Wacky War Tactics in yet another Nutshell

Rápido, rápido! Once they sell out they'll be gone FOREVER! We worked really hard to get this pirate BlueJay right and I can honestly say it came out AMAZING! I hope you all enjoy :)

Feel free to join my Patreon, your support is very much appreciated!

Subscribe to my Second Channel!

Join the Subreddit!

Leave a like, comment, and share if you enjoyed!

I love you, Mango 💕

USERS WHO SUGGESTED STORIES:
- patrickbird27: Nuclear Landmine
- Commander Thorn: Gallipoli
- Mako: Gallipoli

In my third installment of the Wacky War Tactics series, we travel through a huge breadth of human history! From the Spring and Autumn period of Ancient China, to the wacky atomic antics of the Cold War, history is PACKED full of whimsical warfare decisions that make into lovely little bite-sized YouTube videos :)

While the stories of the ANZAC retreat in Gallipoli using drip rifles and a chicken-warmed nuclear landmine from the Cold War are easily verifiable, the tales of self throat-cutting soldiers and Alexander's Siege on Tyre are harder to verify. Alexander's story, on one hand, has strong physical evidence. We can see the remains of the causeway he constructed in Lebanon to this day. But for the details of these stories, the sequences of events, and specific actions and outcomes, we have to rely on the word of scarce few sources. Most of what we know about Alexander the Great, for instance, comes from a few historians writing about him many years after he lived, utilizing primary sources that no longer exist for us to corroborate. The same can be said about King Goujian of Yue, whose sources write about him around a hundred years after the fact. The biggest takeaway for me in this video's research process is that Ancient History is never something we will be able to fully determine. Much of what we know comes from a handful of sources, some of which are known to have lied or exaggerated, requiring us as students of history to use our best judgement and knowledge to decipher the most believable, "true story." Studying Ancient History requires a bit of faith, because if we hold the tales of millenniums ago to the same standards as today's reporting, we know absolutely and positively nothing.

SOURCES:

Drip Rifle:

Goujian:
- Paul A Cohen, History and Popular Memory: The Power of Story in Moments of Crisis
- Paul A Cohen, Speaking to History: The Story of King Goujian in Twentieth-Century China
- “Yue wang Goujian shijia" chapter of Shiji (see Takigawa, Shiki kaichù kösho, vol. 5, juan 41, 3) For a translation of the Shiji account, see Szuma Chien, Selections from Records of the Historian, 47.
- The Zuozhuan, under "Lu Ding gong" (Duke Ding of Lu) fourteenth year (see The Ch'un Ts'ew with the Tso Chuen, 786).
- The Art of War

Siege of Tyre
- The Seventeenth Book of Diodorus Siculus
- Arrian’s The Campaigns of Alexander

Blue Peacock

[BlueJayYT]

Rápido, rápido! Once they sell out they'll be gone FOREVER! We worked really hard to get this pirate BlueJay right and I can honestly say it came out AMAZING! I hope you all enjoy :)

[Nerathul]

To be fair to Sun Tzu, he was writing for ancient nepo babies in charge of armies

[analysissel]

A piece of comedy I think is often overlooked with Bluejay's videos is that, normally his Bluejay avatar is easy enough to play on your peripheral vision since there's so much animation to be focusing on, but when there's a moment of silence and nothing is happening on screen, and you just have the avatar to look at...

your eyes slowly travel across the screen to where the bird is patiently sitting. Waiting. On your reaction.

Your eyes meet its eyes.

Its eyes meet yours.

It stares. Dead. Black. Nothing. Silent.

...And moments later we're back to the action!

[ivanbluecool]

If you fail it's wacky. If you succeed it's legendary

[lordhuntington]

Ngl, the art of war is even more genius than people give it credit for. Sun Tzu managed to write an extensive guide on for the time fairly advanced war tactics in a way that snobby kings and emperors would understand. Sure, we know we need to bring food when going into battle but someone who had private chefs all their life can easily forget about this stuff. Truly genius.

[t.g.]

“Triremes can’t melt wooden beams after all” I never thought I’d see a 9/11 reference go hand in hand with the siege of Tyre

[DJPeachCobbler]

Love your videos so much, an island of humor and history in a sea of copy-and-paste Wikipedia hacks. Particularly liked the one recently where the confused time traveler was slowly murdered by Victorian England.

On a personal note I think just having one source is fine if you’re working with something super niche. It depends, I think. If they’re an eye witness, for example, then that’s definitely worth something. I don’t know, there is no “burden of proof” for history. I’ve tried to find one.

Part of the reason I moved onto the Modern Era from Rome was because ancient sources are so scant it means you really have to just say, “Plutarch said this, so whatever.”

I was also very pleased to see you refrained from using slurs this time (I’m sorry I can’t help myself).

[MicrowaveOvenVideo]

8:18 just got rickrolled by a freaking bird

[Jimizacx]

Another thing they did at Gallipoli is in the lead up to the evacuations they would order *absolute silence* in different parts of the line. When the ottomans would send out scouting raids they would be met with a hail of gunfire. This taught the ottomans that silence was a trap, meaning that when trenches began to fall silent because they were empty the ottomans were slow to realize what was going on.

[treyaldridge]

4:32 China literally wrote the book on feeding your troops only to go up against one of the largest and most powerful military coalitions on Earth, in the winter, without feeding its troops.

[nastiestNate]

I was wondering when you were going to respond the DJ Peach Cobbler there… just glad you did so in such a subtle and non-snarky manner 😂

[ethansphotoshop]

1:00 as an Aussie, that's pretty accurate. We must pray to the vegemite and worships its yeast

[Hi-xhkr]

“Until Isaac Newton took the wheel and pulled the trigger with the nerd magic of gravity” 1:27 🤣🤣🤣

[taskfroceth]

"Only the dead has seen the end of war, and the end to this series"
-Plato, probably

[Zephyra]

"It looks like an island sir."

"But what if it wasn't?"

I straight up immediately asked 'what' at the same time the soldier did lmao. I was so shook by that statement.

[danielb]

HOID!!! (5:45)

Strength before weakness, you blue chicken!

[maxstirland]

Honestly an elegant way to address being wrong about something in a previous video, I've seen way too many people just dig a bigger hole for themselves.
Great job on the video!!!

[mateoewig]

5:40 I just want to point out that BlueJay is a Stormlight Archive fan which makes me incredibly happy

[danielhale]

Sun Tsu's advice was revolutionary for its time. Anyone who wants to know the state of battle tactics and strategy at that time should just read the advice given in The Art Of War, and think about why that direct instruction was necessary. These generals had to be explicitly told DO NOT got to war unless it's actually necessary. You need to survey the land and use terrain to your advantage. You need to think objectively and control your emotions. You need to plan ahead for how to feed your soldiers. You need to have a clear goal in mind for war. The mindset of many warriors and princes at the time was "They insult our honor by existing! The gods are with us we cannot lose! GO GET EM". A ruinous war for honor is still ruinous.

[Skeletonrider]

5:43 Holy shit a Stormlight reference in the wild