July 10, 2012 • 43 mins
There's far more to military camouflage than painting a tank green. As Robert and Julie discuss in this episode, camouflage design incorporates both the neuroscience of how we perceive the world and the art of cubism and textile design.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff to Blow your mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and my name is Julie Douglas. Camouflage.
We've all seen it right A couple of years back, um,
when with my wife up into the rural hills of Georgia,
(00:26):
she had a photo assignment where she had to take
a picture of this, uh, this lawyer's um like rich
game room, like this big basketball sized room just filled
with uh safari animals that he bagged on trips. Did
you call it his man cave? No, I forget what
he called it. It was just his u or something. No,
it was it's just his trophy room. You know. It
(00:48):
was enormous and it was like the center of the house.
It was the center of his life clearly. And I
mean he even there were there were dictys there, you know,
a little the little antelope type creatures with a little
bitty horns and they jumped yeah yeah yeah, and uh,
I mean they're so cute. But he'd like bagged like
three of these things, like who goes in safari and
(01:09):
bags addicted. It's just there a giant panda head for
it because where you go after that, you know, I
mean just about some of these animals were kind of tiny,
you know, they were the larger. It never like the
you know, the big what is it the Big five?
I think it is. You know, he had all those,
but then all these other animals and small diptics. But
(01:29):
that's that's not really this podcast is not about small ditics. No,
it is about camouflage. And on the way up there,
we had stopped. We had to stop and get a
bite to eat, and they're your options are limited once
you leave Atlanta and uh and venture out into the wild.
So we ended up going to like a what was it.
It wasn't like it was like a long Horn steakhouse.
(01:50):
I think it was. It was. It was the best
option that we had at the time. And so we
go there and there's a there's a family there and
they have a baby dressed in camouflage, and they're you know,
passing the baby back and forth, and it seemed just
really reckless because what if that baby, uh touches the
ground and then walks a little ways off into the woods,
you'd never see it again. Like it just completely blend in.
(02:12):
Even if you set the baby down on the grass
and it goes still on you. Where'd it go? But yeah,
but you know what, maybe that baby has been trained
and that baby would climb a tree and then jump
on you. That's yes, everybody has different parenting um agendas.
You know in first rule of parenting, you do not
(02:32):
judge other parents. All right, well, I won't judge their
their camouflaging with their infant. I just hope that he
or she didn't get away into that. I agree, is
that it's a concern. I can see that. I can
see how you guys were like, whoa, But okay, so
it was like a camouflage jumper. How much can you
conceivably spending a camouflage jumper? It's like what five dollars,
(02:53):
ten dollars maybe twenty tops? Right, Um, Yet if you're
the U. S. Military, you can spend a phenomenal amount
of money on camouflage, about five billion. Yeah. This is this, Uh.
I think you called it the camo fail. Yeah, the
cameo fail. Uh. Specifically, it involves something called Universal Camouflage Pattern,
(03:14):
which came out in two thousand four. Yeah, and any
military listeners will probably be, well, you are familiar with
this obviously intimately, Um, this is the pattern that has
been out since two thousand and four, and the U. S.
Army finally made the admission this year that this pattern
is not really effective at doing its job, namely camouflaging
the soldier. This is about how it went down in
(03:36):
terms of modern US camouflage history. What was the predominant
fashion there? What shoulder pads and uh yeah, big shoulder pads,
I don't know, big hair there, right, And if you
were in the US military in the U. S. Army,
woodland camouflage was the classic pattern of the day. Um,
(03:56):
we're talking black, brown, green, and tan all of this
and smudges and a meepal like shapes. All right, you know,
good stuff for the woods. Roll on new fashions. What's
what's fashionable in the nineties, Well, this is the this
is the grunge period, right yeah, yeah, okay, so maybe
this would translate to the Gulf War as being what
(04:19):
they called the cookie pattern, right yeah. This is the
six colored desert camo pattern, also known as chocolate chips
because it's tan, it's brown. You've got some of those
ambo type shapes of both colors going on there with
flecks of this black chocolate chips stuff throughout. So and
we're spending started spending a lot of time in the
desert in the nineties. So there you go. Then two
(04:42):
thousand three, three Colored Desert comes out nineteen, actually came
out two, but we used it on up through two
thousand three. UM, and in two thousand three it saw
wide US in the U S. And it's desert operations.
And this is a tan with a chocolate topped green
blotch kind of thing going on. Yeah, it's kind of
pale green and just a teeny bit of black in it.
(05:04):
And then comes Universal cameo two thousand four, and we're
gonna explain just a little bit about where this one
came from. But um, they rolled this out in Iraq, Afghanistan,
and then it also used as a default throughout the
rest of the military. And it's it's pixelated. It looks
like something from an eight bit video game, and it's
kind of different shades of gray. Yeah, and it does
(05:25):
not really prove all that effective, and yet it's been
in use for eight years. Yeah. This goes back to
problems that we ran into when we UM, when we
first started getting really heavily invested again in a desert
combat environments. Okay, so we were we were using the
three colored desert, but we didn't have enough stuff to
(05:47):
go around it was. It was decked out in that
particular particular camera. So you'd have guys who were given
this three three colored desert camo, but then they had
dark packs strapped on top of that, and it was
a uh essentially supposedly like like a bull bull's eye
because mismatch pieces, right, mismatch pieces, and it makes you vulnerable.
So US Army says, all right, let's do this. Let's
(06:10):
let's let's get this going. Let's invest some funds, let's
test some patterns, and that's how it's generally, it generally
goes at this point. Um, you don't just pick something
off a wall at the home depot. Though an article
I read did involved some soldiers to the home depot
and having them look at colors. I believe that was
the Marines uniform and they took a swatch from Ralph
(06:31):
Laurence collection. It was a brown shade and they said, okay,
let's see this in this But of course there was
tons of research done and you know, this was just
one piece of it. Yeah, the marine one that you
mentioned was called mar pat and it first appeared in
two thousand two and and you had, you know, dozens
of candidates that were considered for this role. The Marines
(06:52):
from the sniper school at Quantico were involved in picking
out things for it. And it did have a pixelated
look to it. It had this kind of eight bit
sixteen bit kind of pixelated thing going on, and this
like pretty nifty to some people over at the U. S. Army, Right,
And as you said, there was a process that was
going on and they were testing a ton of patterns.
But the problem here, and this isn't an interview with
(07:12):
the Daily UM which talked about the story. I guess
about a week ago or so. Here in June UM
several Army researchers said Army Brass interfered in selection process
during the last round, letting looks in politics get in
the way of science. Yes, soups like something called desert
Brush was was actually um making its way to the top.
That was that was the one that people were leaning
(07:33):
to towards that was performing well in test. But then
Program Executive Officers Soldier, which is a program that that's
in charge of actually making the decisions here. They they
allegedly jumped the gun and picked UCP, that universal color
pattern that we mentioned earlier, and put it into production.
(07:54):
And this is what has been really troublesome for a
lot of military Um yeah, because what they essentially did
was that they actually I say, they picked you u CP,
but actually what they did is they said, well, let's
take the colors from Desert Brush, where you know you've done,
You've tested these colors. That's great, but we really like
this pixelated things. So take those colors, dump them into
this pixelated format and let's go with that. That way,
(08:18):
we'll we'll have your research, but we also have the
thing that I like and then that'll that'll be the
finished product, which kind of sounds to I mean, they're
they're giving into a trend. They're combining two different things.
Um It kind of strikes me as kind of a
pride and prejudice with zombies kind of factor where if you,
you know, take take two distinct elements combined it together,
it sounds good on paper, but in reality it wasn't
(08:41):
very rigorous and at least in the last steps, right,
and so they kind of shortcut the process and it
was some noncommissioned officers who complained to um UH, the
Representative John Murtha who took up the issue in two
thousand and nine. And finally today we have something else
that's come into play, and this is the multi CAAM.
(09:02):
This is I don't know if you could call it
a band aid fix, but in the interim, this is
a new pattern that's been introduced to try to fix
this problem that the u C p UM. It's kind
of a placeholder. Yeah, it's like, let's get U C
p out of here because it sucks. Let's get let's
get something usable. So multi caam is here until we
can actually finish up deciding and h implementing the camouflage
(09:25):
we actually want. Multicam is um. It's in keeping with
the previous brown green, tan designs, but with the kind
of a hint of Jackson Pollock to it. Yeah. Okay,
so I'm glad you brought up Pollock because here's the deal.
You know, we're not just talking about this five billion
dollar issue of this one uniform. We're actually talking about
the whole culture of camouflage and how it came into play.
(09:46):
And it turns out that artists are very much and
In fact, Cubism is very much responsible for camouflage patterns.
And if we go all the way back to the nine,
you'll see that the US created the American camouflage Corpse,
and and that enlisted rather core and listened to the
creative talents of renowned painter, sculptors and designers because they
realized that these artists were onto something in terms of cubism,
(10:10):
which you know, takes these scenes from real life and
then kind of breaks them apart in patterns, right, and
then reassembles them. That is essentially what these camouflage patterns
are doing as well. Camouflage, as the name implies, camouflage
of course, begins with the French. I believe it's French
for hidden cheese, is right, Uh, I don't know, I
(10:33):
may be wrong on that, but but no camouflage comes.
I wouldn't that made chemoa but that the French stuff
first adapted camouflage in ninet And I mean that alone's
kind of sounds surprising because animals, of course have been
doing it forever. I mean, camouflage is part of evolved
natural defense techniques. And certainly you can point to various
(10:56):
things in history in ancient history even where you can say, oh,
well this this particular force was using camouflage to some degree,
but certainly as far as modern armies go. I mean
this was modern armies were uniformed ordeals. It was it
was about knowing who was who on the battlefield. It
wasn't as much about about blending in and beIN disguising yourself.
(11:18):
M it was about looking sharp prior to that. And
when the French started using camouflage, they were really more
concerned with camouflaging equipped. They're like, all right, let's keep
this is an important piece of equipment. Let's make sure
the enemy doesn't see it. And then it spreads out
from there to say, hey, we could actually camouflage ourselves
and that would be beneficial as well. Yeah. Actually, there's
a woman named Claudia T. Covert. Claudia T. Covert, like
(11:41):
this is the best name for this. She is a
librarian and expert on the history of military camouflage at
the Rhode Island School of Design and Providence, and she
says that they were they're actually using camouflage to decoy
log so that snipers could line them, or painting decorative
sheets of canvas to look like roads so they're using
it for that type of such refuge, but not necessarily
(12:02):
on their person, right, And so you know in NT
nine you have the artist and naturalist Abbot there and
he wrote the Father of Modern Camouflage. Yeah, he wrote
Concealing Coloration in the Animal Kingdom, and he observed two
ways that animals camouflaged themselves in wild blend and dazzle.
And we'll talk about dazzle a bit more, but that's
kind of a disruptive pattern that creates confusion. Like it
(12:24):
basically comes down to you have animals that have dark
backs and white underbellies. Which it's when I think of that,
I can't help but think of of the of the
prospect of of soldiers running around the battlefield essentially in
uh like bunny costumes you know, where they're painted up,
Like what if they had actually taken that literally they're like, Wow,
these rabbits have figured out, let's get some rabbit costumes
(12:45):
on that on that battlefield. But maybe that was the
first idea. You know, Well, their notices that you know,
when they used this in this way, it's not just
so that their deli is cute and it looks like
it needs to be scratched at all. But it's because
when the when the sun hits their backs and the
darkness hits the underbelly, the animals become flat and they
(13:07):
will end in by counterbalancing shadows. So this is uh,
this is dazzling in action. Yeah, and again we'll talk
about that in a little bit, but um, you know
that's the idea though, of camouflage really didn't come into
play until General um Douglas MacArthur, who decided that he
wanted a hundred fifty thousand jungle kits um, including some
(13:27):
still experimental uniforms. So previous to that it was used.
But you know, World War two is when we really
saw it come into play. Yeah, avoided whatever. I mean.
The the camouflage of of the Second World War is
pretty amazing. Um My, my father was a huge World
War Two junkie, I guess, and uh, and so I
grew up always looking at these various various drawings and
(13:50):
illustrations of especially a German and US infantry camouflage designs,
and it it just it's crazy to so much of it,
and some of it is that kind of dazzling effect
where it's it's all about like like lightning bolt kind
of shapes that kind of break up to sorrient your eyes,
sorient your eyes, and just break up the continuity of
the human form um. So so just like any when
(14:14):
you actually start looking at CAMA, it's easily to just
sort of think of camera and be like camouflage. But
when you really start looking at all the patterns, even
if you don't know anything about it, you quickly realize,
you know, there's something going on here, like a lot
of people are putting a lot of thoughts into the
creation of these various textiles. Yeah, and let's let's take
a quick break and when we come back, let's talk
(14:34):
about a bit more about camera basics, um and this
thing that we call it dazzle. All right, so we're back,
and yeah, we're gonna talk a little bit aboutdazzling. Not
to be confused with the dazzling, because you don't want
to be dazzle of battleship. I mean, it might be
partially effective, but it's although like if you are a
(14:55):
contestant on you know, like pubblers and tierras, that might well,
actually that's don't really that's the opposite of camouflage, right, Bedazzling. Yeah,
I'm trying to think of how you can bedazzle yourself.
I guess the opposite of bedazzling would be when you
take tiny shells and you glue them to something, you know,
like you encounter at the gift shops on the Gulf coast. Right,
there's some sort of rustic bedazzling. Yeah. Yeah, thebably could
(15:17):
do that to a battleship, to be like, oh, it's
a battleship. No, it's a it's a bunch of shells,
it's a giant shell. Often you'll see the Google eyes
to what you've been used in that Google e blew
a bunch of shells something some Google eyes on it,
and you've got yourself nicknack. But but when we're talking
about we're talking about dazzling, which you really need to
see an image of this, and I'll make sure that
(15:38):
we have an image of this on the blog post
that goes up with this episode. But the easiest way
to describe it is imagine getting yourself some blacks, some whites,
some dark, some light colors and painting a battleship up
like a lightning bolt zebra. Yeah yeah, yeah, yes, that's
very good. That kind of design description um. Yeah. And
(16:00):
the reason for this is because you can't hide a
hulking piece of metal floating on the horizon. Right. Yeah.
It's one thing to kmo a tank, to Camo and jacket. Um.
Even to Cammo an airplane is a simpler experiment that
make it recede into the background. Yeah. But but a ship,
there's not a lot you can do. People are gonna
see it. So what you could But what you can
do is by adding this to these dazzle elements, you can,
(16:23):
for instance, make it difficult for U boat to tell
which direction it's going in. Yeah, and this is really
important too. I'm glad you brought up the U boat.
This is really the impetus for Dazzle because in y
five British ships were sunk by German U boats over
an eight month period, and so they realized that they
needed to do something. Um and naval officer and artist
(16:45):
Norman Wilkinson convinced the British government to use the principles
of Cubism and Dazzle to try to at least throw
off the direction that the torpedo might be heading at
least by a couple of degrees, which you know, would
save lives. Yeah, all you have to do is get
it a little little off. And uh well, first of all,
the morale boosted on the ships, which which should come
(17:07):
as no surprised because you just turned this dreary, drab
ship into uh, I mean, it looks like a party vessel. Now,
it looks like a piece of abstract art. It's taken
to the high seas under the command of you know,
Commander Dolly or something. But well, yeah, and you're harnessing
the lightning and zebras, the power of both of them. Yeah,
but more importantly, after they started using the dazzling effects,
(17:29):
fewer than one percent of American merchant ships that were
dazzled were lost. So that's pretty impressive. Yeah. And so
the cool thing about that is paint is cheap. That's
the other thing to my mind. I mean, it takes
a little time to paint up a ship, but in
the grand scheme of things, that is a really cheap
method of defense. And this dazzle effect, again is disorienting
the eye, so if you're you're aiming at it, you
(17:51):
can't quite figure out if it's heading east or west.
And again this is the key to its success. Um
let's talk about something called component part and this is
from Tom Harris's article How Camouflage Works. He's talking about
one of the reasons why it works really well is
that when you look at a scene, you're gathering a
huge amount of information with your eyes, and so in
(18:11):
order for your conscious mind to make any sense of this,
your brain has to basically break it down into component parts. Um. So,
when your brain perceives a long vertical area of brown
with green blotches connected to you see a tree. And
when your brain sees many, many, many individual trees, you
see a forest. And I thought this is a great example. Um.
He also talks about this idea of continuity. So if
(18:34):
you see a stack of twelve blocks and they're all red,
you perceive that as one unit. Break up the colors,
you know, the bottom is blue, the top is red.
Then you see two units then begin to vary alternate
those colors, and you begin to see a whole bunch
of different units. And this is when you see that
pattern of camouflaged doing the same thing. Yeah, the difference
between seeing even a you know, I'm discolored, say human head,
(18:58):
human torso legs, are you know, the basic human form
break that up even a little bit, and it takes
a little more time for us to assemble that into
something sensible. I mean, we've all had those moments where
you see something a little strange and you end up
doing like a double take, even a triple take, or
it just takes you a second to realize what is
that person doing? Is that a person is that you
know what's going on there? And that's kind of the
same effect. It uh creates a little lag time, um
(19:22):
in figuring out exactly what you're looking at. And the
reason for this is because when we've talked about this
a million times, our brains are so well trained at
creating patterns, seeking out patterns, so breaking up patterns is
really important. And then also um this idea of contour
of following the pattern too, So that's another thing that
(19:42):
these modeled effects from camera does really well. So if
you are a soldier out in a field, what you
want is the curve of your body line to then
mimic the curve of the landscapes, and that's what that
that modeled pattern is doing. Yeah, I mean, and of
course the obvious your chain in colors to fit the
colors of the environment. In some cases you're you know,
(20:03):
you even see like snipers that use bits of of
the flora on their their their outfit. Maybe the fine
up too. I don't know if they get get a
little super clue happy there, but no, that would that
would be a terrible idea. But but also it's important
that you have elements of Cubism going on here as well. Um,
early twentieth century you have guys like Pablo Picasto, uh,
(20:25):
and they're going around in there breaking things down into
tiny cubes. You know, they're they're they're pixelating it all out,
smashing it together, and and that is uh, that's basically
what's going on in some of these camouflage patterns there,
attempting to do that to something without actually taking the
human body and breaking into a bunch of piece. Well,
(20:46):
and we've talked about this too, that that one of
the reasons why art moves us so much is that
it takes something that's familiar to us and makes it
unfamiliar and then yet understood again. Um. And so it's
that that idea where you're breaking apart something that you
don't expect um and it works really well. And in
in this scenario of warfare, to an extent, you're turning
(21:08):
soldiers into art on the battlefield, you're turning ships into
art in a way. Yeah. Um, I want to so
what do you do when you can't camo? When camo
is not enough? Right, Well, I mean certainly you can
use decoys in this direction. Um. I mean we we
saw that in uh Normandy. I mean where we you know,
(21:30):
we actually have uh actually forcing the enemy to look
in the wrong direction through the use of of a
false preparations for invasion. Um. Are these the cities that
they created the sort of like the flimsy structures? Yeah? Yeah,
you know, you create fake tanks even in circumstances, you know,
(21:51):
or or fake ships, something to force the enemy to
look look away from the thing that is most important. Yeah.
I read something like in the Battle of Britain, Allied
forces that have more than five hundred false cities, um, bases,
airfields and shipyards. And this this is brilliant, right because,
as you say, it redirects um the enemy and the
(22:13):
enemies using their resources, perhaps even bombing these false cities. Um.
But the problem is these days, in our modern times,
is that now we have um, very telltale signs of
our presence, right, we have signatures exactly. There are more
ways to see something than to see it. We can
(22:33):
use thermal imaging to detect the heat heat source of something.
We can use a sonar to use sound to see
something for us. Radar sees thing of you basically feels
things in the air for us and let us know
that they are present. And you have enhanced imaging to um.
But you know, we can try to thwart this to
some degree, like smoke screens or fog, and yet there's
(22:56):
always going to be some sort of movement that indicates
our presence. I also read a little bit about people
using basically dazzling techniques as face paint to mess with
facial recognition software. So that's interesting, like urban cammo of
the future. Yeah, exactly, because I mean it's kind of
like think of what do you call the disguise letters
(23:18):
the capture stuff on the internet. You know, it has
that that's sort of missed in front of it, and
they're sort of confused a little bit to keep a
eyes from eating it. Uh So it's that in a way,
it's kind of camouflaged well to break up what the
AI can see. We always talk about these dystopian futures.
And I can see that in terms of you know,
if if if privacy issues went completely awry and you
(23:41):
wanted to, you know, have some sort of modicum of
privacy that you might do that you might paint up
your face. What's you're thinking about? Pattern recognition? You know,
I'm talking again and again about how that is core
to how humans behave and and and then we're talking
about taking that knowledge and using it to ensure survival.
So we know that you're the predator or is out there,
and then it's using um pattern recognition to see where
(24:03):
we are and then attacks. You also read accounts when
when people are being advised about public safety, say someone's
a diplomat in a in a hostile city. Uh, they
often advised them, you know, don't don't get patterns going,
you know, because that's if if every day at eight
o'clock exactly and you're forming a pattern, you're you're opening
(24:26):
yourself up to to attack that way of potential kidnapping
or what have you. UM. So if to whatever extent
you can, you can jam that pattern recognition on the
part of your enemies, Uh, the better off you are
in terms of survival. Now, the other interesting thing is
that the human brain can train itself, or we can
(24:46):
train our brains to to see through some of these ruses.
Right are you talking m R. I, Yeah, yeah, I'm
talking about This is something that's apparently going on here
in Georgia at the Medical College of Georgia at Georgia
Haill Sciences University. And this involves breaking camouflage. The idea
(25:09):
that and this is something that people have done for
a while, the military has done for a while. You
get snipers or whoever out there. You you get them
out in the field and you start showing them some
camouflage things and it forces them to actually you get
used to it. You begin to see through it a
little more. So you see the trick enough times you
you know how it works, right, and you cut down
on the amount of processing time required to see through
(25:31):
the misdirection and the and the breaking of continuity. Um.
So in this uh, this particular study, though, they flash
a series of camouflage pictures on a computer screen, providing
about half a second after each spot um to see
things like like a face and a sea of mushrooms,
things like that. So some of it's a little you know,
it's not just a camou pattern. And then then they
(25:53):
do this deal with like a green light signals a
correct answer, red light signals and incorrect answer, and they
the person is learning, yeah, the first learning as they're going.
And they find that an hour of daily training in
this kind of computer environment versus a field environment, um
in as little as two weeks results in proficiency for
six of the mostly college and graduate school students that
(26:15):
signed after this training. So um, So that's interesting. The
idea that then in the future, the future soldier will
have had virtual training in breaking camouflage. But presumably this
is useful for sniper, right, yes, especially for sniper or
special forces kind of scenario. But but where it gets
gets interesting here is that you know, obviously it's a
(26:38):
we're gonna lab, we're studying how people were breaking camouflage.
Let's go ahead and get some fm R eyes in there,
look into the brain and watch some fluids flow around. Right,
So they they were able to corner it to a
Two regions of the temporal lobe found on either side
of the brain, and there are areas that are involved
in speech and vision. One region is called the feast
(26:59):
of form gyrus and This plays a role in facial
recognition and lights up when people become experts at recognizing
certain objects such as a particular bird species or you
know somebody that's an expert on knots or flags, cars,
car make Yeah. Yeah, the kind of person that can
look at me like, uh, she was in such and
(27:20):
such a movie and she directed, you know, whatever your
thing is. That's the area of the brain that that
maybe lighting up. Um. The parts of the brain involved
in camera recognition, though they vary with the object of
the attention. For example, your ability to easily recognize the
car doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to be great
at understanding camouflage. But but they do see some correlation
(27:43):
there between between those parts of the grant and the
brain and breaking the camouflage. Also, doesn't it wasn't there
some sort of mentioned that even if you're a really
good game hunter, that doesn't mean that you would necessarily
be great at being a military slick. Yeah, skills don't
often overlap perfectly, so it's very specialized. So that's the
(28:03):
that'll be interesting to see what is extrapolated from that
study in the long run, you know, what they can
learn about that sort of specialization. It's interesting in speaking
of you know, the fact that that that expert snipers
are not always good at a hunting game. I remember
reading that like tail gunners and uh ball tret gunners
in World War two Arab bombers, and they're training people
(28:26):
for that. They found that the game hunters were often
better at that because they they had grown accustomed to
leading a target, and so they were better to shoot
at like say, you know it's a loofwoff up airplane,
a mattressment or something moving across the sky because I
having to lead it slightly to hit it with those
uh those those bullets. Okay, interesting, Okay, So of course
(28:51):
there's going to be a future of CAMA. Yes, um,
you know, like you say, we're in an age where
our technology allows us to see things in these various ways.
We can you can we can use thermal imaging to
detect the heat of a person or the heat of
an engine. So we're we're already working on cooling methods,
and we're already employing cooling methods to to make say
a ship appear less hot out on the sea. And
(29:13):
and interestingly enough, you also see the same thing and
grow houses, Um right, because you don't want to see
the smoke, you don't want to see the exhaust coming
out right. Um yeah, I wrote an article on grow houses.
Did we do a podcast on this? Maybe that was
the olden days? But um, but you have situation, you know,
you have situations where individuals and groups of individuals are
putting all this money into growing marijuana in an enclosed environment,
(29:37):
and they often become like spaceships because they're they're you know,
they're they're adjusting the atmosphere inside of this house. Uh,
They're they're powering up with lights so that these things grow,
you know, twenty four hour daylight, and then they're having
to worry about outsiders finding it. Um to a certain degree,
other criminals but especially law enforcement, and law enforcement just
(29:57):
gets smarter and smarter. They're looking into how much hour
is a grow house consuming, um, you know, who's coming,
who's going. But also thermal imaging, because you're gonna you're
gonna have a lot of heat going on in that
house from all those lights. So you have seen situations
where the criminals that are trying to grow this marilina
(30:18):
in a grow house will use sort of double walls,
so they'll have UM, they'll have their they'll have their
room that has the plants in an elevated heat, and
then you'll have this chamber that is cooled, and then
you'll have the wall so that that will disrupt the
ability to to see all the thermal activity inside the house.
So with a ship, they're basically taking that exhaust um
(30:41):
and then running it through the steawater to cool it
off so you don't see that to exhaust plume of
thermal heat. Yeah, and I've also heard about the materials
too that UM will actually help to keep excess heat
from escaping UM. And presumably this is used in clothing,
but also on tanks. I've seen them us on tanks
(31:02):
as well. So it really is now a game of
you know, these these sort of biometric measures that we're
trying to control. Yeah, at least in terms of not
trying to give ourselves away. UM. I like this idea
of smart camouflage, the outer coverings there that will at
least at some point alter themselves based on computer analysis
of changing surroundings. It sounds very futuristic. I'm loving it.
(31:26):
I just wonder when it's going to come into play
and what exactly it will be. Yeah, I mean it's
gonna be something similar to I mean the idea that
you could change the color of your car at any moment. Uh,
you know, push a button, you want it red, you
want it green, you want it blue, and you just
you just pus a button and it changes. Um, it's
gonna be something like that, except it's going to be
tied into smart technology, so that essentially, like even if
(31:48):
you were limited to those some of those designs we
talked about at the start of the program, Uh, it
might be said something as simple as, um, you know,
imagine you have a little sensor on your clothing and
it x whether this is an environment that is more
of a woodland camouflage environment or a six colored desert environment,
and then it'll shift accordingly. Now, the more outlandish examples
(32:11):
of future camouflage, of course, involved bending light, and they
involved invisibility or the insility cloak that's come up before
a lot in the medium. And we have an article
on this that I've I've worked on along with at
least one other rider, have tinkered with it because we're
constantly updating it because there's always some sort of new
quote unquote invisibility cloak technology coming around, and the article
(32:32):
is called how the invisibility the invisibility cloaks work. The
schemes for this very there's there are some very sort
of crude schemes that involve using a video camera and
projecting what's behind you on the front of you, which
is is very limited and clunky, but could potentially be
used especially with especially with with like theay of building
(32:54):
or something, you know, something stationary, something stationary. Likewise, you
have a number of experiments that involve the bending of
light um sometimes you know, using nanomaterials to recreate what
happens in a mirage to hide an object, basically making
to where light waves move around it so that you
you end up seeing, uh, maybe a distortion of what
(33:17):
is behind the object rather than the object itself. And
they're also nanoparticle um experiments that have have tested this
ability to bend a sound as well, so that you
won't hear the object. But these these tests um are
all taking place at a very small scale, often not
only two dimensions, so it's not something that's uh that's
(33:37):
necessarily feel ready right now, and it's certainly something we
could talk about for a whole other podcast too, so
you're only you're only getting your toes wet in invisibility
cloak here, but suffice to say that we're working on it.
There's also something that I recently read. Researchers from the
University of Bristol have created artificial muscles that can be
transformed at a flick of a switch to mimic the
(33:59):
camouflaging ability ease of creatures like squid and zebrafish. Yeah,
cuttlefish right. This this you know, near automatic, complete transformation
of the color of the skin and the texture. Researchers
are trying to reproduce these techniques in smart clothing to
trigger these same tricks, and this is interesting. The smart
(34:19):
clothing is made of soft, stretchy artificial muscles and are
based on specialist cells called chroma chromato force that are
found in amphibians, fish, reptiles, um and the color changes
and these guys, these organisms can be triggered by changes
in mood and temperatures, so they're trying to create the
same such of circumstances for this clothing. And the fast
(34:41):
expansion of squids muscles is mimicked by using dia electric elastomers.
Smart materials made of polymer which are connected to an
electric circuit and then expand when voltage is applied, and
then they returned through original shape when they're short circuited.
So of course this is dependent on having some sort
(35:02):
of motherboarder, so something that's going to trigger this. But
it's an intriguing idea that the material that you're wearing
could actually expand and to a certain extent and sound
like a weird biomechanical HRG. You're kind of a suit that. Yeah,
I wish you get second skin that that could monitor
the environment and then change accordingly. Um. I think that's
(35:25):
really cool. Um. But I think is most important here
is that actually the camouflage snaf foo that we talked
about at the beginning is being addressed. This five billion
dollar snaf foo that that wasn't really effective, but it does, Boy,
it does underline. You know, that story raises the question
(35:47):
how can you spend five billion dollars on camouflage? And
it's important to note that five billion wasn't only the
design of it, but also the physical production on it. Right,
So it's so it wasn't just let's pay these guys
five billion dollars design, No, they're also um rolling it out.
But but still a lot of money goes into this
because a lot of thought goes into it, a lot
of science goes into it, and uh, and a lot
(36:08):
of skill. It's not just a situation of hey, give
me some green and some brown, because these guys are
fighting in a green and brown world. Well, I was
thinking that you know, um, nearly a hundred years ago
this camouflage was revolutionized or actually created, so it's sort
of you know, past due time here to actually have
another sort of revolution in terms of the materials camlution. Uh,
(36:33):
knowing everything that we have available to us, you do
I think that you know, these sort of smart skins
um are going to happen tomorrow. Probably not because the
technology is so new, But I'm glad that there is
some focus now at least on what we currently have
available for soldiers. I think it's really important that people
start thinking about the future of that and what could
(36:54):
make them safer. Yeah, we should probably mention the Predator
movie real quick. Did you ever see any of this?
Is the Predator? Is this sort of like sees this
creature in my head and it's it's got crazy long
tangled hair. Yeah, he's got like dreadlocks and crab face.
And in the first film he fought Arnold Swartzenegger and
his muscled up friends. Yes, okay, and uh, and there
(37:16):
was an interesting It was always a fun film to
watch when you're a kid, even though it's not really
a kids movie. But I certainly watched it when I
was younger and and was really into it. Um, but
it's uh, it's you know, it's a film where you
have an alien that's using advanced camouflage technology to you know,
so one of these light bending sort of technologies that
(37:36):
we were talking about, you know, looming in our future.
And then there is a scene where it's using thermal
imaging to hunt Arnold. And then Arnold accidentally survives an
encounter with a creature by coating himself in mud, which
at least in the film, is effective to mask his
thermal signature. So the creature ends up looking right at
(37:58):
him but doesn't see him because he can't see the
heat that he's admitting, which seems unlikely if he was
such a sophisticated alien. Well, talk about unlikely. Then the
next thing Arnold does is he gets some sticks together
and makes an extremely powerful longbow out of them. So well, yeah,
it's because he's Arnold. Yeah, that's still it's one of
those films where Arnold does get his butt kicked the
(38:20):
entire film, and I forget of your survives or not.
He sort of survives, I think, but it's it's kind
of a it's not it's not one of these Bruce
Lee situations where Bruce Lee just kicks about the entire
time and you're like, wow, there's not really any thrill
going on here at all. You know. It would be
great is if every Arnold sourceing of film at the end,
that would the last scene would always be like a
(38:42):
part of his face peeling off and then like, you know,
the machinery underneath, because someone could just fix that for
every single film. Okay, I mean especially figured in in comedies. Yeah, yeah, yes,
his next Danny de Vito picture. Well, hey, us, so
that's that's camouflage for you. Um, I should probably Carl,
(39:04):
our actual robot over here. Carl, Carl, his name is Arnold.
I thought you just called him. You said call him
him over and I was like, did you rename our
robot without talking to I just transformed formed Carl into
it kind of like Carl, I gotta say, all right, well,
we received a lot of cool emails regarding some of
(39:25):
our more movie based stuff recently. Um, we'll not really
well some of this movie, Like our horror episode, we're
talking about what horror does to the brain, how we
perceive a horror movie, and how it affects us. And
this was a great little Facebook share here from a
listener by the name of Terra. Tera writes and it says,
just listen to the episode on horror and loved it.
I've been a horror fan for as long as I
(39:45):
can remember, and like you, Julie, when my son was born,
I went off at a bit and uh and sort
of felt like, we MG, that could be my son
being ripped apart growing up. This is where the email
gets offen though. Growing up I befriended Freddie if that's possible,
and would go to sleep watching Elm Street and would
put on my Freddie glove if I had nightmares. Oddly
(40:07):
not about Freddie. You have another quote unquote monster was
in my dream, Like Jason, Freddie would come and kill
him and then we'd go hang out. Um. Another time
I went to an into a haunted house and there
was a Freddie in there, and I stood and started
talking to the guy. Uh, and as another group came through,
he grabbed me up onto his stage as a prop
(40:27):
while they went past. Sadly, nothing in film scares me anymore.
It's all been done. It's all predictable. The only thing
that it scared me in the last past fifteen years
has been Blair Witch because it was all left to
your imagination as I read the book with all the
police reports, et cetera before it came out. Anyway, great podcast,
and that's a phenomenal little account there. I love that
(40:49):
Freddie was frutalism, yeah, you know, yeah against other evil.
That's uh, that's that's pretty neat. I mean, it's it's
also interesting when you think of when you're thinking in
terms of dreams and and just sort of tinkering with
your mind a bit in terms of how you think
about things. Um okay, because you essentially she's turning turning
(41:13):
Freddy into this, uh, this point of strength, this kind
of totem, you know, this kind of a spirit animal,
really like her spirit animals, Freddy Krueger. Um. And if
if she were in a Freddie Krueger movie, if her character,
she would essentially use Freddy Krueger against Freddy Krueger, which
is which is kind of okay. Well, so now, of
course we need to know from people what their spirited
(41:35):
animals are in terms of horror figures. Yeah, what is yours? Oh?
In terms of horror figures? Um? Oh, I don't know.
I had a dream other that where really Scott wasn't it.
He's not really a correct creature per se. But there's
is there like one creature some sort of um, I
(41:55):
don't know, is there there's there someone who's much like
Freddie that you would be like, hey, you can with me,
you can be my my wing man. I don't Gammer
I guess I love camera. He's on my desk. He's
a giant, you know, giant Japanese turtle. He's a friend
of children. He shoots fire out of his mouth. It's
a good guy. So, and I'm pretty confident in Gammera's
ability that's in me against most things. And he's kind
(42:16):
of like he's also like he's the great turtle you
know on the back he carries the world kind of thing. Boy,
are you go being deep again? Well, you think about it,
and you can come back with one too the next time.
When someone writes us in with their horror movie Spirit Animals, Okay,
we should probably go with that. I have a whole
stack of emails, but I'll get to some more in
(42:37):
the next episode. Um. But anyway, if you guys want
to share something with us, if you want to share
your horror movie, um, spirit animal If you have some
thoughts about CAMO. I know we have some listeners in
the military, um, and then and other listeners who are
at least you know, really into military themes and military subjects. Uh,
let us know what you think. What's your tech on
on on CAMO, and what's your favorite Camo from either
(43:00):
modern or historical armed forces. We'd love to hear from you.
You can find us on Facebook where we are Stuff
to Blow Your Mind, and you can also find us
on Twitter where we are blow the Mind. And you
can always drop us a line at Blew the Mind
at Discovery dot com. Be sure to check out our
new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuffwork
(43:24):
staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities
of tomorrow.
Welcome to stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, welcome to stuff to Blow your mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and my name is Julie Douglas. Camouflage.
We've all seen it right A couple of years back, um,
when with my wife up into the rural hills of Georgia,
(00:26):
she had a photo assignment where she had to take
a picture of this, uh, this lawyer's um like rich
game room, like this big basketball sized room just filled
with uh safari animals that he bagged on trips. Did
you call it his man cave? No, I forget what
he called it. It was just his u or something. No,
it was it's just his trophy room. You know. It
(00:48):
was enormous and it was like the center of the house.
It was the center of his life clearly. And I
mean he even there were there were dictys there, you know,
a little the little antelope type creatures with a little
bitty horns and they jumped yeah yeah yeah, and uh,
I mean they're so cute. But he'd like bagged like
three of these things, like who goes in safari and
(01:09):
bags addicted. It's just there a giant panda head for
it because where you go after that, you know, I
mean just about some of these animals were kind of tiny,
you know, they were the larger. It never like the
you know, the big what is it the Big five?
I think it is. You know, he had all those,
but then all these other animals and small diptics. But
(01:29):
that's that's not really this podcast is not about small ditics. No,
it is about camouflage. And on the way up there,
we had stopped. We had to stop and get a
bite to eat, and they're your options are limited once
you leave Atlanta and uh and venture out into the wild.
So we ended up going to like a what was it.
It wasn't like it was like a long Horn steakhouse.
(01:50):
I think it was. It was. It was the best
option that we had at the time. And so we
go there and there's a there's a family there and
they have a baby dressed in camouflage, and they're you know,
passing the baby back and forth, and it seemed just
really reckless because what if that baby, uh touches the
ground and then walks a little ways off into the woods,
you'd never see it again. Like it just completely blend in.
(02:12):
Even if you set the baby down on the grass
and it goes still on you. Where'd it go? But yeah,
but you know what, maybe that baby has been trained
and that baby would climb a tree and then jump
on you. That's yes, everybody has different parenting um agendas.
You know in first rule of parenting, you do not
(02:32):
judge other parents. All right, well, I won't judge their
their camouflaging with their infant. I just hope that he
or she didn't get away into that. I agree, is
that it's a concern. I can see that. I can
see how you guys were like, whoa, But okay, so
it was like a camouflage jumper. How much can you
conceivably spending a camouflage jumper? It's like what five dollars,
(02:53):
ten dollars maybe twenty tops? Right, Um, Yet if you're
the U. S. Military, you can spend a phenomenal amount
of money on camouflage, about five billion. Yeah. This is this, Uh.
I think you called it the camo fail. Yeah, the
cameo fail. Uh. Specifically, it involves something called Universal Camouflage Pattern,
(03:14):
which came out in two thousand four. Yeah, and any
military listeners will probably be, well, you are familiar with
this obviously intimately, Um, this is the pattern that has
been out since two thousand and four, and the U. S.
Army finally made the admission this year that this pattern
is not really effective at doing its job, namely camouflaging
the soldier. This is about how it went down in
(03:36):
terms of modern US camouflage history. What was the predominant
fashion there? What shoulder pads and uh yeah, big shoulder pads,
I don't know, big hair there, right, And if you
were in the US military in the U. S. Army,
woodland camouflage was the classic pattern of the day. Um,
(03:56):
we're talking black, brown, green, and tan all of this
and smudges and a meepal like shapes. All right, you know,
good stuff for the woods. Roll on new fashions. What's
what's fashionable in the nineties, Well, this is the this
is the grunge period, right yeah, yeah, okay, so maybe
this would translate to the Gulf War as being what
(04:19):
they called the cookie pattern, right yeah. This is the
six colored desert camo pattern, also known as chocolate chips
because it's tan, it's brown. You've got some of those
ambo type shapes of both colors going on there with
flecks of this black chocolate chips stuff throughout. So and
we're spending started spending a lot of time in the
desert in the nineties. So there you go. Then two
(04:42):
thousand three, three Colored Desert comes out nineteen, actually came
out two, but we used it on up through two
thousand three. UM, and in two thousand three it saw
wide US in the U S. And it's desert operations.
And this is a tan with a chocolate topped green
blotch kind of thing going on. Yeah, it's kind of
pale green and just a teeny bit of black in it.
(05:04):
And then comes Universal cameo two thousand four, and we're
gonna explain just a little bit about where this one
came from. But um, they rolled this out in Iraq, Afghanistan,
and then it also used as a default throughout the
rest of the military. And it's it's pixelated. It looks
like something from an eight bit video game, and it's
kind of different shades of gray. Yeah, and it does
(05:25):
not really prove all that effective, and yet it's been
in use for eight years. Yeah. This goes back to
problems that we ran into when we UM, when we
first started getting really heavily invested again in a desert
combat environments. Okay, so we were we were using the
three colored desert, but we didn't have enough stuff to
(05:47):
go around it was. It was decked out in that
particular particular camera. So you'd have guys who were given
this three three colored desert camo, but then they had
dark packs strapped on top of that, and it was
a uh essentially supposedly like like a bull bull's eye
because mismatch pieces, right, mismatch pieces, and it makes you vulnerable.
So US Army says, all right, let's do this. Let's
(06:10):
let's let's get this going. Let's invest some funds, let's
test some patterns, and that's how it's generally, it generally
goes at this point. Um, you don't just pick something
off a wall at the home depot. Though an article
I read did involved some soldiers to the home depot
and having them look at colors. I believe that was
the Marines uniform and they took a swatch from Ralph
(06:31):
Laurence collection. It was a brown shade and they said, okay,
let's see this in this But of course there was
tons of research done and you know, this was just
one piece of it. Yeah, the marine one that you
mentioned was called mar pat and it first appeared in
two thousand two and and you had, you know, dozens
of candidates that were considered for this role. The Marines
(06:52):
from the sniper school at Quantico were involved in picking
out things for it. And it did have a pixelated
look to it. It had this kind of eight bit
sixteen bit kind of pixelated thing going on, and this
like pretty nifty to some people over at the U. S. Army, Right,
And as you said, there was a process that was
going on and they were testing a ton of patterns.
But the problem here, and this isn't an interview with
(07:12):
the Daily UM which talked about the story. I guess
about a week ago or so. Here in June UM
several Army researchers said Army Brass interfered in selection process
during the last round, letting looks in politics get in
the way of science. Yes, soups like something called desert
Brush was was actually um making its way to the top.
That was that was the one that people were leaning
(07:33):
to towards that was performing well in test. But then
Program Executive Officers Soldier, which is a program that that's
in charge of actually making the decisions here. They they
allegedly jumped the gun and picked UCP, that universal color
pattern that we mentioned earlier, and put it into production.
(07:54):
And this is what has been really troublesome for a
lot of military Um yeah, because what they essentially did
was that they actually I say, they picked you u CP,
but actually what they did is they said, well, let's
take the colors from Desert Brush, where you know you've done,
You've tested these colors. That's great, but we really like
this pixelated things. So take those colors, dump them into
this pixelated format and let's go with that. That way,
(08:18):
we'll we'll have your research, but we also have the
thing that I like and then that'll that'll be the
finished product, which kind of sounds to I mean, they're
they're giving into a trend. They're combining two different things.
Um It kind of strikes me as kind of a
pride and prejudice with zombies kind of factor where if you,
you know, take take two distinct elements combined it together,
it sounds good on paper, but in reality it wasn't
(08:41):
very rigorous and at least in the last steps, right,
and so they kind of shortcut the process and it
was some noncommissioned officers who complained to um UH, the
Representative John Murtha who took up the issue in two
thousand and nine. And finally today we have something else
that's come into play, and this is the multi CAAM.
(09:02):
This is I don't know if you could call it
a band aid fix, but in the interim, this is
a new pattern that's been introduced to try to fix
this problem that the u C p UM. It's kind
of a placeholder. Yeah, it's like, let's get U C
p out of here because it sucks. Let's get let's
get something usable. So multi caam is here until we
can actually finish up deciding and h implementing the camouflage
(09:25):
we actually want. Multicam is um. It's in keeping with
the previous brown green, tan designs, but with the kind
of a hint of Jackson Pollock to it. Yeah. Okay,
so I'm glad you brought up Pollock because here's the deal.
You know, we're not just talking about this five billion
dollar issue of this one uniform. We're actually talking about
the whole culture of camouflage and how it came into play.
(09:46):
And it turns out that artists are very much and
In fact, Cubism is very much responsible for camouflage patterns.
And if we go all the way back to the nine,
you'll see that the US created the American camouflage Corpse,
and and that enlisted rather core and listened to the
creative talents of renowned painter, sculptors and designers because they
realized that these artists were onto something in terms of cubism,
(10:10):
which you know, takes these scenes from real life and
then kind of breaks them apart in patterns, right, and
then reassembles them. That is essentially what these camouflage patterns
are doing as well. Camouflage, as the name implies, camouflage
of course, begins with the French. I believe it's French
for hidden cheese, is right, Uh, I don't know, I
(10:33):
may be wrong on that, but but no camouflage comes.
I wouldn't that made chemoa but that the French stuff
first adapted camouflage in ninet And I mean that alone's
kind of sounds surprising because animals, of course have been
doing it forever. I mean, camouflage is part of evolved
natural defense techniques. And certainly you can point to various
(10:56):
things in history in ancient history even where you can say, oh,
well this this particular force was using camouflage to some degree,
but certainly as far as modern armies go. I mean
this was modern armies were uniformed ordeals. It was it
was about knowing who was who on the battlefield. It
wasn't as much about about blending in and beIN disguising yourself.
(11:18):
M it was about looking sharp prior to that. And
when the French started using camouflage, they were really more
concerned with camouflaging equipped. They're like, all right, let's keep
this is an important piece of equipment. Let's make sure
the enemy doesn't see it. And then it spreads out
from there to say, hey, we could actually camouflage ourselves
and that would be beneficial as well. Yeah. Actually, there's
a woman named Claudia T. Covert. Claudia T. Covert, like
(11:41):
this is the best name for this. She is a
librarian and expert on the history of military camouflage at
the Rhode Island School of Design and Providence, and she
says that they were they're actually using camouflage to decoy
log so that snipers could line them, or painting decorative
sheets of canvas to look like roads so they're using
it for that type of such refuge, but not necessarily
(12:02):
on their person, right, And so you know in NT
nine you have the artist and naturalist Abbot there and
he wrote the Father of Modern Camouflage. Yeah, he wrote
Concealing Coloration in the Animal Kingdom, and he observed two
ways that animals camouflaged themselves in wild blend and dazzle.
And we'll talk about dazzle a bit more, but that's
kind of a disruptive pattern that creates confusion. Like it
(12:24):
basically comes down to you have animals that have dark
backs and white underbellies. Which it's when I think of that,
I can't help but think of of the of the
prospect of of soldiers running around the battlefield essentially in
uh like bunny costumes you know, where they're painted up,
Like what if they had actually taken that literally they're like, Wow,
these rabbits have figured out, let's get some rabbit costumes
(12:45):
on that on that battlefield. But maybe that was the
first idea. You know, Well, their notices that you know,
when they used this in this way, it's not just
so that their deli is cute and it looks like
it needs to be scratched at all. But it's because
when the when the sun hits their backs and the
darkness hits the underbelly, the animals become flat and they
(13:07):
will end in by counterbalancing shadows. So this is uh,
this is dazzling in action. Yeah, and again we'll talk
about that in a little bit, but um, you know
that's the idea though, of camouflage really didn't come into
play until General um Douglas MacArthur, who decided that he
wanted a hundred fifty thousand jungle kits um, including some
(13:27):
still experimental uniforms. So previous to that it was used.
But you know, World War two is when we really
saw it come into play. Yeah, avoided whatever. I mean.
The the camouflage of of the Second World War is
pretty amazing. Um My, my father was a huge World
War Two junkie, I guess, and uh, and so I
grew up always looking at these various various drawings and
(13:50):
illustrations of especially a German and US infantry camouflage designs,
and it it just it's crazy to so much of it,
and some of it is that kind of dazzling effect
where it's it's all about like like lightning bolt kind
of shapes that kind of break up to sorrient your eyes,
sorient your eyes, and just break up the continuity of
the human form um. So so just like any when
(14:14):
you actually start looking at CAMA, it's easily to just
sort of think of camera and be like camouflage. But
when you really start looking at all the patterns, even
if you don't know anything about it, you quickly realize,
you know, there's something going on here, like a lot
of people are putting a lot of thoughts into the
creation of these various textiles. Yeah, and let's let's take
a quick break and when we come back, let's talk
(14:34):
about a bit more about camera basics, um and this
thing that we call it dazzle. All right, so we're back,
and yeah, we're gonna talk a little bit aboutdazzling. Not
to be confused with the dazzling, because you don't want
to be dazzle of battleship. I mean, it might be
partially effective, but it's although like if you are a
(14:55):
contestant on you know, like pubblers and tierras, that might well,
actually that's don't really that's the opposite of camouflage, right, Bedazzling. Yeah,
I'm trying to think of how you can bedazzle yourself.
I guess the opposite of bedazzling would be when you
take tiny shells and you glue them to something, you know,
like you encounter at the gift shops on the Gulf coast. Right,
there's some sort of rustic bedazzling. Yeah. Yeah, thebably could
(15:17):
do that to a battleship, to be like, oh, it's
a battleship. No, it's a it's a bunch of shells,
it's a giant shell. Often you'll see the Google eyes
to what you've been used in that Google e blew
a bunch of shells something some Google eyes on it,
and you've got yourself nicknack. But but when we're talking
about we're talking about dazzling, which you really need to
see an image of this, and I'll make sure that
(15:38):
we have an image of this on the blog post
that goes up with this episode. But the easiest way
to describe it is imagine getting yourself some blacks, some whites,
some dark, some light colors and painting a battleship up
like a lightning bolt zebra. Yeah yeah, yeah, yes, that's
very good. That kind of design description um. Yeah. And
(16:00):
the reason for this is because you can't hide a
hulking piece of metal floating on the horizon. Right. Yeah.
It's one thing to kmo a tank, to Camo and jacket. Um.
Even to Cammo an airplane is a simpler experiment that
make it recede into the background. Yeah. But but a ship,
there's not a lot you can do. People are gonna
see it. So what you could But what you can
do is by adding this to these dazzle elements, you can,
(16:23):
for instance, make it difficult for U boat to tell
which direction it's going in. Yeah, and this is really
important too. I'm glad you brought up the U boat.
This is really the impetus for Dazzle because in y
five British ships were sunk by German U boats over
an eight month period, and so they realized that they
needed to do something. Um and naval officer and artist
(16:45):
Norman Wilkinson convinced the British government to use the principles
of Cubism and Dazzle to try to at least throw
off the direction that the torpedo might be heading at
least by a couple of degrees, which you know, would
save lives. Yeah, all you have to do is get
it a little little off. And uh well, first of all,
the morale boosted on the ships, which which should come
(17:07):
as no surprised because you just turned this dreary, drab
ship into uh, I mean, it looks like a party vessel. Now,
it looks like a piece of abstract art. It's taken
to the high seas under the command of you know,
Commander Dolly or something. But well, yeah, and you're harnessing
the lightning and zebras, the power of both of them. Yeah,
but more importantly, after they started using the dazzling effects,
(17:29):
fewer than one percent of American merchant ships that were
dazzled were lost. So that's pretty impressive. Yeah. And so
the cool thing about that is paint is cheap. That's
the other thing to my mind. I mean, it takes
a little time to paint up a ship, but in
the grand scheme of things, that is a really cheap
method of defense. And this dazzle effect, again is disorienting
the eye, so if you're you're aiming at it, you
(17:51):
can't quite figure out if it's heading east or west.
And again this is the key to its success. Um
let's talk about something called component part and this is
from Tom Harris's article How Camouflage Works. He's talking about
one of the reasons why it works really well is
that when you look at a scene, you're gathering a
huge amount of information with your eyes, and so in
(18:11):
order for your conscious mind to make any sense of this,
your brain has to basically break it down into component parts. Um. So,
when your brain perceives a long vertical area of brown
with green blotches connected to you see a tree. And
when your brain sees many, many, many individual trees, you
see a forest. And I thought this is a great example. Um.
He also talks about this idea of continuity. So if
(18:34):
you see a stack of twelve blocks and they're all red,
you perceive that as one unit. Break up the colors,
you know, the bottom is blue, the top is red.
Then you see two units then begin to vary alternate
those colors, and you begin to see a whole bunch
of different units. And this is when you see that
pattern of camouflaged doing the same thing. Yeah, the difference
between seeing even a you know, I'm discolored, say human head,
(18:58):
human torso legs, are you know, the basic human form
break that up even a little bit, and it takes
a little more time for us to assemble that into
something sensible. I mean, we've all had those moments where
you see something a little strange and you end up
doing like a double take, even a triple take, or
it just takes you a second to realize what is
that person doing? Is that a person is that you
know what's going on there? And that's kind of the
same effect. It uh creates a little lag time, um
(19:22):
in figuring out exactly what you're looking at. And the
reason for this is because when we've talked about this
a million times, our brains are so well trained at
creating patterns, seeking out patterns, so breaking up patterns is
really important. And then also um this idea of contour
of following the pattern too, So that's another thing that
(19:42):
these modeled effects from camera does really well. So if
you are a soldier out in a field, what you
want is the curve of your body line to then
mimic the curve of the landscapes, and that's what that
that modeled pattern is doing. Yeah, I mean, and of
course the obvious your chain in colors to fit the
colors of the environment. In some cases you're you know,
(20:03):
you even see like snipers that use bits of of
the flora on their their their outfit. Maybe the fine
up too. I don't know if they get get a
little super clue happy there, but no, that would that
would be a terrible idea. But but also it's important
that you have elements of Cubism going on here as well. Um,
early twentieth century you have guys like Pablo Picasto, uh,
(20:25):
and they're going around in there breaking things down into
tiny cubes. You know, they're they're they're pixelating it all out,
smashing it together, and and that is uh, that's basically
what's going on in some of these camouflage patterns there,
attempting to do that to something without actually taking the
human body and breaking into a bunch of piece. Well,
(20:46):
and we've talked about this too, that that one of
the reasons why art moves us so much is that
it takes something that's familiar to us and makes it
unfamiliar and then yet understood again. Um. And so it's
that that idea where you're breaking apart something that you
don't expect um and it works really well. And in
in this scenario of warfare, to an extent, you're turning
(21:08):
soldiers into art on the battlefield, you're turning ships into
art in a way. Yeah. Um, I want to so
what do you do when you can't camo? When camo
is not enough? Right, Well, I mean certainly you can
use decoys in this direction. Um. I mean we we
saw that in uh Normandy. I mean where we you know,
(21:30):
we actually have uh actually forcing the enemy to look
in the wrong direction through the use of of a
false preparations for invasion. Um. Are these the cities that
they created the sort of like the flimsy structures? Yeah? Yeah,
you know, you create fake tanks even in circumstances, you know,
(21:51):
or or fake ships, something to force the enemy to
look look away from the thing that is most important. Yeah.
I read something like in the Battle of Britain, Allied
forces that have more than five hundred false cities, um, bases,
airfields and shipyards. And this this is brilliant, right because,
as you say, it redirects um the enemy and the
(22:13):
enemies using their resources, perhaps even bombing these false cities. Um.
But the problem is these days, in our modern times,
is that now we have um, very telltale signs of
our presence, right, we have signatures exactly. There are more
ways to see something than to see it. We can
(22:33):
use thermal imaging to detect the heat heat source of something.
We can use a sonar to use sound to see
something for us. Radar sees thing of you basically feels
things in the air for us and let us know
that they are present. And you have enhanced imaging to um.
But you know, we can try to thwart this to
some degree, like smoke screens or fog, and yet there's
(22:56):
always going to be some sort of movement that indicates
our presence. I also read a little bit about people
using basically dazzling techniques as face paint to mess with
facial recognition software. So that's interesting, like urban cammo of
the future. Yeah, exactly, because I mean it's kind of
like think of what do you call the disguise letters
(23:18):
the capture stuff on the internet. You know, it has
that that's sort of missed in front of it, and
they're sort of confused a little bit to keep a
eyes from eating it. Uh So it's that in a way,
it's kind of camouflaged well to break up what the
AI can see. We always talk about these dystopian futures.
And I can see that in terms of you know,
if if if privacy issues went completely awry and you
(23:41):
wanted to, you know, have some sort of modicum of
privacy that you might do that you might paint up
your face. What's you're thinking about? Pattern recognition? You know,
I'm talking again and again about how that is core
to how humans behave and and and then we're talking
about taking that knowledge and using it to ensure survival.
So we know that you're the predator or is out there,
and then it's using um pattern recognition to see where
(24:03):
we are and then attacks. You also read accounts when
when people are being advised about public safety, say someone's
a diplomat in a in a hostile city. Uh, they
often advised them, you know, don't don't get patterns going,
you know, because that's if if every day at eight
o'clock exactly and you're forming a pattern, you're you're opening
(24:26):
yourself up to to attack that way of potential kidnapping
or what have you. UM. So if to whatever extent
you can, you can jam that pattern recognition on the
part of your enemies, Uh, the better off you are
in terms of survival. Now, the other interesting thing is
that the human brain can train itself, or we can
(24:46):
train our brains to to see through some of these ruses.
Right are you talking m R. I, Yeah, yeah, I'm
talking about This is something that's apparently going on here
in Georgia at the Medical College of Georgia at Georgia
Haill Sciences University. And this involves breaking camouflage. The idea
(25:09):
that and this is something that people have done for
a while, the military has done for a while. You
get snipers or whoever out there. You you get them
out in the field and you start showing them some
camouflage things and it forces them to actually you get
used to it. You begin to see through it a
little more. So you see the trick enough times you
you know how it works, right, and you cut down
on the amount of processing time required to see through
(25:31):
the misdirection and the and the breaking of continuity. Um.
So in this uh, this particular study, though, they flash
a series of camouflage pictures on a computer screen, providing
about half a second after each spot um to see
things like like a face and a sea of mushrooms,
things like that. So some of it's a little you know,
it's not just a camou pattern. And then then they
(25:53):
do this deal with like a green light signals a
correct answer, red light signals and incorrect answer, and they
the person is learning, yeah, the first learning as they're going.
And they find that an hour of daily training in
this kind of computer environment versus a field environment, um
in as little as two weeks results in proficiency for
six of the mostly college and graduate school students that
(26:15):
signed after this training. So um, So that's interesting. The
idea that then in the future, the future soldier will
have had virtual training in breaking camouflage. But presumably this
is useful for sniper, right, yes, especially for sniper or
special forces kind of scenario. But but where it gets
gets interesting here is that you know, obviously it's a
(26:38):
we're gonna lab, we're studying how people were breaking camouflage.
Let's go ahead and get some fm R eyes in there,
look into the brain and watch some fluids flow around. Right,
So they they were able to corner it to a
Two regions of the temporal lobe found on either side
of the brain, and there are areas that are involved
in speech and vision. One region is called the feast
(26:59):
of form gyrus and This plays a role in facial
recognition and lights up when people become experts at recognizing
certain objects such as a particular bird species or you
know somebody that's an expert on knots or flags, cars,
car make Yeah. Yeah, the kind of person that can
look at me like, uh, she was in such and
(27:20):
such a movie and she directed, you know, whatever your
thing is. That's the area of the brain that that
maybe lighting up. Um. The parts of the brain involved
in camera recognition, though they vary with the object of
the attention. For example, your ability to easily recognize the
car doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to be great
at understanding camouflage. But but they do see some correlation
(27:43):
there between between those parts of the grant and the
brain and breaking the camouflage. Also, doesn't it wasn't there
some sort of mentioned that even if you're a really
good game hunter, that doesn't mean that you would necessarily
be great at being a military slick. Yeah, skills don't
often overlap perfectly, so it's very specialized. So that's the
(28:03):
that'll be interesting to see what is extrapolated from that
study in the long run, you know, what they can
learn about that sort of specialization. It's interesting in speaking
of you know, the fact that that that expert snipers
are not always good at a hunting game. I remember
reading that like tail gunners and uh ball tret gunners
in World War two Arab bombers, and they're training people
(28:26):
for that. They found that the game hunters were often
better at that because they they had grown accustomed to
leading a target, and so they were better to shoot
at like say, you know it's a loofwoff up airplane,
a mattressment or something moving across the sky because I
having to lead it slightly to hit it with those
uh those those bullets. Okay, interesting, Okay, So of course
(28:51):
there's going to be a future of CAMA. Yes, um,
you know, like you say, we're in an age where
our technology allows us to see things in these various ways.
We can you can we can use thermal imaging to
detect the heat of a person or the heat of
an engine. So we're we're already working on cooling methods,
and we're already employing cooling methods to to make say
a ship appear less hot out on the sea. And
(29:13):
and interestingly enough, you also see the same thing and
grow houses, Um right, because you don't want to see
the smoke, you don't want to see the exhaust coming
out right. Um yeah, I wrote an article on grow houses.
Did we do a podcast on this? Maybe that was
the olden days? But um, but you have situation, you know,
you have situations where individuals and groups of individuals are
putting all this money into growing marijuana in an enclosed environment,
(29:37):
and they often become like spaceships because they're they're you know,
they're they're adjusting the atmosphere inside of this house. Uh,
They're they're powering up with lights so that these things grow,
you know, twenty four hour daylight, and then they're having
to worry about outsiders finding it. Um to a certain degree,
other criminals but especially law enforcement, and law enforcement just
(29:57):
gets smarter and smarter. They're looking into how much hour
is a grow house consuming, um, you know, who's coming,
who's going. But also thermal imaging, because you're gonna you're
gonna have a lot of heat going on in that
house from all those lights. So you have seen situations
where the criminals that are trying to grow this marilina
(30:18):
in a grow house will use sort of double walls,
so they'll have UM, they'll have their they'll have their
room that has the plants in an elevated heat, and
then you'll have this chamber that is cooled, and then
you'll have the wall so that that will disrupt the
ability to to see all the thermal activity inside the house.
So with a ship, they're basically taking that exhaust um
(30:41):
and then running it through the steawater to cool it
off so you don't see that to exhaust plume of
thermal heat. Yeah, and I've also heard about the materials
too that UM will actually help to keep excess heat
from escaping UM. And presumably this is used in clothing,
but also on tanks. I've seen them us on tanks
(31:02):
as well. So it really is now a game of
you know, these these sort of biometric measures that we're
trying to control. Yeah, at least in terms of not
trying to give ourselves away. UM. I like this idea
of smart camouflage, the outer coverings there that will at
least at some point alter themselves based on computer analysis
of changing surroundings. It sounds very futuristic. I'm loving it.
(31:26):
I just wonder when it's going to come into play
and what exactly it will be. Yeah, I mean it's
gonna be something similar to I mean the idea that
you could change the color of your car at any moment. Uh,
you know, push a button, you want it red, you
want it green, you want it blue, and you just
you just pus a button and it changes. Um, it's
gonna be something like that, except it's going to be
tied into smart technology, so that essentially, like even if
(31:48):
you were limited to those some of those designs we
talked about at the start of the program, Uh, it
might be said something as simple as, um, you know,
imagine you have a little sensor on your clothing and
it x whether this is an environment that is more
of a woodland camouflage environment or a six colored desert environment,
and then it'll shift accordingly. Now, the more outlandish examples
(32:11):
of future camouflage, of course, involved bending light, and they
involved invisibility or the insility cloak that's come up before
a lot in the medium. And we have an article
on this that I've I've worked on along with at
least one other rider, have tinkered with it because we're
constantly updating it because there's always some sort of new
quote unquote invisibility cloak technology coming around, and the article
(32:32):
is called how the invisibility the invisibility cloaks work. The
schemes for this very there's there are some very sort
of crude schemes that involve using a video camera and
projecting what's behind you on the front of you, which
is is very limited and clunky, but could potentially be
used especially with especially with with like theay of building
(32:54):
or something, you know, something stationary, something stationary. Likewise, you
have a number of experiments that involve the bending of
light um sometimes you know, using nanomaterials to recreate what
happens in a mirage to hide an object, basically making
to where light waves move around it so that you
you end up seeing, uh, maybe a distortion of what
(33:17):
is behind the object rather than the object itself. And
they're also nanoparticle um experiments that have have tested this
ability to bend a sound as well, so that you
won't hear the object. But these these tests um are
all taking place at a very small scale, often not
only two dimensions, so it's not something that's uh that's
(33:37):
necessarily feel ready right now, and it's certainly something we
could talk about for a whole other podcast too, so
you're only you're only getting your toes wet in invisibility
cloak here, but suffice to say that we're working on it.
There's also something that I recently read. Researchers from the
University of Bristol have created artificial muscles that can be
transformed at a flick of a switch to mimic the
(33:59):
camouflaging ability ease of creatures like squid and zebrafish. Yeah,
cuttlefish right. This this you know, near automatic, complete transformation
of the color of the skin and the texture. Researchers
are trying to reproduce these techniques in smart clothing to
trigger these same tricks, and this is interesting. The smart
(34:19):
clothing is made of soft, stretchy artificial muscles and are
based on specialist cells called chroma chromato force that are
found in amphibians, fish, reptiles, um and the color changes
and these guys, these organisms can be triggered by changes
in mood and temperatures, so they're trying to create the
same such of circumstances for this clothing. And the fast
(34:41):
expansion of squids muscles is mimicked by using dia electric elastomers.
Smart materials made of polymer which are connected to an
electric circuit and then expand when voltage is applied, and
then they returned through original shape when they're short circuited.
So of course this is dependent on having some sort
(35:02):
of motherboarder, so something that's going to trigger this. But
it's an intriguing idea that the material that you're wearing
could actually expand and to a certain extent and sound
like a weird biomechanical HRG. You're kind of a suit that. Yeah,
I wish you get second skin that that could monitor
the environment and then change accordingly. Um. I think that's
(35:25):
really cool. Um. But I think is most important here
is that actually the camouflage snaf foo that we talked
about at the beginning is being addressed. This five billion
dollar snaf foo that that wasn't really effective, but it does, Boy,
it does underline. You know, that story raises the question
(35:47):
how can you spend five billion dollars on camouflage? And
it's important to note that five billion wasn't only the
design of it, but also the physical production on it. Right,
So it's so it wasn't just let's pay these guys
five billion dollars design, No, they're also um rolling it out.
But but still a lot of money goes into this
because a lot of thought goes into it, a lot
of science goes into it, and uh, and a lot
(36:08):
of skill. It's not just a situation of hey, give
me some green and some brown, because these guys are
fighting in a green and brown world. Well, I was
thinking that you know, um, nearly a hundred years ago
this camouflage was revolutionized or actually created, so it's sort
of you know, past due time here to actually have
another sort of revolution in terms of the materials camlution. Uh,
(36:33):
knowing everything that we have available to us, you do
I think that you know, these sort of smart skins
um are going to happen tomorrow. Probably not because the
technology is so new, But I'm glad that there is
some focus now at least on what we currently have
available for soldiers. I think it's really important that people
start thinking about the future of that and what could
(36:54):
make them safer. Yeah, we should probably mention the Predator
movie real quick. Did you ever see any of this?
Is the Predator? Is this sort of like sees this
creature in my head and it's it's got crazy long
tangled hair. Yeah, he's got like dreadlocks and crab face.
And in the first film he fought Arnold Swartzenegger and
his muscled up friends. Yes, okay, and uh, and there
(37:16):
was an interesting It was always a fun film to
watch when you're a kid, even though it's not really
a kids movie. But I certainly watched it when I
was younger and and was really into it. Um, but
it's uh, it's you know, it's a film where you
have an alien that's using advanced camouflage technology to you know,
so one of these light bending sort of technologies that
(37:36):
we were talking about, you know, looming in our future.
And then there is a scene where it's using thermal
imaging to hunt Arnold. And then Arnold accidentally survives an
encounter with a creature by coating himself in mud, which
at least in the film, is effective to mask his
thermal signature. So the creature ends up looking right at
(37:58):
him but doesn't see him because he can't see the
heat that he's admitting, which seems unlikely if he was
such a sophisticated alien. Well, talk about unlikely. Then the
next thing Arnold does is he gets some sticks together
and makes an extremely powerful longbow out of them. So well, yeah,
it's because he's Arnold. Yeah, that's still it's one of
those films where Arnold does get his butt kicked the
(38:20):
entire film, and I forget of your survives or not.
He sort of survives, I think, but it's it's kind
of a it's not it's not one of these Bruce
Lee situations where Bruce Lee just kicks about the entire
time and you're like, wow, there's not really any thrill
going on here at all. You know. It would be
great is if every Arnold sourceing of film at the end,
that would the last scene would always be like a
(38:42):
part of his face peeling off and then like, you know,
the machinery underneath, because someone could just fix that for
every single film. Okay, I mean especially figured in in comedies. Yeah, yeah, yes,
his next Danny de Vito picture. Well, hey, us, so
that's that's camouflage for you. Um, I should probably Carl,
(39:04):
our actual robot over here. Carl, Carl, his name is Arnold.
I thought you just called him. You said call him
him over and I was like, did you rename our
robot without talking to I just transformed formed Carl into
it kind of like Carl, I gotta say, all right, well,
we received a lot of cool emails regarding some of
(39:25):
our more movie based stuff recently. Um, we'll not really
well some of this movie, Like our horror episode, we're
talking about what horror does to the brain, how we
perceive a horror movie, and how it affects us. And
this was a great little Facebook share here from a
listener by the name of Terra. Tera writes and it says,
just listen to the episode on horror and loved it.
I've been a horror fan for as long as I
(39:45):
can remember, and like you, Julie, when my son was born,
I went off at a bit and uh and sort
of felt like, we MG, that could be my son
being ripped apart growing up. This is where the email
gets offen though. Growing up I befriended Freddie if that's possible,
and would go to sleep watching Elm Street and would
put on my Freddie glove if I had nightmares. Oddly
(40:07):
not about Freddie. You have another quote unquote monster was
in my dream, Like Jason, Freddie would come and kill
him and then we'd go hang out. Um. Another time
I went to an into a haunted house and there
was a Freddie in there, and I stood and started
talking to the guy. Uh, and as another group came through,
he grabbed me up onto his stage as a prop
(40:27):
while they went past. Sadly, nothing in film scares me anymore.
It's all been done. It's all predictable. The only thing
that it scared me in the last past fifteen years
has been Blair Witch because it was all left to
your imagination as I read the book with all the
police reports, et cetera before it came out. Anyway, great podcast,
and that's a phenomenal little account there. I love that
(40:49):
Freddie was frutalism, yeah, you know, yeah against other evil.
That's uh, that's that's pretty neat. I mean, it's it's
also interesting when you think of when you're thinking in
terms of dreams and and just sort of tinkering with
your mind a bit in terms of how you think
about things. Um okay, because you essentially she's turning turning
(41:13):
Freddy into this, uh, this point of strength, this kind
of totem, you know, this kind of a spirit animal,
really like her spirit animals, Freddy Krueger. Um. And if
if she were in a Freddie Krueger movie, if her character,
she would essentially use Freddy Krueger against Freddy Krueger, which
is which is kind of okay. Well, so now, of
course we need to know from people what their spirited
(41:35):
animals are in terms of horror figures. Yeah, what is yours? Oh?
In terms of horror figures? Um? Oh, I don't know.
I had a dream other that where really Scott wasn't it.
He's not really a correct creature per se. But there's
is there like one creature some sort of um, I
(41:55):
don't know, is there there's there someone who's much like
Freddie that you would be like, hey, you can with me,
you can be my my wing man. I don't Gammer
I guess I love camera. He's on my desk. He's
a giant, you know, giant Japanese turtle. He's a friend
of children. He shoots fire out of his mouth. It's
a good guy. So, and I'm pretty confident in Gammera's
ability that's in me against most things. And he's kind
(42:16):
of like he's also like he's the great turtle you
know on the back he carries the world kind of thing. Boy,
are you go being deep again? Well, you think about it,
and you can come back with one too the next time.
When someone writes us in with their horror movie Spirit Animals, Okay,
we should probably go with that. I have a whole
stack of emails, but I'll get to some more in
(42:37):
the next episode. Um. But anyway, if you guys want
to share something with us, if you want to share
your horror movie, um, spirit animal If you have some
thoughts about CAMO. I know we have some listeners in
the military, um, and then and other listeners who are
at least you know, really into military themes and military subjects. Uh,
let us know what you think. What's your tech on
on on CAMO, and what's your favorite Camo from either
(43:00):
modern or historical armed forces. We'd love to hear from you.
You can find us on Facebook where we are Stuff
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(43:24):
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