I can't believe it took me 4 whole hours to notice this video. edit: I can assert that the seed pods of Tribulus Terrestris are still widely known in outback Australia as caltrops (also bindiis and undoubtedly numerous other names.) Incapacitating little buggers, the biggest ones can stand a half-inch tall and even regularly made my blue cattle dog come to a complete stop while she ripped it out of her foot with her teeth. (It's also ground up to make a testosterone supplement.)
When I joined TH-cam in 2007, I subscribed to three channels: Lindybeige, Scholagladiatoria, and CommunityChannel. The third one is sadly dormant, but the first two are still active!
In old youtube, pre optimised algorithm, channels like these thrived. Now a lot of these creators or potentional creators are pushed away by specific addiction spiked content 😢
Another modern Caltrop is the British Type G electrical plug. These are designed to fall in a way that leaves three sharp prongs sticking up, so you deal additional damage. While these no doubt have prevented some burglaries, they seem to be much more effective at stopping people from going to the bathroom at night.
Tbf, they are effective at stopping people from getting an electric shock. As someone who has gotten zapped a couple times thanks to American plugs, I would take the tradeoff.
@@qasimmir7117a demonstration of his lack of intelligence. Mercenaries and terrorists tend not to broadcast their activities for a good reason! One day the Russians will get him and he will have a hard time explaining himself during their less than tender questioning… assuming he survives the capturing.
@@Quansem It's Lindybeige. He never has been the pinnacle of journalism. Entertaining, sometimes good history, sometimes unique journalism, sometimes good investigation, sometimes just ... bleh.
WW2 journalist Ernie Pyle noted a caltrop attack while at an air field in Italy. The troops called it a jacks raid and quickly swept them up with jeep mounted magnets normally used for collecting shrapnel along roads.
Something I'm surprised you didn't mention! I was taught that caltrops were not widely used as weapons for the common soldier but instead scouts. If being pursued, they're convenient things that are easy enough to make, small enough to carry, and simple enough to throw behind you as you're possibly being chased down by enemy who might have discovered your position.
That does make sense, and would explain why they're usually found in fairly small numbers. Would also explain why they aren't talked about that much in historical sources - if they weren't used in huge numbers, they would be less likely to be talked about, and additionally, a lot of ancient societies looked down upon scouts and the like. Not to the level of disdain, but more like, if you could talk about a squad of light scouts, that might be like 5-10 men, lightly armed who are going to run away the moment they're spotted, or you could talk about the battle exploits of a division of heavy infantry on the front line of a battle... you're going to talk about the cooler one. As a writer, the details of a glorious battle make much better material than "and then the scouts were spotted so they ran away." I think it also makes more tactical, strategic AND economic sense to use in smaller quantities. If you spread thousands of caltrops all over the battlefield to deny the area to your enemy, well first you have to find a way to do that that doesn't result in the enemy sending out light calvalrymen to murder your caltrop layers, but then even if you get them down, YOU can't use that area of the battlefield either. And if you're engaging in a battle with the enemy, you're at least fairly confident you have a chance of winning, so you probably have your own cavalry you want to maneuver. Plus... in the ancient world, metal was expensive, and metalworkers were a highly skilled profession. I feel like it would be a fantastically expensive strategy to have a small army of smiths using a fortunes worth of metal, just to literally throw if en masse into an empty field that your enemy may or may not even run in to. All that metal and all those smiths could be used making more mundane but useful things, like swords, daggers, arrowheads, armor etc. Caltrops being an emergency defensive tool for scouts and the like solves both of those issues. They're only found in small numbers, because a unit of scouts might have like 10 per man, and they might not even use the ones they have if they don't get discovered, which would explain why they're not found in quantity. It solves the economic cost/benefit issue, because instead of having an army of smiths using a fortune of metal to make a minefield, you just need maybe a few hundred to a thousand or so to equip your scouts with, and all things going well they won't use them all that fast, it solves the tactical issues surrounding their use because your not denying an area to you AND your enemy, so you don't need them in quantity, you don't need a dedicated logistics train and dispersal mechanism for them and you don't hamper your own movement if you only have maybe a few dozen scouts using a few here and there, and it solves the lack of historical mention of them because scouts that work in small groups away from the main army and run away all the time aren't sexy and cool and make for terrible writing material, so you don't mention those losers in more than passing and write about chadsius maximus the heavy cavalry division commander instead. Thinking on those lines, it would also explain why the roman author felt the need to explain them - if they were used by scouts as emergency defense tools... scouts were, compared to the main bulk of the army, quite few in number, and spent most of their time away from the army doing their scouting job, so even if you were in the army, the odds that you were a scout, or worked closely enough with the scouts to know what they did and the kit they used, would have been pretty low. I imagine that unless you were a commander recieving reports from the scouts, you probably didn't interact with them much, and it's not like you could see a caltrop on a scouts person like you could a sword or a shield, given they likely would have been kept in some sort of pouch.
@@AnthonyA1995 Scouts also have an extremely high mortality rate no matter what era you live in which adds to the idea that there wouldn't be much information about their use and effectiveness. if its something you only use in a pinch its all the more likely very few historians would be able to get first or even second hand accounts. until more concrete evidence appears, I think this is probably the best theory for their historical use.
I bought a nice paring knife on ebay and the buffoon shipped it with a lil piece of styrofoam over the blade in a bubble mailer. Left the worst review I could. Was amazed it even made it.
My favorite package knocked me out! It was a 30-40 pound package and when I picked it up the contents shifted inside the large box which then "punched" me in the face.
I once had a large roll of razor wire in a very thin box come barreling at me down a chute. I only know it was razor wire because a bunch of the razors were sticking through the box and a couple got into my shirt. If you ship anything sharp or pokey, please pack it well
Ok, this one pinged a memory about area denial. So, story time. I had a buddy who was in the US Army in Bosnia during the late 90's (This is all from him and I have no documentation, but I love the story). He was at a camp somewhere and they had issues with, let's say "impolite characters" sneaking into the camp and causing issues. They figured out after a while that they were getting in through one small area that was hard to monitor due to the terrain and they needed to keep people out. So the solution was a mine field set up in that area. He said after that, no one came through there again while he was there. I then asked "How many mines did that take?" His response, "None, we didn't have any. We just paid a local to make a few signs warning of a minefield and put them up." Brilliant. As for the Jamestown bit, I once heard that caltrops used to be used as a training aid for new blacksmiths to learn the basics. Make a few, and if you did well you get to do more complicated stuff. They also took very little metal to make. That may be why they found one. New guy didn't want to show his crap work and hid it for a few hundred years.
My immediate thought when he mentioned Jamestown having _only_ one was "ooh, I bet those make for _excellent_ training projects for new blacksmiths!" Glad to see my idea supported ^^ Also, that was brilliantly simple and deviously compassionate thinking by your buddy!
The story about the fake minefield makes me think ancient people might have used these simple blacksmithing jobs as a bluff. You didn't need to plant a whole load of caltrops in an area. You just needed to scatter a few, to give the _impression_ the area is more treacherous than it really is. You only need one soldier on the line getting a sole-full of spike to have the entire regiment need to stop and reconsider their marching path. Or at least waste a bunch of time fanning out to search for nonexistent caltrops. Spread these kinds of false traps far enough, and it can delay troop movements by a few hours. While that might not seem significant to us, even small delays can prevent parts of an army from reaching a battle on time.
A co-worker of mine had a caltrop on his desk, made from two pieces of round stock, bent and welded together, and the ends ground to points. He told me he found it in the sand while visiting Israel. (I managed not to wince when he told me about seeing a point sticking out of the sand and picking it up.) He didn't know what it was, and after I told him, he speared a piece of paper on the up-pointing spike with "THIS IS A CALTROP" written on it.
28:36 These evil seed pods were the bane of my bike tires. I personally called them, “the devil’s tack-weed,” before learning that they are actually named “goathead puncturevine”.
Lindy, there's something you're neglecting to factor in: Delay of Advancement (I don't know if there's a proper term for this so I'm just gonna use my own). If your column is advancing and suddenly one of your men steps on a caltrop... well, now you have to assume the area ahead of you is seeded with caltrops, and you have to stop and clear those caltrops before your main force can advance. Psychologically, area denial is about more than "they can't go this way", there's also "they CAN go this way, but it will take an awful lot longer". The Vietcong used this against the US to devestating effect; a single infantryman injured by a punji trap slows the whole squad down, and a single punji trap found can slow a whole unit down as they search for more. The value of caltrops, mines, boobytraps and other such devices is not in how many men it kills/disables, but how long it can keep a force from advancing.
Oh yeah the Ukrainians have got the Russians beat now they have to worry about caltrops, personally id be be more worried about explosive anti personnel mines but you stick with thinking the Russians are going to worry about metal spikes
That’s a good point! I’m on active duty in the US, and this is much like the way I train obstacle employment with my soldiers. I explain that the obstacle creates a dilemma for the enemy. Go around it, but maybe that’s where I want you to go and now you’re in my kill zone? Or you deal with the obstacle, and spend time at that point on the battle field and make your operations officers sync matrix completely useless, aka play havoc with the enemy forces timing/synchronization.
Yeah, I was kinda thinking you don't actually need loads of them. Even if your front line troops carried a handful each and scattered them ahead of where they were going to hold ground, it would give the approaching force one more distracting thing to deal with as it approached.
In my opinion caltrops are mainly useful for skirmishing and/or delaying actions against infantry. You’re being chased so you toss a few dozens in a narrow path with vegetation that the enemy has to follow you through. One guy steps on one in a run and now everyone has to slowdown to prevent more casualties allowing you to escape/regroup/counterattack etc.
We used caltrops in Iraq. We'd string about a dozen of them on some 550 cord, and then they could be thrown across the road at a vehicle checkpoint if we needed to stop a car. Never actually saw a car stopped by them, but they were easier to deploy than police-style spike strips, easier to pick up too.
27:28 The Swedish word "Fotangel" came about during medieval times from the German word "Fußangel" which basically mean "Foot hook" or, as some would claim, "Foot point". The word "angel" has nothing to do with the English word "angel" which instead would be translated to "ängel" in Swedish. Those two little dots above the "a" might seem rather insignificant, but I assure you they are not.
The diacritical mark over "ä" is an umlaut. The "ß" is an eszett, and is a basically a "ss" (like hiss) that indicates the preceding vowel has a long sound. So Fuß is like fuss, but sounds like "foos". In "fußangel", the angel isn't angle like it's used in geometry (i.e. right angle, acute angle); it's angle meaning to fish (angling/fishing, angler/fisherman). Angel is "Engel" im der deutsch. Sorry, I had a little moment there. Lol
The terrible foot pain I remember is treading on a Jack after playing with that little red rubber ball and picking up those little baby caltrops as part of a childhood game! Anyone else remember those!
On a side note, they made for passable 1/72 scale beach defences at the battle for Rug Island c.1978. Sadly many were hoovered up by peace keeping forces shortly thereafter.🙄😅
For the bomb thing, I could see it being used over a military camp, where there's lots of foot traffic and people running about. You can't rely on a direct hit on anything useful, but you can get a bunch of caltrops all over the place and force people to walk more slowly and carefully in case they weren't cleaned up.
Lindybeige just taught me a new English word 'asunder'! As a Swede I immediately correlated it to the Swedish 'sönder' that is pronounced just as asunder but without the initial 'a' and means "to be broken". I love me some ethymology in the morning.
Sundering is an entire combat option they spelled out in the 3rd Edition of D&D. Great to remind players that sometimes its better to break the bad guy's magic gear instead of looting it (what's a barbarian know of a staff of fireball beyond "stop that"?)
in DnD one of my characters always carried caltrops around in his batman utility belt full of random flasks of acid and pitons and whetstones, and never got to use them. Then after years I finally got a chance in one battle. An enemy walked on them. And took 1 damage and wasn't affected mobility wise because DnD doesn't have body part damage. I don't know what I expected, but it was disappointing. Also I appreciate the return to form, I missed these sorts of videos
Yeah, no damage and difficult terrain would be preferable to 1 damage and no mobility penalty, even for low levels where the 1 damage would even matter. On a related note, idk why they switched marbles for ball bearings. The former is much more appropriate for the setting
I’m not sure what edition this was, but in 5e caltrops are one of the better utility items IMO. If a creature takes damage from them, it gets a pretty sizeable movement penalty which is permanent until healed. They’re also one of the few “consumables” that are just infinitely reusable as long as you can spare the time to go collect them.
At least in D&D 5th edition any enemy who moves over caltrops without slowing down has their movement reduced a bit until they receive healing, so they've been improved since then at least.
This video brought back some long forgotten memories... Years back I was collecting some boards left over from a construction project. Some boards still had nails sticking out of them. Some of these nails were not bent over. Some of the nails were rusty. My cat got curious and got fairly close, so I wanted to shoo her off from the immediate area, so I wouldn't hurt her on accident. Shooing her off involved me stomping my foot on the ground... straight on one of the long, straight, rusty nails, protruding out of a board. Pain ensued, a visit to the emergency room followed. The nail did not go entirely through the foot, because my bones were in the way. Luckily I did not need stitches, there was no infection and since I was an invincible teenager back then, it all healed up nicely after some time. 5/7 experience, would not recommend.
Found a US Civil War caltrop in our backyard. Hello from Kansas City Missouri. PS plant seeds from High Plains known as Goatheads. The seeds are triangular with spikes on two spikes so one is always pointed up. Hard on war ration car tires and current bike tires.
As child, we wondered around everywhere. Often, we hung around where trash was dumped. Stepping on boards with nails was common. There some basic knowledge children knew from experience. One bit of knowledge was, you had about two second before the nail sticking through your foot hurt. From experience, you knew what to do. You put down your impaled foot, stepped on the board, and yanked your foot free. Sometime you foot got stuck on the nail. Thats when friends come in. We hand friend who stepped a nailed board. He tried, but his foot didnt pull free. So we helped. Someone sat on our impaled friend as we tried to pull the nail free. All we did is drag them. There was a lot of screaming. Then we tied him to tree, and we all pulled on the board. The board broke, and our impaled friend was hysterical. We tried hammering the nail out. Didnt work. Finally, we all sat on him, and pulled the nail out with pry bar. A few hours later the bleeding stopped. We carried him home and left him on the sidewalk. We never got in trouble. Our impaled friend told us about it later. He crawled into his his house, and his mother asked him why he was crawling on the floor. He said, I stepped on nail. His mother looked at his foot, and said "You look okay to me. Wear is your sock?" Looking back, all that screaming was gruesome.
In my collection is a small, roughly 2 inch square version. It is quite rusty and I was told it was one of a few hundred thousand that were dropped on Korean roads to slow the advance of the Chinese army later in the war. It looks more like a very large version of a child's "Jack" toy in layout but is a quite heavy and solid piece of cast iron.
When I was little, maybe 9 or 10, my older sister spilled a box of straight pins on the shag carpet in our basement. She made no effort to clean it up. I, walking barefoot through the house, found them. Her punishment for not picking up her mess, which led to my injury, was that she had to be the one to pull each pin out of my foot. My dad made no effort to restrain me, either, so she had to deal with me constantly trying to kick her with my one good foot every time it hurt. Thankfully, only one managed to find purchase in the bone, but that did require the use of a pair of pliers to successfully remove. Needless to say, she was much more careful with pins and I stopped going barefoot for a few years.
I feel.your pain, as little child I dismantled my clockwork alarm clock. All was well until I tried to run out of by bedroom and put the winding spike through my foot. Missed everything important, but was a handful for my dad when he had to pull it out. Unsurprisingly that was the last thing I dismantled on the floor.
The point around 14:00 is sooooo good. These kinds of things are so telling about what was actually common or not. That is the kind of thing that a lot of people would not pick up on, and I'm glad Lyod points out.
Yup, very true. On a little bit of a tangent related to this; That's why the classical Greeks defining certain structures/foundations as "Cyclopean masonry" is so interesting. Today, we claim we simply don't understand how they build certain things, but clearly even back then they didn't even understand how the people before them did it to a point they mythified it. I mean, we claim we simply can't grasp the idea of being able to "waste" an insane amount of workforce on stuff to get thing done and that we must be missing certain technologies and strategies they had and used, but clearly people who were at the height of their age, and who did fully live with that concept and those possibilities at their disposal, still considered themselves to be so far away from "Cyclopean masonry" that they didn't even think it was build by normal humans.
Dude, that 'Modern Caltrop' is freakin' BRILLIANT!!! Mythbusters did a bit, where they discovered that standard caltrops were utterly useless against cars, as they tended to plug the holes they made, thus never deflating any tires. But those hollowed out caltrops??? Someone was paying attention during that Mythbusters episode!! That's freakin' awesome and I'm glad to announce, my Bank Robbing idea can now move forwards!!!
22:00 "Notice things on runways" - most WWII airstrips were grass fields, not paved runways (those proliferated toward the end of the war, but were hardly dominant even by 1945). So camo'd sheet metal caltrops wouldn't necessarily be easy to see and clean up.
I assume, the Germans noticed how easy it was to actually repair bomb damage to those runways like the British did during the Falklands War and hoped, that the fear of missing a couple of caltrops on the runway would be enough to take the thing out of service.
@@marksvilar6550 Grass has nothing on strawberries. A neighbour asked me to clear some out of her garden and I thought it'd be smart to put them in mine and have free strawberries. Local female blackbird has been diligent about making sure I never get any, and has spread seed and fertiliser all over the place. They're coming up everywhere!
I had a Summer job as an historical animator at Citadel Hill in Halifax Nova Scotia, and during that time we were put through authentic infantry training for the 1800's (to better represent the troops who were present there in the late 1800's). When marching in column, the correct method of moving does not allow you to 'sweep' your step as you move. So when moving in formation on the battlefield, your steps are more up down rather than sweeping forward. I can see these being an issue to a moving line or column of men. Thanks for the video.
That's a really cool piece of information to know, thanks! Now that I think of it, it makes a lot more sense when moving in a formation! Dragging the foot could easily result in someone tripping, stumbling, or falling down, which could quickly affect everyone else, due to being so close to one another. It makes perfect sense now! Cheers
I'm not sure why I wasn't already subscribed; I've enjoyed this channel for ages! Not only is the content interesting, and the presentation top notch, but the script is always so satisfying. Rather than bait the viewer with "more on that later", he rewards them with callbacks to earlier in the video. It's a narrative, with a roundness and homogeneity that fact-dump channels can't achieve.
I think Lindy's point about not many ancient caltrops being found might be overstated. Even if the military was too busy to pick them back up, the locals would have known about them and picked them up to recycle.
@@jessicascoullar3737 Everyone would have known what chariots were. They would be seen on parades. Caltrops would not be seen on parades, and because they are rather unpleasant, people would not talk about them much. I think it's quite plausible that they could be somewhat common but still need a definition in a military manual.
I think all these points speak to how highly situational the caltrop is: you need them in large numbers to deny the enemy the use of an area, they're heavy to transport, and like, say, landmines, they also deny the area to you and are indiscriminate in destruction. I suspect they would be most useful in blocking gateways or roads. Come to think of it, scattering them on a bridge would also slow down an enemy crossing, especially if your team can make cleaning up the caltrops dangerous. That being said, most things that a caltrop achieves can probably also be achieved by a guy with a shovel and some sharp sticks. That alone could be a reason why they weren't that common: even in the ancient world, there were cheaper options.
Not sure about Swedish, but in German, "angel" shares the same etymology as the English word "angler", as in, "fisherman". For example, residents of the Black Forest at one time used a device called a _Wolfsangel,_ a vicious-looking double-sided hook that was buried in a piece of meat and attached to a post or tree with a chain. The wolf would swallow it, and, er....get caught, so to speak. In any case, the _angel_ part of the word implies fishing, or angling. So my guess is _fotangel_ in Swedish is meant to be something similar, but for the foot instead of a wolf.
I'm also not sure about the Swedish translation, as a Dutch person. In Dutch, angel means the part a bee stings with. Oh, it's the same in English. According to deepL translation, Dutch and English angel translates as ängel in Swedish.
_"Angel"_ was historically used for _"fishing hook"_ in Swedish, today it's mostly used in the word _"angeldon"_ which is an ice fishing tool. _"Don"_ is another old word which basically means _"tool",_ _"thing"_ or _"gear"._ So "angeldon" can be translated to "fishing gear" (the kind with line and hook). You can also call a fisherman who is using those kinds of fishing tools an _"anglare",_ much like the English word _"angler"._ Anyway, like you basically guessed already, "fotangel" is thus "foot-hook".
There's a real life FBI shootout story over on Wendigoon's channel, in which, according to witnesses, a shot-and-wounded FBI agent was spurting blood _eight feet_ from a wound...
Ditto many samurai movies. In Sanjuro, an excellent samurai movie, this was done. However, they didn't let the actor know. The look of shock on his face was genuine.
A key thing about stepping on a LEGO (or equivalent brand) brick in the dark is its mostly fine on a flat wood or tiled floor. Its when you step on a brick nested in carpet, where a corner is forced into gaps of the fibers by the foot, is then the real pain happens.
In Oklahoma we called those spiked seeds "goatheads" and they were the bane of bicycle tires. Some had spikes over 1/8" in length. We'd buy a tube of this gunk and inject it into the tire before inflating it and it would ooze out of such holes and seal them until you could get home and make a proper repair.
All of the notation about equivalent metrics and you hit us with "a 2000lb drone" My brother in Christ, it took me longer than I care to admit to realize you were talking about money
Nature has its own caltrop. The goats head sticker. It's a 3 thorned sticker very common in Northwest Texas. They will flatten a bicycle tire, and do serious damage to your foot.
In the UK we have *Pyracantha* (lit: FireThorn); basically as nasty as Barbed Wire once established, but is alive, doesn't rust, takes heavy duty loppers to deal with well grown bows thereof, can have thorns that're 1/2ft long, goes through most footwear like a naval torpedo through armour steel and are so named because a wound caused by it feels like it's on fire with pain 😅 . Unlike Barbed Wire though there's no particular rules limiting where you can grow it or use bits of it, as indeed I do as an infinitely replacable organic garden obstacle 😈 . It's also great for the environment as birds & other wildlife take cover in & live in it, and it's a common choice for hedgerow building 🙂 .
@@TSR1989FF we have that here too, not on my place thankfully, just blackberries that are trying to take over the place. Small birds do love them though and sambar.
I remember stepp[ing on a nail sticking out of a board as a kid. By some miracle, it went completely through my foot, but missed every blood vessel, nerve, and skipped right through the muscle fibers without tearing. The doc at the ER was impressed I'd managed to impale my foot so perfectly without serious damage. And that's the story of how I got my first tetanus shot.
Same scenario for me as well, including the childhood introduction to the tetanus shot. One notable difference in our experiences, however, was the nail's length and thus penetration potential. My nail was fairly small and, thanks to thick, rubber-soled sneakers, only penetrated an inch or so into my heel. Whereas you apparently stepped on a railroad spike.
HE'S BACK BABY!! Lindy I appreciate you may have wanted to try a foray into something else but let's face it most of us are here for your historical stuffs. Overall I'm just happy that you are still making content and seem to be happy and healthy... OK and Im also REALLY happy about the seeming return to form/format. :P All the best in 2025 and beyond Lindy, keep your stick on the ice!!!
You mention that they wouldn't be all that effective against vehicles, because as soon as one has a flat tire, then someone would just sweep them up with a broom. But very often vehicles has to go through muddy swathes on the front line, where you couldn't easily get rid of a couple hundred cheap-as-dirt caltrops.
Thanks, Lindybeige! Yesterday, I was listening to a recent episode of Ukraine: The Latest (award-winning & fantastic!) and Dom Nicholls mentioned pointy bits being dropped from FPVs on rodes... This morning, your very fine video popped up in my feed! Very comprehensive and timely. I shared it in an email to Dom. Maybe Ukraine: The Latest will pursue a connection with Big Mac!!! TTFN
Caltrops are still a recurring issue here in Yakima Washington. They finally, after years of it happening, caught one guy who was putting them in the roads here, but it's still happening.
25:00 It occurs to me that the best sort of terrain to use caltrops in would be in any bodies of waist high, muddy water through which your enemies are obliged to wade (such as marshlands, irrigation ditches, partially flooded trenches or most of South East Asia.) When wading, one tents to take shorter, higher steps that end with the foot being placed straight down. This means that more steps are taken per arbitrary unit of distance travelled, increasing the likelihood of a caltrop being encountered, and more ground clearance per step, decreasing the chance of a caltrop being kicked away. Additionally, the murky water would serve to lower visibility and increase the chance of a wound becoming infected. While the inability to sit or lie down would complicate any effort to remove the caltrop (especially if you used that evil barbed one.) Finally, if your enemy were to overbalance and fall over backwards, even in waist high water, the weight of their plate carrier and equipment could drag them down and prevent them from righting themselves, resulting in death by drowning.
Moreeee! More videos! I know all your videos by heart now. Tons, Tuns, Hannibals, Gladiators, cannons, ladders, slings, helmets... MORE!!! There are so many topics... life on old wooden ships, castles, plague, emperors, turks, ... No buts... do it! Love
I believe that in WW2 a number of the airfields did not have paved runways. Much harder to see even on the manicured grass of an aerodromes runways or aircraft maintenance areas
From the very definition of air 'field'. Paving only really became necessary as weights increased, during WW2. Previously both military and civilian traffic didn't use paved runways.
Last year I got a Stanley blade stuck in my floorboards, it must have fallen of my desk and, through some stroke of terrible luck, landed sideways in-between the boards, sticking up. I found it with my bare foot, and I still can't feel the toe I almost lost a year later. The only reason I'm sharing this is that I can relate to how bad these things could be, first hand, the damn video gave me borderline PTSD
The most useful place I'd imagine for a caltrop is in the streets of a city. It's far easier to deny narrow corridors and roadways with caltrops than entire fields of battle. Not to mention, sieges were much more common than great big battles out on a plain. It wouldn't surprise me at all to learn certain defending armies would drop caltrops onto their streets or like at a castle gate. Sure you could see them, but you'd have to stop and clear them, especially if you're an entire crowd of soldiers, and that's time you may not have with defenders waiting for you.
Yes, imagine scattering them in a castle gateway so that the attackers are dealing with threats from above at the same time. Or maybe scattering in front of your missile troops or artillery pieces
I imagine they would work also pretty well in wall breaches. There you have the added benefit of uneven ground and people have to run to pass it and make room for the people behind them.
Its honestly making me feel a bit sick looking at those things, very clever idea and very interesting subject for a video, thankyou for a great presentation
Why did rhis vid's title get me as excited as I am? This is classic Lindybeige, amd I have upvoted before qatching, and im pretty sure I'll stick with that! Nice!
0:42 My ex husband's got that beat. As a child, he trod on a chair from his sister's dollhouse and the leg of the chair went right through his foot! Ouch!
I agree caltrops seem rare in history. I suspect the problem with caltrops in ancient warfare was the same as with today's mines - they last a long time and are hard to collect. Imagine a muddy, gravely, or grassy field with caltrops in it. This makes them a weapon liable to harm your own side. Metal lines shoes weren't an option back then, so anyone moving across an area where caltrops had been used is in danger for a long time. Considering how armies had to get really close to each other, advancing and backing up as the battle went back and forth over the area, your own side is almost guaranteed to suffer.
Plus, in those days such an injury was actually life threatening. And given the value of iron and steel way back then, scattering it about, never to be seen again sounds terribly expensive.
27:27 _"Angel"_ was historically used for _"fishing hook"_ in Swedish, today it's mostly used in the word _"angeldon"_ which is an ice fishing tool. *_("Don"_*_ is another old word which basically means _*_"tool",_*_ _*_"device",_*_ _*_"gear"_*_ or _*_"thing"._*_ So _*_"angeldon"_*_ can be translated as _*_"fishing gear",_*_ the kind using line, hook & bait, etc.)_ You can call a fisherman who is using a line & hook an _"anglare",_ much like the English word _"angler"._ But today most people use the broader term _"fiskare",_ meaning _"fisherman"._ _"Fisk"_ = _"fish"._ So _"fotangel"_ is basically _"foot-hook"..._ _...in my dialect it's pronounced something like _*_"ANG-el"_*_ where the A is like the a in _*_"Ahh",_*_ NG is like the ng in _*_"raNG"_*_ and -el is like the letter _*_"L"._* _Swedish for the English word _*_"angel"_*_ is _*_"ängel"._*
Used them on every patrol in the province in the cuds . Not so much in The city’s . They were linked together and used on vcps at the cutoffs to use if a dodgy vehicle tried to break through.
Man, this is the first video that's been recommended to me from Lindybeige in a long time. Glad you're back in my suggestions. Also, you can make those out of staples in the office.
An installed denier of macadam roads and runways is the common 16d nail. These are driven about halfway into the pavement, so the nail head pushes into the Tyre (tire) then rips the tire as the head pulls out. The massive damage can not be repaired and delays the aircraft or vehicle until wheel change.
In the world of toys there was something much worse than Lego not that long ago. When I was a kid Jacks were a common toy on the schoolyard. Very nearly recreational caltrops.
They are likely very expensive (in terms of era economy), think of the numbers of arrow heads that could be made using the same amount of metal; and once used, I imagine they would have been collected and the metal recycled, those few remain in the archeological record being those that weren't recycled. Plus, they would only be really useful in very specific situations in which more cost-effective methods could be used, like digging a ditch.
They are also probably lethal. I stepped on a nail in the later 90s, and my mother signed paperwork they could cut my leg off to the hip. (The nail stuck a bone and the bone got infected) I was on IV line threaded through my veins to my heart, and the antibiotics were 4k a day. I did get to keep the leg... but its not likely people before world War two would have lived.
Big Macs 6 pointers are great, they are also using great big rebar regular 4 point ones something like 6 inches or more tall, but connected on a chain so they can be deployed and re collected like a giant spike strip
Caltrops here in Australia were also called cats heads , these were a natural version albeit a bit smaller but very painful as a youngster playing in a paddock barefoot, they got to about 10mm 3/8 and had a large end and three thorns, I wonder if the name came from the weapon or the weapons name came from the thorn
I was under the impression that, during the world wars, most of the airfields were just that, open fields. Hence the big round wheels on the bombers and cargo planes. Also, as a general area denial weapon, yes not great, but for guerilla warfare/ambush situations they'd be great. A sack full could hold up a column quite easily at least long enough for a raid
Right, that is what I was thinking, you place them in a narrow pass or on the road into town that you expect the enemy to come down. Not for wide open plains. This is more like modern use too where they put them on a roadway they know the vehicle is coming down.
I'm an old man now... when my sons were little, we made the mistake of buying them metal jacks {as in the old game of "Jacks"} and boys being boys those got left on the floor often enough so that those little pseudo-caltrops tore up our feet many a time until we found them all and quietly got rid of them. I would imagine that in Roman times, the cost of metal would have made large scale use of even the cheapest iron versions prohibitive though we may never know as cheap iron wouldn't survive well when buried in most soils to reveal how common their usage might have been. Wooden caltrops would have been a different beastie and, in recent years, there is now real archaeological evidence that the defensive ditches outside many parts of Hadrian's Wall in the UK had wooden spikes/caltrops "planted" in the bottom to make it even harder for attackers to reach the base of the walls themselves.
I've stood on a nail poking out of a bit of wood before, went right through my foot and out the top. While it's certainly a shock it's not exactly immobilising, I pulled it out and managed to walk back to the van about half a mile away without too much bother. Cleaned the wounds when I got home, had gone between the big toe and 2nd toe bone behind the ball of the foot, bit messy but healed well within about 3 weeks, stung a bit for the first few days then felt bruised but was still able to bare weight and didn't hamper movement too much. Could definitely see it getting infected if you didn't have access to materials/knowledge.
As long as Lindybeige is talking about ancient weapons, Old TH-cam is still alive.
I can't believe it took me 4 whole hours to notice this video.
edit: I can assert that the seed pods of Tribulus Terrestris are still widely known in outback Australia as caltrops (also bindiis and undoubtedly numerous other names.) Incapacitating little buggers, the biggest ones can stand a half-inch tall and even regularly made my blue cattle dog come to a complete stop while she ripped it out of her foot with her teeth.
(It's also ground up to make a testosterone supplement.)
When I joined TH-cam in 2007, I subscribed to three channels: Lindybeige, Scholagladiatoria, and CommunityChannel. The third one is sadly dormant, but the first two are still active!
Awesome start to 2025 right here
@@johnhenderson7941Yep, proper little buggers aren't they!?
In old youtube, pre optimised algorithm, channels like these thrived. Now a lot of these creators or potentional creators are pushed away by specific addiction spiked content 😢
Another modern Caltrop is the British Type G electrical plug. These are designed to fall in a way that leaves three sharp prongs sticking up, so you deal additional damage. While these no doubt have prevented some burglaries, they seem to be much more effective at stopping people from going to the bathroom at night.
British people rarely go to the bathroom at night. They go to the toilet, which may or may not be located in the bathroom. 😉
😆😆😆
this ^
Tbf, they are effective at stopping people from getting an electric shock. As someone who has gotten zapped a couple times thanks to American plugs, I would take the tradeoff.
😰
This is old school lindybeige content posted in 2024 with an active military combatant discussing the effectiveness of the subject matter. Nice.
Did you see the other one where he’s talking about and shows the kind of bombs he drops on Russian soldiers and their equipment from his drones?😳
@@qasimmir7117a demonstration of his lack of intelligence. Mercenaries and terrorists tend not to broadcast their activities for a good reason! One day the Russians will get him and he will have a hard time explaining himself during their less than tender questioning… assuming he survives the capturing.
Happy new year
He throws shade at him for not looking at the lens. Kinda prick-ish.
@@Quansem It's Lindybeige. He never has been the pinnacle of journalism. Entertaining, sometimes good history, sometimes unique journalism, sometimes good investigation, sometimes just ... bleh.
WW2 journalist Ernie Pyle noted a caltrop attack while at an air field in Italy. The troops called it a jacks raid and quickly swept them up with jeep mounted magnets normally used for collecting shrapnel along roads.
Yes, the children's game "jacks" usually uses small caltrops with blunted spines.
That’s a smart way to get rid of them
Time to use STAINLESS STEEL!
My guess is that the caltrop bomb was used over towns or around bridges making effective area denial for military vehicles
Something I'm surprised you didn't mention!
I was taught that caltrops were not widely used as weapons for the common soldier but instead scouts.
If being pursued, they're convenient things that are easy enough to make, small enough to carry, and simple enough to throw behind you as you're possibly being chased down by enemy who might have discovered your position.
That does make sense, and would explain why they're usually found in fairly small numbers.
Would also explain why they aren't talked about that much in historical sources - if they weren't used in huge numbers, they would be less likely to be talked about, and additionally, a lot of ancient societies looked down upon scouts and the like. Not to the level of disdain, but more like, if you could talk about a squad of light scouts, that might be like 5-10 men, lightly armed who are going to run away the moment they're spotted, or you could talk about the battle exploits of a division of heavy infantry on the front line of a battle... you're going to talk about the cooler one. As a writer, the details of a glorious battle make much better material than "and then the scouts were spotted so they ran away."
I think it also makes more tactical, strategic AND economic sense to use in smaller quantities. If you spread thousands of caltrops all over the battlefield to deny the area to your enemy, well first you have to find a way to do that that doesn't result in the enemy sending out light calvalrymen to murder your caltrop layers, but then even if you get them down, YOU can't use that area of the battlefield either. And if you're engaging in a battle with the enemy, you're at least fairly confident you have a chance of winning, so you probably have your own cavalry you want to maneuver. Plus... in the ancient world, metal was expensive, and metalworkers were a highly skilled profession. I feel like it would be a fantastically expensive strategy to have a small army of smiths using a fortunes worth of metal, just to literally throw if en masse into an empty field that your enemy may or may not even run in to. All that metal and all those smiths could be used making more mundane but useful things, like swords, daggers, arrowheads, armor etc.
Caltrops being an emergency defensive tool for scouts and the like solves both of those issues. They're only found in small numbers, because a unit of scouts might have like 10 per man, and they might not even use the ones they have if they don't get discovered, which would explain why they're not found in quantity. It solves the economic cost/benefit issue, because instead of having an army of smiths using a fortune of metal to make a minefield, you just need maybe a few hundred to a thousand or so to equip your scouts with, and all things going well they won't use them all that fast, it solves the tactical issues surrounding their use because your not denying an area to you AND your enemy, so you don't need them in quantity, you don't need a dedicated logistics train and dispersal mechanism for them and you don't hamper your own movement if you only have maybe a few dozen scouts using a few here and there, and it solves the lack of historical mention of them because scouts that work in small groups away from the main army and run away all the time aren't sexy and cool and make for terrible writing material, so you don't mention those losers in more than passing and write about chadsius maximus the heavy cavalry division commander instead.
Thinking on those lines, it would also explain why the roman author felt the need to explain them - if they were used by scouts as emergency defense tools... scouts were, compared to the main bulk of the army, quite few in number, and spent most of their time away from the army doing their scouting job, so even if you were in the army, the odds that you were a scout, or worked closely enough with the scouts to know what they did and the kit they used, would have been pretty low. I imagine that unless you were a commander recieving reports from the scouts, you probably didn't interact with them much, and it's not like you could see a caltrop on a scouts person like you could a sword or a shield, given they likely would have been kept in some sort of pouch.
@@AnthonyA1995 Scouts also have an extremely high mortality rate no matter what era you live in which adds to the idea that there wouldn't be much information about their use and effectiveness. if its something you only use in a pinch its all the more likely very few historians would be able to get first or even second hand accounts.
until more concrete evidence appears, I think this is probably the best theory for their historical use.
@@AnthonyA1995I recognise a procrastination post when I see one. Excellent comment, but get back to what you're supposed to be doing lol
@@garymahony701 Wha- How-
...I don't think I've ever felt this called out before in my life.
@@AnthonyA1995 you are not alone
I work at a mail sorting facility and just want to say I really appreciate how much care Stephen took with proper packaging
I bought a nice paring knife on ebay and the buffoon shipped it with a lil piece of styrofoam over the blade in a bubble mailer. Left the worst review I could. Was amazed it even made it.
In the USA, at any rate, when one goes to ship a parcel, one gets the third degree over what hazards the contents may pose.
My favorite package knocked me out! It was a 30-40 pound package and when I picked it up the contents shifted inside the large box which then "punched" me in the face.
I once had a large roll of razor wire in a very thin box come barreling at me down a chute. I only know it was razor wire because a bunch of the razors were sticking through the box and a couple got into my shirt.
If you ship anything sharp or pokey, please pack it well
The best package instructions got at work was a live snake. We are a laptop repair facility not snake wranglers so that was a bit of a surprise.
You are correct, Lloyd; there are indeed quite some points about a caltrop.
Very nice 👌
Much like any good speech, the fewer points you can stand with while getting your point across, the better constructed it is.
I see what you did there... *Glares*
Very sharp observation indeed!
I can tell this guy is sharp!
Ok, this one pinged a memory about area denial. So, story time.
I had a buddy who was in the US Army in Bosnia during the late 90's (This is all from him and I have no documentation, but I love the story). He was at a camp somewhere and they had issues with, let's say "impolite characters" sneaking into the camp and causing issues. They figured out after a while that they were getting in through one small area that was hard to monitor due to the terrain and they needed to keep people out. So the solution was a mine field set up in that area. He said after that, no one came through there again while he was there. I then asked "How many mines did that take?" His response, "None, we didn't have any. We just paid a local to make a few signs warning of a minefield and put them up." Brilliant.
As for the Jamestown bit, I once heard that caltrops used to be used as a training aid for new blacksmiths to learn the basics. Make a few, and if you did well you get to do more complicated stuff. They also took very little metal to make. That may be why they found one. New guy didn't want to show his crap work and hid it for a few hundred years.
My immediate thought when he mentioned Jamestown having _only_ one was "ooh, I bet those make for _excellent_ training projects for new blacksmiths!"
Glad to see my idea supported ^^
Also, that was brilliantly simple and deviously compassionate thinking by your buddy!
I suspect that unused caltrops were rapidly converted into 4 nails by the local blacksmith.
The story about the fake minefield makes me think ancient people might have used these simple blacksmithing jobs as a bluff. You didn't need to plant a whole load of caltrops in an area. You just needed to scatter a few, to give the _impression_ the area is more treacherous than it really is. You only need one soldier on the line getting a sole-full of spike to have the entire regiment need to stop and reconsider their marching path. Or at least waste a bunch of time fanning out to search for nonexistent caltrops. Spread these kinds of false traps far enough, and it can delay troop movements by a few hours. While that might not seem significant to us, even small delays can prevent parts of an army from reaching a battle on time.
That tactic is called a ‘phoney minefield’. Understood by any combat engineer.
A co-worker of mine had a caltrop on his desk, made from two pieces of round stock, bent and welded together, and the ends ground to points. He told me he found it in the sand while visiting Israel.
(I managed not to wince when he told me about seeing a point sticking out of the sand and picking it up.) He didn't know what it was, and after I told him, he speared a piece of paper on the up-pointing spike with "THIS IS A CALTROP" written on it.
28:36 These evil seed pods were the bane of my bike tires. I personally called them, “the devil’s tack-weed,” before learning that they are actually named “goathead puncturevine”.
Lindy, there's something you're neglecting to factor in: Delay of Advancement (I don't know if there's a proper term for this so I'm just gonna use my own).
If your column is advancing and suddenly one of your men steps on a caltrop... well, now you have to assume the area ahead of you is seeded with caltrops, and you have to stop and clear those caltrops before your main force can advance. Psychologically, area denial is about more than "they can't go this way", there's also "they CAN go this way, but it will take an awful lot longer". The Vietcong used this against the US to devestating effect; a single infantryman injured by a punji trap slows the whole squad down, and a single punji trap found can slow a whole unit down as they search for more.
The value of caltrops, mines, boobytraps and other such devices is not in how many men it kills/disables, but how long it can keep a force from advancing.
Oh yeah the Ukrainians have got the Russians beat now they have to worry about caltrops, personally id be be more worried about explosive anti personnel mines but you stick with thinking the Russians are going to worry about metal spikes
That’s a good point! I’m on active duty in the US, and this is much like the way I train obstacle employment with my soldiers. I explain that the obstacle creates a dilemma for the enemy. Go around it, but maybe that’s where I want you to go and now you’re in my kill zone? Or you deal with the obstacle, and spend time at that point on the battle field and make your operations officers sync matrix completely useless, aka play havoc with the enemy forces timing/synchronization.
Yeah, I was kinda thinking you don't actually need loads of them.
Even if your front line troops carried a handful each and scattered them ahead of where they were going to hold ground, it would give the approaching force one more distracting thing to deal with as it approached.
Only Lindy could post a vid like this on New Years Eve :D
Caltrops are the fireworks of the feet.
Yet here we are, always hungry for more niche historical knowledge, such as caltrops LOL. I love LindyBeige
@@marcoeire44 What do you mean niche? Didn't you watch the video? They're Common! Everyone knows that!
@@Sepultra012 Fancy his not knowing that! Yes, ever so common.
In my opinion caltrops are mainly useful for skirmishing and/or delaying actions against infantry. You’re being chased so you toss a few dozens in a narrow path with vegetation that the enemy has to follow you through. One guy steps on one in a run and now everyone has to slowdown to prevent more casualties allowing you to escape/regroup/counterattack etc.
We used caltrops in Iraq. We'd string about a dozen of them on some 550 cord, and then they could be thrown across the road at a vehicle checkpoint if we needed to stop a car. Never actually saw a car stopped by them, but they were easier to deploy than police-style spike strips, easier to pick up too.
Really delighted to see an old format video from you, very comfy and very passionate rambles are what I love about em
A classic Lindybeige topic with modern Lindybeige running time! What a treat.
Hello hop
You truly are a hoplophile
27:28 The Swedish word "Fotangel" came about during medieval times from the German word "Fußangel" which basically mean "Foot hook" or, as some would claim, "Foot point". The word "angel" has nothing to do with the English word "angel" which instead would be translated to "ängel" in Swedish. Those two little dots above the "a" might seem rather insignificant, but I assure you they are not.
simple, angel means angle, as in a point.
Really weird that Indy didn't pay closer attention to possible other meaning of the word...
The diacritical mark over "ä" is an umlaut. The "ß" is an eszett, and is a basically a "ss" (like hiss) that indicates the preceding vowel has a long sound. So Fuß is like fuss, but sounds like "foos". In "fußangel", the angel isn't angle like it's used in geometry (i.e. right angle, acute angle); it's angle meaning to fish (angling/fishing, angler/fisherman). Angel is "Engel" im der deutsch. Sorry, I had a little moment there. Lol
Definitely hook. Angeln is fishing.
@@nilsmadej9091Winkel means angle you ducknugget
same as the rune named "wolfsangel"
The terrible foot pain I remember is treading on a Jack after playing with that little red rubber ball and picking up those little baby caltrops as part of a childhood game! Anyone else remember those!
Jacks
I remember those. I'm glad I never stepped on one.
@@thomashopkins2609 Baby Caltrops is their new name.
I was waiting for them to appear right after the D4s!
On a side note, they made for passable 1/72 scale beach defences at the battle for Rug Island c.1978. Sadly many were hoovered up by peace keeping forces shortly thereafter.🙄😅
Lindybeige has a fantastically expressive lecturing style. Not many students will fall asleep when he is lecturing.
For the bomb thing, I could see it being used over a military camp, where there's lots of foot traffic and people running about. You can't rely on a direct hit on anything useful, but you can get a bunch of caltrops all over the place and force people to walk more slowly and carefully in case they weren't cleaned up.
Lindybeige just taught me a new English word 'asunder'! As a Swede I immediately correlated it to the Swedish 'sönder' that is pronounced just as asunder but without the initial 'a' and means "to be broken". I love me some ethymology in the morning.
Gotta love Germanic roots!
Words are only boring if we make them so. Always love a new word!
*etymology
Sundering is an entire combat option they spelled out in the 3rd Edition of D&D. Great to remind players that sometimes its better to break the bad guy's magic gear instead of looting it (what's a barbarian know of a staff of fireball beyond "stop that"?)
Taco bell tore my anus asunder.
As all the toys, Lindy's caltrops are bound to end up on the floor. RIP Lindy's foot and dancing career.
Ouch... Lindy hopping his last hops. 😢
I'll get me coat...
in DnD one of my characters always carried caltrops around in his batman utility belt full of random flasks of acid and pitons and whetstones, and never got to use them. Then after years I finally got a chance in one battle. An enemy walked on them. And took 1 damage and wasn't affected mobility wise because DnD doesn't have body part damage. I don't know what I expected, but it was disappointing. Also I appreciate the return to form, I missed these sorts of videos
If you throw enough caltrops they should just be treated as a casting of spike growth. DM could just copy and paste the effects!
Yeah, no damage and difficult terrain would be preferable to 1 damage and no mobility penalty, even for low levels where the 1 damage would even matter.
On a related note, idk why they switched marbles for ball bearings. The former is much more appropriate for the setting
Be a druid. Use thorns. There's your caltrops
I’m not sure what edition this was, but in 5e caltrops are one of the better utility items IMO. If a creature takes damage from them, it gets a pretty sizeable movement penalty which is permanent until healed. They’re also one of the few “consumables” that are just infinitely reusable as long as you can spare the time to go collect them.
At least in D&D 5th edition any enemy who moves over caltrops without slowing down has their movement reduced a bit until they receive healing, so they've been improved since then at least.
This video brought back some long forgotten memories... Years back I was collecting some boards left over from a construction project. Some boards still had nails sticking out of them. Some of these nails were not bent over. Some of the nails were rusty.
My cat got curious and got fairly close, so I wanted to shoo her off from the immediate area, so I wouldn't hurt her on accident.
Shooing her off involved me stomping my foot on the ground... straight on one of the long, straight, rusty nails, protruding out of a board. Pain ensued, a visit to the emergency room followed. The nail did not go entirely through the foot, because my bones were in the way. Luckily I did not need stitches, there was no infection and since I was an invincible teenager back then, it all healed up nicely after some time.
5/7 experience, would not recommend.
Those of a certain age, spent their youths playing jacks. Their parents only wished they'd be stepping on Legos.
I'm surprised that comparison wasn't made, I know the game is pretty old, I wonder which came first and if it inspired the other?
Yep!! I think I can still walk three steps in the air if I saw one on the floor lol❤️🐝🤗
Jacks were such a boring toy I had some but lost interest after a day, why would I wanna play jacks when I can build a whole city out of Lego?
@@SmitzPNK Money is power😄
Kids First Boobytrap 😏
"Not many yards." I love your humor. And your sweater is also excellent.
Found a US Civil War caltrop in our backyard. Hello from Kansas City Missouri. PS plant seeds from High Plains known as Goatheads. The seeds are triangular with spikes on two spikes so one is always pointed up. Hard on war ration car tires and current bike tires.
They do get around. They were common in Southern California in the 1960s and parts of Arizona in the eighties and nineties.
Those things or something similar grow in the Balkans. 20 or more spikes, not just 4
Hard on airplane tires also
We have something the same in South Australia. Here, they are imaginatively called Three Cornered Jack's.
My bike tires leak because of these in the high desert of AZ, but mostly they get in the cat's fur and end up in the carpet and then my foot.
As child, we wondered around everywhere. Often, we hung around where trash was dumped. Stepping on boards with nails was common. There some basic knowledge children knew from experience. One bit of knowledge was, you had about two second before the nail sticking through your foot hurt. From experience, you knew what to do. You put down your impaled foot, stepped on the board, and yanked your foot free. Sometime you foot got stuck on the nail. Thats when friends come in. We hand friend who stepped a nailed board. He tried, but his foot didnt pull free. So we helped. Someone sat on our impaled friend as we tried to pull the nail free. All we did is drag them. There was a lot of screaming. Then we tied him to tree, and we all pulled on the board. The board broke, and our impaled friend was hysterical. We tried hammering the nail out. Didnt work. Finally, we all sat on him, and pulled the nail out with pry bar. A few hours later the bleeding stopped. We carried him home and left him on the sidewalk. We never got in trouble. Our impaled friend told us about it later. He crawled into his his house, and his mother asked him why he was crawling on the floor. He said, I stepped on nail. His mother looked at his foot, and said "You look okay to me. Wear is your sock?" Looking back, all that screaming was gruesome.
In my collection is a small, roughly 2 inch square version. It is quite rusty and I was told it was one of a few hundred thousand that were dropped on Korean roads to slow the advance of the Chinese army later in the war. It looks more like a very large version of a child's "Jack" toy in layout but is a quite heavy and solid piece of cast iron.
When I was little, maybe 9 or 10, my older sister spilled a box of straight pins on the shag carpet in our basement. She made no effort to clean it up. I, walking barefoot through the house, found them.
Her punishment for not picking up her mess, which led to my injury, was that she had to be the one to pull each pin out of my foot. My dad made no effort to restrain me, either, so she had to deal with me constantly trying to kick her with my one good foot every time it hurt. Thankfully, only one managed to find purchase in the bone, but that did require the use of a pair of pliers to successfully remove. Needless to say, she was much more careful with pins and I stopped going barefoot for a few years.
I feel.your pain, as little child I dismantled my clockwork alarm clock. All was well until I tried to run out of by bedroom and put the winding spike through my foot. Missed everything important, but was a handful for my dad when he had to pull it out. Unsurprisingly that was the last thing I dismantled on the floor.
Perhaps there was a reason Mr. Rogers always wore shoes inside too...
Sharing the shag on the carpet with your sister? Was that in Norfolk?
Taking precautions being bare footed or being bare backed???
Straight pins are forbidden at many places for this reason, the 📌 pins like that lay on the side and are no danger to feet.
I didn't know that special carpets were made for shagging.
I love your content. Love you came back to your roots
The point around 14:00 is sooooo good. These kinds of things are so telling about what was actually common or not. That is the kind of thing that a lot of people would not pick up on, and I'm glad Lyod points out.
Yup, very true.
On a little bit of a tangent related to this; That's why the classical Greeks defining certain structures/foundations as "Cyclopean masonry" is so interesting.
Today, we claim we simply don't understand how they build certain things, but clearly even back then they didn't even understand how the people before them did it to a point they mythified it.
I mean, we claim we simply can't grasp the idea of being able to "waste" an insane amount of workforce on stuff to get thing done and that we must be missing certain technologies and strategies they had and used, but clearly people who were at the height of their age, and who did fully live with that concept and those possibilities at their disposal, still considered themselves to be so far away from "Cyclopean masonry" that they didn't even think it was build by normal humans.
Thanks!
Dude, that 'Modern Caltrop' is freakin' BRILLIANT!!!
Mythbusters did a bit, where they discovered that standard caltrops were utterly useless against cars, as they tended to plug the holes they made, thus never deflating any tires. But those hollowed out caltrops??? Someone was paying attention during that Mythbusters episode!! That's freakin' awesome and I'm glad to announce, my Bank Robbing idea can now move forwards!!!
22:00 "Notice things on runways" - most WWII airstrips were grass fields, not paved runways (those proliferated toward the end of the war, but were hardly dominant even by 1945). So camo'd sheet metal caltrops wouldn't necessarily be easy to see and clean up.
Better on grass yes, but plenty of magnets in the workshops.
They actually rolled down steel netting all over those grass runways, to prevent the planes from tearing it up. creating a smooth surface.
I assume, the Germans noticed how easy it was to actually repair bomb damage to those runways like the British did during the Falklands War and hoped, that the fear of missing a couple of caltrops on the runway would be enough to take the thing out of service.
Could blades of grass grow though the net? Grass grows in my concrete driveway@@Jacob-W-5570
@@marksvilar6550 Grass has nothing on strawberries. A neighbour asked me to clear some out of her garden and I thought it'd be smart to put them in mine and have free strawberries. Local female blackbird has been diligent about making sure I never get any, and has spread seed and fertiliser all over the place. They're coming up everywhere!
Thank you for helping to create Good Men, friend!
I had a Summer job as an historical animator at Citadel Hill in Halifax Nova Scotia, and during that time we were put through authentic infantry training for the 1800's (to better represent the troops who were present there in the late 1800's). When marching in column, the correct method of moving does not allow you to 'sweep' your step as you move. So when moving in formation on the battlefield, your steps are more up down rather than sweeping forward. I can see these being an issue to a moving line or column of men. Thanks for the video.
That's a really cool piece of information to know, thanks! Now that I think of it, it makes a lot more sense when moving in a formation! Dragging the foot could easily result in someone tripping, stumbling, or falling down, which could quickly affect everyone else, due to being so close to one another. It makes perfect sense now! Cheers
I'm not sure why I wasn't already subscribed; I've enjoyed this channel for ages! Not only is the content interesting, and the presentation top notch, but the script is always so satisfying. Rather than bait the viewer with "more on that later", he rewards them with callbacks to earlier in the video. It's a narrative, with a roundness and homogeneity that fact-dump channels can't achieve.
Exactly!
It was wild hearing you talk about Peoria. I was born and raised in Peoria County, and drove by the Caterpillar plant several times per week at least.
I think Lindy's point about not many ancient caltrops being found might be overstated. Even if the military was too busy to pick them back up, the locals would have known about them and picked them up to recycle.
or just to eliminate the hazard.
@@kenbrown2808 probably both, really.
True, but his point about them needing a definition in a military manual is pretty convincing that they weren’t very common.
@@jessicascoullar3737 Everyone would have known what chariots were. They would be seen on parades. Caltrops would not be seen on parades, and because they are rather unpleasant, people would not talk about them much. I think it's quite plausible that they could be somewhat common but still need a definition in a military manual.
I think all these points speak to how highly situational the caltrop is: you need them in large numbers to deny the enemy the use of an area, they're heavy to transport, and like, say, landmines, they also deny the area to you and are indiscriminate in destruction. I suspect they would be most useful in blocking gateways or roads. Come to think of it, scattering them on a bridge would also slow down an enemy crossing, especially if your team can make cleaning up the caltrops dangerous. That being said, most things that a caltrop achieves can probably also be achieved by a guy with a shovel and some sharp sticks. That alone could be a reason why they weren't that common: even in the ancient world, there were cheaper options.
Not sure about Swedish, but in German, "angel" shares the same etymology as the English word "angler", as in, "fisherman". For example, residents of the Black Forest at one time used a device called a _Wolfsangel,_ a vicious-looking double-sided hook that was buried in a piece of meat and attached to a post or tree with a chain. The wolf would swallow it, and, er....get caught, so to speak. In any case, the _angel_ part of the word implies fishing, or angling. So my guess is _fotangel_ in Swedish is meant to be something similar, but for the foot instead of a wolf.
I'm also not sure about the Swedish translation, as a Dutch person.
In Dutch, angel means the part a bee stings with. Oh, it's the same in English.
According to deepL translation, Dutch and English angel translates as ängel in Swedish.
_"Angel"_ was historically used for _"fishing hook"_ in Swedish, today it's mostly used in the word _"angeldon"_ which is an ice fishing tool. _"Don"_ is another old word which basically means _"tool",_ _"thing"_ or _"gear"._ So "angeldon" can be translated to "fishing gear" (the kind with line and hook).
You can also call a fisherman who is using those kinds of fishing tools an _"anglare",_ much like the English word _"angler"._
Anyway, like you basically guessed already, "fotangel" is thus "foot-hook".
let air out of a tire, or all the blood out of a typical anime character in the 90s which all seemed to have 2000psi for their blood pressure.
There's a real life FBI shootout story over on Wendigoon's channel, in which, according to witnesses, a shot-and-wounded FBI agent was spurting blood _eight feet_ from a wound...
Ditto many samurai movies. In Sanjuro, an excellent samurai movie, this was done. However, they didn't let the actor know. The look of shock on his face was genuine.
What shirt are you wearing under your sweater? I think it looks great!
That’s his uniform from way back even before yt and modifies them himself.
th-cam.com/video/ZtsqYGBK6XA/w-d-xo.html
A key thing about stepping on a LEGO (or equivalent brand) brick in the dark is its mostly fine on a flat wood or tiled floor. Its when you step on a brick nested in carpet, where a corner is forced into gaps of the fibers by the foot, is then the real pain happens.
As soon as I saw the title I knew Big Mac was going to make an appearance, I saw his blog video a few weeks before this. Nice collab, very fun!
I absolutely love when you do these type of videos. So interesting.
Happy new years everybody!
19:48 one was for the left foot, and the other was for the right foot.
LOL
0:18 Not on a carpet they don't. No, no, no. That's the full scream-a-thon
In Oklahoma we called those spiked seeds "goatheads" and they were the bane of bicycle tires. Some had spikes over 1/8" in length. We'd buy a tube of this gunk and inject it into the tire before inflating it and it would ooze out of such holes and seal them until you could get home and make a proper repair.
Happy New Year to all. Thank gawd he is back! Nicely bonkers.
All of the notation about equivalent metrics and you hit us with "a 2000lb drone"
My brother in Christ, it took me longer than I care to admit to realize you were talking about money
0.454 is the magic number to convert pounds to kilograms.
I don't think a drone that weighs close to a ton would fly very far, or at all.
@@fernando47180 no shit? can you read?
@fernando47180 he was talking about British pounds
@@fernando47180 why would you think that? passenger jets are hundreds of tons. 2000 lbs is actually under the max takeoff weight of a predator drone.
@@fernando47180 Your definition of drone needs evaluation
Nature has its own caltrop. The goats head sticker. It's a 3 thorned sticker very common in Northwest Texas.
They will flatten a bicycle tire, and do serious damage to your foot.
Similar to cats head? (Tribulus Terrestris)
They also grow out in Nevada. Folks out here also call them "goat heads", save for me who calls them "caltrops" as I'm a goddamn D&D nerd.
In the UK we have *Pyracantha* (lit: FireThorn); basically as nasty as Barbed Wire once established, but is alive, doesn't rust, takes heavy duty loppers to deal with well grown bows thereof, can have thorns that're 1/2ft long, goes through most footwear like a naval torpedo through armour steel and are so named because a wound caused by it feels like it's on fire with pain 😅 .
Unlike Barbed Wire though there's no particular rules limiting where you can grow it or use bits of it, as indeed I do as an infinitely replacable organic garden obstacle 😈 .
It's also great for the environment as birds & other wildlife take cover in & live in it, and it's a common choice for hedgerow building 🙂 .
@@TSR1989FF we have that here too, not on my place thankfully, just blackberries that are trying to take over the place.
Small birds do love them though and sambar.
I remember stepp[ing on a nail sticking out of a board as a kid.
By some miracle, it went completely through my foot, but missed every blood vessel, nerve, and skipped right through the muscle fibers without tearing. The doc at the ER was impressed I'd managed to impale my foot so perfectly without serious damage.
And that's the story of how I got my first tetanus shot.
Same scenario for me as well, including the childhood introduction to the tetanus shot. One notable difference in our experiences, however, was the nail's length and thus penetration potential. My nail was fairly small and, thanks to thick, rubber-soled sneakers, only penetrated an inch or so into my heel. Whereas you apparently stepped on a railroad spike.
HE'S BACK BABY!! Lindy I appreciate you may have wanted to try a foray into something else but let's face it most of us are here for your historical stuffs. Overall I'm just happy that you are still making content and seem to be happy and healthy... OK and Im also REALLY happy about the seeming return to form/format. :P All the best in 2025 and beyond Lindy, keep your stick on the ice!!!
What a cool sponsor, Game of Drones. Actually going to look into that despite being predominantly PC gaming for a long time.
You mention that they wouldn't be all that effective against vehicles, because as soon as one has a flat tire, then someone would just sweep them up with a broom.
But very often vehicles has to go through muddy swathes on the front line, where you couldn't easily get rid of a couple hundred cheap-as-dirt caltrops.
I don't ever remember seeing a broom in a HumVee
Weird, just a few minutes ago I was thinking, I haven't heard from Lindybeige recently.................
Its the best sort of timing. Every once in a while, i'll think about that 50 minute word on seige ladders. 😄
And I was sticking a bandaid to the sole of my foot.
Thanks, Lindybeige! Yesterday, I was listening to a recent episode of Ukraine: The Latest (award-winning & fantastic!) and Dom Nicholls mentioned pointy bits being dropped from FPVs on rodes...
This morning, your very fine video popped up in my feed!
Very comprehensive and timely. I shared it in an email to Dom.
Maybe Ukraine: The Latest will pursue a connection with Big Mac!!! TTFN
Caltrops are still a recurring issue here in Yakima Washington. They finally, after years of it happening, caught one guy who was putting them in the roads here, but it's still happening.
A classic Lloyd video...the Platonic ideal
It kept on subject……which was odd…. Was it Lindy?
@davidbrennan660😅
It’s not all recorded in one take, but I’ll take it
25:00 It occurs to me that the best sort of terrain to use caltrops in would be in any bodies of waist high, muddy water through which your enemies are obliged to wade (such as marshlands, irrigation ditches, partially flooded trenches or most of South East Asia.)
When wading, one tents to take shorter, higher steps that end with the foot being placed straight down. This means that more steps are taken per arbitrary unit of distance travelled, increasing the likelihood of a caltrop being encountered, and more ground clearance per step, decreasing the chance of a caltrop being kicked away.
Additionally, the murky water would serve to lower visibility and increase the chance of a wound becoming infected. While the inability to sit or lie down would complicate any effort to remove the caltrop (especially if you used that evil barbed one.)
Finally, if your enemy were to overbalance and fall over backwards, even in waist high water, the weight of their plate carrier and equipment could drag them down and prevent them from righting themselves, resulting in death by drowning.
Indeed they were used to exactly that effect by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. Luckily they’re easy to find with a metal detector.
I've missed the points about etc videos so much! My favorite content on this channel
Moreeee! More videos! I know all your videos by heart now. Tons, Tuns, Hannibals, Gladiators, cannons, ladders, slings, helmets... MORE!!! There are so many topics... life on old wooden ships, castles, plague, emperors, turks, ... No buts... do it! Love
TY-Lindey. I have marveled at caltrops for decades ; so simple, so effective.
I believe that in WW2 a number of the airfields did not have paved runways. Much harder to see even on the manicured grass of an aerodromes runways or aircraft maintenance areas
From the very definition of air 'field'. Paving only really became necessary as weights increased, during WW2. Previously both military and civilian traffic didn't use paved runways.
Happy new year, Lindy 👍 thank you so much for your videos in 2024. Much love 🇧🇻
Happy new year Lloyd !
Thank you for making such good videos on such unexpected, yet interesting subjects !
Happy new year Lindy, always finding comfort in your videos, I hope you spoil us again this year!
Last year I got a Stanley blade stuck in my floorboards, it must have fallen of my desk and, through some stroke of terrible luck, landed sideways in-between the boards, sticking up. I found it with my bare foot, and I still can't feel the toe I almost lost a year later. The only reason I'm sharing this is that I can relate to how bad these things could be, first hand, the damn video gave me borderline PTSD
The most useful place I'd imagine for a caltrop is in the streets of a city. It's far easier to deny narrow corridors and roadways with caltrops than entire fields of battle. Not to mention, sieges were much more common than great big battles out on a plain. It wouldn't surprise me at all to learn certain defending armies would drop caltrops onto their streets or like at a castle gate.
Sure you could see them, but you'd have to stop and clear them, especially if you're an entire crowd of soldiers, and that's time you may not have with defenders waiting for you.
Yes, imagine scattering them in a castle gateway so that the attackers are dealing with threats from above at the same time.
Or maybe scattering in front of your missile troops or artillery pieces
I imagine they would work also pretty well in wall breaches. There you have the added benefit of uneven ground and people have to run to pass it and make room for the people behind them.
22:30 the WW2 Germans also painted craters on their runways, but were countered when the Allies started used stereoscopes.
Less than two hours before the start of a new year, and Lloyd posts a video about caltrops - brilliantly random.
Happy New Year everyone ✌️
History and ukraine war correspondence, probably the best video on youtube atm!
Its awesome to hear from Joe Macdonald and his stories from ukraine
thanks
Its honestly making me feel a bit sick looking at those things, very clever idea and very interesting subject for a video, thankyou for a great presentation
Why did rhis vid's title get me as excited as I am? This is classic Lindybeige, amd I have upvoted before qatching, and im pretty sure I'll stick with that!
Nice!
My immediate thought was - "Is this a reupload ?" 🤔
0:42 My ex husband's got that beat. As a child, he trod on a chair from his sister's dollhouse and the leg of the chair went right through his foot! Ouch!
I agree caltrops seem rare in history. I suspect the problem with caltrops in ancient warfare was the same as with today's mines - they last a long time and are hard to collect. Imagine a muddy, gravely, or grassy field with caltrops in it. This makes them a weapon liable to harm your own side. Metal lines shoes weren't an option back then, so anyone moving across an area where caltrops had been used is in danger for a long time. Considering how armies had to get really close to each other, advancing and backing up as the battle went back and forth over the area, your own side is almost guaranteed to suffer.
Plus, in those days such an injury was actually life threatening. And given the value of iron and steel way back then, scattering it about, never to be seen again sounds terribly expensive.
I love these Lindybeige videos so much! I appreciate you for your effort!
27:27 _"Angel"_ was historically used for _"fishing hook"_ in Swedish, today it's mostly used in the word _"angeldon"_ which is an ice fishing tool.
*_("Don"_*_ is another old word which basically means _*_"tool",_*_ _*_"device",_*_ _*_"gear"_*_ or _*_"thing"._*_ So _*_"angeldon"_*_ can be translated as _*_"fishing gear",_*_ the kind using line, hook & bait, etc.)_
You can call a fisherman who is using a line & hook an _"anglare",_ much like the English word _"angler"._ But today most people use the broader term _"fiskare",_ meaning _"fisherman"._ _"Fisk"_ = _"fish"._
So _"fotangel"_ is basically _"foot-hook"..._
_...in my dialect it's pronounced something like _*_"ANG-el"_*_ where the A is like the a in _*_"Ahh",_*_ NG is like the ng in _*_"raNG"_*_ and -el is like the letter _*_"L"._*
_Swedish for the English word _*_"angel"_*_ is _*_"ängel"._*
In Dutch we call all kinds of insect stingers (think bees and wasps) ‘angels’ 😊
HAPPPPY NEW YEARS LINDY!!!
Used them on every patrol in the province in the cuds . Not so much in The city’s . They were linked together and used on vcps at the cutoffs to use if a dodgy vehicle tried to break through.
Great to see Lloyd again. Glad he’s still doing good work.
Man, this is the first video that's been recommended to me from Lindybeige in a long time. Glad you're back in my suggestions. Also, you can make those out of staples in the office.
Walking in the snow would defnitely get me caltroped.
An installed denier of macadam roads and runways is the common 16d nail. These are driven about halfway into the pavement, so the nail head pushes into the Tyre (tire) then rips the tire as the head pulls out. The massive damage can not be repaired and delays the aircraft or vehicle until wheel change.
In the world of toys there was something much worse than Lego not that long ago. When I was a kid Jacks were a common toy on the schoolyard. Very nearly recreational caltrops.
ever get twosies?
New Lindybeige video, just what I needed after a long day at work
They are likely very expensive (in terms of era economy), think of the numbers of arrow heads that could be made using the same amount of metal; and once used, I imagine they would have been collected and the metal recycled, those few remain in the archeological record being those that weren't recycled. Plus, they would only be really useful in very specific situations in which more cost-effective methods could be used, like digging a ditch.
They could also just be a cheap way to secure a candle.
They are also probably lethal.
I stepped on a nail in the later 90s, and my mother signed paperwork they could cut my leg off to the hip. (The nail stuck a bone and the bone got infected)
I was on IV line threaded through my veins to my heart, and the antibiotics were 4k a day. I did get to keep the leg... but its not likely people before world War two would have lived.
Clicked for the clever title, stayed for the lively presentation.
21:30 literally the pamphlet you are referring to has detail of an air burst fuse and the intended use for the weapon
I once stepped on jacks when I was a kid. I can imagine how these might feel.
Big Macs 6 pointers are great, they are also using great big rebar regular 4 point ones something like 6 inches or more tall, but connected on a chain so they can be deployed and re collected like a giant spike strip
Caltrops here in Australia were also called cats heads , these were a natural version albeit a bit smaller but very painful as a youngster playing in a paddock barefoot, they got to about 10mm 3/8 and had a large end and three thorns, I wonder if the name came from the weapon or the weapons name came from the thorn
10mm 3/8?!?!
glad to see/watch you again. Happy New Year!
That was remarkable. Thank you. It's always nice to see Big Mac.
A Three pin plug is also a useful anti personnel device..
I've been looking forward to a new "some points" video for some time. And I feel the title is very appropriate
I was under the impression that, during the world wars, most of the airfields were just that, open fields. Hence the big round wheels on the bombers and cargo planes.
Also, as a general area denial weapon, yes not great, but for guerilla warfare/ambush situations they'd be great. A sack full could hold up a column quite easily at least long enough for a raid
Right, that is what I was thinking, you place them in a narrow pass or on the road into town that you expect the enemy to come down. Not for wide open plains. This is more like modern use too where they put them on a roadway they know the vehicle is coming down.
I'm an old man now... when my sons were little, we made the mistake of buying them metal jacks {as in the old game of "Jacks"} and boys being boys those got left on the floor often enough so that those little pseudo-caltrops tore up our feet many a time until we found them all and quietly got rid of them.
I would imagine that in Roman times, the cost of metal would have made large scale use of even the cheapest iron versions prohibitive though we may never know as cheap iron wouldn't survive well when buried in most soils to reveal how common their usage might have been. Wooden caltrops would have been a different beastie and, in recent years, there is now real archaeological evidence that the defensive ditches outside many parts of Hadrian's Wall in the UK had wooden spikes/caltrops "planted" in the bottom to make it even harder for attackers to reach the base of the walls themselves.
I've stood on a nail poking out of a bit of wood before, went right through my foot and out the top. While it's certainly a shock it's not exactly immobilising, I pulled it out and managed to walk back to the van about half a mile away without too much bother. Cleaned the wounds when I got home, had gone between the big toe and 2nd toe bone behind the ball of the foot, bit messy but healed well within about 3 weeks, stung a bit for the first few days then felt bruised but was still able to bare weight and didn't hamper movement too much. Could definitely see it getting infected if you didn't have access to materials/knowledge.