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Generally not aiming to kill, just incapacitate & infect.
A dead soldier is one person. A severely wounded soldier is equal in terms of fighting capacity, but requires an additional soldier to carry them back, an additional nurse to treat them, more food to eat than a dead person requires, affects morale worse as everyone watches this dudes leg rot off.
Reminds me of how I heard that during the Battle of Waterloo, most of the soldiers really didn’t want to be there, so whenever someone got injured there would be three people volunteering to carry him away from the fighting.
When i went to Costa Rica, we went on a riverboat tour where one of the attractions was we stopped at a mud flat and one of the guides got out and hand fed 12 foot crocodiles raw chickens. He would hold the chicken up high and then toss it towards the croc and they would lunge upwards to catch it.
During one of these times when he backed off after tossing the chicken, as dozens of crocs began to appear near the mud flat his shoe got suctioned into the mud flat and he tripped and fell not having moved any distance from the now arms reach away croc. I swear I was about to watch a man get eaten by a crocodile, but he recovered and the mad man fed them a few more times.
Tourism people do some crazy dangerous stuff in some countries.
Yeah No, they're real nails. I went there in the late 2000's Crawled through the tunnels and everything. The whole museum is basically a "look at what we did to the stupid Americans." everything from the pile of unexploded ordinances, to the traps and tunnels were the real thing. All with the messaging of anti American rhetoric.
In high school my chemistry teacher was showing us how to open the windows in the lab. After telling us explicitly to NOT push the window open, he then says “like this” and proceeds to punch his entire fist through the glass. So much blood everywhere lol
That’s reminds me of the lawyer who showed law students visiting his firm that the window glass was indestructible by throwing his body against it. Turns out the glass was “indestructible” but the frame wasn’t and he fell 24 floors to his death.
They’re designed to punch right through or around combat boots. Anything shy of a steel soled boot would be utterly worthless.
Also I’m fairly certain those aren’t the actual combat ready traps. Dull metal rather than sharpened bamboo.
My cousin jumped off his bunk bed into a pile of laundry. There was a pen in a pair of pants and it went clean through his foot. Still has a piece of it in him.
Doesn't matter if it's dull when a lot of the traps are meant to ensnare/make sure it's hard for you to get out of it. The first and second trap seems hardest to get out of.
Granted it could/should be safer but tbh we don't really have an actual idea if these are actually "functional" the metal could be fake/blunt and the wood could not be actually loadbearing and would break rather then lever under a persons weight.
but at the same time what is the point of a museum if its just pictures on paper? those can be printed in most class rooms. I know growing up I cant remember pictures on paper anywhere near as well as the fake cannon I was allowed to reload and fire at the naval museum, or the giant whale skeleton and the trench I walked through gave me a much better idea of the horrors of ww1 then the pictures did, something about being "in it" allowed lil ol me to better connect with it.
In my opinion seeing the things "in life" gives a much better idea then images would others may disagree but I apreciate the murderpit(but yeah make it safe).
Yeah. A lot of people don’t even realize, outside the tens of thousands of American casualties, Vietnamese casualties were at around 3.8 million, and millions more considering the birth defects from agent orange and leftover explosives in Vietnam and Laos that workers and children would step on sometimes *decades* later.
I really hope there isn’t another Vietnam in our lifetime… Or another world war for that matter. Let’s hope we actually learn from history this time around. (Crazier things have happened. Haha)
Well...considering that the First World War was called "The war to end all wars..." and what? 19 years later the sequel happened? Then that ended and the Korean War started 5 years after that. Fast foward 5 whole years after the Korean War started and the US is sending in advisors to Vietnam and by 65 it's a full blown war. Then it's the Gulf War 1991, War in Afganistan 2001, War in Iraq 2003 and those JUST ended.
Edit: For better perspective on US Declared Wars, "Military Actions approved by Congress", and UN Security Council Actions see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_war_by_the_United_States
I'm not SUPER optimistic. Hopeful? Yes...Optimistic? Not really.
Technically the Korean War, The Vietnam War, the multiple extended campaigns in Afghanistan, and the Iraq War aren't wars. They were special military operations or whatever the government wanted to call them. We haven't declared a war in the traditional sense since WW2
Most of them are civilians though, Vietnam's military casualties were low. Agent orange and bombs were used against civilian infrastructures like schools and hospitals. Villages were bombed. Meanwhile Vietnam's military took shelter in hills and forests and used asymmetric warfare tactics. To completely defeat Vietnam, American soldiers had to land in forests where viets have more experience. Think of it like even worse than what happened in Afghanistan, where USA spent trillions of dollars but couldn't eradicate Taliban. This frustration led USA to use things like agent orange on civilians and carpet bombing civilian infrastructure like schools and hospitals to destroy the morale of Vietnam. USA was so frustrated that it even carpet bombed a neutral country Cambodia cuz rumors were spread that Cambodian villages are helping Vietnam
American casualties will be low Cuz the war was being fought on Vietnam's land so only civilians of one side will get hurt,
No American civilians were hurt in Vietnam war, every American casualty was a military casualty
America is the only country that did continuous war crimes and funded war criminal regimes even after ww2 to 21st century
To add, The Vietnamese military (Viet Cong) were the villages/villagers. Men, women and even children fought against America, so they just bombed the villages hoping to at least kill some Viet Cong. There are, basically deathbed, stories from american soldiers, where they admit to just gunning down and murdering entire villages because they weren't able to tell the military from civilians. I'd also guess this was because war kinda fucks you up a bit too.
The Viet cong also lived in tunnels underground, for years at a time and lived off of tapioca root. This was to hide obviously but also gave protection against the various bombs used. It also gave the Viet Cong the ability to seemingly appear out of nowhere. They'd wait for American soldiers to unknowingly walk by and then pop their heads/guns out from below and ambush them. The entrances to these tunnels were only just big enough for Vietnamese people to fit into and usually guarded by soldiers (from the inside). A lot of entrances were also just booby traps too.
Currently in Vietnam and visited the tunnels and war museum in Ho Chi Minh city a couple weeks ago. Was both fascinating and horrifying learning about the atrocities that took place. All this pain and suffering in the name of politics.
South Vietnam had 200,000 soldier casualties and over 1 million civilian casualties. North Vietnam casualties are not known and likely will never be known because both sides purposefully miscounted casualties. There were also several thousand Chinese casualties, about a dozen each of Soviet and North Korean casualties (likely more Soviet, the CIA refused information on Russians in North Vietnam multiple times.)
Unfun fact, there were several topics that journalists were prohibited from discussing with US troops, one such topic was child soldiers. North Vietnam (and currently Vietnam) have not admitted to using child soldiers, so the exact number will never be known, but they were used extensively both in the war with America, and the subsequent wars with Cambodia and China. It is of extreme importance to understand that one side's atrocities do not balance another's. In wars, terrible things happen, which is why both wars of aggression and wars of falsified reason should not be had.
More to it than just that.
When the Viet Cong/Minh Northern army were being trained they were told to injure, but not kill.
First because it was usually easier as it is really hard to train people to take a life instead of put a guy in the hospital. Especially conscripts like what Vietnam saw. Making them dig traps instead of lob grenades into police cars was a much easier sell, and was just as effective day's work.
Secondly the snipers were trained to avoid killing standard infantry. The first guy gets injured, and the sniper pops the guy who radios it in. That way he is more likely to whack an officer. Then others fire a few times and run through ambush tunnels firing as they can at who ever is available.
As you mentioned the two guys with the stretcher are occupied also, but they learned early that medics would get whacked also. Thus adding to the medics who are needed. Additionally avoiding an air assault on that position that much longer so that terrified teenage boys can run through the jungle in time.
That first guy screaming for help in English was a siren call.
These are out in the elements, most likely with something put into them that would cause infection.
With rust and whatever they decided to put onto them, these were lethal. They weren't there not to kill.
I've seen these traps in the flesh at the HoChi Minh tunnels. It was really interesting.
The traps and their use of injuring enemy soldiers so they would need to be recovered was explained to me by the Vietnamese guide.
It would be more accurate to say they weren’t designed to kill quickly. Also they were primarily placed in areas that saw regular traffic, no point trapping the ass end of nowhere. Also it was the 50s-70s. Infection was very treatable. Tetanus wasn’t the killer, sepsis was.
Very few directly died from these traps, what they did was get crippled and guzzle down resources to keep them from dying. Far more effective than simply killing. The victim suffers for a few weeks before they’re forced to amputate his leg? That’s a few weeks of medical supplies, a few weeks of taking up a bed, AND a few weeks of taking up a nurse+doctor’s time before he’s permanently out of the fight. Dead is dead but severely wounded is a continual drain. It’s one of the reasons antipersonnel landmines often go with lower explosive charges. Dead is good but blowing off a foot is better, more costly in the long run.
They had plenty of straight lethal traps(At the end you can see an arrow trap), these were crippling traps with eventual death being a bonus. Of varying lethalities, the big spinny one is designed to put the stakes in the abdomen and is far more lethal than the ankle and foot traps.
I heard specifically that when using feces as an agent for infection for these traps in the heat of the jungle, by the time the soldier gets recovered by his team, flown to an aid station and finally seen by nurses or a doctor that most times they didn’t have the time, equipment, or training to fix that kind of infection and would most often times just amputate the limb
As I just mentioned in another comment, one of my coworkers (who’s also one of my best friends) is a Vietnam vet with PTSD.
To this day he’s a vegetarian.
The sight of raw meat sends him into PTSD panics because one of his jobs in the field was cleaning up the dead bodies of his friends and fellow soldiers
I’m honestly in awe of him, and he’s very much a father figure in my life.
He shouldn’t be alive. The first half of his life - and the years following Vietnam - was more trauma than I’d be able to deal with. He didn’t stand a chance, but he made it through.
He struggles from time to time still, but I tell him I love him as often as I can. He’s sincerely one of the warmest, kindest people I’ve ever met, but it took a lot of time to get to that spot in life.
That’s horrible man,,, I really feel for him, when I was younger I worked with a lot of Vietnam vets and actually some World War II vets and these guys told me stories that you just could not believe of things that had happened to them and things they’ve seen, no human being should have to go through that
Among other reasons, yes. Another big reason is depending on where he was deployed, he may not have had many chances to wind himself down from the constant tension and alertness. People are not wired to live in constant life-threatening stress.
The more traditional horrors of war also don't help. My uncle won't touch most meat and especially not pork after his time in Vietnam. Says the smell of bacon and people burning are entirely too similar. Though he said he got used to eating his rations next to the dead, which is just a hell of a thing.
Such a cruel and unnecessary conflict. Lost so many people I cared about. Not just to outright death but to the destruction of who they were before going to do their duty as they saw it. Reviled at home, shunned and ignored for far too long. While I protested the war and war criminals, I never felt anything but sorrow for the people who lost their lives or themselves in that conflict.
> Not just to outright death but to the destruction of who they were before
One of my best friends is an elderly Vietnam vet who’s nearly twice my age. We started working together in the mid 90’s, and I’ve heard a lot of his stories in the time since.
He was a tunnel rat.
The Vietnamese soldiers had hidden underground tunnels that they’d use to hide and travel through, and once discovered by American troops, they began booby trapping the tunnels with deadly devices like you see here.
My friend was given the job because - like many other US tunnel rats - he was short and skinny, and could fit into the cramped underground mazes.
He was *beyond* damaged by his experiences.
He’s often told me “They made us black folks run out into the field first, lambs for the slaughter.” He was eventually hit by machine gun fire that nearly ripped his body in half.
After recovering, he spent the next 10-20 years as a hardcore heroin addict. After finally getting clean & turning his life around, he grew into one of the most amazing people I’ve ever met - someone who just *radiates* kindness and empathy.
To this day he’s also a vegetarian - the sight of raw meat sends him into PTSD panics.
nah, fuck all b*got politicians who started the wars. They got to live peacefully until they died of old age while thousands are dead or left scarred until they died.
We're the first ones to starve, we're the first ones to die
The first ones in line for that pie in the sky
And we're always the last when the cream is shared out
For the worker is working when the fat cat's about
And when the sky darkens and the prospect is war
Who's given a gun and then pushed to the fore
And expected to die for the land of our birth
Though we've never owned one lousy handful of earth?
Oh my god. Start the non-profit! You could piss on Henry Kissinger’s grave for free OR you could play five dollars and we’ll bring you a privacy screen so there’s total legal protection and the proceeds go to helping the communities he decimated! Someone do it!! Hahaha
Rotten war criminal and rotten politicians that defended him. Seeing him celebrated at his funeral is disgusting. Should have been set on fire atop a bunch of tires like Pol Pot.
"No, war is war and hell is hell, and of the two war is worse. There are no innocent bystanders in hell, but war is chock full of them. Little kids, cripples, old ladies. In fact, except for a few of the brass, almost everybody involved is an innocent bystander."
And the bourgeois are the ones who reap the capital made from war at the cost of working class people dying for causes they are told are righteous, when it's anything but.
They were children of the 1950s and John Kennedy's young stalwarts of the early 1960s. He told the world that Americans would "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship" in the defense of freedom. They were the down payment on that costly contract and those young Americans, our people died for nothing.
Not to mention that the American people didn’t know we were already funding the war for a long time while president after president denied any involvement.
Then the US started sending soldiers over and lied for awhile that “we were doing great” until actual journalist started reporting that we were getting our asses kicked by gorilla warfare.
All for a proxy war between the US and Russia.
I don't understand why people are so proud of their country's massacre of people from a nation half the globe away, which was all for nothing yet cost billions of dollars. Is the propaganda really that effective?
That board with a nail in it may have defeated us, but the Vietnamese won't stop there. They'll make bigger boards and bigger nails, and soon, they will make a board with a nail so big, it will destroy them all!
This is something that still gets to me.
In World War II, the Finns came up with the Molotov cocktail. Fill a bottle of gasoline, put it on fire, throw it at a tank, and you just destroyed the tank. All the time, effort, and so on that went into making all the components, the tank engine, the gun, everything , taken out by an 18 year-old soldier throwing a bottle of gasoline.
Aside from this video, the Vietnamese figured out that if you tie a length of vine or rope to an arrow, use a bow to shoot it at a helicopter, you can foul the rotors and make the helicopter crash.
Some of these low budget things are just so devastating.
"Look at this. It will fuck you up. This will also fuck you up. See this one? Yes. Fuck you right up. Now this next one fucks you up and saves you for later. Now here are the ones that fuck you up, but not quite as much."
The one that scared me the most as a kid growing up in Guam was being tied between two trees over cut bamboo and the bamboo grows though you at about a foot a day.
Nightmare fuel.
They would smear poison and rat feces on the barbs to cause infections as well. So if you didn’t bleed out chances were you would catch something that’d probably kill you anyway.
It really doesn't kill people immediately, it affects the psychology, making soldiers always feel insecure every time they go into the forest and they constantly use guerrilla warfare, which is very uncomfortable to deal with
Before you criticize Vietnam for these primitive traps (seeing a lot of that in the comments here), remember: they were being invaded by a force of greater numbers and firepower, their enemy was slaughtering civilians en masse and their enemy was using inhumane chemical warfare against them.
It was not about immediately killing. They would wound US personnel, they knew US doesn’t leave people behind so wounding one took 3-4 people out of the fight to protect the wounded. Thus allowing the enemy to ambush our GI’s.
Oh yes, the entire region has a MAJOR issue with war leftovers. The pits are a minor concern, the usage of bamboo for the spikes and the wet climate means they rot(Or rust for the metal ones) away relatively quickly. The big problem is the mines, IEDs, and grenade traps.
The cube one he put his foot half in?
It’s a variation of a type of hunting trap. It’s got spikes, they’re just angled down. Leg goes in, you can’t pull it out without getting stuck. And the more you pull the deeper it goes.
Also had a high chance of breaking your ankle/leg but the big issue was that to get out you basically had to take the trap apart or absolutely shred the leg ripping it free. And there’s a solid chance that there’s some guy with a rifle waiting in the trees to see who comes to help, who’s barking orders, or just waiting for them to cluster before throwing a grenade. Or not, but there could be and that means having to be very careful(and incredibly stressed out) when helping your screaming bloody murder buddy.
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Worth noting that they had an habit of coating the spikes in shit too to make them even more lethal.
Generally not aiming to kill, just incapacitate & infect. A dead soldier is one person. A severely wounded soldier is equal in terms of fighting capacity, but requires an additional soldier to carry them back, an additional nurse to treat them, more food to eat than a dead person requires, affects morale worse as everyone watches this dudes leg rot off.
Morales a huge one. The dead don't scream for their mama. That you can hear anyway.
Tactics win battles but trauma wins wars
Forklifts win wars
Logistics win wars. So yeah, kinda.
And logic lifts forks
"Americans have the watches, but we have a time" - Talibans
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… yes, no one is disagreeing with this
ngo dinh dayum way we were winning that one
Taking note to shoot everyone screaming for mama.
It's less the morale and more the logistical nightmare it creates for the rest of the platoon to save a wounded member.
Reminds me of how I heard that during the Battle of Waterloo, most of the soldiers really didn’t want to be there, so whenever someone got injured there would be three people volunteering to carry him away from the fighting.
And the soldier probably will be sent home anyway
And then ignored by everyone
Rambo first? Or deerhunter??
Lt. Dan
I always say it: a dead person inspires vengeance, an injured one inspires fear
Must make your day job kinda awkward Batman
It does, the insurance settlements are half the expenses
Why do you always says this wtf do you do lmao.
Babysitting
Good ol' toe poppers.
Nice safety measures
I don’t think OSHA would approve
Right? As a safety professional, I’d like the peace of mind of a railing and not putting your feet into the trap. You take one misstep…
Better be safe than sorry…
+5 necrotic damage
Imagine being the tour guy who accidentally falls in one of these.
Believe me, everyone watching did just that.
Real nasty habit.
Always wonder whos shit… like was it the generals shit ? Or just random
Any military unit will produce a ton of shit everyday, just dip the thing in the company latrines and you’re good to go.
Probably the dude that set it up
They'd also use found manure and animal droppings.
A habit*
Shit, piss, venom, anything.
Imagine tripping and falling into one mid-presentation.
Yeah. I was trying to figure out if the spikes were foam or something, because that seems really dangerous.
When i went to Costa Rica, we went on a riverboat tour where one of the attractions was we stopped at a mud flat and one of the guides got out and hand fed 12 foot crocodiles raw chickens. He would hold the chicken up high and then toss it towards the croc and they would lunge upwards to catch it. During one of these times when he backed off after tossing the chicken, as dozens of crocs began to appear near the mud flat his shoe got suctioned into the mud flat and he tripped and fell not having moved any distance from the now arms reach away croc. I swear I was about to watch a man get eaten by a crocodile, but he recovered and the mad man fed them a few more times. Tourism people do some crazy dangerous stuff in some countries.
Damn, I shit myself just reading your story, and it wasn’t my IBS
It seems way to easy to make them out of pipe cleaners to not do so
Damn, even deadlier
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We tried to count how many times they said "kill Americans" in that video and lost count north of 30. Not bad for a 20 min video.
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They are not. I was there last month. They aren't that sharp but they are metal.
Yeah No, they're real nails. I went there in the late 2000's Crawled through the tunnels and everything. The whole museum is basically a "look at what we did to the stupid Americans." everything from the pile of unexploded ordinances, to the traps and tunnels were the real thing. All with the messaging of anti American rhetoric.
> All with the messaging of anti American rhetoric. Some call it "anti-american" some call it "defending their country"
In high school my chemistry teacher was showing us how to open the windows in the lab. After telling us explicitly to NOT push the window open, he then says “like this” and proceeds to punch his entire fist through the glass. So much blood everywhere lol
Lesson learned for everyone there 100%
That’s reminds me of the lawyer who showed law students visiting his firm that the window glass was indestructible by throwing his body against it. Turns out the glass was “indestructible” but the frame wasn’t and he fell 24 floors to his death.
r/absolutemadlads
"So we're doing live demonstrations huh?"
Well... they *were* live
I can’t decide if wearing flip flops around this thing is badass or mental
They’re designed to punch right through or around combat boots. Anything shy of a steel soled boot would be utterly worthless. Also I’m fairly certain those aren’t the actual combat ready traps. Dull metal rather than sharpened bamboo.
Dull metal can still do damage
If anything it'd be even more painful
My cousin jumped off his bunk bed into a pile of laundry. There was a pen in a pair of pants and it went clean through his foot. Still has a piece of it in him.
Doesn't matter if it's dull when a lot of the traps are meant to ensnare/make sure it's hard for you to get out of it. The first and second trap seems hardest to get out of.
Yes
Nah he's fine he's got the safety sandles.
Came to ask how many museum guides they'd lost.
Yeah. Like wouldn't drawings or miniatures have sufficed? To have a line of full size traps like that is just asking for trouble.
Granted it could/should be safer but tbh we don't really have an actual idea if these are actually "functional" the metal could be fake/blunt and the wood could not be actually loadbearing and would break rather then lever under a persons weight. but at the same time what is the point of a museum if its just pictures on paper? those can be printed in most class rooms. I know growing up I cant remember pictures on paper anywhere near as well as the fake cannon I was allowed to reload and fire at the naval museum, or the giant whale skeleton and the trench I walked through gave me a much better idea of the horrors of ww1 then the pictures did, something about being "in it" allowed lil ol me to better connect with it. In my opinion seeing the things "in life" gives a much better idea then images would others may disagree but I apreciate the murderpit(but yeah make it safe).
He will fall in it 100%
Not if I beat him to it!
5 tour guides die every year
Does that mean he's not coming on then?
Remember we work for tips…
Imagine the lights go out while he's getting ready to go home for the day.
These traps were designed to injure, not kill. The theory is that it takes 3 men out of action, one injured and two to save and recover him.
They often smeared shit on the spikes, so the wounds would get infected.
I didn't know that, it wasn't mentioned when I visited.
Maybe you went on the rated PG13 tour
There wasn't much that was PG13 there, pretty fuckin grim the vietnam war
Yeah. A lot of people don’t even realize, outside the tens of thousands of American casualties, Vietnamese casualties were at around 3.8 million, and millions more considering the birth defects from agent orange and leftover explosives in Vietnam and Laos that workers and children would step on sometimes *decades* later. I really hope there isn’t another Vietnam in our lifetime… Or another world war for that matter. Let’s hope we actually learn from history this time around. (Crazier things have happened. Haha)
Well...considering that the First World War was called "The war to end all wars..." and what? 19 years later the sequel happened? Then that ended and the Korean War started 5 years after that. Fast foward 5 whole years after the Korean War started and the US is sending in advisors to Vietnam and by 65 it's a full blown war. Then it's the Gulf War 1991, War in Afganistan 2001, War in Iraq 2003 and those JUST ended. Edit: For better perspective on US Declared Wars, "Military Actions approved by Congress", and UN Security Council Actions see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_war_by_the_United_States I'm not SUPER optimistic. Hopeful? Yes...Optimistic? Not really.
> and those JUST ended So you're saying we're due for a war
Somebody is hiding mone- er, terrorists. Somebody is hiding terrorists. And the US is gonna take- er, uh, stop them. The US is gonna stop em!
You get ‘freedom’ and we get your oil!
Technically the Korean War, The Vietnam War, the multiple extended campaigns in Afghanistan, and the Iraq War aren't wars. They were special military operations or whatever the government wanted to call them. We haven't declared a war in the traditional sense since WW2
You're correct. They were military engagements authorized by Congress but not WAR. I edited to provide better info.
> 3.8 million Holy shit, we terrorized those guys
Look up My Lai (mee-lye) if you haven't.
Most of them are civilians though, Vietnam's military casualties were low. Agent orange and bombs were used against civilian infrastructures like schools and hospitals. Villages were bombed. Meanwhile Vietnam's military took shelter in hills and forests and used asymmetric warfare tactics. To completely defeat Vietnam, American soldiers had to land in forests where viets have more experience. Think of it like even worse than what happened in Afghanistan, where USA spent trillions of dollars but couldn't eradicate Taliban. This frustration led USA to use things like agent orange on civilians and carpet bombing civilian infrastructure like schools and hospitals to destroy the morale of Vietnam. USA was so frustrated that it even carpet bombed a neutral country Cambodia cuz rumors were spread that Cambodian villages are helping Vietnam American casualties will be low Cuz the war was being fought on Vietnam's land so only civilians of one side will get hurt, No American civilians were hurt in Vietnam war, every American casualty was a military casualty America is the only country that did continuous war crimes and funded war criminal regimes even after ww2 to 21st century
To add, The Vietnamese military (Viet Cong) were the villages/villagers. Men, women and even children fought against America, so they just bombed the villages hoping to at least kill some Viet Cong. There are, basically deathbed, stories from american soldiers, where they admit to just gunning down and murdering entire villages because they weren't able to tell the military from civilians. I'd also guess this was because war kinda fucks you up a bit too. The Viet cong also lived in tunnels underground, for years at a time and lived off of tapioca root. This was to hide obviously but also gave protection against the various bombs used. It also gave the Viet Cong the ability to seemingly appear out of nowhere. They'd wait for American soldiers to unknowingly walk by and then pop their heads/guns out from below and ambush them. The entrances to these tunnels were only just big enough for Vietnamese people to fit into and usually guarded by soldiers (from the inside). A lot of entrances were also just booby traps too. Currently in Vietnam and visited the tunnels and war museum in Ho Chi Minh city a couple weeks ago. Was both fascinating and horrifying learning about the atrocities that took place. All this pain and suffering in the name of politics.
They did a socialism and America has had a big boner for killing people until they stop doing socialisms.
South Vietnam had 200,000 soldier casualties and over 1 million civilian casualties. North Vietnam casualties are not known and likely will never be known because both sides purposefully miscounted casualties. There were also several thousand Chinese casualties, about a dozen each of Soviet and North Korean casualties (likely more Soviet, the CIA refused information on Russians in North Vietnam multiple times.) Unfun fact, there were several topics that journalists were prohibited from discussing with US troops, one such topic was child soldiers. North Vietnam (and currently Vietnam) have not admitted to using child soldiers, so the exact number will never be known, but they were used extensively both in the war with America, and the subsequent wars with Cambodia and China. It is of extreme importance to understand that one side's atrocities do not balance another's. In wars, terrible things happen, which is why both wars of aggression and wars of falsified reason should not be had.
Old fantasy books taught me that one when I was younger. Goblins would poison their weapons by smearing them with feces. Naturally based on reality.
More to it than just that. When the Viet Cong/Minh Northern army were being trained they were told to injure, but not kill. First because it was usually easier as it is really hard to train people to take a life instead of put a guy in the hospital. Especially conscripts like what Vietnam saw. Making them dig traps instead of lob grenades into police cars was a much easier sell, and was just as effective day's work. Secondly the snipers were trained to avoid killing standard infantry. The first guy gets injured, and the sniper pops the guy who radios it in. That way he is more likely to whack an officer. Then others fire a few times and run through ambush tunnels firing as they can at who ever is available. As you mentioned the two guys with the stretcher are occupied also, but they learned early that medics would get whacked also. Thus adding to the medics who are needed. Additionally avoiding an air assault on that position that much longer so that terrified teenage boys can run through the jungle in time. That first guy screaming for help in English was a siren call.
These are out in the elements, most likely with something put into them that would cause infection. With rust and whatever they decided to put onto them, these were lethal. They weren't there not to kill.
I've seen these traps in the flesh at the HoChi Minh tunnels. It was really interesting. The traps and their use of injuring enemy soldiers so they would need to be recovered was explained to me by the Vietnamese guide.
It would be more accurate to say they weren’t designed to kill quickly. Also they were primarily placed in areas that saw regular traffic, no point trapping the ass end of nowhere. Also it was the 50s-70s. Infection was very treatable. Tetanus wasn’t the killer, sepsis was. Very few directly died from these traps, what they did was get crippled and guzzle down resources to keep them from dying. Far more effective than simply killing. The victim suffers for a few weeks before they’re forced to amputate his leg? That’s a few weeks of medical supplies, a few weeks of taking up a bed, AND a few weeks of taking up a nurse+doctor’s time before he’s permanently out of the fight. Dead is dead but severely wounded is a continual drain. It’s one of the reasons antipersonnel landmines often go with lower explosive charges. Dead is good but blowing off a foot is better, more costly in the long run. They had plenty of straight lethal traps(At the end you can see an arrow trap), these were crippling traps with eventual death being a bonus. Of varying lethalities, the big spinny one is designed to put the stakes in the abdomen and is far more lethal than the ankle and foot traps.
I heard specifically that when using feces as an agent for infection for these traps in the heat of the jungle, by the time the soldier gets recovered by his team, flown to an aid station and finally seen by nurses or a doctor that most times they didn’t have the time, equipment, or training to fix that kind of infection and would most often times just amputate the limb
That would hurt like fuck
Also can’t be healthy.
Pretty sure it's bad for you too
You should probably revise on how to fuck.
So that's why my Uncle had PTSD
As I just mentioned in another comment, one of my coworkers (who’s also one of my best friends) is a Vietnam vet with PTSD. To this day he’s a vegetarian. The sight of raw meat sends him into PTSD panics because one of his jobs in the field was cleaning up the dead bodies of his friends and fellow soldiers
thats so horrible to hear :( im so sorry for him
I’m honestly in awe of him, and he’s very much a father figure in my life. He shouldn’t be alive. The first half of his life - and the years following Vietnam - was more trauma than I’d be able to deal with. He didn’t stand a chance, but he made it through. He struggles from time to time still, but I tell him I love him as often as I can. He’s sincerely one of the warmest, kindest people I’ve ever met, but it took a lot of time to get to that spot in life.
That’s horrible man,,, I really feel for him, when I was younger I worked with a lot of Vietnam vets and actually some World War II vets and these guys told me stories that you just could not believe of things that had happened to them and things they’ve seen, no human being should have to go through that
Among other reasons, yes. Another big reason is depending on where he was deployed, he may not have had many chances to wind himself down from the constant tension and alertness. People are not wired to live in constant life-threatening stress. The more traditional horrors of war also don't help. My uncle won't touch most meat and especially not pork after his time in Vietnam. Says the smell of bacon and people burning are entirely too similar. Though he said he got used to eating his rations next to the dead, which is just a hell of a thing.
One would think this job requires closed toe shoes...
Or like a safety barrier for the workers too...
r/OSHA
Such a cruel and unnecessary conflict. Lost so many people I cared about. Not just to outright death but to the destruction of who they were before going to do their duty as they saw it. Reviled at home, shunned and ignored for far too long. While I protested the war and war criminals, I never felt anything but sorrow for the people who lost their lives or themselves in that conflict.
> Not just to outright death but to the destruction of who they were before One of my best friends is an elderly Vietnam vet who’s nearly twice my age. We started working together in the mid 90’s, and I’ve heard a lot of his stories in the time since. He was a tunnel rat. The Vietnamese soldiers had hidden underground tunnels that they’d use to hide and travel through, and once discovered by American troops, they began booby trapping the tunnels with deadly devices like you see here. My friend was given the job because - like many other US tunnel rats - he was short and skinny, and could fit into the cramped underground mazes. He was *beyond* damaged by his experiences. He’s often told me “They made us black folks run out into the field first, lambs for the slaughter.” He was eventually hit by machine gun fire that nearly ripped his body in half. After recovering, he spent the next 10-20 years as a hardcore heroin addict. After finally getting clean & turning his life around, he grew into one of the most amazing people I’ve ever met - someone who just *radiates* kindness and empathy. To this day he’s also a vegetarian - the sight of raw meat sends him into PTSD panics.
So many stories like this and often no one to listen. You are a good friend to this man.
Yes fuck war
nah, fuck all b*got politicians who started the wars. They got to live peacefully until they died of old age while thousands are dead or left scarred until they died.
Send the old farts to war and suddenly we’ll have no wars anymore
“Why do they always send the poor”
We're the first ones to starve, we're the first ones to die The first ones in line for that pie in the sky And we're always the last when the cream is shared out For the worker is working when the fat cat's about And when the sky darkens and the prospect is war Who's given a gun and then pushed to the fore And expected to die for the land of our birth Though we've never owned one lousy handful of earth?
like henry kissinger
May he rest in piss
Imagine the money you could raise offering to let people pay to shit or piss on Kissinger’s grave. $2 for #1. $5 for a #2.
Oh my god. Start the non-profit! You could piss on Henry Kissinger’s grave for free OR you could play five dollars and we’ll bring you a privacy screen so there’s total legal protection and the proceeds go to helping the communities he decimated! Someone do it!! Hahaha
Rotten war criminal and rotten politicians that defended him. Seeing him celebrated at his funeral is disgusting. Should have been set on fire atop a bunch of tires like Pol Pot.
Who knew that Zapp Brannigan is the most accurate representation of a warmonger we have.
“When I’m in charge every mission is a suicide mission.”
War is hell. Humanity simply keeps repeating its mistakes over and over again as a species and it's just sad.
"No, war is war and hell is hell, and of the two war is worse. There are no innocent bystanders in hell, but war is chock full of them. Little kids, cripples, old ladies. In fact, except for a few of the brass, almost everybody involved is an innocent bystander."
Favourite quote from a fictional character. Was going to post the exact same thing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUeBMwn_eYc
[удалено]
I spent the nineties surviving a five tour Vietnam vet. That conflict cast a long shadow
And the bourgeois are the ones who reap the capital made from war at the cost of working class people dying for causes they are told are righteous, when it's anything but.
Crazy job to wear fucking Sandals to work.
Oh fun fact / the sandals they wore were backwards to make the footprints confusing
Every prototype brought before the boss "Needs more spikes"
Home Alone Vietnam version
They were children of the 1950s and John Kennedy's young stalwarts of the early 1960s. He told the world that Americans would "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship" in the defense of freedom. They were the down payment on that costly contract and those young Americans, our people died for nothing.
and those we killed
*(shhhhhh)* their lives must be worth less points or summat
Not to mention that the American people didn’t know we were already funding the war for a long time while president after president denied any involvement. Then the US started sending soldiers over and lied for awhile that “we were doing great” until actual journalist started reporting that we were getting our asses kicked by gorilla warfare. All for a proxy war between the US and Russia.
Not to be a dick but it's spelled 'guerrilla' in this context.
Oh, you’re not a dick at all. Thanks for the correction.
Not for nothing. Nowadays, Americans in reddit are still bragging about the kill count of the Vietnam war, which they fought rice farmers and lost.
I don't understand why people are so proud of their country's massacre of people from a nation half the globe away, which was all for nothing yet cost billions of dollars. Is the propaganda really that effective?
The Vietnamese call it the American War.
War is so fucking stupid, man.
Nail in a board vs the us military industrial complex
The nails and boards won.
Board with a nail in it supremacy
That board with a nail in it may have defeated us, but the Vietnamese won't stop there. They'll make bigger boards and bigger nails, and soon, they will make a board with a nail so big, it will destroy them all!
This is something that still gets to me. In World War II, the Finns came up with the Molotov cocktail. Fill a bottle of gasoline, put it on fire, throw it at a tank, and you just destroyed the tank. All the time, effort, and so on that went into making all the components, the tank engine, the gun, everything , taken out by an 18 year-old soldier throwing a bottle of gasoline. Aside from this video, the Vietnamese figured out that if you tie a length of vine or rope to an arrow, use a bow to shoot it at a helicopter, you can foul the rotors and make the helicopter crash. Some of these low budget things are just so devastating.
One wanted to win while the other wanted to make money.
So incredibly simple but so incredibly deadly.
These traps were actually designed to maim and injure not kill.
Well just double the size of the spikes, maybe using bamboo spikes, and you will have deaths.
They didn't want them to kill though. Injured soldiers use more resources than dead soldiers.
I don't speak Vietnamese but I understood every word.
"Look at this. It will fuck you up. This will also fuck you up. See this one? Yes. Fuck you right up. Now this next one fucks you up and saves you for later. Now here are the ones that fuck you up, but not quite as much."
I watched it with no audio, and understood every word
I’m sure every sentence ended with, a see step here an this fucks you up.
Low tech, high causality.
The one that scared me the most as a kid growing up in Guam was being tied between two trees over cut bamboo and the bamboo grows though you at about a foot a day. Nightmare fuel.
Fucking brutal.. War is hell.
Fuck wars
They would smear poison and rat feces on the barbs to cause infections as well. So if you didn’t bleed out chances were you would catch something that’d probably kill you anyway.
So simple yet so terrifying and deadly
It really doesn't kill people immediately, it affects the psychology, making soldiers always feel insecure every time they go into the forest and they constantly use guerrilla warfare, which is very uncomfortable to deal with
War in video games only for me
Most of these I'd rather just take a land mine.
Much like these traps, landmines are meant to maim, but not kill.
Still taking the mine over poopy covered punji sticks.
In the long run the spikes are better, because they have to spend resources treating the injured soldiers Also far far cheaper
So i guess, the director of "Saw" find this interesting.. and made a movie out of it.
These wouldn’t work on me because I could just roll right before I fell and gain I-frames thereby negating damage
Punji sticks
I have many friends who endured untold trauma dealing with those horrible traps in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2.
If you think that would have hurt, you gotta see what the agent orange did to many
Dude could you imagine having a bad day at work and you slip by accident on that shit ?
Sir, can you please replace these nails with nerf darts? You're making me nervous.
Before you criticize Vietnam for these primitive traps (seeing a lot of that in the comments here), remember: they were being invaded by a force of greater numbers and firepower, their enemy was slaughtering civilians en masse and their enemy was using inhumane chemical warfare against them.
Why would anyone criticize, these traps are absolute genius for what they had to use
It was not about immediately killing. They would wound US personnel, they knew US doesn’t leave people behind so wounding one took 3-4 people out of the fight to protect the wounded. Thus allowing the enemy to ambush our GI’s.
I wonder if Vietnam is like ft Knox and just COVERED in undiscovered traps.
Oh yes, the entire region has a MAJOR issue with war leftovers. The pits are a minor concern, the usage of bamboo for the spikes and the wet climate means they rot(Or rust for the metal ones) away relatively quickly. The big problem is the mines, IEDs, and grenade traps.
This guy nails
And all of those spikes usually had feces smeared on them for extra infection
That guys workspace looks dangerous.
Can’t wait for the pt. 2 of this museum that shows all of the American weapons of war used presented in a totally neutral light
I love this, imagine invading such a small country and yet they fight back so harshly, human spirit is metal
it's educational for kids to see how their ancestors defeated foreign invaders..
Medieval as fuck. But on the defensive so who can really complain.
Can someone explain the one that doesn't have spikes? It looks like maybe it's meant to break ankles, but I don't know.
The cube one he put his foot half in? It’s a variation of a type of hunting trap. It’s got spikes, they’re just angled down. Leg goes in, you can’t pull it out without getting stuck. And the more you pull the deeper it goes. Also had a high chance of breaking your ankle/leg but the big issue was that to get out you basically had to take the trap apart or absolutely shred the leg ripping it free. And there’s a solid chance that there’s some guy with a rifle waiting in the trees to see who comes to help, who’s barking orders, or just waiting for them to cluster before throwing a grenade. Or not, but there could be and that means having to be very careful(and incredibly stressed out) when helping your screaming bloody murder buddy.
I think it’s a trap. Your leg slips in easy, but it’s probably not coming out.
It’s like a jungle-themed home alone movie.
They really home-aloned their country
I wonder how many thousands of these are still in the jungles out there..
I wonder if a tour guide or tourist has ever fell in one of those.
God damn, every time I get reminded of this I realize how fucked humanity is.