11 Bizarre Military Strategies That Somehow Won Real Battles
Wars involve a lot of pressure to be cool. It's why people sign up: the chance to be heroic, the chance to appear mighty, the chance to give a 'Patton' style speech in front of a giant version of your national flag. That heroic stuff is all well and good for the right cause. But what if that vibe hides the historical reality that thousands of years of wars often came down to goofy ideas straight out of a cartoon?
On this episode of The Cracked Podcast, Alex Schmidt is joined by comedians Logan Guntzelman and Eric Lampaert for a trip through the silliest, strangest, dopiest ideas that have ever won real battles. Discover world wars, civil wars, ancient bloodbaths, and other major conflicts that hinged on drugging honey, catapulting snakes, piling the right trash into the right boat-shaped pile, and other ridiculous "strategies."
Footnotes:
Eric Lampaert's website & upcoming live shows in Europe
See the first-ever Cracked Podcast LIVE TOUR THIS WEEK! Get your tickets now for: Thursday April 11th -- Lincoln Hall, Chicago IL and Friday April 12th -- Amsterdam Bar and Hall, St. Paul MN.
6 Cartoonishly Simple Battle Plans That Worked (Cracked)
5 Stupid Lies That Changed The Outcome Of Historical Battles (Cracked)
4 Battles Won by Using Food as a Weapon (Cracked)
5 Real MacGyvers Who Won Battles With Improvised Weapons (Cracked)
The 6 Greatest Twist Endings in the History of Battle (Cracked)
How eating 'mad honey' cost Pompey the Great 1,000 soldiers (Research @ Texas A&M)
Fantastically Wrong: The Legend of the Kraken, A Monster That Hunts With Its Own Poop (Wired)
Cyclops Myth Spurred by 'One-Eyed' Fossils? (National Geographic)
Boston Dynamics "WildCat" robot
V-2 Missile (National Air & Space Museum)
How Britain Went to War With China Over Opium (The New York Times)
Haka (Encyclopedia Britannica)
The Only Time in History When Men on Horseback Captured a Fleet of Ships (Smithsonian)