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April 6, 2010 18 mins

Here's the crazy thing about war: It breeds innovation. Since the dawn of civilization, human beings have searched for ways to kill each other. Join Robert and Allison as they explore the weapons that changed the world, from the horse to nuclear weapons.

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Yeah, welcome to stuff from the Science Lab from how
stuff works dot com. Hey, this is Alice Madam Milk
the science edit how staff works dot com. And this
is Robert Lamb, Science Rider at how stuff works dot com.

(00:21):
Today we're wandering into the world of weapons, and we're
talking about weapons that change the world. Yeah, and uh,
we're actually we're talking about this earlier. Um. The first
thing that springs to mind is the Simpsons, right, of course,
the Simpsons the tree House of Horror episode where King
and Kodos take over the world. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's
the one where they got to Morocco and the Simpsons

(00:43):
going to Morocco and they buy that severed monkey hand. Yes,
some monkey paw. That sounds much nicer than severed hand.
And then they'll make a wish, right, and Lisa wishes
for world peace, and poor Lisa backfires on her as
as most of Lisa's plans seem to do. They burn
and all the guns they you know, they other think
they launched weapons into the sun or something, you know. Uh,

(01:04):
So everybody's at peace, and that just makes us right
for the picking for the aliens who might end and
what enslave humanity with with what weapons, um, A slingshot
and a club I believe for the weapons of King
and Kotos. And then eventually the bar keep Mo manages
to drive them away with I believe a board with
a rusty nail in it. So these are examples of

(01:27):
game changing military technologies. Each one just drastically changes the
face of human or human slash alien conflict on the planet. Yeah,
in real life outside of the Simpsons, we've had a
few too, and uh they've shaped the way wars waged
and and one or or lost, as the case may be.
And when you look at these technologies, and when Robert

(01:48):
and I were talking about them before, they you kind
of see that they start to fall into um three categories. Right.
So you have the weapons that expand the battlefield, the
ones that you know make it bigger, you know, make
the theater of war much larger, spanning continents and seas
and all that. And you also these same weapons can
increase the speed of war. And then there are weapons

(02:10):
or technologies, as the case maybe that increase communication abilities
between and among troops and soldiers or their ability to
spa on enemy troops and movements and stuff like that.
And then of course there's firepower, good old fashioned firepower.
Now you might be thinking, well, why stuff in the
science lab talking about military and and uh and warfare. Well,

(02:34):
that's because basically the story of science is also the
story of war, because heaven forbid humans invent anything, um
that we can't turn around and kill the next guy with.
All right, Gid Robert, all right, thinking that, note, let's
let's head straight to I mean, what seems to me
the and what historians and to agree is like one
of the big game changing military technologies of all up

(02:56):
all time, talking of course about the horse. The horse
isn't necessarily something I would think about the technology, but
a technology indeed for our purposes. Yes, And nobody's nobody's
sure exactly when when when this this all began, But
they say that initial domestication of the horse uh was
probably um looked into just for food, just you know,

(03:18):
taming the animal so that you could butcher it and
need it. And at some point they started realizing, hey,
I need a haul this from point A to point
b um, so why don't I hook something up to
the horse. They started using them as draft animals, and
then at some point they're like, hey, I can uh,
I can you know, ride this into war? And they
started developing ways of using the horse in warfare, and

(03:39):
they think the earliest example of this is five thousand
years ago. Um. And there's evidence of of horse warfare
of popping up in Eurasia between four thousand and three
thousand BC. Are you able to ride a horse by
the way, no, my uh, my, my wife is uh
there's an accomplished writer and and love's horses. I have

(04:04):
not actually gotten on one yet. She keeps threatening to
make it happen or I think I would probably like
ride maybe a pony or like a or a cart
behind once with a camel. Yeah, like you set between
the humps. It was kind of like the saddle set
on top of the humps, some sort of zoo place.
I wrote an elephant. I did write an elephant, excellent,

(04:26):
but not a horse that I remember. So I have
elephants been used in ballot? Probably not? Yes, yes, yes, Hannibal,
oh yes yes, yes, okay, oh yeah, Lord of the Well,
Lord of the Rings. Didn't actually happen, but still um yeah.
Elephants in warfare are also pretty big, and in Thailand
they were used. Elephants have have helped helped humans out

(04:48):
in their in their warring. But anyway back to the horse.
Another important factor in what they call the equine revolution
is availability of food. And this is the trad transition
from hunter gathering to um to actual agriculture. All right,
before your hunting, gut hunter gatherers, you're gonna wage war
for what just you know, oh, you're picking berries and

(05:09):
from my shrubs. Right, But with the development of agriculture, um,
suddenly there's the ability to have a true surplus of food,
so you could actually attack the other guy and you'd
have something, you know, really tangible to steal. And the
horse about allows you to to not only get the drop,
but to run away with the food. All right, um,

(05:32):
because basically anybody can, in theory surprise another armed force.
You know, you can creep up there on your feet.
But then once you've surprised them, you're gonna have to
make your getaway. And you can only run so fast,
and the other guy I can run too, But the
horse allows you to make us us steady escape. And
from there this just kicks off a horse based arms race,
all right. They start attaching clumsy wheeled vehicles to the horses,

(05:56):
and these these evolved into chariots, which which were in
a way another game changing technology because these were the
basically the super weapons of the time. Um. Then you
had other advancements such as stirrups and saddles. The stirrup
was really important because you could actually set down in
the saddle, put your feet back into the stirrups and uh,
and put a lance under your arm and drive it

(06:17):
directly into the enemies. You have the force of the
horse behind the weapon. Um. Yeah, so the horse was
a major contributor to our ability to destroy one another unwittingly.
You can't blame it on the horses, definitely not. Mr
d is not to blame. From there, it kind of
goes along some more lines. Eventually we're able to develop

(06:41):
steam technology and eventually eventually becombustion engine. All right, And
this uh basically just picks up where the horse left off.
And it alters the speed and range of war all right.
We can travel um farther and we can travel faster
and uh. And it also changes you know, it also

(07:02):
changes what kind of supplies you're gonna need. It's no more,
no longer do you have to worry about feeding the
horses as well. You just have to keep the tank's
gased up. Well don't they even use internal combustion engines
on ballistic missiles. I think they do, so it's powering. Yeah,
I mean yeah, combustion engines you know, lead to pretty
much any kind of motorized weapon you can think of,

(07:23):
from airplanes in the sky you know, to uh uh
two submarines under the sea. Um, it's it just totally changes.
And speaking of which, that's the other major transportation based
game changing weapon technology, air power. And you know this
is this is pretty obvious. It just opens an entirely
different theater of warfare. All right. You suddenly you're able

(07:46):
to to to fly over the battlefield provide air support
for your troops. Therefore you need you don't. Therefore you
don't need as many troops on the ground. Right. No,
land is impenetrable now now, I mean we don't have
to have Omaha beaches and stuff like that with troops
washing up and these great waves on the shore. I
mean we have air power, so I mean anything is game, right, Yeah,

(08:09):
they all they offered in an alternative to uh two
typical land and sea invasion. You know, it's just another
way into enemy territory. And at the time people thought
that bombarding civilian populations would be the kind of thing
that would just instantly bring about peace, that the nations
would just crumble up far faster with that kind of

(08:29):
threat over their heads. The horse, the combustion engine, and
in power flight. All three of these have have changed
how far we can we can travel, how we travel,
and the speed with which we can get there. Um.
So these are all basically weapon delivery systems, and they've
changed the way we wage war. Right, so if you

(08:51):
have all these delivery systems, you have to have a
means of controlling them and communicating with them, and you know,
changing the game plan if if the troops are on
the move. And so communication is a major theme within
military technology. So before recent times, commanders could still reach
their troops, but they just had to rely on stuff
like you know, a guy running, or a guy on

(09:12):
a horse, or flags or maybe and some guy standing
on a hill watching everything, or the pigeon, you know,
the messenger pigeon. But this is a problematic system, as
Napoleon could attest you back in the day. Um, there's
a story of Napoleon forgetting about a few thousand troops
during the Battle of Jenna. So Napoleon surely would have

(09:33):
appreciated the advances in communication that I've come about, like
the advent of radio and it's subsequent introduction into the
theater of war. So, first we had the wireless telegraph,
and this led to lots of cracking codes and stuff
like that, which I kind of love Enigma code so
forth right, So you're communicating your message over wireless telegraph

(09:56):
and granted it's getting the message are faster, but it's
open to enemies and spies and stuff like that. By
World War Two, though, you have shortwave radios and this
was a huge thing for the Germans actually, because the Germans,
as you guys might remember, did these coordinated blitzkrieg movements
in which pilots and soldiers are all talking by radio
and so you have one airplane who's providing cover and

(10:16):
tanks are moving in and it's this kind of lightning war.
That's the literal translation. Yeah, right. In addition to short
ray radio, you have radar, and this is the first
automated way to really see the enemy and be seen yourself.
So goodbye to that guy in the bluff. Who's looking
out for approaching troops or ships. Radar let us bounce

(10:36):
radio waves or microwaves off solid objects and then alert
us if say, an enemy plane is flying into our
particular neck of the woods. Then this is actually another
favorite because I love all spy stuff. You have the
spy satellite, and this is as far back as the
Cold War. Essentially countries have been sending up recon satellites
to see what the other side is up to. Modern

(10:56):
spy satellites can do more than just take photos. They
can collect telephone, own radio, and internet signals. The problem
seems to be is that sometimes these images or information
that it captures seems to be a little blurry. Have
you ever looked at some of these photos? Oh yeah,
and I'm thinking of the rest of Development episode with
the w m d s. But that's that's different because

(11:17):
let's turn out not to be w m ds. But yeah,
they there's you can only get so clear an image,
and then you sort of have to decide exactly what
you're looking at. Yeah. Yeah. And then beyond spy satellites,
we have of course GPS, and this basically turns the
world into a giant, instantly accessible map. And that's pretty
handy if you're a soldier with no earthly idea where
you are suddenly landed in foreign territory. So that kind

(11:40):
of covers the major advancements and communications. But we saved
the best for last, which of course is firepower. Well
the best but also kind of the worst. Yeah. I
guess the most impressive one, the most explosive one. Yeah,
and yeah definitely has the most bag. Yeah. So let's
move on to the big guns. First, we have gunpowder,
and we have the Chinese basically to thank for this.

(12:02):
They came up with it while they are trying to
mix immortality elixers. Really they created the exact opposite of that.
So the Chinese made early versions of gunpowder weapons um,
including like bombs and guns, and even a type of
cannon called get this, the flying cloud, thunder clap eruptor
wow that I can just imagine the instructions for that,

(12:25):
somehow being very hard to follow. So gunpowder of course
changed China, and once it made its way across trade
roots had also changed Europe and Asia, and it gave
those people the abilities dominate over the barbarians. And it
was also eventually said to have crumpled the Byzantine Empire.

(12:47):
So gunpowder is a pretty game changing technology. But in
addition to gunpowder, you have to have the ability to
focus it right, you know, you have to be able
to hit your enemy if that's what you're aiming to do.
And so this is where proved gun barrels actually came
into effect. So you want to take the big ones. Yeah,
you know, what are you firing and what are you
blowing up? You know, we've been talking about gunpowder, which

(13:08):
is is pretty effective, but we also developed some pretty
terrifying armaments on top of this. Um. First of all,
there's biological and chemical weapons to consider. And by chemical,
I mean technically gunpowder is a chemical weapon, but we're
referring to everything that's not gunpowder or an explosive um,
stuff like mustard gas, mustard gas um as far as

(13:30):
chemical goes. And then for biological things like anthrax or vasualism, toxin,
and these are pretty terrifying. And that with with all
these is just in it allows you to kill more people. Uh,
and not just people. I mean, chemical and biological weapons
can be used against armies, but they can we live,

(13:50):
you know, civilian populations where they can be used against plant,
live crops, animal life. Um. And they've they've proven pretty
tricky too that you can't you can't make a chemical
weapon or biological weapon that only kills your enemies. You
know it's gonna be dangerous to your troops as well. Um.
And they're very difficult to control. The effects are are

(14:14):
are unpredictable and uh I really you don't have to
look at uh any further back in time than World
War One to see just how like psychologically terrifying they were. Um.
You know they were used to us a great effect
into great terror during the First World War and m

(14:35):
and as a result, you didn't see as as much
use in the Second World War because all the major
leaders in the Second World War had been troops in
the First World War and they've seen the effects firsthand. Um.
This will probably get cut, but there's a there's a
great poem by Wilfred Owen dulcay at decloromst World War
two poem. You've probably heard this right, gas gas quick boys,

(14:56):
and ecstasy of fumbling fitting the clumsy helmets just in time.
But someone's it was yelling out and stumbling and floundering
like a man in fire or lime dim through the
misty pains and thick green light as under a green sea.
I saw him drowning, you know. So that's that has
always kind of give given me the chills before. Yeah,
so I mean terrifying weaponry, uh and you know, and

(15:20):
and very effective. An ounce of bostilism toxin can kill
an estimated sixty million people. So that's something to think about.
As a result, they've been uh I think twenty two
UH participating countries UM agreed to ban biological weapons in
the nineteen two and there are a lot of similar

(15:42):
bands on the table for UM and in place for
chemical weapons as well. And then the big one, of
course is nuclear armaments, the ability to split the atom
and UM create a nuclear explosion. This particular weapon has
UH fortunately only been used twice in warfare UM, once

(16:03):
int Hiroshima where it killed ninety thod people and once
at Nagasaki where it killed thirty five thousand people. And
I think the the true terror this uh, this weapon
is evident in how little it's been used. You don't
have to look any any any further than the Cold
War to see just how it can really just chill

(16:25):
out UM military aggression at least overt military aggression um.
And we're continuing to live in an age where military
um a conquest defense is defined by the fear and
the threat of nuclear weapons. Yeah, and then you have
smaller robots like stuff they can search for booby traps

(16:47):
like the pac bot, or you have bigger remote controlled
trucks or tanks, you know, with computers inside them. And
then you know, doing stuff like clearing minds, and then
the drones like you said, doing recon in the air.
And then eventually the robots take over and turn all
the weapons on us, right right, And also we have
clone armies. No, we don't have clone armies. That could
be the way that that article didn't happen. Well, it

(17:10):
wasn't for lack of trying. It was pitched right. We'll
clone armies change the world or what we'll clone will
clone armies take over? And okay, Roberts. So if you
think we missed a military technology, send us an email.
It's science stuff at howstuff works dot com. Or brush
up on bots of the military kind of the top
ten game changing military strategies over on the site. And
you can check out the blogs where we talk about

(17:32):
everything from what the latest podcasts are about to uh
megastructures again. You can always send us an email and
uh we'll see you next time. Thanks for listening, Guys
for moralness and thousands of other topics because at how
stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check

(17:55):
out our blogs on the house stuff works dot com
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