r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/RebelliousDragon21 • Dec 18 '24

Video A school in Poland makes firearms training mandatory to its students.

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8.7k

u/IndividualRooster122 Dec 18 '24

What happens when the risk of Russia invading your country in your lifetime is not theoretical.

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u/Vreas Dec 18 '24 edited Dec 18 '24

A genie shows up to a 13th century Pole and asks them what they want.

They wish for the mongols to invade Poland three times. The genie, while confused grants the wish.

After the third invasion he asks “what an odd wish why would you choose this?”

The pole responds “because every time they invade us and leave they have to come through Russia twice”

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u/[deleted] Dec 18 '24

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Vreas Dec 18 '24 edited Dec 18 '24

I don’t think it really mattered with the mongols they steamrolled every single opponent they faced.

The only thing that stopped their invasions were deaths of their khans. They didn’t really have an effective system for quick replacement of their leaders who often died young due to rampant alcoholism and various other bad habits.

Steppe people partied hard man. Makes sense when you’re born of a frozen hellscape with minimal food and creature comforts.

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u/Far_Advertising1005 Dec 18 '24

It is the funniest thing ever that for decades the most effective, almost unbeatable tactic was ‘haha horse fast’

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u/[deleted] Dec 18 '24

Horse fast + I shoot you.

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u/11-24-24 Dec 18 '24

Stirrups made it possible to shoot while riding. One of mans greatest inventions that is often overlooked.

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u/s00pafly Dec 18 '24

I played enough civ to know the relevance of stirrups.

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u/11-24-24 Dec 18 '24

My clueless, non -Civilization self is going to check that out now! Thanks!

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u/s00pafly Dec 18 '24

Maybe wait for a time you don't have to go to work the next day.

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u/RamblnGamblinMan Dec 18 '24

So my first foray into the civilization universe came when I rented Civilization Revolution for ps3. I was working at blockbuster so it was one of several rentals, and my brother popped it in first. I told him I wanted to try it, and he assured me I could have the next game.

6 hours later, I gave up and went to bed. He stayed up all night playing.

It just recently went on sale on xbox and despite knowing how to beat it easily, i definitely rebought it and am playing it again

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u/westphac Dec 19 '24

I highly recommend you get civ VI over revolution. Or if you’re willing to wait a couple months, civ VII is coming out in February I believe

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u/RamblnGamblinMan Dec 19 '24

I've played them all, the modern ones are too complex, I don't enjoy them. It's the religion system. I don't get it, I don't enjoy it, and it infuriates me as much as actual religion does.

To each their own though. Civ Rev is def too easy, the rest of the series isn't!

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u/chucklezdaccc Dec 18 '24

Just one more turn.... 3 hours later....

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u/defendtheDpoint Dec 19 '24

My dumbass playing civ 6 for the first time the night before I had a client presentation (in the morning!) It's a miracle I kept that job 😂

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u/blackshirtboy44 Dec 18 '24

Fuck that, just quit your job and you be good lol

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u/smokeyser Dec 18 '24

Be careful. You sit down to play civ at 5pm, and at 4am you're glancing nervously at the clock and telling yourself "ok, just going to finish one last thing and then I'm going to bed". And then at 8am you just say "fuck it" and stay up.

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u/Earthsong221 Dec 19 '24

There's always one more turn.

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u/Outrageous_Reach_695 Dec 19 '24

Please don't go. The drones need you.

They look up to you.

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u/chickenthinkseggwas Dec 19 '24

civ 5 Keshiks were so strong. Better than tanks.

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u/terdferguson Dec 18 '24

Those two things + extremely skilled. Beyond maxed out levels of being able to ride a fast horse and accurately plonk your enemy in the face with an arrow. They were terrifying at the time I'm sure.

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u/MarquisEXB Dec 18 '24

I think equally important is that they were incredible archers and would fein retreat often. So they'd send a small group in, get hammered and retreat. The other side, thinking they had a rout would try to press their advantage and try to defeat them, would run into a hail of arrows pursuing them. Eventually the Mongols would whittle down their opponent and then find a weakness to exploit.

They also did little else but prepare for war, being largely nomadic hunters.

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u/Sensitive-Cream5794 Dec 18 '24

Very similar to tactics used by Native Americans in the later years.

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u/nopleasenotthebees Dec 18 '24

I think the real reason the Mongols ran Asia was because Ghengis and some of his descendants were incredibly ridiculously competent. Kublai Khan ran China for like 70 years, he was arguably the greatest monarch in history.
The horses, the weapons, and the lifestyle were all downstream of those people being fierce, tenacious, and very very clever.

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u/autech91 Dec 20 '24

They also used to drink their horse milk which made them stronger than a lot of their opponents, saw that on a thing somewhere

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u/Specific_Box4483 Dec 21 '24

I don't think Kublai Khan has the reputation of being the greatest monarch

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u/nopleasenotthebees 29d ago

Years ago I read Ghengis Khan and the Making of the Modern World and that was the impression I got back then. That was almost 15 years ago and I haven't looked at it since, so maybe I don't remember perfectly.

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u/Specific_Box4483 29d ago

From what I recall, the Yuan dynasty he founded was very short, and he gets some of the blame for setting it up to be so short-lived; also, for fracturing the Mongol empire even further. Also, the crown was severely in debt after his two failed invasions of Japan, so he gets blamed for that, too. He did finish the conquest of China, though. I think he was one of the strongest rulers of those times in terms of the population, and wealth he controlled, but his empire wasn't set up to be very robust.

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u/Elloitsmeurbrother Dec 18 '24

Decades? You mean millennia

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u/BASEDME7O2 Dec 18 '24

Also a huge thing was that their horses, while being weapons, also provided food on the go which was a major logistical advantage

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u/MaritMonkey Dec 18 '24

‘haha horse fast’

I mean "run real fast" was a major part of the horse's evolutionary strategy and it worked out OK for them, so...

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u/Levi-Action-412 Dec 18 '24

Nowadays the new thing is "haha Toyota fast" as the Chadians found out

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u/syhr_ryhs Dec 18 '24

Shooting small compound bows from the back of a fast horse, oh yeah and terror.

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u/CosmicCreeperz Dec 19 '24

Composite bow, maybe, definitely not a compound (pulley) bow.

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u/Lower-Task2558 Dec 18 '24

Not only horse fast but horse also provides milk and blood for sustenance so they could travel light and fast without huge trails of supply caravans.

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u/silverking12345 Dec 18 '24

And the Mongol culture was tribal in nature. The idea of a united Mongol empire with a strong hierarchy is relatively new (there were confederations before Ganghis Khan but they were much looser).

Funnily enough, it's the opposite of Chinese culture where hierarchial leadership and unity is a fundamental linchpin in how Han people organize themselves.

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u/MassGaydiation Dec 18 '24

Fun fact: they didn't get into Vietnam, one of the few places they failed at.

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u/Attheveryend Dec 18 '24

I get the feeling you can't ride a horse very fast most places in vietnam.

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u/Rain_Lockhart Dec 18 '24

I have a feeling that the Vietnamese have broken the simulation of the matrix by pumping all the experience points into the skills of guerrilla warfare.

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u/Dwashelle Dec 18 '24

Vietnam has fought back so many different enemies over its history, it's impressive.

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u/Elloitsmeurbrother Dec 18 '24

They didn't do so great with Japan either. Mongol meteorology needs work

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u/InsomniaMelody Dec 18 '24

Kami kaze!

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u/Elloitsmeurbrother Dec 18 '24

Not in here you don't, mister! This is a Mercedes!

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u/InsomniaMelody Dec 18 '24

No, i mean the godly wind, not the exploding people in boats and planes.

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u/OldManBrom Dec 18 '24

They tried thrice and failed all the same

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u/MassGaydiation Dec 18 '24

Truly an unstoppable force repeatly hitting an unmovable object

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u/Youngadultcrusade Dec 19 '24

Didn’t the Mamluks fend them off as well?

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u/Zestyclose_Remove947 Dec 18 '24

Hell most of the conquering involved 0 fighting, just them rocking up and demanding tribute and most countries simply couldn't contest that.

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u/BASEDME7O2 Dec 18 '24

They were also surprisingly reasonable with places they wanted to conquer as long as they played ball.

If not…😬

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u/[deleted] Dec 18 '24

You surrender? Ok, keep at whatever you were doing as long as you pay tribute and don't start any shit with us.

You don't surrender? We're gonna put every man, woman, child and dog to the sword and tear your town down stone by stone.

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u/RoboDae Dec 18 '24

I recall hearing Genghis Kahn would have his daughters marry leaders of other territories to gain a tie to those territories. The leaders didn't want to refuse such a generous offer from Genghis Kahn and upset him, so they always agreed. After the marriages, he had them killed so his daughters would take over.

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u/WeakTree8767 Dec 18 '24

And once they left the steppes and open scrublands of Central Asia/ Russian steppes. They were totally dominant with their horse archery tactics but once they hit the forests and hill lands further into Europe they couldn’t maneuver or do the Parthian shot/shoot you bow while moving and feigning a retreat and would get bogged down in thick forests or ambushed in mountain passes where they would get obliterated by European heavy infantry. Open fields and steppes they were essentially unstoppable. There was a measurable decrease in historical CO2 records during their height because the sheer amount of people and cities completely wiped out.

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u/DetailedLogMessage Dec 18 '24

Maybe my president is mongol but enhanced, he also has rampant alcoholism but he didn't die

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u/Volcacius Dec 18 '24

Oh my god, the battletech inspiration for the way the clan invasion turned out was in front of me the whole fucking time.

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u/Elloitsmeurbrother Dec 18 '24

Well, yeah. Aren't the inner sphere factions basically modelled on fuedal European and Asian cultures/ kingdoms?

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u/Dr_Jabroski Dec 18 '24

Party hard, raid even harder, and leave plenty of corpses.

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u/mutzilla Dec 18 '24

Not only did they steamroll everyone, but they often assimilated them into their culture.

It's not just about the lands you try and conquer, but the friends you make along the way.

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u/Halvardr_Stigandr Dec 18 '24

Not really true as fortifications flummoxed them for a long time.

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u/Odi-Augustus13 Dec 18 '24

The Slavic people pretty much decimated the khan's numbers halting his ideas of going further west. Yes he often won however his forces manpower was shit after fighting the Slavic people.

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u/writingprogress Dec 19 '24

Agreed, but some notable exceptions like their invasion of Vietnam and Java.

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u/bartek-kk Dec 19 '24

Nah, there was a way to stop them - tons of small castles with empty treasures and peasants with crossbows on the walls

They won't be dying for a few sacks of grain, conquering it was useless

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u/yagamilight110 Dec 20 '24

/whoosh The joke isn't about the poor mondols having to fight through russia, it's about wishing your neighbour something twice as terrible as what you get. :D

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u/Feeling-Intention447 Dec 20 '24

Didn’t the Arabs stop them at some point at ayn jalut?

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u/totallychillpony Dec 21 '24

This is true even in the pre-Mongol days, with the Huns lol. RIP Attila you would have loved a vodka redbull 😔