Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 181 - The Charge of the Light Brigade

Episode Date: November 8, 2021

2/3rds of the WTYP cast join Joe to talk about the dumbest game of telephone in military history. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys sources: https://www.historynet.com/crimean-war-siege-in-the-caucasus.htm https://www.historyextra.com/period/victorian/the-charge-of-the-light-brigade-who-blundered-in-the-valley-of-death/ https://www.warhistoryonline.com/history/light-brigade-britains-disaster.html

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. If you enjoy what we do here on the show and you think it's worth your hard-earned money, you can support the show via Patreon. Just a $1 donation gets you access to bonus episodes, our Discord, and regular episodes before everybody else. If you donate at an elevated level, you get even more bonus content. A digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a sticker from our Teespring store. Our show will always be ad-free and is totally supporter-driven. We use that money to pay our bills, buy research materials that make this show possible, and support charities like the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Flint Water Fund, and the Halo Trust. Consider joining the

Legion of the Old Crow by Donkeys podcast. I am Joe, leading the group of tired and sick people that are on the show today. I think I have dysentery. Yes. Well, it's very thematic it kind of is i have two-thirds of the well there's your problem podcast here today how's it going guys fuck you man that's how it's going that's the energy that i want to bring brought to the podcast i have a headache it seems to be dissipating uh what the headaches dissipating i think the headaches dissipating yeah are you hung over

do you just have a headache i'm hung over oh word so someone kept me too late last night playing railroads online that wasn't me is that like a railroad based mmo it's mo but it's not mmo was it zoric i think you can it was notk. It was the guy from Trained Pictures with chaotic auras. Oh, that guy? It's an outstanding account. Many people don't know this, but kind of like head-on, if you apply podcast directly to the forehead, it cures headaches. And that is approved by the FDA. I can say that.

Yeah. And here comes the lawsuit. Dude, it's not approved by the FDA to treat any medical condition. We've got to be fine. Yeah, it's fine. It's good. You know what also is not approved by the FDA to treat any medical condition. We've got to be fine. Yeah, it's fine. It's good. You know, it also is not approved by the FDA. The charge of the light brigade.

I don't know how to segue into that today. That was awful. Beautiful. It's a beautiful segue. Fucking silky smooth, right? I was going to say something about dysentery and typhus, but, you know, I don't feel like there's a cure for those either mother's little helpers yeah not fda approved being shot at yeah i think the order is wrong this is why i just like constantly taint my own drinking water with my own poop uh that what that way i'm pointing joe i never get typhus or dysentery right like i'm bulletproof anyway let's uh go back to literally any time i've traveled anywhere

where i get dysentery you got to adopt the leah vanderson diet joe now that's johnny walker black label and guinness because i know what those taste like i do have to say recently when i was in armenia someone warned me that the tap water would fuck my stomach up and it didn't so i feel like i feel like my system is working there's a reason this this episode this topic has been requested like countless times it's not quite our tacoma narrows bridge but it's close i feel like our tacoma narrows bridge is stalling right at this point though i do plan on doing that eventually uh i've been saying that now for three years we did tacoma narrows man it only took us two years the reason for that is there's a kind of a through line to this podcast and that is

you can win a war with good soldiers and good leadership and it's very hard to win a battle with only 50% of those things. So that brings us to what has to be one of the worst command decisions in popular military history, because it's not egregiously terrible. It doesn't even kill that many people. But it's a legendary failure that somehow got turned into an act of heroics, because soldiers are sometimes too stupid to ask questions. Now, that is what brings us to the charge of light brigade. But of course, the charge of light brigade did not happen in a vacuum, which means we kind of have to talk a little bit about the war. That is the Crimean War, which began in 1853.

And also how the fuck we ended up there, because it's one of those wars that nobody's really sure why it happened because it didn't have to. This is the long and short of it. What a theme we'll never see again, goddammit. Not until next week. Those Crimeans have mobile chemical weapons labs. Yes. RIP Colin Powell. Credit where credit's due. Colin Powell

was a trendsetter. He was a trailblazer because he covered up his first war crime and he didn't stop there. No, no, no. Credit where credit's due. Colin Powell was a trendsetter. He was a trailblazer because he covered up his first war crime and he didn't stop there. No, no, no. He decided he could break on through and lie into an entire war. And that's an energy that not many people have. And I have a feeling we will talk about him significantly more whenever we eventually cover My Lai. It's not good, folks. It's not good. don't name anything after him he sucks you know unfortunately it's gonna come out in like three weeks and the news articles are gonna pass but whatever he'll still be dead joe that is true that we both hope so yeah i was about to say unlikely

he comes back to life we'll get one of those nice lead-lined uh uh afghan war caskets. Yeah, you get to get a bolt him in to be safe. He's going to punch his way out of the earth and feast for Iraqi blood. You got to drive a stake through his heart. That just feels like we're being racist. Vampires aren't racist. Settle down there, Armenia.

I was about to say, I don't usually associate. Well, I guess I guess there was Blackula That's a black vampire, but there's not too many of them I'm pretty sure there's only one movie about it. I mean, was there like do we have a

blaxploitation extended universe that we're unaware of? There's gotta be, right? Coming from Marvel next year I mean, eventually they're going to run out of topics and they're going to have no choice they're already down to the eternals nobody gives a shit about them i don't know what the fuck the eternals is nobody does everybody just knows it as the movie is that guy melted his face for with hgh oh no now the crimean war like many

other wars pretty much boils down to inbred people beefing over turf with a little bit of the sick man of Europe thrown in. It was one of several wars between the Ottoman Empire and the Russian Empire. And at this point of history, the Ottoman Empire is fully in the death throes of the sick man of Europe phase. Without going too far into the weeds here, because depending on who you ask, the sick man phase lasted like hundreds of years. And I'm not going to talk about all of that. Do you want to cheer for the Ottoman Empire?

No, because I know how the story ends, unfortunately. Yeah, that's fair. All right. All right. Disregard. Moving on. Now, various nationalities were figuring out this entire empire situation in the greater Ottoman Empire. It kind of sucked ass and wanted their freedoms, at least for some of them.

Some people, like the minorities of the Ottoman Empire, were not like a monolith. Not everybody was fighting for independence. There were some, like the various Balkan countries and Greece. And there's a few others that had armed insurrection rebellion, while also saying like, hey, we just kind of want to run our own affairs within the imperial framework. And that's actually where Armenians were at the time. They're like, look, we just kind of want to run our own affairs within the imperial framework. And that's actually where Armenians were at the time. They're like, look, we kind of know what happens and we don't have you guys protecting us.

So we just kind of want our own parliament and you don't charge us more in taxes because we're Christian. That'd be great. This became to be known somewhat grimly as the Eastern question. A phrase that is famously not problematic. Hey, buddy. buddy fancy seeing you here now this question it boiled down to imperial fears now remember for hundreds of years uh the ottomans have been fighting the russians and the two shared a border because you know they both expanded east and west other european powers would fight the ottomans they would also fight

the russians because this is the part of history where other Europeans don't actually think Russians are European because racist reasons. A good example is France seizing Algeria from the Ottomans in 1830, another place where France would not famously go on to do horrible things. Now, these same powers eventually came to fear the power of Russian expansion, combined with the weakening of the Ottomans. Like the idea was like, without the check of the Ottoman Empire, we're going to have to go duel with the Russians more often. And we really don't want to do that. So the Eastern question was like, how the fuck do we duct tape the Ottoman Empire back together to fight the Russians? While also, if they do collapse entirely, what do we get out of it it's

not good there's a lot more to it than that but that's kind of like the too long i prefer to call a diplomatic realism yes but also no um like it was imperialism with extra steps because it wasn't like who's going to get independence it's, it's always imperialism. Of course it is. Sometimes they're just called think tanks. It's different. Brookings, you sick son of a bitches. Now, the reason why this question came to be is the French and the British specifically were pretty pissed that this whole crumbling could occur

without them being able to take what they wanted. Not to mention, like, they wanted to take what they chose to be part of their empires or satellites or whatever, but they also wanted to prop up the shambling corpse of the Ottoman Empire to deal with the Russians, to be a buffer. It was everybody in the West's best interest that something resembling the Ottomans, because the concept of modern Turkey does not exist yet. That is not a thing. And either is Azerbaijan, I need to point out. Is it on topic? No, but do what I do.

They were Ottoman Turks. And before then, they were the Seljuks and things like that. It was never Turkey. But they wanted to nail together a scarecrow that looked like the Ottoman Empire that could keep the Russians from spreading into Europe. Right. Strangely enough. Someone who actually supported this tactic. Was a guy named Karl Marx. Way to go Ross. And in what has to be. One of the greatest ironies. In history.

That he would of course not live to see. Is that he was worried about what he called. Russian absolutism. Spreading across Eastern Europe. Crazy how that works. you know later on that did happen but it was for communism so it was good jesus christ man let me click on this page called russian chauvinism congratulations ross you're actually the villain of call of duty modern warfare 3 i feel like it's better to be the villain of those games.

Oftentimes, there's really no difference. Russian expansionism at the time was under the guise of the so-called Holy Alliance, which is a grouping of Russia, Prussia, and Austria after the final defeat of Napoleon I, of course, in 1815. The other Napoleons, not so noteworthy until his idiot family member, Napoleon III, who would get tricked into uniting Germany. Whoops. Whoopsie doodle. Happens to us all.

He's also the guy who tried to create the Mexican Empire with a German guy as the emperor. He's a joy. Also redid Paris. Yeah, he redid all the arrondissements to make it easier to crush rebellion yes that's fun now the alliance's goal is to make sure none of this revolutionary bullshit as far as the french revolution ever occurred again damping down concepts of liberalism and

secularism wherever they reared its head to uh you know challenge the inbred power structure of european monarchy, but also more importantly, to keep the balance of power laid out in the treaty of Vienna. Now, if you're pointing out that expansionism kind of flies in the face of a concept of a balance of power, you'd be right about that.

I wouldn't, I wouldn't worry about that on the paper. Don't worry about that. Yeah. It's crossed out an initial next to it. Russia played the shit out of the alliance because when they signed it, they were the most powerful

part of it. During the revolutions of 1848, more specifically the Hungarian Revolution, Russia helped Austria stamp the shit out of that as long as they let them do whatever they wanted

with the Ottomans. You know, the alliance said, sure, fuck it. Why not? We don't care. And that would change because Russia kind of got way too big and powerful on the outside.

This is helped by the fact that Russia has long since considered itself the great protector of Orthodox Christianity. Yeah, a ton of Orthodox Christians lived under Ottoman rule, a second class citizens known as Dimi. These people would pay more taxes. They couldn't have certain jobs and were mostly barred from civil service though that tended to be somewhat fluid depending on who you knew like for instance at one point there was an orthodox armenian minister of foreign affairs somehow but like things weren't good it's fun to hear this yeah which brings us to britain france for equally dumb reasons of course it does the The Britons never come in for good reasons.

No, it's always for something idiotic. And neither is France. Nobody here is acting in good faith on behalf of the Christian population of the Ottoman Empire, to include the Ottomans. Everyone here sucks. Well, at least we're consistent, right? Yeah. The British were worried about the Russian Navy gaining power made easier by warm weather port in Crimea. worried about the Russian Navy gaining power made easier by warm weather port in Crimea. But the true idiocy of the moment belongs to Napoleon III, as we've already kind of explained how dumb he was.

Wow, that's a new one. He's truly one of history's greatest idiots. France was Catholic and asserted sovereign authority over all Christians in Palestine, Catholic or not Catholic, which of course pissed off Russia to further his goals. Napoleon the third appointed Marquis Charles D. Leve, sorry,

as ambassador to the Ottoman empire, which controlled Palestine. So, so what was the France, despite not holding Palestine, it's just like, oh yeah, we're the protectorate of all christians in

the territory we don't control yes even though we're catholic cool 100 fun that's france baby hell yeah this is where i get to tell you it gets much much dumber of course it does hit me with it joe russia pointed out that they had already signed a treaty about a hundred years before with the ottoman empire that made them the protectors of Christians in the Ottoman Empire. So the Sultan... Well, they're the wrong kinds of Christians. Uncertain the Russians would enforce the treaty or not, began hedging bets and kicked out the French.

So now the Russians are in charge of Christians within the Ottoman Empire. Oh, boy. Okay. Why exactly do they need a protector in the first place? I don't know. Can these people not advocate for themselves? Hell no. However, it was mostly imperial creep. They wanted to control the Christian population to put agents in these areas that would kind of sort of slowly bleed over and be like, well, we already control these areas. The Christians in it, why not make it Russia? Because especially in Eastern Ottoman Empire, the population is overwhelmingly Orthodox Christian or apostolic, especially in places like the balkans and things like that so like russia could very easily just kind of slide in but like well we already kind of control

you so we're just gonna annex that let's just come on in here and just oh squeeze on now let me let me just borrow this yeah i mean that's effectively what the french did in vietnam uh when they colonized indo-china which was like they sent in catholic missionaries who then got attacked and like well our missionaries are being attacked we just said in soldiers and then before you're like it's indo-china now who could have received this outcome not me guy who designed this outcome yeah but but consider if if they hadn't done, we wouldn't have delicious banh mis. I mean, the sandwich would still, in fact, exist. Yeah.

Although I'm not in total disagreement with your point, Ron. Embarrassingly enough. Food imperialism, the bright side. I mean, that's the reason why a curry is one of the main staples of the British diet. We're kidding. It's not a good thing. Don't do that. But if you're going to do that, bring back good food.

This is why nobody ever colonized Britain. I was about to say, I don't know that I'm that crazy about fish and chips that I'm going to go and die for it. Or like Russia. Curry, on the other hand. That's actually why Operation Sea Lion was called off.

Hitler was like, oh, I have to eat that for the rest of my days? Oh, God, no. He said, what the fuck is toting the hole? We're staying on this side. Blood pudding? Ew. Nine. That's actually why Napoleon turned around when he invaded Russia.

He's like, this shit sucks. What is this? Now, Napoleon III then got mad of the old switcheroo and dispatched some ships to threaten the Ottomans and Russians simultaneously, which violated a different treaty they had signed known as the London Straits Convention, which had been signed by every power in Europe not to dispatch warships into the area. Despite the fact that only Russia seemed to care, like nobody was mad this convention was violated because they didn't apply to them. It only applied to Russia or the Ottomans and nobody cared about

the Ottomans. Now, this warship was enough to scare the Ottomans into once again switching sides and accepting the French as the protectors of Christians within the empire. At this point, you can imagine Russia's pretty upset. For one, they had a treaty, which was then violated by the French and the Ottomans. So they forced them to listen, which was then switched again. At this point, they just can't win. It really seems like there's camps in the government who are pro-Russia and pro-Europe. And most people are pro-Europe because they've been fighting the Russians forever.

So, like, we can't fucking trust these people. Let's trust these French people over here. Famous last words, right? Oh, that's the last move you're ever going to make. Not good. point was the new treaty confirmed the catholic church's supreme authority over all holy places within the empire which had been previously held by the orthodox church and things that like were worshipped by uh orthodox believers like the church of the nativity like now this is all catholic and they're like wait a minute that's fucked uh which it is but also none of this is your

territory go home like now this is enough to get russia's czar nicholas the final czar boss's dad to deploy his soldiers to the banks of the danube river as an actual threat to ottoman territory oh good yeah well this was happening old nick tried to smooth some things over with britain trying to keep them out of it hoping to keep this between russia and france telling them he didn't want to take over the empire. No, of course not. He simply insisted that he had a job to protect the Christian population in the country, and clearly the Catholics weren't going to do a good enough job

of this. I mean, you could largely argue that's not incorrect. Yep. Catholics doing a subpar job? That's crazy. Meanwhile, like the modern day Russian Orthodox Church is just like an old guy with a six foot... Like an old guy with a six foot... An old guy with a six foot long beard,

eight Rolexes, and doing a burnout in a Bentley. Which, the idea. I mean, right, if you're gonna be a corrupt GTA 5 character, you know... More of a Saints Row thing,

I think. Oh! I like it there's a there's a single like russian orthodox church in yurovan despite the fact there's a very very very little russian orthodox population there and it is like the largest most gaudy fucking thing you've ever seen in your life like it's like this featureless gray building both gigantic golden yeah that's the one uh the one in my neighborhood because we have every orthodox flavor known to man in my neighborhood uh in philly there's the absolutely massive ukrainian orthodox cathedral the beautifully painted ukrainian catholic cathedral and then there's like the russian

tavern shoved in on like north fifth and a girl was walking by it in front of me and corinne and she said oh my god like what kind of church is that i was like the onion domes the fuck like you've never like basil's anything like you don't know what a fucking you know you engineering plebe now at this point uh the the russians very nearly managed to get an official protectorate over 12 million orthodox christians in that country which would have taken over swaths of the eastern portion of the empire something that if it went through would have literally changed the course of history uh this would have changed like the the entire tapestry of world war one it probably would have stopped about three genocides from happening you know possibly

i mean the russian empire doesn't and then the soviets don't exactly have the greatest track record on those two things but slightly better than the ottomans yeah low bar here yeah the only thing that really stopped the s from signing this deal, effectively giving away all of the eastern portion of the Ottoman Empire, was the British demanding that they didn't. And he's like, all right. Yeah. Okay. So after being cock-teased with a massive addition to the Russian Empire, he just invaded the Danube principalities and took them over. the Danube principalities and took them over.

And the Russian and French sent in warships and troops, reasoning that they had, in fact, invaded the Ottoman Empire, which they did, but also they were semi-sovereign principalities. They were part of the Ottoman Empire. It's kind of like how Puerto Rico is part of the United States, but we're not really willing to give them all the rights in the world, right? They also get invaded, in which case, USA, baby, number one. Exactly. Almost as soon as Russia tipped the scales towards war, things began working

against them. Russia assumed that during the revolutions before, Austria, Prussia, all these people would help them, like they had previously in Hungary. But instead, Austria sided with the British because they really didn't like the idea of Russia getting that close to them. And also taking over the Balkans, which was definitely their goal.

Realizing they'd kind of overplayed their hands in this situation, the Russians withdrew their soldiers out of the principalities, which were then occupied by Austria, as was quite possibly the biggest fuck you in the entire war. This meant the entire purpose of this war going forward was now moot. The principalities have been evacuated. The Russians backed off kind of like the war of 1812 in the U S like the whole point of the war was kidnapping sailors for war. And then by the time the war actually started, it was, they didn't do that anymore, but like,

well, we've already got all of our, everybody dressed up, you know, but the British decided now that, you that the strike while the iron's hot type thing is to make sure that we already got all these warships and soldiers everywhere. We might as well

make sure the Russians couldn't fuck with the Ottomans ever again and continued on with the war anyway. It became clear that Russia had seriously fucked up. Most people had thought of them as very strong. Their navy was shit as is throughout most of history quite honestly the russian navy is historically a joke so good yeah

um but their army and artillery and cavalry and all these things were they were still fresh in everybody's mind from the the last war against napoleon the first like they were huge they were like one of the main fighting forces in that war. They destroyed the Grand Army. Unfortunately, they really haven't changed since then. And that was 1815. The army, by and large, was virtually unchanged from the one that had driven Napoleon from the motherland about 40 odd years before. And that army was badly behind the times. And that army was badly behind the times. The most up-to-date things they had had been taken from the French because they were much newer than what the Russians had at the time. Oh, good. Every piece of equipment they had was older than dog shit and hardly worked. Not to mention, we always talk about going camping with 100,000 of your pals in the 1800s was a bad idea because it spreads disease.

Because people are worried about bad humors and shit, and they don't understand the concept of germ theory yet it was especially bad in the russian military even before the war started just pour some vodka on it man a lot of it was like i'm not going to go over it all again but if you go back and listen to her in a point in in russia series it was most nobles who were the officer corps of pretty much every army at this point didn't care about the well-being of the enlisted men we were normally peasants or draftees the russian army was unique in that it seemed like they actively hated them all right you've talked about this and uh was this uh soviet afghan so it's also kind of a through line through most of Russia.

It's a through line, yeah. That's not to say, yeah. It very much seems to have a history of just people getting killed for no reason at all. Like conscription periods at the time were so bad. Oh, yeah, the Dorovshchina, I think it's called. That still goes on today. It was so bad in 1815 and also now in the mid late or mid-1800s here that when a russian soldier was conscripted their village would hold like a funeral because they knew he was not coming

back like a pre-funeral that's exciting yeah you would serve like 10 to 15 years pretty much yeah it's like i kind of want you deep down inside every person kind of wonders what their funeral looked like and who would show up. Russian conscripts actually have the ability of knowing that, which is nice. You know, it's cool that the Russian VA gives them that option. Russian VA. Now, the disease thing, however, was not completely limited to the Russians.

And I can't talk about the extent of disease in the Crimean War because it's actually legendary. Disease during the Crimean War was so goddamn bad. It effectively gave us what we consider the modern practice of nursing. That's right, Florence Nightingale.

That is where Florence Nightingale comes from. And she's kind of turned into a folk hero who kind of wasn't so great at her job. The most delicious battle of all time.

Well, admittedly, Nightingale is more of a complicated character than some people like to think. She did evolve. Most people think that she came to, I believe it was like Tiraspol or something like that. That is where the main British field hospitals were. And the media was like, this is terrible. I need to fix it. So, the main British hospital was a place called Scutari.

And it was outside of, it was like a suburb of Constance and Oak. And the hospital is described as, quote, soldiers lay on the ground, their clothes in which they arrived. Many were malnourished and dehydrated because of food and water shortages. The wounded were mixed in with the infected and open latrines helped spread infection. If a soldier didn't have a disease when he arrived, he would certainly catch one in the hospital and die. Oh, tasty. So the hospital is doing the opposite of what it's intended to do. Yeah, that's bad.

That's pretty much hospitals at this time, and even worse during war. We're going to get a poor review on war Yelp. Nightingale believed that sickness among the wounded was largely a result of exhaustion from marching and poor nutrition, and said about feeding and treating the wounded. Now, this is good to make you feel like at least they weren't going to about feeding and treating the wounded. Now, this is good to make you feel like at least they weren't going to die thirsty and hungry or whatever. However, this actually was a huge vector for disease. Nightingale was not washing her hands

like most people weren't, to be fair, and spreading disease from people while she was trying to feed and water them. This killed thousands of people. That's how I got typhus. Now, there was a military surgeon at Scutari named Dr.

James Berry. Now, at the time, being a doctor is more of an on-the-job training type thing. It's a vibe, right? And you did do a lot of medical knowledge in the day. You kind of learned on the fly. And James Berry hypothesized that it was almost certainly poor sanitation and bad ventilation of the hospital that were responsible for deaths from infectious disease.

And he personally criticized Nightingale because she became very popular even in the day that she was very wrong and she was killing patients. Now, thankfully, this got fixed. Nightingale did a 180, but she learned, which is know evidence-based medicine right um that's that's how medicine is supposed to evolve but yeah that's that's as much about florence night gales i i had to talk about it because like when else might give me a chance to talk about that yeah she was killing people with shitty hands for a while oh she had poop finger yeah i want everybody had poop fingers like we all had a finger everyone had pink eye constantly it's like that scene from mall rats with the shitty pretzel but it's like all of

human history before like 1905 for the most part that's gnarly yeah really gross thank you joe someone down the line whose name i do not remember someone will probably tell me figure out the washing your hands even without soap before going into a medical theater like vastly decreased the amount of people who died or got infected and it was considered ungentlemanly so we'll have to wash your hands because gentlemen are always clean right right but also would keep uh basically blood blood stains on their aprons at the time as a mark of how good a surgeon they were. Yes. I remember reading that. And then that knowledge was...

See, I don't want to read. That knowledge was lost because people rejected it. And then it had to be rediscovered later on. They're like, maybe we should wash our hands, Pete. As someone just frothing at the mouth from infection.

How can we survive this long as a species? I at the mouth from infection. I thought we'd survived this long as a species. I don't know. Fucking. It's a lot of fucking. Now, there's a lot of different campaigns of the Crimean War, but we're going to jump into the one that gave its name, the Crimean Campaign. No surprise there.

Now, the main city that the Allied British and French were gunning for was savastopol and uh they landed their main invasion force in the north of the city uh now this is not an amphibious invasion by any stretch of the imagination those weren't quite a thing yet uh so you had them using just like gigantic transport ships transporting tens of thousands of soldiers which took like a week to unload everything. And because the Russians were bad at their job, they landed completely unopposed.

Though they learned that the entire city was very well defended, so they had to figure out a way around it. They ran into Russian trench lines during the Battle of Ulma, so they marched everybody into the south around the city to kind of tighten a trench-based noose around

the city and lay into a siege, which would be pretty fucking destructive. But as they encircled the city and prepared for the coming siege, the forces got rocked by a wave of cholera. Just absolutely fucked by cholera. Oops.

Not ideal. And it's one of those things that once disease hits a military formation 10 times out of 10 that formation is gone um and we saw that in covid in modern times like once one person the platoon got covid everybody's fucking sick shit spreads quickly and even more when people are very very close together they're not washing their hands nothing like that wash your fucking hands. Yeah. Wash your hands.

I don't want cholera. We're going to do a live event and someone's going to give me a cholera as a bit. They will do that. And more importantly, there was just not enough room in the hospitals to pull these people off the line and not enough healthy soldiers to replace them. So like, well, your color is only kind of bad, so you have to stay out there. A Russian scouting mission actually noticed that when they realized that the allied lines were mostly staffed with sleeping or half dead people. And also now typhus was introduced.

Oh, good. That's how you win a war, baby. And that brings us to the Battle of Balaklava, which is not the flaky delicious dessert. It is, in fact, a battle full of cholera and typhus. It was in October of 1854. And then the Russians' mission was to ride out and destroy the enemy's warehouse, like supply warehouse, which would have forced them to break the siege because they would have to leave. British and French intelligence actually saw this coming and exact details

of the plan were delivered to Lord Raglan, full name and this is true, Fitzroy James Henry Somerset, first Baron of Raglan. We're going to get a lot of these names in this episode. He was in charge of the entire British army on that campaign.

At that point, he had been given a lot of false Intel reports and kind of like the boy who cried wolf. He's like, at this point, he's like, yeah, fuck it. I don't care.

Um, and then this one ended up being true. Another fun fact about Raglan, despite the fact he is legendarily bad at his job is he had never once commanded a battle before this, uh, before being put in charge of this entire invasion force. Uh, he, battle before this uh before being put in charge of this entire invasion force uh he his entire claim to fame was being on the staff of the duke of wellington at waterloo that was it

and he just kind of coasted on that for a bit which like to be fair i get like i there was a lot of of u.s army commanders who really slid on by after world War II because they kind of worked for Patton going into the Korean War. And then everybody realized, like, holy shit, this guy's bad as Jeff. Now, that army included five infantry divisions. Of those four, they were commanded by dudes 60 years or older. And the other one was commanded by the queen's cousin, who was 35 and never commanded a day before in his fucking life these guys have an in-depth understanding of tactics right that's right yes modern tactics

because they've learned that war evolves right that's what's gonna happen in this battle right i mean it doesn't have to be that modern they're going against up against the russians after all well i mean it's somewhat modern to the extent that like... Slingshots loaded with rocks. They should have known like full frontal assaults were not a good idea, especially against like things like the hardened target of Sevastopol. But they didn't. And like guns had made a little bit of an evolution. They could fire further, which was also true during the Napoleonic Wars.

Like they were still fighting 50 years before with tactics and using somewhat modern weapons. And then in 10 years, we would fight the Civil War. 10 years, give or take, we'd fight the Civil War and do the same fucking thing all over again. Now, the two British commanders, Lord George Padgett and Lord William Paulette, along with Major Thomas McMahon,

were hanging out in a nearby redoubt, and they saw two flags approaching them. Unsure of what they were looking at, it was actually the battle standard of the Russian army, and they had a little bit of a conversation amongst themselves, which thankfully was noted for us to understand. Hello, said Lord William. There are two flags flying. What does that mean?

Well, surely that is a signal that the enemy is approaching, said Major McMahon. Are you quite sure? He replied. Hardly were the words out of McMahon's mouth when a cannon from the redoubt in question fired on the advancing masses of the enemy while they were cut out in the open. Womp. Now, these redoubts were something of, there's no nice way to say this other than tripwire or possibly meat shield, because these Ford redoubts guarding the supply areas were commanded and controlled by Ottoman troops. But the Ottoman Empire, which was taking part in this war, made sure not to actually use their crack troops. They wanted to hold those in reserves.

They wanted the Europeans to die fighting for them, which, honestly, good call. They wanted the Europeans to die fighting for them, which like, honestly, good call. Yeah. But instead, they sent conscripts from Tunisia who had never seen combat and had not been trained. Furthermore, they had not been given any water or food. The British knew these conscripts are almost certainly going to break at the first sign of fighting because when you're treated that shitty, you're not going to stick around for very long. And they knew that they would fire a volley or two and then haul ass. They just run. But that would give the British enough time to get their shit together and defend they were literally a trip wire like oh the turks are running we need to get our shit together

and hopefully if they stick together they can slow the russian advance down and happen but you know whatever raglan ordered his first and fourth divisions to move on to the field which were commanded by the duke of cambridge the duke who's the commander of the first division specifically complied immediately uh though because it is the mid-1800s it took him about 30 minutes to get his troops moving because you know everything has to be spread by mouth you know word of mouth spreads very slowly disease other things spread mouth typhus then there's a guy named major general sir george cathcart who took much longer to get his troops moving because he's too busy bitching about having to do army stuff which i can honestly understand it sucks he complained that his men had just returned

from trench duty and they shouldn't have to do anything. Mind you, they are under attack. The aide-de-camp, who was aware of the seriousness of the situation, had to convince Cathcart to obey the order, and even then it took him a full fucking hour to get his division to march. Oh, that is a well-disciplined machine, baby.

Imagine just bitching and moaning as you're under attack by like literally thousands of Russians. It's hot. We just got back here. I want to go home. Look, I thought Britain was bad, but Crimea fucking sucks.

The food's gross. The food is gross. The Russian cavalry descended upon the Causeway Heights, which overlooked the area, onto the South Valley in advance for the 93rd Highlanders. Now, their commander, Colin Campbell, first Baron Clyde, ordered his men to lie down on the reverse slope of the hill. Now, this is probably because it protects them from incoming artillery. Artillery explodes up and out. it protects them from incoming artillery artillery explodes up and out

kind of like if one of the things they teach you is if a grenade lands close to you immediately hit the ground close to the grenade as possible if you can't run you'll probably dodge the most damaging of the blast that's most explosions assuming they're not you know so large they just evaporate your insides

but also because the horses wouldn't be able to see them possibly we don't really know. This could have just been like, let's try this and see what happens. I might be giving him too much credit. I might be giving too much credit. Either way,

the Russians did not see them or they underestimate the brigade's numbers of only about 500. When the Russian cavalry was 900 yards away, Campbell ordered his men forward. Normally at this point, when an infantryman is under attack by a galler, you form a square. A square formation is exactly what it sounds like, but it means

that there's bayonets put in every direction and you can fire outwards, scaring away the horses. No horse is going to charge directly into a bayonet. It literally goes against their brain. They won't do it. So you keep them away. Oh, the very small things that horses are smart about those bastards have it surrounded terrific now we can fire at them from every direction yeah exactly

famously during the battle of waterloo this happened as well uh like squares fended off a lot of napoleon's cavalry but by camel's own mission he decided that he would not call for a square formation because his men were too dumb to pull it off uh they had simply they had simply not been trained but they could stand and march in a line without fucking that up so he went with that lieutenant general ivan ryzov's 500 cavalry charged the highlanders and campbell ordered, quote, remember, men, there's no retreat from here. You must die where you stand. Now, at this, reportedly, the men just kind of laughed, either because they were the toughest motherfuckers on Earth

or facing down death had broken their brains just a little bit. And honestly, both could be true. As the horses were charging at them, they only fired off two volleys from their rifles before the Russians decided they didn't want any more of that smoke. Turn around and retreat it. This confused the Highlanders deeply.

Nobody thought they actually did that much damage. But it turned out that Russian cavalry of the day had a tendency to tie themselves to their horses so they didn't get unmounted. A lot of the Russians were apparently dead in their saddles and the Highlanders had no idea.

Now, after this, this is like the era of war where there's like journalists put in units for like the first time. So there's, there's actually like civilians watching this entire thing happen and writing about it. Um,

and a journalist who witnessed the event wrote, he could see nothing between the charging Russians and the British regimentsish regiment's base of operations at balaclava but a quote thin red streak tipped with a line of steel this is unfortunately where we have to thank for the term the thin red line it used to mean something cool now at this point you've heard quite a few stupid command choices right um you're probably like why the fuck would they do this on this podcast yeah generally speaking the the aristocratic class despite the fact they have commanded war for thousands of years now you would have think that these guys i don't know would have earned the rank at least like so some idiot noble doesn't just like i don't know say buy his way to be a general.

Unfortunately, that is exactly how it worked. Oh, that's crazy. Yeah. The British army that the Russians were running into did happen to be made up of some of the, like the best of veteran soldiers in the entire empire.

However, they also have to be led by some of the dumbest motherfuckers to ever be given a commission. And I mean that throughout war i mean we've talked about luigi codorna and and hodson dorff and all these other people but like these people arguably dumber this is because of the practice of commission purchasing this meant that anyone regardless of their military education or lack thereof could become an officer in the British military if they had enough money or the right connections,

which also normally meant they had enough money to have those connections in the first place. What's wrong with that? That's egalitarian, Joe. I was about to say, I feel like it's ableist to expect people to go through training to be an officer. Egalitarian, Joe. It's a bit sussed for you to

believe in impossible meritocracy when it comes to shooting people. Now, I did find the prices for these ranks and adjusted them for 2019 inflation, since that's the best I could find. In 1837, adjusted for 2019 pounds as

a cornet, that being the lowest ranked commission officer at the time in the infantry cost you 41,000 pounds a cavalry officer was 77,000 pounds and lifeguard a 115,000 pound price tag

damn this is not just like a little bit of money and mind you like that's serious holy shit and being an officer meant you paid for like you got paid like it was just not a lot but you paid for your uniform you paid for your weapons you paid for all it was considered gentlemanly to do all these things like if you couldn't afford that simply you didn't deserve it and like this went up to colonel which was half a million pounds cavalry for over half a million pounds, and a million for foot guard command, which is like a senior infantry unit

full of veterans. Now, these prices were incremental. If, say, you purchased your way into being a cornet, that did not just mean you'd become a captain based on your merit. You had to buy that rank. You had to pay for every single promotion

along the way. That sucks ass. Yeah. So say you were a cornet and you were a very good cornet, but you literally hemorrhaged your entire life savings for that $41,000 or whatever. You would just never get promoted. Merit promotions were possible, but they were exceedingly fucking rare. Almost everybody in the officer ranks paid for their rank.

In order to be promoted, you had to buy the next rank. Now, granted, it wasn't just offered to the guy with the most money, though sometimes that is what happened. It did go to the senior most person they thought that could fill that rank, but they still had to pay for it. If you couldn't pay for it, it went to the next guy. It was like buying a used car. Theoretically, a commission could be sold for only its official value and offered to the most next senior officer in that same regiment.

But in practice, there's also an unofficial over-regulation price or regimental value. Say like being a colonel in the lifeguard normally would cost you 115,000 pounds or half a million pounds, whatever. But because this particular regiment is so famous, it's actually cost you 2 million, even though it's like...

That's just some bullshit, man. The difference is absolutely being pocketed by your commander. And that's like would double or triple the official cost. And that money would go into somebody's pockets. That wasn't going to the military. This, of the richer you were the faster you made rank and the

more important units you could command for example james brundell lord cardigan who we'll talk about a little bit more paid three million pounds for the rank of colonel in the 11th hussars as you can see a lot of these commands and like interpersonal bickering and shit makes a lot more sense when you realize that like the guy ahead of you isn't better than you. He's just richer than you are, which, of course, brings us to the topic of today's episode, the charge of a light brigade on the Northern Valley. At this point, the battle, no matter which units broke or held, everything was pretty much a stalemate. The British had broken the Russian attack, but the Russians had not been driven from the field. Also, the Russians were not going to go and destroy the warehouses. But the Russians

planes were defeated, but they refused to retreat. They were still hanging out on the heights overlooking them. The British had gotten the upper hand and were preparing to launch a counterattack. A counterattack that the Russians could see coming because they held the ridgelines. They had the high ground. They could be like,

hey, look, they're forming up to attack us. That's stupid. Igor, come close. But also the French held one of the ridgelines on a flank. So like they could also see what the Russians were doing and then tell the British,

which they did. Everybody could see what everybody was doing in plain view. War is so cool. For some reason, Lord Raglan believed that the enemy had retreated in total disorder despite scouts and the French pointing out that the opposite was actually taking place he knew if he wanted his attack to succeed

he needed his light brigade or light cavalry to chase down the artillery that was on the ridge line and take it out before it could redeploy that is in the concept of they were fleeing and taking their artillery with them, which was not happening. Furthermore, in a previous fight over the Causeway Heights, some British guns had been captured by the Russians. And he believed if he allowed those to be taken from the battlefield, it'd be just a big dishonor. Also, we need our cannons back. Now, the system of orders used by British commanders to direct units in action was simple. However, it was very vulnerable to missteps and confusion.

Commanders could often see the entire battlefield and would give orders to a chief of staff who would write them down on a piece of paper. An aide-de-camp would then be used to deliver those written orders to whatever unit it was a written order to. Simple as that. It was literally passing a note. But sometimes verbal orders would accompany written ones, which were not written down, which the aide-de-camp would use in a game of battlefield telephone. He would carry the letter, give it to him, and then give it the additional verbal orders on top, which hopefully he did not misremember. By rules of the time, verbal orders allowed for a latitude of the lower command because they were not exact, while written ones were to be adhered to exactly and immediately

without question. Now, the key here is the aid to comp was supposed to have the ability to fill in the gaps in any questions you had regarding either the verbal or written orders. So you couldn't be a dick about it. If the system worked, great. And it also probably meant the aide-de-camp relayed accurate orders to you. If it didn't, well, you get the charge of the light brigade. Oh, boy.

Raglan quickly wrote an order and passed it to George Bingham, 3rd Earl of Lucan, which said, quote, Cavalry is to advance and take advantage of any opportunity to recover the heights, he instructed. They will be supported by the infantry, which have been ordered to advance on two fronts.

There's a lot of information missing from that order. And Lucan, to his credit, was very confused. The order made no sense. There were four different heights it just said the heights which fucking heights am I attacking look around you dipshit

also looking around he didn't see any infantry either and if they showed up which fronts were they attacking you just said two of them you didn't say which ones so he asked the aide who delivered the order all of these questions. Like, what does this mean?

The aide had no idea because he also hadn't been told. So Lucan simply didn't pass the order. He figured if he just sat on his ass, the next order he got would be much more detailed. That did not happen. Raglan wrote another order, not clarifying a goddamn thing, and instead just screaming at him for not doing anything while reassuring him that now the French cavalry was on his left, moving to support his attack, which was not part of the original order at all, which make Lucan even more confused. This is when you just need to walk off the job site. Yeah.

You know, this is... I won't strike. I won't strike. Wildcat cavalry strike. Yeah. Now, this latest order made little more sense than the previous one, so Lucan asked for more information. But this time, Raglan had sent a guy named Captain Lewis Nolan to deliver the second order, and Nolan fucking hated Lucan. They had personal problems going back years.

Nolan, as far as anybody knew knew exactly what the orders were supposed to be when lucan asked nolan for more clarification despite the fact that lucan far outranked nolan nolan pretty much told him to fuck off and attack immediately oh okay lucan asked angrily quote quote, attack, attack what? What guns are you talking about? And Nolan angrily waved his arm in the direction of the entire North Valley and said, quote, there, my lord, there is your enemy. There are your guns. Oh, a little sass. Listen, just find a gun.

Find any gun. Any gun. Pick a gun. Russian guns lined the heights to the left. More Russian guns were deployed to the heights to the right and straight ahead were even more guns. These were the ones that he was actually supposed to attack. Enemy infantry also massed nearby with the reformed Russian cavalry behind those guns. And anybody with eyes could see that this would have been fucking insane.

could see that this would have been fucking insane. For one, you'd have to charge straight down a valley, effectively volunteering yourself to be surrounded by enemy artillery on three sides to attack at the furthest point of the valley where infantry was also standing. It made no sense. So Lucan was at this point fucking furious. He hated his own boss and probably wanted to shoot Nolan. was at this point fucking furious. He hated his own boss and probably wanted to shoot Nolan, so he ordered

his light brigade to advance in what has to be like a fuck you to his own boss. Yeah, like I'll listen to these orders, but you'll feel like a real asshole when I get killed. Now, the light brigade formed into three lines for the charge. The first contained the 13th Dragoons, the 17th

Lancers, and behind were the 11th Hazars. So remember, the guy paid $3 million for this. In the second line, there's more Hussars and more Dragoons. These are commanded by Cardigan. Remember the guy who spent 3 million pounds getting promoted? That guy is the one that ordered the brigade

to advance at 11 a.m. Now, Captain Nolan, despite being a prick about this entire thing, actually chose to ride with the Light Brigade during the attack. But after about like 200 yards, he realized that nobody had any idea where they were going. They didn't understand what the orders were. Because remember, he didn't tell them. He just told them to fuck themselves.

like told him to fuck themselves now he rode out in front of the brigade's march shouting and waving his sword towards causeway heights which is where apparently the orders were supposed to be to attack now suddenly caught like concern that someone would know what they were supposed to be doing and while he was standing there shouting and waving without telling lucan what the actual orders were he then got killed by a cannon shell which landed right next to him, meaning the only guy who knew what the orders were were now dead. Well, that's unfortunate.

As soon as they set out, they were shelled and shot at by three sides. Their heavy cavalry component, led by Lucan, saw what was happening and immediately called off their charges. The light brigade carried on without him, which is, you know, good call, in my opinion. Now, the French who were sitting on a nearby ridge and remember, I've been told that they were supposed to support this. I'd never been told that they were supposed to support any attack. And they watched this thing unfurl in front of them and abject horror, unsure what the fuck the British were

doing because nobody had told them an attack was taking place. And certainly nobody told them they were supposed to support that attack. Raglan had either miscommunicated or simply lied to get Lucan on the charge. Now, this French detachment was commanded by a guy named Basquiat, and he ordered his light cavalry to attack one of the heights out of nowhere with no plan just to possibly take some pressure off the light brigade so maybe they wouldn't all die. So far, the only decent command

decision that has taken place was by some French bystanders. No, no, you're going to need the French, man. The light brigade got within range of the Russians and their formation began to slip crippled james nunnerly of the seventh lancer saw the headless body of a sergeant strapped into a saddle gripping his reins with his lance still pointed straight ahead

endless horseman classic it's swoopy then the horse was taken out by a cannonball they both exploded and only five yards away the russian kids opened fire with canister shot tearing the entire front rank to pieces but somehow the weight of the charge kept going the surviving horsemen charged over their friends dead bodies and took the cannons slaughtering the russians who were manning them in the middle of all this cardigan who was still in the middle of the charge, managed to get himself separated from his unit and surrounded by Cossacks, which is never a good thing.

Now, this was when Prince Rad... Sorry, Russians. Radizwill? He's a Russian prince named Radizwill, who knew Cardigan personally, jumped in and instead offered a bounty over him being taken alive in order to try to save his life this slowed the cossacks down just enough that cardigan's soldiers

ran over and started shooting at the cossacks saving his ass cardigan did the thing that you would assume a an officer of the nobility would do in the situation and got on his horse and abandoned his soldiers running as fast as he could back to the rear hell yeah now this left his second lord paget to order a withdrawal back to the exact same valley they had just charged through by this point most of the survivors had lost their horses because they were shot out from under them or they were stabbed and they actually got to line or they're wounded or they've been knocked off their horses by an explosion. So most of the retreat was actually on foot.

How exciting. Which is not good. Now of course that meant they were hit by cannon fire by three sides all over again but then the Russian Lancers, seeing the enemy running, charged down the hill and came after them. Those in the groups that were able to force their way out but most of the stragglers were lost the final saving grace that probably

saved the weight of this unit from being annihilated was the french cavalry who came and rescued them mostly out of pity and horror i will take being rescued out of pity and horror yeah that's their sweet being alive and me being dead. Yeah. I will let some French cav trooper like make fun of me all he wants if it means me not getting stabbed

in the face by a Cossack. Yep. Out there admonishing all of them for not walking off the job when it was clearly unsafe. Sucker blue,

you dumb morons. This effectively ended the battle. Of the brigade, only 195 answered the roll call upon the return. 118 had been killed, and 127 wounded, with another 60 captured, and 300 horses died. Oh my god. Jesus. The pedigree in your opinion on horses is either a good thing or a bad thing. Padgett wrote a detailed letter about how bad Cardigan was at his job,

as well as everyone else, and they should all resign or lose their commission. At that point, he immediately resigned on the spot and went home. Fair enough. Which is something that, like, there's a reason why they don't allow soldiers to do that. Yeah. Like, every time you have a shitty sergeant or a lieutenant like man fuck this I'm going home fuck you the only

way you can get someone to do shitty enlisted work is via compulsion now the Russians were so confused by this attack they thought the soldiers that attacked them had lost their minds or had been drunk with like russian soldiers

asking one pow how much they had to drink the night before which is like has to be the greatest own at the time like accidental oh yeah that like that attack was so stupid you have to be higher drunk or both what the fuck what are you doing why didn't you walk off the job? Just Roz in the back at the warehouse like you should have been on strike with me. I don't have to do work. It's unsafe. Call OSHA.

OSHA has typhus. Oh shit. OSHA probably does have typhus. Raglan made no future moves. This abandoned his plan to advance along the Causeway Heights. The Russians eventually withdrew at dusk, officially ending the battle, though no more attacks were taking place in the area. Nobody, of course, has ever held accountable for any of this legendary fuck-up that instead got folded into a tale of heroism though if it makes anybody feel better raglan did die of cholera a year later

so like right the sometimes cholera is is just latin for justice maybe now his entire savastopol campaign was a complete failure, and he died knowing that. So, good. The only real win here is everyone in this battle and this entire war fucked up so badly that the British got rid of the commission purchasing system shortly thereafter, realizing that like, oh, man. And if this doesn't surprise you, the entire war, it turns out, was pointless and for no reason. Um, and besides me being like just the normal person,

that's not pro war saying that this legally, it meant nothing, uh, in the end, around 1 million people died, uh, mostly from disease, uh,

about like, I think it was like four times more people died from disease than combat, which is high. Even for war back then, um, the Russians signed a treaty in 1856 that ceded some territory, but most importantly, made them demilitarize the Black Sea. That is what Britain wanted, kind of, was to kick the spreading Russian naval influence in the balls.

However, by 1870, they would negotiate their way out of that little detail of the treaty re-militarizing it all over again yeah meaning that all of this is for nothing and history is one big dumb flat circle um and this would immediately spark more conflict and more um so yeah yeah this is literally for nothing, literally and legally for nothing, which is not often. I can say that now, gentlemen,

we have a thing on this show called questions from the Legion. Um, now this is a little bit different. We didn't pull it. Like I didn't have like a lot of time, um, to solicit people for questions that were not military related because, you know,

with Nick gone and liam not being a veteran or someone in the military like there's not a lot of the military type things that he knows so like sorry joe my fault oh it's good it's cool thanks joe military is when the government makes you fight right yeah yeah that's right um or normally just stand around a parking lot and jerk off a lot. That's what I do anyway. That's why I'm a Sergeant. But the reason, because of that, I've had to skip over a lot of the questions from Legion.

Cause almost all of them have to do with military stuff. But this time I was like, Hey, Roz is going to be on the show. It was like, just as a reminder that this doesn't have to be military related. Right. And I have explicitly

engineering related questions now that I cannot answer. So, what is the most hostile infrastructure work you can think of? And where is it? And other than saying just like roads. What is the most hostile

infrastructure? It was designed because people it was not designed of people involved um i mean you know other than like you know the obvious answer is jersey the whole state of new jersey is a good candidate right the whole state of new jersey yeah or actually south jersey um you know and you know that's just an environment where if you are if you are not in a car, you'll be murdered. Infrastructure, which is actively hostile to human life, I'd have to say stuff like having to work on transmission towers. That's a job that kills people constantly. Cell phone towers and stuff like that?

No, like the really tall radio towers. I didn't know those killed so many people. Oh, yeah. You got to send someone up there to change the light bulb and work on the equipment every once in a while i did know that i just assumed that i was generally like one of those jobs it's safer than you think uh no no it's actually as dangerous as it appears outstanding great yeah as the non definitely non-engineer of of the current gathering of hosts here, if I was to think of hostile infrastructure work, honestly, like I'm sitting in Hawaii right now. And I have to think that the Hawaiian highway system in particular, well, not the Hawaiian highway system, it's an American highway system.

The American highway system in Hawaii is actively hostile to everybody that doesn't drive a car. And there's no public transit here for the most part. The American highway system in Hawaii is actively hostile to everybody that doesn't drive a car. And there's no public transit here for the most part. So, I can only speak for this particular island. I have not been to any others yet in Oahu. However, it's a very small landmass. So, when you build gigantic highway systems, that means you can't really walk anywhere without having to cross some of these monstrosities. Right?

Oh, yeah. Right. It's insane. Not to mention that the highway itself is dog shit. It's kind of like the Houston Highway, just different. Like the Houston Highway is so comically large at this point that if you are not securely in a car, you will die. Yes. And even then, you might still die.

So the answers are New Jersey. Yeah. The answer is New Jersey and everywhere in the United States. Honestly, it's been a long time since I've traveled. I went to Iceland a couple of years ago, but Iceland doesn't really have public transit because it's very, very small. Reykjavik is a very small walkable town and it doesn't really have a necessity for public transit. I think they sell buses and stuff like that. Yeah. I think they got a big bus network.

A couple months ago, I went to Armenia, which is also a very small country. Most population lives in one area. And even then, the city is incredibly walkable and has an underground metro line. We're losing the goddamn Yerevan. Yeah, 100%. And the metro

is fine. I mean, sure, it's old, but it works and it's like 20 cents. It's one of those good Soviet metros, you know? Yeah, I mean, it is. It just has slightly newer trains, I believe, but not by much. Not by much, yeah. Yeah, but even then, in comparison to

if I wanted to go somewhere, since I don't live in... I live in Honolulu, but I don't live in downtown Honolulu because you can't afford to live in downtown Honolulu. I have to get in my car and I have to drive at least 15 minutes. And in that 15 minutes, I have to merge into three different highways and then go back into town. It's just obscene. But I mean, it's... Same thing goes for pretty much every metro area now, right? Anyway, this is the plug zone. Plug your show. Liam and I have a show. It's called, well, there's your problem. It's a podcast about engineering disasters with slides.

Um, it's on YouTube and also on podcasting apps. Uh, you, you should listen to it or watch it because it's good. Yeah. Uh, actually recently I watched the very first,

uh, YouTube version of your podcast. I normally only listen to it on my podcast app because there was the military slideshow one and you cannot listen to that. It's like not, I don't know any other shows that do that. Like it's very, very cool and people should go listen to it.

Also, I have a sport affiliate sports podcast now called, uh, Oh God, what's it called? Oh, 10,000 losses. Go listen to that.

I know four of those losses off the top of my head. You just stole the name right off of Hussein there. Gentlemen, thank you for coming on the show. It is always a joy. I'm glad to flip things. I've been in the world. There's a problem.

I think three times now. So it was nice talk at ross rather than the other way around and until next time uh don't do don't get typhus and i feel like we've used that one before still avoid it though don't invade crimea that one's topical yeah there you go russia