Mines, or "torpedoes," as they were known at the time, were primarily a Confederate weapon. These antipersonnel explosives, invented by General Gabriel J. Rains, were typically iron barrels fitted with gunpowder, a fuse, and a brass detonation cap. Rains first deployed the subsurface booby traps during the Peninsula Campaign in 1862, and buried thousands more around Richmond and throughout the Deep South. In reality, some of these still-active landmines were only recently discovered in Alabama in the 1960s.

Landmines were widely seen as an unethical type of conflict, despite their effectiveness as a terrifying means of psychological warfare. Union General George B. McClellan called them "barbarous," and Confederate General James Longstreet temporarily prohibited their usage. Union General William T. Sherman, who lost numerous troops to buried landmines during his historic March to the Sea, was perhaps their most outspoken critic. Sherman reportedly compelled his Confederate prisoners to march at the front of his column in order to detonate any hidden "land torpedoes," describing the usage of mines as "not battle, but murder."

In addition to landmines, the Civil War served as a key testing area for underwater mines. Torpedoes were used by both sides to mine harbors and rivers, although the Confederacy was more successful. Beginning with the sinking of the ironclad Cairo in 1862, Confederate torpedoes sank dozens of Union ships and injured numerous others. Meanwhile, Union torpedoes only sank six Confederate Navy ships.

The rebels owed their expertise in undersea warfare in part to Matthew Fontaine Maury, an oceanographer who demonstrated the use of mines for the first time in 1861. Maury's "infernal machines" practically impassable the James River, and mines later terrified the Union Navy during assaults at Mobile Bay and Charleston Harbor. The Confederacy also succeeded in converting mines into offensive weapons by deploying submarines. After attacking the Union sloop-of-war Housatonic with a pole-mounted torpedo in 1864, the H.L. Hunley became the first combat submarine to sink an enemy ship.

Soldiers throughout the Civil War were known to build jury-rigged explosives out of various fuses and gunpowder, but the fight also witnessed advancements in the design and manufacture of hand grenades. The Union-issued Ketchum grenade, a projectile explosive shot like a dart, was the most popular variant. The grenades were available in one-, three-, and five-pound sizes, each featuring stabilizer fins and a nose-mounted plunger. The plunger's impact would detonate a percussion cap, igniting a lethal amount of gunpowder.

While a unique concept, the explosives did not always function as anticipated. In reality, during an 1863 siege at Port Hudson, Louisiana, Confederate forces reportedly used blankets to catch Ketchum grenades before hurling them back at their unlucky enemies.

The most popular firearms of the Civil War were Colt revolvers and Springfield muskets, but the era also gave birth to some of the first machine guns. The Gatling gun, a six-barreled device capable of firing up to 350 rounds per minute, is possibly the most famous of them. The Gatling was never ordered in mass by the United States government, but Union General Benjamin Butler purchased three of the terrifying guns privately in 1863 and later utilized them during the Petersburg Campaign.

The Williams gun, a Confederate breechloader first seen at the Battle of Seven Pines in 1862, and the Billinghurst-Requa battery gun, which consisted of 25 rifle barrels stacked side by side, were two other rapid-fire weapons. These weapons were primarily utilized to guard bridges and other critical areas because they were deemed too inefficient and unwieldy for infantry warfare.

Several experimental cannons, machine guns, and rifles were developed during the Civil War, but none was more odd than the Winans steam gun. This gigantic automatic weapon stood on an armored train carriage and used steam to fire projectiles at a rate of 200 per minute, according to Ohio creators William Joslin and Charles Dickinson.

Newspapers heralded the mysterious gun as a super weapon, but it was never used in combat. When Dickinson set out for Harper's Ferry in May 1861, most likely to sell the gun to the Confederacy, Union forces intercepted him and confiscated his invention. The steam gun was later transferred to Fortress Monroe in Virginia before being sent to Massachusetts, where it was eventually scrapped. The Union Army never attempted to use the steam gun in battle, implying that it did not live up to its lethal reputation.

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