ShmoopTube

00:03

Ah, weapons and warfare like peaches and cream

00:06

except well you know infinitely more terrifying. Unless of course you [Bowl of peaches with an evil laugh]

00:10

have a deeply rooted fear of stone fruits, but all jokes aside a cherry killed our

00:15

entire family, it was the pits. Okay, all jokes actually aside, this unit is grim [Giant cherry eating people]

00:21

basically a story about how people managed to kill people faster, cheaper,

00:24

from farther away and in greater numbers. So yeah, definitely not a feel-good [Graph line going up]

00:29

story, but even though it makes the first ten minutes of up look like a [Boy being read a story shaking with fear]

00:33

side-splitting comedy all this weapon and warfare stuff is integral to the

00:38

study of our past. Like it or not we can't truly understand history without [People in a theater laughing]

00:42

understanding how technology has affected war. In fact the histories of [Boy studying textbooks]

00:47

war and technology are basically BFFs. If they could they'd be snapchatting all

00:52

day long and their pictures would probably be horrifying, of that and that and that... [Pictures of nukes, giant guns and explosions]

00:59

So in this unit we're going to get to know the centuries long evolution of military

01:03

technology. We'll start with the hunting tools that slowly but surely were [Man chucks a spear at an elephant]

01:08

turned into weapons against mankind. Because shockingly enough if it can kill

01:13

a mammoth it can kill a human. After we're done talking about humankind [Man chucks a spear at a human]

01:17

early and wimpy attempts at killing each other we'll move on to humankind's

01:21

slightly less early and slightly less wimpy attempts at you guessed, it killing [People fighting in a boxing ring]

01:26

each other. Well there were some serious innovations once the ancient empires

01:30

came to power, and if there's one thing Greeks and Romans were awesome at it was [Roman man firing a catapult]

01:35

inventing new and creative ways to annihilate each other. That and fashion.

01:40

Yeah let's make togo's hip again. All right we'll briefly cover the dull [People wearing togas]

01:44

swords and armor Middle Ages, sorry guys but you kind of drop the killing ball.

01:48

There are more interesting things to focus on here like the Industrial

01:52

Revolution, this is when things got serious, submarines, airplanes [Chimneys with smoke coming out of them]

01:57

tanks, machine guns, mustard gas, bigger and bigger bombs

02:02

and yep the Greeks and Romans would have needed a change of robes if they saw

02:06

these things coming at 'em. And from then on well things kept getting crazier, [People running away from a missile]

02:11

nukes gave us the power of total complete do not pass go do not collect

02:16

$200 destruction, and although they were less flashy two more modern technologies [Monopoly board explodes]

02:21

changed the way we make war. Chemical weapon and high-tech cyber weapons.

02:27

Though in terms of mass chaos and destruction they're both overachievers [Man wearing gas mask next to a toxic barrel and code on a computer]

02:31

and we can't forget about one of our newest war toys, drones. Now we'll be

02:36

covering all these things in this terrifying unit so stay tuned or just [Woman looking at her laptop scared]

02:40

hide beneath the covers we won't judge you but we will track you down with the

02:44

drone and force you to watch. [Drone flies by and takes away her blanket]

Full Transcript