In the 19th century sword and gun duel were not that rare, think about Mathematician’s Gallois death for example, it seems to be a thing of the past as the last duel occurred in the late 60’s.
Politics also used to be pretty violent, with fascist leagues in the 30’s and even after the war tons of pretty violent fight between political activist in the 60’s and various armed group including full terrorist groups (RAF, ETA and more).
Without saying that today world is peaceful and today politics is “nice diplomacy” things seems pretty laid back simply compared to our parent era and let alone the 19th century.
I would have expected that people would take advantage of modern medicine to be more violent. A duel, or a street fight between political opponent would be way more survivable than it was 100 years ago, so how comes these stuff seems mostly from the past ?
You aren’t accounting for the increase in cool stuff that makes people want to stick around longer. There’s at least one more Dune movie coming and even a Rebel Moon for the Snyder people. When dueling was popular people were going to church for fun… If you believe in an afterlife and most of your time is spent peasanting about, why not have some fun in a duel?
I love the idea of people who would REALLY want to be in a duel, but don’t want to risk it just in case Half Life 3 gets released.