Men Against Fire: How the Majority of Soldiers in Every War Steadfastly Refuse to Harm the Enemy
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 22 авг 2021
- Start building your ideal daily routine. The first 100 people who click on the link will get a FREE week trial and 25% OFF on Fabulous Premium: thefab.co/todayifoundout
Love content? Check out Simon's other RUclips Channels:
Biographics: / @biographics
Geographics: / @geographicstravel
MegaProjects: / @megaprojects9649
SideProjects: / @sideprojects
Casual Criminalist: / @thecasualcriminalist
TopTenz: / toptenznet
Highlight History: / @highlighthistory
XPLRD: / @xplrd
Business Blaze: / @brainblaze6526
→Some of our favorites: • Featured
→Subscribe for new videos every day!
ruclips.net/user/TodayIFo...
This video is #sponsored by Fabulous.
Sources:
Grossman, David, On Killing: The Psychological Costs of Learning to Kill in War and Society, Back Bay Books, New York, 2009, kropfpolisci.com/cognitive.gro...
McCammon, Sarah, The Warfare May Be Remote But the Trauma is Real, NPR, April 24, 2017, www.npr.org/2017/04/24/525413...
Engen, Robert, Marshall and the Ratio of Fire: History, Interpretation, and the Canadian Experience, Canadian Military History, Autumn 2011, www.canadianmilitaryhistory.ca...
Burdett, Thomas, Marshall, Samuel Lyman Atwood (1900-1977), Texas State Historical Association, www.tshaonline.org/handbook/e...
Smoler, Fredric, The Secret of the Soldiers Who Didn’t Shoot, American Heritage, March 1989, www.americanheritage.com/secr...
Glennt, Russell, Men Against Fire: How Many Soldiers Actually Fired Their Weapons at the Enemy During the Vietnam War, Vietnam Magazine, April 2002, www.historynet.com/men-agains...
Start building your ideal daily routine. The first 100 people who click on the link will get a FREE week trial and 25% OFF on Fabulous Premium: thefab.co/todayifoundout
My uncle is a nam vet he killed sooooo many people he took a photo of everyone he killed and when he came home he made a fire and burned each photo one at a time but he also told me for every one he killed there was 2 he let go many many times he and a viet cong came outta the bushed 5 ft away from each other both soldiers would usually point rifles at each other and after a moment it was understood u dont kill me i dont kill u.
I swear that the presenter is a AI scripted program thing. Idk im just saying because he mustn't sleep at all . Idk I could be right.
This is the first time I have heard Marshall's findings discussed outside of a military/quasi-military setting. Excellent job, especially when you included the "killing by reflex" training implemented post-WW II, to address it.
I love how you fed us bull crap in this video. You want me to believe in all wars soldiers refused to hurt the enemy. Look at the Mongolian empire. They loved killing. German empire 3rd reich same thing. You are not good at giving bs.
I enlisted when I was 16 and was sent to France….Battle of the Somme, it was horrible. I just shot high, over peoples heads. Rats in the trenches. Played football with the Germans on Christmas Eve. No drones on those days.
My grandfather fought in WWII…he was patrolling when he ran straight into a German soldier not out of his teens, just like grandpa was. They both stared, the German soldier smiled and gave him a wave…grandpa waved back…
…and then they both continued patrolling.
It's better to keep quiet and not sound the alarm so you won't be caught in the crossfire, where you will most probably get hurt
yeah people get so caught up in things they forget we’re all still people
Dude. Idk why, but I love that.
monsters send men to war, not the other way around
I Love the stories of Christmas eves and days during both world wars. Playing soccer with the enemy in no man's land, drinking with them, and being as merry as one could be in such a time and place...
Pretty sure it happened during the American revolutionary war and civil war too
Now it all makes sense. Stormtroopers intentionally miss their targets.
In all action movies, the heroes are just the psychopaths who can kill repeatedly without remorse.
It's also easier to fire AT stormtroopers who appear less human in their full armor.
@Wanye Smith I wonder who's fake here tho..
@Wanye Smith Something tells me you were never in the military. Remember most of the initial research and observations were made before and just after WWII. The military has made the training more realistic since then. I was a Marine and served in Afghanistan. and I can understand the studies. It's one thing to shoot a piece of paper. Another to shoot an actual person and they can shoot back. I never had to shoot my rifle on deployment but I imagine if I had shoot and missed it would have been due to bad (and panicked) shooting.
@Wanye Smith he literally said that people don’t do it as much anymore because of desensitization to killing incorporated into training
Fascinating. I recall a time in Iraq when a soldier turned to me and asked if he could fire on a crowd that was growing agitated. I dismissed it as him getting jumpy and told him I'd shoot him myself if he shot anyone, then I sent him to go sit inside an armored vehicle. I wrote it off as he was nervous of being hurt. It never occurred to me that he may have been thinking about the act of taking a life, and was getting a peer review on if it was ok. Whatever the case, nobody got shot that day.
You did a good thing that day my friend. Much respect.
Good on you..!!!
Thank you.
@@rainbowscarface2496 I simply did my duty. Win hearts and minds. I sat down with the soldier after. He said it was F--- up that I threatened to kill him. I'm not a genius, so I broke it down as we didn't become a CNN headline. That's our goal. We are trying to build stability. We don't massacre civilians. If I gotta kill one comrade to save 3, I'll do it. So please work with me. Don't make me kill you. One team, one fight.
@@WaywardVet You’re a good man.
"We discovered that people really don't like killing other human beings. So we decided to psychologically condition them into being violent killers."
I hate it.
@@ExE7333 Most people don't have to kill their own food anymore, so killing humans seems more unnatural to them.
@@ExE7333 you didn't watch the video did you?
@@ExE7333 you mean during routes when they were generally run down by cavalry or archers, generally nobility trained to do so and having plausible deniability respectively, rather than the whole main force?
@@ExE7333 think dude think.
if a properly trained soldier were always trying to kill another upon sight, and each time troops met they did so. How fast would wars end ? It doesn't take long to kill someone with a gun if they decide to engage you seriously.
“Out of every one hundred men, ten shouldn’t even be there, eighty are just targets, nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle. Ah, but the one, one is a warrior, and he will bring the others back.”
- Heraclitus
One of my favorite quotes
@@xxJJBOSSxx you must be a delight at parties
@@xxJJBOSSxx As my favorite quote goes -
"67% of quotes on the internet are made up"
-Abraham Lincoln
@@xxJJBOSSxx would you prefer the commenter credit themselves for it?
@@Lifesizemortal You know, you see Jakob's comment as correcting. I see it as, "Here's a tidbit of information that you may not have known!" For which, I am grateful to have learned a new quote and a little bit of history behind it.
"They were killing my friends."
damn, idk why that hit me so hard but it did
Audie Murphy’s life is a fascinating read. Dude was like if Steve Rogers was an actual person, with all the realistic consequences thereof.
That's some raw heroic bullshit right there
Who know what war would look like if soldiers' training focused on bonding them emotionally
I've been doing mideval combat recreation and LARPing for years and can tell you with 100% certainty that it is very easy to fake fighting with melee weapons. Even in sport combat only about 20% of participants actively engage the enemy and really drive the battle forward, and most people just follow them around and assist.
Interesting! This comment should be higher up.
The Greeks and Romans (and likely all other martial cultures too) already knew this thousands of years ago.
@@eekee6034 at the top for me
IRL example being the Battle of the Thirty during the hundred years war (pretty sure it was that one)
When we paintball there's a lot of spotting, ammo and air runs, and "medics" taking the time to apply 1 of 3 bandages to a friend so they can keep playing instead of immediately calling out
The part on the Drones reminds me of Ender's Game, when they literally tricked him to think that it was all a simulation, to get him to kill the buggers homeworks
But then he admits that deep down he knew the truth all along.
@@graham1034 But did he really? I guess we'd have to ask OSC whether he believes Ender's comment at face value or supposition with 20-20 hindsight.
In any case, Ender and the rest of the kids were pretty messed up after that incident.
Bean figured out it was real but Ender didn't.
They're bureaucrats, morty!
Thanks for spoiling it for anyone who didn’t finish the book
"one of the things that amazed me is how many bullets can be fired during a firefight without anyone getting hurt"
finally! storm troopers don't have to feel so bad! but then...does that mean the heroes just 100% psychos?
Most heroes are motivated by emotion: anger, fear, devotion to a cause, etc. That's very different from a real-world soldier who's basically just a poorly-paid employee doing what he's told until he's allowed to clock out. Form a unit of, say, angry folks who've been personally harmed by the Taliban, and you'll see some killing.
@Wanye Smith how do you know? You been spewing shit on every comment but no actual fact. WW1, and WW2 there are well documented cases of soldiers not willing to pull the trigger on the enemy. So explain to us where the lies are?
@Wanye Smith so literal centuries of evidence backing up the claims made in this video are somehow wrong despite that not being how data works. are you stupid or trolling?
@Wanye Smith Sweetie, all caps doesn't make you correct. It makes you look pathetic.
No, it all depends on the situation. Preserving life by taking another’s life isn’t inherently immoral. One could easily argue that killing a dog that was attacking a small child is a heroic act, while killing a dog for ‘fun’ or as part of a dog fighting ring would be on the ‘psycho’ side of that equation. Some people are morally opposed to hunting while others can do it without issue, but those same hunters would have a problem with ‘hunting’ another person. Life is more complex than the Hollywood tropes we like to attempt to distill it down to. I know plenty of people that carry firearms that abhor violence, they just realize that avoiding it isn’t always possible because they aren’t the only variable in the equation.
I like how positive this video is overall. I would also point out that the USA methods of getting soldiers to kill works on the battlefield but it causes a LOT of problems after those people leave the military. Some soldiers never manage to reintegrate successfully and end up with a lot of psychological damage.
It's called PTSD and literally EVERYBODY knows about it.
@@jojodancer1743 that and many other disorders.
I got some eggo's in the toaster, want some?
Yeah they basically dehumanize the enemy in order to make you not think about it as much.
@@josephsaude6298 That is the really sad part. The part that makes me happy is that without a lot of effort the vast majority of people will not kill other people even if their own life is at risk. I think it says a lot about basic humanity.
My Grandad fought in WW2 in the pacific and he had to kill... how did he justify it? "They were trying to kill our boys" That hit hard because he didn't want to but felt like he had to. The war messed him up and he became a missionary afterwards. Miss that man.
That's how I've always felt about it, more or less. I genuinely don't believe all these tales of "the majority don't shoot to kill." Just don't believe it. I know myself and I know people. You put me in a situation where someone is trying to kill me and I'm damn well going to try to kill them first, provided I don't just try to run away or hide. Morality doesn't come into it, it's survival. Humanity would never have gotten this far if most men weren't willing to kill to defend themselves, or to feed themselves etc. IMO most people are willing to kill others to protect themselves, particularly men.
I have absolutely no doubt that if I were in a war, I would be shooting to kill. Why? Well, what if I pretend to shoot at the enemy then the guy I pretended to shoot at shoots me for real? It makes no logical sense to do this. It's actively counter productive to the continuation of your own life. The only doubt I have is as to my own courage. The only reason I wouldn't be shooting to kill were if I were cowering in fear, which is plausible because I don't think anyone can truly know how they would handle bullets flying past you and explosions going on around you until you do it for real.
I have no desire to harm or kill other people. But I do want to continue living, I would want my friends to continue living, therefore I WOULD fight to kill the enemy provided my courage didn't fail. I see these stories through the lens of the more religious society that we had in the past. I think it's highly likely that these men just didn't want to admit what they had done while living in a society that simultaneously celebrates war heroes while sticking to the ten commandments belief that a killer is going to hell. But I have to admit, that these men coming from a previously more religious society might have been less willing to kill their fellow man than me due to their religious beliefs. I don't believe in God. For me, if I die it's all over. However if you do believe in eternal life, God and all that then maybe you wouldn't be willing to kill an enemy soldier if you thought God would sentence you to an eternity of torment in hell for doing so.
I was 17 when 9/11 happened and I live right outside of DC. My neighbor died at the pentagon that day. So myself as well as many of my classmates were personally effected and many of the boys decided to join the military. This means I know a good slew of people who went over there, several of them spoke to me about what it was like. One guy, he won a metal for bravery for saving his comrades, he spoke to me about that day and what he had to do to save his friends, one thing he said always stuck with me “I’m a murderer. I’m a murderer, and they gave me a medal”
I've heard a few interviews with drone pilots about the stress (on Radiolab I think, or similar) where they describe that, because they watch their target for so long (as opposed to say a jet pilot), they actually felt very close to them. I guess when you've watched someone meet/greet friends or taken the garbage out, it's hard to dehumanize them.
But they did take the garbage out didn't they? Just via a remote controlled bin tipper.
I always thought it might be *harder* cause of that than to scream by at several hundred miles an hour shooting or bombing targets.
Often you see the terrible things they do as well.
Imagine having a scope on someone as he drags a little boy into his home, and not getting clearance to engage, but being ordered to keep surveillance active.
I've heard this from friends in the military as well. They can watch a specific compound for days or weeks at high magnification before killing everyone in it. Potentially easier to not think about the people when you're flying high overhead at high speed and dropping on a numbered coordinate.
@@stubbornone1189 The vast majority of people the drone program has killed were innocent civilians. The drone operators have terrible rates of PTSD from perpetrator trauma
"I selfishly lowered my moral standards so that I may be here today. Some looked at me negatively when I came home for that, but to them I would say, never question ones morality until yours has been tested itself."
Said by a Vietnam vet in an interview on the subject of killing
I think this video has proven that the vast majority of people who fight in war take the moral high ground even at the threat of self preservation, so many have tested their morals and still sided with not engaging the vicious and pointless cycle of destruction. what a soldier does is the most thankless task a person can willingly do, I don't think anyone should ever give a veteran grievance for what they had to do to survive, but that doesn't mean what they did was right or even the only solution, and thats food for thought that keeps humanity from the brink.
@Wanye Smith Crikey, what's your problem?
@Wanye Smith Here's something for you to think about:
*You are your enemy's enemy!*
Yup, people who loudly and proudly pronounce what THEY would do in a given extreme scenario always make me laugh... the truth is you have NO IDEA how you will act in an extreme circumstance. and what you think you would do may well be the opposite of what you will actually do.
@Wanye Smith nah, even soldiers you specified aren't good people. Why? Because the sole purpose of life is to be as twisted and corrupt as possible in one way or another, and all living beings will actively pursue ways to enforce said corruption
😂😂😂😂
The very fact that so many men survived "kill or be killed" scenarios when they refused to kill is telling in itself. Maybe the other guy didn't want to shoot them any more than they wanted to shoot him
Maybe this is a cultural thing? The military in my country always seemed ready to kill.
@Wanye Smith I had an enemy in my sights and didn't fire this weekend in COD.
@Wanye Smith Just what Hitler would've said. Fight me bro!
Well duh...
That's because these studies aren't actually true
The truth is that most firefights end swiftly, because people tend to not want to die and will withdraw if they feel they are losing. Exceptions to this are battles like Stalingrad, where *millions* were killed.
The Eastern Front as a whole is a hard rebuke to this video, as is the Japanese conquest of China, and the Pacific theater. A British soldier was far more likely to be unwilling to shoot a German (and vice versa) than a German and a Soviet, or an American and a Japanese.
This is a difficult subject to talk about. As someone who's been to war and done the deed, I don't make a habit of reminiscing about the experience, but I think there are some points that need to be addressed.
Modern warfare rests upon the idea of diffused responsibility. Outside of a very few specialties, a single soldier killing a single enemy soldier is a rarity. Modern infantry doctrine rests on the idea of fire superiority, that is, putting enough bullets downrange to convince the enemy that maybe they shouldn't stick their heads up to fire back. The upshot to this approach, if you'll pardon the pun, is that it's extremely difficult to know who's actually doing the killing. The "natural soldier" might deliberately engage single targets, but everyone else can get away with spraying in the general direction of the enemy. This principle of diffused responsibility spreads equally well to just about every other job in combat. No single person is responsible for an artillery round going downrange. Pilots may drop a bomb or fire a missile, but they're not even close to the first person in the decision making process.
Combat is a team sport. When everyone has a relatively small role to play, it becomes easier to focus on your particular job. You can tell yourself that the final responsibility doesn't rest on your shoulders, or doesn't wholly rest on your shoulders, as so many others had their own part to play. Simply refusing to pull the trigger, push the button, so on and so forth, isn't an option. You're not just letting yourself down and risking your own lives, you're letting down your entire team. When you screw up, you're risking everyone's life.
One final note: take care in using LTC Grossman as a source. He was in vogue for awhile when his "sheepdog" philosophy gave T-shirt designers and wannabe tough guys something to proclaim loudly to anyone who would listen, but these days, he's widely regarded as full of shit among the people who actually did some fighting.
It still sounds as if deliberate killing is more or less left to those that choose to engage in it and that everyone else can get away with laying down suppressive fire or be ordered to push a button since the weapons systems attached to said button are too destructive or just expensive to be left to the whim of a single human though.
Then again, I have never been in combat so what do I know?
You haven't really objected to the thesis of this video. Was that your goal?
I spoke to an Israeli very decorated soldier who was part of the first unit to enter and take the temple square in Jerusalem in 1967, he told me smiling that he only shot over the heads of the Arabs opposing them, who then promptly retreated. Very interesting guy, and very interesting conversation.
I trained in the FDF (Finland) and also qualified as a sniper, and got extensive range time with popup targets, as well as did simulations and airsoft battles, and I was always very effective at those, and there isn't the smallest chance that I would not aim for and hit an enemy if I were ever put in that situation, most of my fellow soldiers probably would do a lot worse with the actual killing part of war. Both from a marksmanship as well as a personal morality aspect, I spoke to many of them about this and many candidly said they would not be willing to take enemy lives under any circumstance, some considered me a psycho as they knew I wouldn't hesitate to do so.
I've never been in combat so this is interesting expansion on what Simon talked about. Thank you!
That is what my grandpa said about world war 2 when I asked if he killed anyone. He said he was shooting but so was everyone else.
"Then perhaps, there's hope for humanity after all."
I'm an Iraq war vet so this whole video really hits close to home, but that last line and point really got me choked up. I believe that all humans are intrinsically good, and war is not our natural state. But it is sometimes necessary. Although usually it isn't.
I have never felt a bond like I had with some of my fellow soldiers while deployed, and your explanation is spot on.
In the end, we aren't evolved to live in modern civilization. We are evolved to live in small nomadic tribes competing for resources. War is a lot like that. If you look at the cultural record left by prehistoric people, there isn't a lot that indicates war was common. But hunting and working items was. So while tribal war certainly was a thing, it wasn't commonplace. By bypassing the control nature exerts over us with technology, we have largely set ourselves outside the effects of natural selection. Which means, we have not REALLY changed much genetically since the stone age, or even before.
That's why we would fight much harder for our fellow soldiers than ourselves. They are a stand in for our "tribe".
Human's secret weapon isn't our big brains or opposable thumbs. It's cooperation/compassion. Caring about each other is our secret weapon.
That's the root of this whole video really. It's built in to us to help each other. To care about each other.
Humans are inherently good.
Ah the Iraq war. A war to led to the Power Vacuum of the Middle East, that led to the rise of ISIS. Iraq was the failed war, the pointless war. If Sadam and Ghadafi ruled those shitholes no Muslim extremists would ever rise.
And don’t get me started on the Afghan war. The money war. God damn the arms contractors made so much money.
I will disagree with your conclusion. I do not know of any time in human history when there was not a war occurring. Despite the hosts conclusions war was common among the Indian tribes of America and remarkable tortures were conceived by the same people. We get the word cannibal from the Carib tribes Columbus discovered, and the human sacrifices of the Aztecs and Incas are undeniable.
Going further back to the Middle East there have always been wars and horrors. From the enslavement of entire nations in Egypt to the child sacrifices to Moloch in what we now call Israel. Even more "civilized" cultures in Europe had a fighting season when men were not needed to tend crops so they were sent to war.
Do not trust human nature. That is why we live in this sin-cursed world.
"The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?" Jeremiah 17:9
I disagree with your conclusion that humans are inherently good.
Human are inherently delusiona, going about our days completely oblivious to the effects our actions have on others and trying to justify those actions with the label "good" or "bad" based on our own preconceptions and not on the actual causation of those actions.
Basically if an Alien species or "All powerful entitie" comes to earth and asks one human for a reason to save the species, hope the human they find isn't me.
@@PhilosophicallyAmerican ;Sure. During "history".
I'm talking about prehistory. Before agriculture and writing.
@@AmadonFaul Two points:
1. I do not believe in a "pre-history." My Bible covers the first days of the universe.
2. Even if I did accept your premise, your assertions are nothing but assumptions of human life during those days as we have no written record to back up your claims. So that does not even work by your own logic.
I read a novel ages ago about young soldiers in WW2, their sergeant saying that only one in five will actually pull the trigger of their rifle, and even then so long as it's not pointing at an enemy - the young man he was talking to was the exception, and had just killed some enemy soldiers.
Humans are like most other animals, up to and including the other great apes; posture, intimidate, threaten, make a lot of noise and pull faces, but only actually attack as a very last resort.
i dont think you have hung around the hood at all.
@@Tripskiii no I haven't and I'm very pleased about it.
My father is currently the youngest still-surviving American POW of ww-2...either theater. He explained that 'his war' was an industrial slaughter operation and there was very little "combat" as seen in movies. He was on Task Force Baum at the very end of the war. German's started lobbing an occasional artillery round their general direction. Each time, it got closer. The guys he was with split up and took cover best they could, more time passed. A round landed so close my dad was covered with debris and had the wind knocked out of him. At first he thought there was no trace at all of the several men who suffered a direct hit . They were mostly intact but got buried by the dirt kicked up by the explosion.
@@ATOMIC_156 wtf are you talking about? that wasn't what was intended, and if you thought that's what was, well way to reveal something about yourself.
people attack beyond reasons of 'last resort', we literally wage pre-emptive warfare here in the US, just incase the 'enemy' might be planning something... that policy will always fail.
This reminds me of a quote of Peter Gelderloos. He said something along the lines of "If humanity is really as warlike as some have us belief, we wouldn't have survived our early evolution."
YWNBAW
The sad part about that quote is the only reason we are the only species of humans left even though we weren't as strong as neanderthal or others.
We were just smart enough to work together.
@Wanye Smith if that were true then why are there different types of human surely if we all started from the same 2 people we would all look roughly like them right? its almost as if due to humanity spreading across the globe they physically adapted to new environments over time or to put it simply evolved.
@@exilestudios9546 I can't tell if he is trolling or not.
@@exilestudios9546 yeah he's (wayne smith) a shitposter/troll fo sho
Also a reason why governments try to objectivize their enemies, try to think of them as non-human. The Civil war must have been really tough since it was neighbors and even family.
I don’t think it would have been that hard. Look at the internet now. Regardless whether it’s a republican or Democrat they all talk about the other side as if they’re extremists and like they’re brain dead zombies. Referring to each other as racist or sheep or cuck or whatever anything but a person. The reality is neither republicans or democrats are anything like an extremist party. But in order to prevent their followers from engaging in reasonable discussion with the opposition that could lead to middle ground and even concessions that the other side has a valid point they label the other side as extremists and there for should be ignored as they have nothing of value to add to a discussion.
@@troystaunton254 all racists are person's. So. Meh.
@@troystaunton254 fuck middle ground. The middle ground between wrong n right is wrong. Overton window.
@@gur262 most of the North were pretty racist back then too
There have been many civil wars and they’re always brutal
My grandpa grew up during WWII and served in Korea. He was conditioned through propaganda, both civilian and military, to think of Asians as less than human. It wasn't until his late 70s that he stopped referring to all Asians with various racial slurs. Propaganda and conditioning are powerful tools.
So what about all those brainwashed SJWs who were trained to think of "Trump Supporters" as sub human?
Like that kowalski guy in gran torino
@@khaccanhle1930 lmao sure, famously all SJWs are known for yelling slurs and oppressing Trump supporters 🙄
Probably not so much the propaganda as the memories of seeing his brothers skinned alive and hung up for display.
War is ugly, and we all do terrible things in war. Ask a veteran (if any survived Cuomo's nursing home covid extravaganza), about some of the demoralization tactics of Asian military forces.
Obviously, no group can be held together as a single consciousness, so it makes no sense to hold racial animus.
Maybe you should consider what horrors the enemy put your grandfather through, rather than disrespecting him by writing him off as a "racist ol' relic". People are far too eager to paint Americans as the oppressors.
@@khaccanhle1930 No they view Trump supporters as brainwashed proto fascist, that support policy that leads to the destruction and oppression of life on earth at the most extreme levels seen in a modern democracy
spray and pray was my moment I stuck with when in Iraq '03. I was on recovery missions with an .50 cal on my truck, let alone my M16. So when we took fire and I was on overwatch. I just spray the general area where the fire was coming from. Now, when I was on the ground recovering equipment, I just shot in the general direction. Of course, I wasnt a grunt. An Soldier yes. but, I wasted no time in helping my fellow soldier and Marine, while under fire.
There's part of the reason for the low hit percentage -- he can't see anything. And if he does see an enemy, it's not going to be standing there waiting to be shot.
I'm reminded of something a soldier said in a documentary about a war he'd fought in(I think it was WW2, but I'm not sure), about killing the enemy:
"I'd lay down, so the sun was in my eyes, and all I could see was silhouettes. I'd shoot uniforms, not people."
@Wanye Smith Wayne, are you on a watchlist or something yet? You seem to be very bloodthirsty in this comment section… If you think everyone is absolutely willing to kill other humans, you need help. Sure, some twisted people are out there, but that is not the majority.
@Wanye Smith Just go away.
@Wanye Smith Fix things? Care to elaborate?
@Wanye Smith I did hear there was a shortage of plumbers.
@@joonasvilen8759 He wants to murder people. Simple as that. But he knows if he starts killing now, he'll be thrown in prison.
As for the large number of bullets expended for just one kill on the modern battlefield you have to understand that alot of this is the result of Suppressing Fire. Keep the enemy's head down and he cant shoot back. Meanwhile you are calling in an artillery strike on his position. The vast majority of kills and wounds are caused by artillery. Not small arms. But a good episode none the less Simon. I share your hope for humanity.
The mismatch between theoretical and actual results also shows up in the Napoleonic Wars and American Civil War. Brent Nosworthy goes into it in depth.
That's the old "suppressing fire" theory. All that wasted ammo is unneccessary. This is why armies are rapidly moving away from squad machine guns in favour of carefully aimed shots. The British had intended this with the LSW in the 1980s already but that weapon's performance did not meet expectations.
@@HO-bndk well still the suppressive fire Is used a lot, especialy against a static enemy were he can be pin down and killed or forced to surrender
@@HO-bndk Suppressing fire isn't going anywhere. Marksmanship theory was debunked in the Korean and Vietnam wars.
@@HO-bndk Thanks to guys like you, magazine cut offs exist
It makes me think on Dakota Meyer. He won the Medal of Honor in Afghanistan- the highest award for valor in the American military. But, like Audie Murphy, when asked about it, he refers to the fact that he acted to save his friends and that it was actually the most terrible day in his existence on this planet.
I didn't find this video interesting, I found it fascinating. This speaks volumes about the nature of humanity and men in particular.
The idea that we care more about social standing (peer pressure) than our own preservation is crazy and shows our profoundly social nature.
Likewise we generally care less about dying than we do about taking someone else's life. Humans are naturally empathetic.
Also, your point of peer pressure in my opinion corroborates doctrines by groups like Sacred Band of Thebes. They were a military unit composed entirely of male lovers, and that was openly encouraged. The idea being if you were boning the guy next to you, you'd fight extra hard to impress them, and fight like hell to protect them.
I'd say that idea is pretty accurate, as the Sacred Band were noted for their military prowess, were one of the few factions to ever beat Sparta decisively in battle, even being one of two factions to kill a Spartan king, and fought to the last man against Philip II even when the rest of the army had fled and were soundly beaten.
In war, the “peer pressure” would be to fire…. So, it seems to me this says they care more about human life (or doing the moral thing?) than peer pressure or self preservation.
@@Andreamom001 Yes, that's what i meant. I could have written that better.
Often times what's moral is what's good for the group, sometimes at the detriment of the individual (the ultimate good is self-sacrifice) and what's immoral is what is good to the individual at the detriment of the group.
@@Joe-po9xn I've never heard about them, that sounds really peculiar and interesting, I'll look it up.
I think it's a profound example of men's nature to protect others, as well. We're naturally inclined to not only be social creatures, but to protect those we instinctively see as "weaker" or those with whom we've formed an emotional/social bond.
I served in the army for six years and was happy to continue. One day, and I don't really know how or why it happened, it just occurred to me in a really profound way what it was that I was actually training to do.
That was the end. By the end of the weeks I'd handed my papers in, and by the end of the month I'd been discharged.
I don't know who you are. I will never meet you or see you. But I'm proud of you.
@@cristiancamilovaldiviesopo6717
That's definitely the kindest thing anyone has ever said to me on the internet. 🙂
Heh, interesting. When I had to serve my compulsory service and they taught us how to shoot people I immediately thought "fuck that. I'm never going to to shoot anyone." That made carrying around the stupid rifle for months immensely annoying. But what can you do. I wasn't sure how the others felt. But seeing this I now know most of you feel the same way and it puts a smile on my face. :)
What country did you serve in?
> Origin story for why Batman doesn't use guns
My faith in humanity has suffered much over the years. This. This brings a gleam of hope back for my fellow men and women.
Why?
Your fellow men and women only have hope now because somebody pulled a trigger for them.
Being a pacifist is fine, whatever, but I'm seeing a lot of people in these comments who seem to mistake pacifism for moral superiority, when in many cases, especially in the past, it just wasn't.
War is never so black and white.
There is goodness in standing up and fighting for those who can't, your neighbours and the ones you love.
It's okay to recognise goodness in dark places, it might help your "faith in humanity."
Faith in what?...
If the soldier next to you isn’t fighting, not only should he not be there, he’s betraying his fellow soldiers.
@@MultiWolfstorm "Never force pacifists past their breaking point. They're perfectly calm and happy until they're angry, and they'll end up haunting your nightmares."
@@foty8679 But then they aren't pacifists really are they.
Remember everyone, Grossman has never killed anyone and pushes his ideas regularly at seminars to turn a buck. He pushes the idea that movies and videogames make people violent and the "sheep dog" mentality.
Never rely on intimidation or assume the other person in a confrontation will settle if you submit.
Ridiculous that people still take him seriously.
Grossman has a wonderfully accurate name
As a young sergeant, years ago I read S.L.A. Marshall’s book and I took those lessons to heart. It served me well when I deployed numerous times to Afghanistan and how I trained the soldiers under my care on how to deal with the situation.
I remember reading an account of ww2 patrol in Europe where a platoon was confronted by the enemy, bumped into them in the woods.
It'd started as a shouting match, stones were thrown then both sides decided better of it, backed down and sculked off. It was only at that point they remembered they had guns, the other guys had guns, and no one had though to use them.
IIRC it said in the same book at that the time only 20% of soldiers had fired their guns, only 10% had fired in the general direction and only 2% had aimed to kill. Of that 2% half did it because it was their duty, the other half because they were psychopaths.
As the video said by Vietnam this had reversed and nearly 100% in modern conflict, which is when the PTSD really kicked in.
The peer pressure thing is also why military groups are the sizes they are based on the roles as that's the numbers of other people ( friends ) you can care about in the various requirements needed.
Numbers are largely universal for the number of people you can know, count as friends and very close friends.
When you see another human being, your first reaction isn’t to want to harm or kill them; unless you’re a psychopath. most of the troops in the world wars were just ordinary lads, and groups of british and german soldiers alike frequently just ignored one another whenever they thought they could get away with doing so.
OFFICER: If you didn't want to shoot your enemy, then why are you applying for the position?
APPLICANT: I just want a job
for every infantryman there are 4 or 5 support soldiers. he could have gone into admin or logistics away from the frontline
12:24 No, after pulling the trigger every single soldier in a firing squad will know perfectly well if they fired a blank cartridge or not. There's simply no mistaking the very distinct difference in recoil. The blank cartridge's purpose is to ensure everyone will go through the motions because they don't know whether they have a blank or not _before_ they pull the trigger, not after.
Too late for the person to be executed, anyhow.
I thought that bit was odd. Thanks for clarifying.
Wax bullets do in fact provide realistic recoil
@@Keti9er I doubt it. Granted, might very well be closer to the real thing than blanks, but Newton's third law comes in the way. A wax projectile will be much lighter than a metal bullet, so in order to have identical recoil, the amount of propellant would have to be much larger to compensate.
@@MosoKaiser realistic doesn't mean identical. It's close enough that the shooters can sleep at night, if they need that sort of thing.
I had read somewhere that during WW2, many small German units were made up of soldiers from the same town or village so that they were more likely to fight harder and defend their family, friends and people they had known for many years.
as an army vet, one of the one things I was grateful for was never being put in a position to make that choice. To this day, i dont know what choice id have made in that situation
Why’d you join the army?
@@bennywolfe4357 was straight out of high school. had a choice of joining military or going to university, and i had enough of school. was best 6 years of my life, i really grew up there. I went in as an IT specialist, and for 4 of the years i helped with the digitization of the 2/8th mechanized infantry, which then was later deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. I never got deployed, instead being reassigned to Egypt as part of the MFO
This gave me the most hope I’ve had in the human species I’ve felt in a LONG time
This gives me the exact opposite feeling let's not kill the people trying to kill us great way to die
Knowing that war is so unnatural that most people will refuse to do it even when trained to shows something great about humanity.
@@wiiretime3704 But they are having the same problem. It’s good to know that most people do not want to kill others. The scary part is how we’ve gotten better at figuring out how to psychologically trick people into killing while ignoring the mental health fallout that comes with realizing you’ve ended so many people’s life after you’ve “served your country”
@@Talik13 👏👏👏
And then you woke up , and seen the stupidity that your fellow man has displayed these past 18 months !
Honestly, I've been in a situation where I have taken a life, entirely within self defense, I know I could do it again, because I've already done it and while I know I'd hesitate, I know how it'll be afterwards. But regardless, I don't blame anyone for not wanting to do so, I got the misfortune of not having any other alternative to killing and not many can say the same, if you cannot bring yourself to fire upon another person and actually kill them, despite being under fire yourself, you are far braver than given credit for, and are clearly a good person in a bad situation
Hey man I was just talking to my girlfriend about this psychological nich humans have, even though humans have killed each other since the dawn of time, we would much rather preserve life than take it.
I'm glad I didn't even have to bring it up for somebody to put it out there in one good explanation.
Thank you very much for the educational morning coffee friend.
niche* :) and good comment!
It's more of an over-extrapolation of a uniquely modern circumstance.
Our species is successful because of our ability to cooperate on a massive scale, not because we kill one another. Caring about human life, even strangers or the enemy, was and is evolutionarily advantageous.
Its why our leaders are never on the front lines. You go sacrifice your humanity, I’ll be watching from far away.
That's a double edged sword, the REASON we have evolved to cooperate is specifically to outcompete enemies, one does not occur without the other
Obviously I think we are far more enlightened now than our ancestors, and we should do our best to avoid war, but ignoring the huge part warfare played on our evolution is ignoring what made us human to begin with.
@@viysnjor4811 every species natural enemy is not their fellow. Animals only compete for hierarchy when they're the same species usually. Our enemy was nature, and other animals. And that's not a threat on average.
Though other apes have shown that they kill some smaller competition too, of other apes. I think it was chimps. I don't know if it's been observed elsewhere.
@@DSan-kl2yc "every species natural enemy is not their fellow."
For apex predators (like humans) their chief enemies literally are other members of the same species. A great white is not threatened by tuna, they are threatened by other great whites that want to kill them to reduce competition.
Except we elected leader with no morality at all. So if anything they should be on the Frontline they got nothing to lose.
No, the reason why our leaders no longer lead us into battle is because they're easy targets. Frontline Generals have either a low survival rate, or a high capture rate.
It's been a few years now that I've been watching your channels, and you've taken over RUclips. Thanks for the quality videos 👍 I love learning new things.
@Wanye Smith Did you know that 75% of statistics are made up of lies and BS.
It's not that I believe every last thing I see. In all lies, there are truth's and in all truth's, there are lies. It's our job to unblur the lines.
Now it makes a lot more sense why resistance groups can be so combat effective
I remember hearing a sniper say during an interview after his first kill he went back to base and kept thinking he was gonna get in trouble
This, combined with how thoroughly normalized lynching was in the USA, are a powerful reminder of just how dangerous dehumanizing efforts can be.
What's wrong with lynching?
@@donvito5647 please tell me you're joking, and I don't actually have to explain to you why extra judicial murder is Not Good, Actually - and that it being normalized to the point that people used to sell memorabilia to the families that would attend them is a special kind of horrible 😒
I want to know when lynching was normalized? It may have been a thing that happened but it was never normal and it was never accepted. I was born in the 50s, and it wasn't normal then and the closest it came to being accepted is through media and television, if it was ever normalized it was in the 80s or 90s
@@zenolachance1181 Ever hear the song, "Strange Fruit?" Ever look up the stats of how many Black people were murdered by White mobs, particularly those who were members of the KKK? In the South, it was considered normal for guys to go to Klan rallies, and commit random acts of terrorism, including on "race traitors" who had married someone not White, often including killing their kids. Thousands were murdered, and very few were ever convicted, because systemically, it had become normalised. Please, don't take my word for it. History exists for us to learn from it. You need look no further than the first comment in this thread, but I encourage you to do so.
@@donvito5647 Ask that again when you're the one about to swing, having done nothing but be born, and encountering the wrong people at the wrong time. Btw, the KKK used to list Spanish and Italians as "mongrels," assuming all were to some extent mixed with African, Moorish, and/or Jewish ancestry. P.S. Genetic analysis shows that to be the case, so if you are indeed of Mediterranean extraction, you might want to avoid Klan rallies, lest they discover you aren't "really" White. If you were trying to be funny, #Fail.
I cannot imagine killing another person. I have had to put down animals, and that is hard. The only reason I was really able to do it the first time was because the animal was fatally injured and would have died, but slowly and painfully.
Most animals haven't done anything to deserve death: even those that have were usually messed up by humans first. I've put down a dog and two cats, helped butcher a couple animals as well, and I always shed some tears: I don't believe I'm any sort of broken.
I never signed up, but our country has been at war for 20 years, so I've certainly thought about it, and the thought of killing a human who would do the things that the Talaban, Baathists, Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, or any of the other monsters out there wouldn't bother me one iota. I think if China pushes the button, killing Chinese kids might bother me because I know them not to be monsters, only propping up a regime of monsters... but knowing what those monsters would do to my family if they gained power over my homeland, I'm fairly certain I'd only hesitate a moment.
I don't have a problem killing monsters: animals are different.
Anthropomorphizing animals is very much a human thing. No other animal on the planet has any hesitation about killing another animal for food, and most don't care if another animal -- even one in its immediate circle -- dies. Animals die throughtout nature in horrific ways all the time, and this is the natural norm. Putting down a dog or cat, or a farm animal, may indeed feel difficult and sad, but it is because of the value and affection we assign to those particular animals and not others.
@@RohannvanRensburg You're not wrong, but you have to remember that it is the fact that we have evolved such a strong sense of empathy that allowed us to very firmly claim the status of dominant species on this planet. Empathy is not something to shun: it's necessary to our survival as a species.
So basically, a good example of the idea of being more intimidating than effective at killing would be that crazy scotish dude that charged enemies with a two-handed sword, yelling at the top of his lungs. Opposing soldiers apparently thought the guy was totally mad and were scared of him.
Mad Jack Churchill? I know there was a tale of him marching ashore on D-day playing the bagpipes with one arm and waving a claymore around with the other. Some of the German prisoners were later asked why they didn't shoot him as an easy target. Allegedly their response was something along the lines of "Well, we didn't want to shoot him. We felt sorry for him because we assumed he was mentally handicapped."
@@minimalbstolerance8113 I don't remember the name of the guy. Just that he charged enemies (Germans I think ?) with a claymore, followed by his helper playing bagpipes. The guy is a fucking legend in my book.
I think Biographics has already done a story on him.
Grossman's findings may give hope but his "killology" training that he gives to police departments all over the country (training them to be more comfortable with killing citizens) should absolutely not. His name describes it so well. Gross Man.
Grossman should be in prison for crimes against humanity.
(Training them to be more comfortable with killing *dangerous criminal scum)
Fixed your sentence for you
@@nedflanders4158 except statistics show otherwise in a multitude of cases and either way lethal force us only supposed to be used when there is no other option. Which as we've seen time and time again is far from what actually happens. They're supposed to arrest people. Charges are supposed to be drawn against people and a trial is supposed to happen. The cops aren't supposed to be thugs or judge, jury, and executioner. There's supposed to be due process. So no, you didn't "fix" anything. All you did was make a stupid comment without any regard of how things are supposed to be by law and by rights both constitutional and human. Pipe the fuck down.
@JojoTheGeneral Good thing we don't have a severe problem with these killology trained cops shooting unarmed civilians then, right?
@@nedflanders4158- Except it ALSO trains them to be more likely to kill anyone else too. Holding a phone? Dead. Holding your wallet? Dead. Holding nothing but they think you're making a move? Dead. Running away? Dead! You can't always tell who's "dangerous criminal scum" at a glance, you know.
Absolutely enlightening episode! Very nicely told and referenced! Thank you again for such great work!
The beard is trimmed. It feels like we've gone back in time.
How do we know his beard isn't connected to the flow of time?
I can almost always tell how old a video is by the length of his beard 😂
@@operator.k The beard is all knowing
Thank the gods
Simon doesn't trim his beard. It molts. Once it pumps in a full blood supply before hardening, it will be bushier than ever.
I think this is the best video Simon and "Today I Found Out" have made
With everything said, I find it the most... inspiring, that the biggest motivation is in saving the lives of thier brothers and comrades, even at the expense of thier own life.
Imagine before the introduction of guns having "war" as a game of tag because neither side can afford to kill eachother
Did you ever see Shaka Zulu? The Zulus and other "warring" tribes of Africa only staged mock battles of intimidation and ridicule. A few spears would be thrown lazily at no one in particular. The chiefs would then decide who won.
Then Shaka Zulu came along and made them real and dangerous killers.
I remember a documentary way back in the late 70's-early 80's about the psychology of war. It had an interview with some officer doctors and others about the biggest issue in combat situations where soldiers would purposely shoot to the right or left of the enemy, missing him on purpose. Also they would sometimes shoot up all their cartridges. or render their weapon inoperable somehow.
You get to disassemble n reassemble the thing alot. Lose a part or 2,maybe bend it. Done
And then when you train a solider to kill by reflex, you make him even more subject to PTSD because he has to deal with the psychological fallout after acting without thought.
A more effective killer, but after, yet another victim of war.
A semi-autonomous weapon system, more or less.
I’m assuming it would be best if the soldier believed in what he was doing.
@@bennywolfe4357 Just because you believe in what you are doing, doesn't mean you know what you are being asked to do, until you have to do it.
Honestly, this video rather unexpectedly helped me feel better about my PTSD , even though I've never been in the military
In hand to hand, he's in your face, and the lines literally have to push against one another. And that's how it's been for a long time. But now...it's different.
This is so cool! And as you said, really gives me a lot of much needed hope for humanity.
@Wanye Smith lol okay
@Wanye Smith Could you please explain what part of it you think is evil and why?
It'd be interesting to do a follow-up study related to those who served in the middle east, given the Western world have now moved to an all volunteer military force.
I attended a very excellent seminar presented by Colonel Grossman who, if memory serves me correctly, taught psychology at West Point and I have also read his book, "On Killing". Very illuminating and a lot of additional information that was not included here due to Simon's time constraints. I highly recommend the book to anyone who is concerned with the amount of violence in our society because it is more about that violence than it is about the military.
Great vid!
Imagine if only just a quarter of troops, refused to kill the enemy. Imagine the carnage on D-Day, iwo jima, or Stalingrad. It's for the best that healthy people don't enjoy killing.
Strangely enough this makes the world a much nicer place showing that people really are peace loving while simultaneously a much darker place showing that wars are really pushed forth by the influential who just want to gain something.
I think it makes the world seem like a darker place.
People aren’t willing to fight for what they believe in.
@@bennywolfe4357 People aren't willing to KILL for what they believe in.
@@bennywolfe4357 I disagree , as also seen in the video people are not only willing to fight for what they believe in but also sacrifice their lives for it. The do it for the ones they love , family , friends etc. They just don't want to kill another person whose only crime was that he vas conscripted/ coerced etc. to be on the other side .
@@Xenofer1 you guys may not realize this, but the only way to fight your enemy is to kill them. If the enemy is shooting at you and your friends, and you don’t shoot back, your friends death is partly on your hands. The enemy might kick your loved ones out of their homes or kill them. If they were really willing to sacrifice, they’d sacrifice by fighting.
@@bennywolfe4357 Hmm well that is also a way to look at it I suppose , but throughout history the vast majority of enemies (in battles) were not killed , but morally beaten and turned to flee. And as the video shows people don't like to kill other people and generally speaking don't want to be in combat so "scaring" them not to fight is the preferred (easier and quicker) method of winning. Of course I assume you meant enemies in actual combat .
I love this channel and I think this is seriously one of the best, most interesting videos I've ever seen on this channel, despite the fact I was very familiar with this concept previously.
Dont forget his other 9 channels
One of the best videos you've ever done, thanks.
I know that this might totally surprise people, but most who fight in wars don't exactly love the idea of killing another human being.
you mean soldiers aren't inherently evil??? no way!!1!
Look at the army ads -- "money for college", "learn a trade", "be all you can be", etc. Not a word about "kill or be killed".
If they really wanted hard-a$$ MF's, they'd recruit from the urban gangs.
@Wanye Smith, hey, active duty servicemember here... Shut the hell up. You give respect to soldiers because we volunteered our time, energy, and in many cases lives to defend the country.
You don't respect someone just because they kill people. That's sociopathic.
@Wanye Smith
@@ItRemindMeOfHome thank you for your service. Advice, don’t engage with Wayne. He’s posting this on every comment that supports the notion of humanity amongst military members. I’m pretty certain that if he had been a German citizen in WW2, he’d be starching his uniform daily and find nothing wrong with the fact that some soldiers played pin the baby on the bayonet.
Fascinating look into a complex subject, and well researched! Thanks, TIFO team! 😀
Outstanding video. Gives me hope for the future.
"A good soldier kills his enemies without stopping to think of them as human beings. The moment you see them as your fellow Man, you cease to be a good soldier.
I was a great soldier. May God forgive me..."
I would venture there is likely a significant difference between conscript and volunteer armies. One of the primary reasons the draft is so controversial as a means of potentially increasing combat capability.
My country has a draft, but the soldiers who are in combat typically believe in what they’re doing. I assume that our soldiers are more motivated than American soldiers who volunteer.
@@bennywolfe4357 What's your country, Israel?
@@Clumsy-vp3if yeah
@@bennywolfe4357 Understandable given the strategic and political position Israel is in. Compare that to the States were most civilians have little reason to be afraid of a dangerous neighbor by the border
I believe I have read that even in Medieval battles, there was surprisingly little death. The majority of the battle was the pre clash manuvours, positing and trying to get the enemy to engage on unfavourable terrain. It was very rare for two armies which were actually equal to take each other on, at the end of this, usually one or the other would get the advantage and the other army would rout or surrender with only a few exchanges. The fictional trope of one army being wiped out basically never, if at all, happened
One of the most interesting videos you have hosted. Thanks
If I could like this 100 times I would… thank you for making me feel so much better about human instincts. To all who serve, whether you’re in the 15% or the 75%, I appreciate your service.
What are the last 10 % ? 😅
What service do they render you personally? Have they defended you from invading hordes of barbarians? Their "service" costs you megabucks in tax money handed over to the defense contractors who laugh all the way to the bank and live in exclusive gated communities and have mansions in the Seychelles and own private jets and have 300 foot yachts and donate to the opera and the symphony and also have a chalet in Switzerland and a condo in the Caymans and maybe their own helicopter so they don't need to be bothered stuck in traffic with all you peasants who are thankful for the service of the chumps who are stupid enough or desperate enough to become cannon fodder and volunteer for military service
@@dingusdingus2152 And yet without them there would be nothing to stop groups coming along and making you their slave.
@@dingusdingus2152 Without a powerful standing army (and nuclear capability) the US would be completely open to invasion. The people who profit off of it are indeed scumbags. However, the seemingly perpetual stalemate between countries like the US and Russia are the reason for peace. Without this expenditure, the world would be in a constant state of global/large scale war and peace, over and over. As it was before WWII. The Chinese are extremely close to breaking this stalemate. When war breaks out you'll realise the existence of said scumbags is needed.
I read soldier biographies (WW2) and this was a returning theme.
The artillery man said his work was like a trained ballet, they thought about putting as much rounds out as possible - of course they mostly did not see what same rounds did.
Shooting with the rifle was assessed differently as to how far the enemy was away, got more difficult as they closed in and they started to see faces instead of grey/brown/green uniforms.
And the worst for everyone was close quarters bayonet/spade combat.
Seems logic to me.
Maybe bomber crews were happy not to have to land afterwards and look at what they had done.
And maybe Jack Churchill was a psychopath 🤷♂️
PS: Just what I read, no need to restart the same old WW2 discussions here.
Alternative title for this could be “Simon effectively explains why nobody ever got shot on The A-Team”
This is one of the most interesting videos you have done. I really enjoyed this one.
So modern training makes firing a weapon instinctive by using drills to create processes for the subconscious to engage based upon various trigger scenarios.
Then we wonder why people leave the military and are unable to detach from the simulation.
And similarly wonder why there's an issue with law enforcement shooting first and asking questions later, when so many cops are ex-military.
Meaning most people are not ready to commit murder just because someone told them to? Shocking
Killing in war isn't murder
@@stevenpolkinghorn4747 Technically correct, the best kind of correct
@@stevenpolkinghorn4747
Well it is, it just depends what kind of support you have.
XD
I’m sure Britain thought colonists as Murderers, and terrorists during the revolutionary war.
Its only the winners that get to decide. XD
If I declared war on the gov, and won, took it over, I’d be in the clear somehow.
Lose, I’d be killed, or worse.
@@stevenpolkinghorn4747 Whatever gave you that idea?
I find this vedio and information fascinating, I'd love to see more of these, keep it up!!!
Thank you. This was a very insightful video. It made me think.
For me it isn't about killing. It's about elitists telling me WHO to fight. Maybe I think we need to fight, but maybe we don't. Maybe if those who started wars actually had to fight them, they would feel the same.
You feel differently when you get shot at.
@@fedbia2003 I wouldn't be there to begin with. I'm not going to shoot at people who I may agree with because some profit-wh0re elitist told me to. I can think for myself.
I vote for letting the aggressor of a war fight against the champion of the defender himself.
Naked with spears of course.
@@molybdaen11 I'm for that!
@@beeinthehive Your name is literally "bee in the hive." And your rhetoric has nothing to do with what actually happens in a combat zone.
I feel like it's especially easier to kill these days since most of the time you can't even _see_ the enemy you're shooting at. Either you'll be shooting at some speck through a scope, or returning fire at a vaguely human-shaped blur in a tree-line, or blowing up some thermal signature on a terminal screen. Even in the occasional instances of close-quarters fighting, the hectic, unpredictable nature of such situations make absolute terror and desire to preserve your own life take precedent in your mind over human empathy. It's not really the same as large-scale, frontline fighting. You know what I mean?
A very interesting video, and to add on the the violence in video games bit. I myself have even felt an aversion to violence in games. To preface this I started hormones some time ago due to personal reason and they caused more emotional sensitivity. After a while I started to think about people in games and began to question myself "what if they have a family, or are just a teen who got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time" and I found out that if instead of turning real people into targets as the military does, I had turned targets into real people. I had to stop thinking this way because it made me a little sad if I thought that maybe the AI I had just shot perhaps was a father or son who wasn't going to come home at the end of the day. An interesting anecdote indeed but I have no idea if anyone else has ever felt the same.
I needed this
This explains Stormtroopers
I see what you did there hahaha
Lmmfao
I hate to be that guy but ruclips.net/video/P2TA9coGLzM/видео.html 😎
@@user-pn1fe6sg2w 🤣😂🤣
Underrated comment.
Lindybeige did a GREAT video on this and supports this one really well
Which one?
Thank you for this video. You've given me hope for humanity, for the first time in a long while.
This is actually, as you say at the end, a reason for cautious optimism in the future of mankind. It’s strange, I wouldn’t have ever guessed that a video about killing in war would inspire hope for humanity
As long as two people on earth hold diametrically opposed opinions, war is inevitable. It is what it is.
the idea of killing has always been horrible to me, but after having children, I can't look at somebody dying without thinking "that was some mother's child"
Earth sucks
Edit: but at least its not venus
Having been in the U.S. Army, soldiers from some other countries were amazed that although we were pushed very hard in Basic Training, we weren't beaten or abused like they were, and they couldn't understand why the average U.S. soldier was so disciplined and good. I told them they replaced the beatings a long time ago for shame in having let your unit down when you fail, and it works incredibly well. It's now built into every facet of modern military life. In this environment, shame is a far better motivator than pain.
Yes, it is indeed. I've been shamed for thinking for myself, shamed for being abused, shamed for being unable to control my actions while under such abuse that we couldn't even see. ... In the quest to create ever better armed forces, we've created something absolutely demonic.
@@eekee6034 That's a different kind of shame though. One is letting down your comrades, the other is just guilt tripping from a narcissistic parent
@@applesandgrapesfordinner4626 I evidently brought to mind the wrong bits of shaming for this subject. (Can't hold all of it in my mind at once.) The shaming for letting down my family and for letting down God because I couldn't function and couldn't do what was asked of me was presented as exactly like letting down your comrades. None of these people were narcissists, they were soldiers who expected those around them to support them.
@@eekee6034 You need someone to talk to?
@@applesandgrapesfordinner4626 Thank you. :) I'm not ready to talk at present, and I have people I'll be able to talk to when I'm ready. Thanks again. :)
thank you for mentioning PTSD and drone pilots. previously drone pilots with PTSD were dismissed as impossible; but later realized that due to drone pilots sometimes going home after a "work shift", they have issues separating the battlefield from their homes. so they have no way of relaxing and the issues of PTSD got worse.
Thanks for the captions! Like the beard trim.
I wonder if the increase in the percentage of soldiers killing also increases PTSD.
I've read On Combat and On Killing, Colonel Grossman's books. It does not increase PTSD because the soldiers are more prepared mentally for combat and they are more used to the idea of killing because of movies and games. They see it as hard but necessary and normal. Additionally, soldiers today are encouraged to be open about their feelings and talk to a psychologist, which is not shamed today as it was in the past.
I had a discussion with a philosophy professor after I got out. She wondered why PTSD was so prevalent now than it was around the time of Caesar.
My opinion is that PTSD has always been there in probably about the same capacity, it just showed itself in different ways and called different things. If a soldier settled down to farm with just him and his family, he could get drunk and fight with whoever. The idea is just that he was that kind of person. For me, it's just him not knowing how to deal with what he experienced.
@@fedbia2003 there's work on this where vets put on ancient Greek dramas because they're so helpful. It's in The Body Keeps The Score, a book about PTSD.
@@bowdencable7094 HOLY FUCK! Yeah, when I got back from Afghanistan we were supposed to do a 2 week course based around Greek drama to help process some stuff. The funding got cut so we only saw him for 1 hour for 2 days, but he said he was going to do that. I always wondered wheat it would be like.
It definitely happened in ancient times just like it does now. Just back then it was understood that war changed you. Also varied by time and place as well. In Rome a term of service 10 years and later that was increased to 20 years. A lot of them settled close to where they were stationed later on in life so being around other soldiers a majority of their lives definitely would have helped them deal with it. Of course everything varied by era and place. There are plenty of well researched videos on RUclips that can explain all this much better than I can in just a RUclips comment. Here is one of the better ones ruclips.net/video/7w8d10UuxkE/видео.html
On the other hand, I wonder then what compels some soldiers to massacre unarmed civilians.
Indoctrination of cult like proportions mostly. Look to both sides the extremed, Nazism and communisim for examples. Heavy Indoctrination to view a certain class or race as subhuman and need of culling. Sad I know but when a nation is faced with sorrow and despair, maniacs get into power.
You mean like death camps? Read about the Milgram experiment. People's inclination to obey orders is greater than their inclination to avoid killing. Soldiers on the line can pretend to fight, but death camp guards can't pretend to kill prisoners.
@@stevenscott2136 No I didn't mean death camps, but rather massacres like for example in Vietnam.
Such as the massacre at wounded knee. Was it the guy playing garryowen on the fife in the background?
@@Sidewinder1996 bullshit comparison. There's no kill all philosophy in communism.
I had no idea how interesting this was. Thanks for another banger 🙌🏾
What a happy video, really made my day.
God bless them. Look at how our soldiers are behaving now, some risking life and limb to help people our government has abandoned in Afghanistan; the same place where they've been fighting the enemy and losing friends and family for years. Soldiers have some of the biggest hearts among us. I'd be honored to call such humans my brothers and sisters, no matter what comes with it. This video truly uplifts my spirit.
On one summer day my Grandpa was a sniper holding a castle near Lyon. A French soldier with his girl walked into the perimeter, flirting holding hands. He watched them.
He didn't shoot.
Was your Grandpa German or Hungarian or…?
@@Andreamom001 German
No such mercy would've been shown on the Eastern front, sadly. It seems such things wholly depend on just how human you are taught to view your enemy.
@@viysnjor4811 Or what kind of a mood you're in that day .....
This is one of your best videos.
The video reminded me stories about the Greek civil War my grandfather used to say to me, to be more specific when was the time to be conscripted to the Royalist army, his father a war veteran told him to always keep his weapons clean and that their is no dignity in war no honor only dead and the ones who survived,... Fast forward few months later upon arriving to his unit George was handed "the British one" a Enfield with a scope on it, since he used to hunt as civilian and his was good at it, but still it felt so wrong to kill a fellow human being, so he strikes an agreement with his unit commander, he would bring game for the commander ( that he could sell the meat or the fur) and in return he would not force to kill an other person..
Of course it only lasted for a while, in some point he was ordered to kill four sentinels of a neighboring country's army in retaliation for a similar incident, he had an NCO to act as his spotter although it was obvious that the officer was there to make sure that George would make the kill..
Few days later on a hunting run lost his tracks and found him self face to face with a group of rebels, instinctively he tries to draw his revolver, but it was stuck in holster, the rebels started laughing and one of them tells him " soldier! We have nothing against you keep walking!"
That rebel few days later was captured by George's unit, one thing that they used to do was to run the gauntlet on the captured rebels, but George couldn't do it, his commander ordered to be locked in a cellar to die from hypothermia and the only reason he survived was that he was the nephew of a police General known as a person that you wouldn't want crossing..
By the way one of the common secrets of the time was that when a soldier was singing a specific song,and he was replied with the rest of the lyrics on the other side it was like saying "let's not kill each other tonight"
Very interesting, especially to me with my Greek roots. Thanks for sharing it! :)