's shoulders.

Film — Animated

• The Incredibles has Blu-Ray extras detailing how Syndrome's leftover robots are reprogrammed to become camp counselors, lifeguards, and cooks after Nomanisan gets converted into a tourist resort.

Film — Live-Action

• Interstellar:
  • Happens en masse after a series of blights ravages several major crops, causing worldwide starvation. Most of the world's militaries are effectively dissolved in the aftermath, with their equipment and personnel going toward much-needed crop production.
  • At the beginning of the film, Cooper and his children scavenge a defunct Indian surveillance drone for parts, hoping to use them to aid in farming.
• Arms Dealer Yuri Orlov claims this is happening in one scene of Lord of War when Agent Valentine catches him shipping a helicopter gunship to the African nation of Burkina Faso. Yuri claims that with all the excess hardware after the recent fall of the Soviet Union, all they can do with it all is repurpose it for civilian use. Valentine isn't fooled, especially since the missiles and bullets for the helicopter are also going to Burkina Faso, albeit to a client at a different address. Unfortunately, this was apparently a real-life legal loophole at the time, and Valentine is forced to let Yuri go.
• A very literal example occurs in The Man Who Could Work Miracles. The Vicar Mr. Maydig is seeking to bring about a Golden Age, including ending war. As a test, he asks Fotheringay to use his Reality Warper powers to transform his militaristic neighbour Colonel Winstanley's collection of antique weapons. Investigating strange noises, Colonel Winstanley discovers that all of his weapons have been transformed into a vast array of agricultural equipment.
• During the victory celebration at the end of Return of the Jedi, some Ewoks are shown using old Imperial Stormtrooper helmets as drums.
• Short Circuit 2: Johnny 5 has converted his shoulder-mounted laser cannon into a toolbox packed with various handy and nonlethal gadgets.
• At the start of Small Soldiers, the GloboTech Industries has basically resolved to do this by buying up companies in other industries, then using its state-of-the-art military technology to make superior products. This is how A.I. Is a Crapshoot computer chips end up in the Commando Elite and Gorgonite action figures. Inverted at the end when the CEO decides to sell the toys as weapons after all.
• In Star Trek: First Contact, Dr. Zefram Cochrane builds the first warp ship out of an old nuclear missile.

Literature

• This trope is mentioned in George R. R. Martin's "And Seven Times Never Kill Man", in the story describing the creation of the militant cult of the Children of Bakkalon, and it's portrayed as being a stupid idea and displeasing to their god, Bakkalon the Pale Child, who thinks Humans Are Warriors should be the norm and all other species should be under their heel:
  "And the pale child came and stood before them, with His great sword in His hand, and in a voice like thunder He rebuked them. 'You have been weak children,' He told them, 'for you have disobeyed. Where are your swords? Did I not set swords in your hands?'
  "And the children cried out, 'We have beaten them into plowshares, oh Bakkalon!'
  "And He was sore angry. 'With plowshares, then, shall you face the Sons of Hranga! With plowshares shall you slay the Horde of Fyndii!' And He left them, and heard no more their weeping, for the Heart of Bakkalon is a Heart of Fire."
• Beware of Chicken sees a literal sword-to-plow conversion; Sun Ken the bandit is defeated, and his intelligent (though nobody realizes it at the time) sword is turned into a plow to insult his memory, then given to Jin as a wedding present (Jin had joked about turning the sword into a plow but didn't expect be taken seriously). .Being a spirit blade, it's very receptive to qi reinforcement, making it supernaturally effective, and Jin is very pleased with the gift. After considering how Sun Ken must be turning over in his grave, Jin decides to call the plow Sunny and paint it a bright cheery yellow. The blade is actually quite happy with it's current situation since it gets to do a lot of cutting of the earth.
• In A Darkling Plain, Tom notes that the medical technology which diagnosed his weak heart was made from repurposed Stalker technology, which is typically used to turn corpses into military cyborgs.
• Discworld series by Terry Pratchett:
  • Invoked in The Colour of Magic, when Kring, Hrun's talking sword, mentions a wish to be forged into a plowshare.
  • Referenced in Night Watch, where Vimes sees the stuff the government ban on weapons has missed, like an old halberd used to hold up a clothesline, or a sword used as a fireplace poker... which are by far outstripped by the perfectly legal tools (billhooks, cleavers, etc.), but that can be repurposed into very efficient weapons.
• The Faraway Paladin: During William's battle with the dragon Valacirca, his longtime weapon of choice, the spear Pale Moon, is wrecked beyond repair. He has a smith reforge the largest fragment of the spearhead into a knife, which he gives away to a novice adventurer.
• In The Grace of Kings, one of these was planned by the Visionary Villain Emperor Mapidere but never came to fruition. After conquering a continent and subduing warring states, he wanted to confiscate all swords in the realm and then melt them down to make statues of all of the deities in the pantheon as a monument to peace.
• Discussed in The Heroes of Olympus novel "The House of Hades", where Frank threatens that unless Triptolemus frees his friends, he will beat his sword into Triptolemus' head instead of beating it into a plowshare.
• In Hero's Song by Edith Pattou, the gardener Collun forges his trowel into a dagger at the beginning of his quest to find his sister. At the end, he has it reforged into a trowel, signifying the end of his quest.
• Discussed in John Gardner's James Bond novel Role of Honor. A major plot point is that both the Soviet Union and the United States have top secret computer codes known as "Swords-to-Plowshares" codes. If sent with proper authentication, these codes will start an irrevocable process of shutting down all nuclear warheads in their countries. The novel centers around a plot by SPECTRE to falsely transmit only the US code from an airship positioned directly above Geneva, where the American President and Soviet Premier are holding a critical summit meeting.
• Known Space: On the backstory of the Man-Kzin Wars saga, humanity had decided to become peaceful and gotten rid of all of its weapons, meaning that during the first encounters with the Kzin, the Earthlings had only unarmed vehicles and other civilian equipment... unfortunately for the Kzin, the fact that Humans Are Warriors means that they are also murderously adaptive, and Improvised Weaponry that was the result of on-the-spot MacGyvering was what killed those early Kzin war parties (one of the most famous instances being using a ship's fusion torch engine and the energy beam it fired off for propulsion to cut a Kzin ship in half).
• In one Retief story, the CDT have re-purposed Bolo tanks (Artificial Intelligence supertanks with megaton firepower) for farming and mining by attaching bulldozing blades. Subverted in that the Bolos are still more than capable of being used as weapons of war.
• Star Wars Legends:
  • In X-Wing: The Bacta War, semi-retired smuggler Booster Terrik manages to capture an intact Imperial II-class star destroyer with a bit of trickery and a lot of luck. The New Republic agrees to let him keep it and turn it into a roving casino and freeport on the condition that most of its weapons are removed (down to ten turbolaser batteries out of sixty as designed). In Hand of Thrawn he gets the guns back by order of New Republic Intelligence in exchange for General Garm Bel Iblis getting to borrow it for a special operation.
  • The Thrawn Trilogy: Since the New Republic is not engaged in much active combat, and trade is struggling, they take several dozen capital ships, remove a bunch of equipment to make more space, and use them to haul cargo. Unfortunately, since it wouldn't be hard to convert them back, they're a prime target for theft by the ascendant Grand Admiral Thrawn.
  • The Corellian Trilogy:
    • Zigzagged with Centerpoint Station. After the hyperspace-capable planetary-scale repulsor was initially used to construct the Corellian star system, it was retired and the station was converted into living space. However, the starbusters have done the opposite, taking the construction tool and using it as a weapon.
    • There's also a discussion of how warships can disappear from attempts to track and register them, by filing all the paperwork to strip out most of their combat systems and convert them into freighters — but not actually carrying out the work.
• In the Terran Trade Authority series by Stewart Cowley, after the Proxima War, many of the military spacecraft used in the war are converted for civilian use, e.g. by removing their weapons.
• World War Z: As the Chinese military collapses, the crew of the Admiral Zheng He nuclear submarine defect with their vessel. They end up docking on an island in French Polynesia, where they use the submarine's capabilities to provide power to the locals, winning popularity and improving the population's quality of life until the remnants of the Chinese military strike the island in revenge, forcing them to flee.

Live-Action TV

• This is the premise of the short-lived History Channel show "Tactical to Practical", where Survivor: Marquesas alumnus and ex-naval aviator Hunter Ellis showcases each technology that was used for military purposes that were converted to civilian usage.

Music

• Inverted by "Ashes In Your Mouth" by Megadeth, which references the biblical line.
  Melting down all metals, turning plows and shears to swords
  Shun words of the Bible, we need implements of war
• In the climax of the music video for Dire Straits' "Brothers In Arms", Mark Knopfler is shown holding an assault rifle in hands which then switches into a guitar for the final solo.

Religion and Mythology

• The phrase "swords to plowshares" originated from the Book of Isaiah in The Bible where, to put it into context, a prophecy declares that upon the establishment of God's kingdom on Earth and bringing peace and justice to the land, weapons of war would be turned into agricultural tools as nations would no longer wage war and focus instead on peace and prosperity.
  "They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks and study war no more." — Isaiah 2:4
• Chapter V, Section III of the Analects of Confucius includes a story in which Confucian disciple Yan Hui expresses his wish to educate others so that they might turn their weapons and fortifications into more peaceful tools.
  At last came [Yan Hui], who said "I should like to find an intelligent king and sage ruler whom I might assist. I would diffuse among the people instructions on the five great points, and lead them on by the rules of propriety and music, so that they should not care to fortify their cities by walls and moats, but would fuse their swords and spears into implements of agriculture." — Confucian Analects, The Great Learning, and The Doctrine of the Mean (trans. James Legge, 1892)

Tabletop Games

• BattleTech: Following the end of the Word of Blake Jihad in 3081, the Inner Sphere saw a period of extended de-armament where nations downsized their militaries. Many Battlemechs were stripped and had their components converted to civilian usage, especially the engines, which were used to power civilian vehicles or provide power generation for cities and towns.
• Magic: The Gathering has a card named "Swords to Plowshares." It exiles a creature (IE Deader than Dead), but because White is obsessed with fairness, it gives that creature's controller Hit Points equal to the creature's power, representing the repurposing of a combat unit to a non-violent function. Despite the Equivalent Exchange, this is one of the most powerful spells in the game, reprinted continuously for its entire 30-year existence and rarely worth less than $1 a copy: how are Hit Points going to help your opponent after you just used this card for a Decapitation Strike on their Keystone Army?
  "The arc of my blade has carved a path of light for the peace that will follow."
• Warhammer Fantasy: Several steam tanks exist in the Empire, one of which has been converted into a mobile kitchen by its halfling owners.

Theatre

• In "Don't Rock The Boat" By Tim Kelly, Captain Tom Butterworth wants to be a cruise ship captain using the surplus gunboat Vengeance. Hilarity Ensues as the Ragtag Bunch of Misfits that make up the crew, the cast of entertainers for the cruise, and the passengers have to fend off pirates.

Video Games

• Ace Combat: Inverted. The Strangereal setting has a Cataclysm Backstory where the threat of the Ulysses 1994X asteroid led to many nations building anti-meteor structures to shoot down fragments to mitigate potential damage. The Stonehenge, the Arkbird, the Chandelier, Fortress Intolerance, and the Megalith were ultimately repurposed for conventional weaponry when various factions realized how much power they could hold over entire continents with them.
• Afterlife (1996): In Heaven, there is a reward structure for peaceful souls named "Swords Into Plowshares", where the blessed souls get to spend eternity living in a city made out of discarded missiles, assault weapons, and torpedoes.
• In Fate/Grand Order, Voyager's Bond Craft Essence mentions how The Titan III intercontinental ballistic missile was repurposed into a rocket booster to send him into the far reaches of space.
• Halo 3: ODST: The M313 "Elephant", a military vehicle designed for mass troop deployment, is seen in the city of New Mombasa as the "Oliphant", repurposed into a garbage truck. Though smaller now and lacking weapons, the Oliphant is still durable enough to plow through cars and serve as a minor tank.
• Horizon Zero Dawn: The Sun-Ring was a structure used by Sun-King Jiran to execute and sacrifice enemy combatants during the Red Raids. After Jiran's son Avad ended the raids, he converted the Sun-Ring into a memorial and a place of worship.
• Star Wars Battlefront II (2017): Inferno Squad utilizes the Imperial Raider-Class Corvette Corvus — designed to engage both starfighters and larger ships — for their operations during the Galactic Civil War. During the final mission, which takes place a few decades after the war ends, it is revealed that the crew has since converted it to a commercial freight hauler.

Webcomics

• Schlock Mercenary:
  • The space-habitat of Credomar. A journalist even mentions that it was created by the 'Swords to Plowshears' project. Essentially, it's a Hyperspace Death Ray with enormous strategic value, which has been repurposed as a deep-space habitat. An Arc centers around the king of Credomar evacuating the entire population to a habitable moon somewhere in order to reactivate the weapon — not because he's looking to pick a fight with anyone, but because he's worried that The Federation, who BUILT the damn thing in the first place, may at some point declare a 'state of emergency' and fire the weapon without evacuating the population first...
  • At one point Kevyn converts their terapedo supply into a Very Large Array, placing them around a solar system and using their targeting sensors to survey it without giving out radar signals. Of course, they're still fully functional teleporting missiles, which is why he calls it a Very Dangerous Array.
  • Referenced by Petey when he sends the Tohdfraug invasion fleet to Andromeda to fight the Paanuri with no supply line and compares them to swords.
    Tohdfraug Admiral: But if you break a sword through abuse or neglect, it's useless.
    Petey: As a sword, yes. Eventually I'll be needing plowshares.
• The premise of Warbot in Accounting is that a Killer Robot was repurposed and reintegrated into civilian life. Its unsuccessful attempts at doing so are played for Black Comedy.
• Implied as part of the backstory and inverted in the main story of Girl Genius. The Baron has a gift for repurposing the technology of his fellow mad scientists and is reputed to have used it to try and better the lives of the citizens of Europa. During the Siege of Mechanicsburg however, his son notices him bringing a lot of civil engineering equipment to the fight, and figures out that the Baron plans to use them as the weapons they were presumably originally designed as.

Western Animation

• A variation occurs in A Charlie Brown Christmas. After Linus uses his Security Blanket to knock a can off of a fence, which he's shown to weaponize on occasion, Lucy chastises him for having it in the first place, followed by a Rhetorical Question Blunder.
  Lucy: You think you're so smart with that blanket! What're you gonna do with it when you grow up?!
  Linus: Maybe I'll make it into a sport coat!
• Fantaghirò: At the end of “The Weapons Of Peace”, Daniel Hammer’s Talking Weapons allow themselves to be remade for more peaceful purposes (for instance, Crossbow becomes a violin while Arrow becomes his bow) and set out to enjoy their new functions in life.
• One early Mighty Mouse cartoon shows a cheese factory making Swiss cheese by rolling wheels of regular cheese in front of a World War I Vickers machine gun, which shoots the distinctive holes in the cheese, making it Swiss.
• Downplayed example from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. The show has instances where weapons such as catapults, cannons, and even tanks are being used for games (like chucking pumpkins) or celebrating parties.
• In the 1939 animated short Peace on Earth, the debris of a terrible war that killed off the human species is converted into little houses made of soldier helmets and street posts made from bayonets by Woodland Creatures.
• The Simpsons:
  • In "Treehouse of Horror II", Lisa wishes for world peace. A subsequent montage shows soldiers and police officers melting down their guns, The Pentagon being turned into a shopping mall, and a missile silo being repurposed into a garden. Of course, since the episode is a homage to The Monkey's Paw, things don't stay peaceful for long.
  • In "Treehouse of Horror XIII", Lisa starts an anti-gun campaign that ends with the entire population of Springfield getting rid of their weapons. Some of the guns are recycled to create a playground, though they keep their shape (and apparently their ammunition, since they go off when kids use the slides).
    Ralph: Wheeeeee! This slide is bumpy!

Real Life

• The Philippine "jeepney", specifically the "Sarao" style, originated from the Willys MB jeeps used during World War II. The structure was converted for usage by the public utility vehicles that ultimately became national icons.
• As gunpowder and cannons rendered medieval castles obsolete, some castles that hadn't already been destroyed were converted to more habitable places. Over the centuries (especially with the medieval revival of the 1800s), the original functions of castles were abandoned, leading to the modern imagination of castles as being fortified palaces. This video explains more about the modern/fantasy concepts of castles.
• One of the first usages of locomotives with internal-combustion engines was in World War I's "Trench Railways"; near the front lines, their exhaust wasn't anywhere near as easily visible to the enemy as the smoke from steam engines, so they were used to ferry troops and supplies through the last miles of the trench system. By the 1920s, diesel locomotives were used on civilian railroads as switchers and in self-contained passenger railcars, and by the end of WWII they were slated to replace steam locomotives almost everywhere that wasn't planning to electrify their railroads.
• Military surplus — old military gear is sold on the commercial market. Items like sleeping bags, tents, uniforms, and boots are used by the public, often because they're rugged and cheap.
• In Britain, Anderson Shelters were built as backyard air raid shelters during The Blitz; since then, they have been used by many homeowners for peaceful purposes ranging from garden sheds to children's playhouses.
• Nuclear power itself is an example because, for over a decade, the only use of nuclear power was to build bombs and then later to power submarines.
  • The Megatons to Megawatts program converts nuclear weapons into fuel rods that provide 10% of the total US electricity supply.
  • "Project Plowshare" took its name from this saying, being the official name for a U.S. Government program to explore practical peacetime uses for nuclear bombs. Unfortunately, the test results ran from "Awesome, but Impractical" at best to "Contaminating the water table with radioactive fallout" at worst, and the program was ultimately shuttered in 1977 amidst widespread criticism.
  • The Soviet Union went even further with their program Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy. Although they had a few successes in eliminating natural gas well fires, they similarly found the explosions difficult to control and producing too much radiation to be practical.
• The Internet. Invented in 1969 for military and scientific uses when it was called ARPANET, it is now used for information, communication, business, and research, as well as plenty of other things.
• The Semi-Automatic Ground Environment, a network of air defense radars, missile installations, and command stations, all controlled by a series of massive computers, developed many of the necessary technologies such as remote workstations, parallel processing and redundancy, and multinode computer networks.
• Drones, originally designed for offensive strikes and/or for surveillance, are now being used as entertainment by civilians, and as tools by hobbyists.
• The escopattera (a portmanteau of the Spanish words escopeta and guitarra, meaning "shotgun" and "guitar" respectively) is a type of guitar made from a modified gun. It was first invented by Colombian peace activist Cesar Lopez after he saw a soldier holding his gun like a guitar following the 2003 El Nogal Club bombing in Bogota.
• Stringed instruments, from guitars and violins to harps and lyres, were all preceded by one ultimate ancestor: the bow harp, which was either originated or inspired by archers' bows.
• During The Napoleonic Wars, the French government offered a reward to whoever could find a way to help preserve food for marching soldiers. Thus, canned goods were invented by Nicolas Appert. Nowadays, through the help of soldiers during World War II, canned goods are now available almost everywhere for regular consumption.
• "Water bomber": Take a bunch of old World War II airplanes and former Air Force pilots, and have them drop water over forest fires.
• Superglue was developed during The Vietnam War as a quick way to secure wounds.
• Military surplus vehicles, like the "Deuce and a half" truck and the HMMWV, often wind up sold to the public to perform mundane jobs like hauling freight in remote areas. A civilian version of the HMMWV eventually entered production and is now known as the Hummer.
• Supreme Chef Auguste Escoffier, the codifier of Haute Cuisine, was an apprentice chef when he was conscripted into the French Army. He served there for 7 years as a chef, and when he left he developed the "Brigade De Cuisine", a method of organizing a kitchen staff along the lines of an army regiment, with a clear chain of command and specialized duties for each member.
• Jet aircraft were first developed for military applications by Germany and the UK during WWII, and later improvements to the engine made civilian aircraft larger, faster, and more efficient.
• The Space Race was kicked off by Germany developing the V2 ballistic missile, sparking competition between the USA and the USSR (along with a few other countries) all developing missiles to lob nukes at each other when some came to the idea of using those same missiles to lob their countrymen into outer space instead.
• The Global Positioning System was originally developed for military navigation and maneuvering but has become ubiquitous for civilian uses.

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