The origins of the word “Cringe” are believed to be from Middle English, around 1175-1225 AD, one example being Crinchen, and originally meant “to fall (in battle)” So to not wear your armor was literally cringe.
"Wearing helmet can increase chances of getting a concussion'. They are kinda correct here. It is literally why people in WW1 didn't want to adopt metal helmets. They discovered that units that had metal helmets suffered a lot more head wounds than units that used traditional caps and other headwear. Of course it was soon discovered that the difference was caused by helmet-less units suffering a lot more fatal casualties. So yeah; helmet increases your chances of getting a concussion by reducing the chances of dying on the spot.
They say that all European Warfare was based around plate armor, but not a minute later they say that our perception of them wearing armor was really only because of jousting. Switched sides faster than a politician there. Amazing
The Plate Armor used in jousting is much heavier and less flexible than combat plate armor. Combat armor allows for very agile movements. Jousting armor allows almost no movements. The early perceptions of combat armor was fooled by this difference.
Not to mention they then go on to say that an unarmored opponent would not be tired as quickly. But I thought you just said that all European armies were based on full-plated soldiers! So which is it?
@@davidbock6276 I bet nobody would ever have tried to actually fight in jousting armour, either if they had a choice. That was protective gear for jousting, not for fighting. People wouldn't go into a fight to the death with boxing gloves, either.
As an Englishmen, I am offended by your implication that the English Longbow is not the best weapon of all time. In response, I have launched an arrow in the rough direction of Australia. Your doom will be with you shortly.
The English longbow was actually so powerful that it could pierce through and split atoms mid flight, thus causing destruction only previously possible by dropping pommels
"You could roast alive in the heat" Yeah, that was a common problem back in the day. Fighting a Dragon is tough business, or the mean medieval flame thrower.
Perhaps the writers at Weird History only prepare microwaved meals? This would explain why they feel a person "bakes" so quickly they have no time to react?
"Knights realized that covering up their armor with cloth prevented it from heating up as much. But now they were wearing armor and cloth, which obviously made it heat up more. So they suffered less heat, but at the cost of suffering more heat." How does this guy manage to contradict himself that often?
It's like saying "You have to cover up in the Sahara to not die from the heat. But as a consequence, you're still hot." Guess it's pointless then lmao.
@@gabepeterson6414 And it's not even as hot as NOT wearing cloth over your armor, so the consequence of the cloth is, in total, still a reduction of heat
Being generous he may have meant that covering up that much whilst it reduced the heat was still far from an ideal solution... But that's giving them a lot more credit than they deserve >
I doubt that. While it is utterly correct that your chances of survival decrease significantly with a severed head (that sort of injury tends to be rather lethal, I‘m told), the other wounds themselves don‘t get worse because of a lack of said body part. In fact, they may be less dangerous, as it‘s unlikely for wounds to cause inflammation to a headless. That doesn‘t really help the beheaded, of course. I‘m just clarifying the use of language.
@@gi0nbecell It seems you are conflating limbs lost in battle to limb ambutation through medical intervention. A limb lost in battle has all the same risks as a wound that doesnt result in amputation, in addition to the fact that person is pretty much guaranteed to bleed out before the wound could be staunched(every appendage has critical arteries that leads to death in minutes if the blood flow isnt stopped immediately). On top of that, if the limb is already severed, its far less likely you could amputate in more controlled circumstances to remove infected tissue, as the infection has less distance to spread before its beyond the point where the remaining limb can be removed.
@@rc5452 I would think that with the head severed, there is no risk of infection of other wounds at all, due to a significant lack of life. That‘s the whole point. Other limbs you‘re correct, but the head being a rather vital part, I doubt that any treatment, in the field or somewhere more secure, could possibly save you.
You'd think the fact that medieval people designed multiple different weapons, and techniques to specifically try and deal with armor would be a testament to how effective it is.
You'd think anyone who isn't total idiot would work out if armor didn't work, it wouldn't be used for very long time in the past. When it comes for life and death, people in the past were not stupid.
Shad has managed to make wearing gambeson and brigandine look completely mundane and no more unusual than a hoodie. Honestly I wish they sold gambesons in the mall.
Reminds me of the meme what women think men want, and its a picture of a hot women, then what men really want, and it's a suit of plate mail. I'll take the plate any day XD
@@chesterbonaparte6787 What women think men want them to wear: chainmail bikini. What men actually want them to wear: well-tailored, form-complimenting plate armor.
@@jeffjeffersonjunior3679 and apparantly nearly all fights in europe were in deserts... You know, I live in europe and I wasn't even aware we have so much dessert here. I always thought I would have to go to Egypt and finally see the dessert, but no. I just have to time travel. The fact they would all build their armies around heavy armor. And that the armor is supposed to be more dangerous then wearing nothing at all... The wording is kind of... Stupid.
@@jackwriter1908 as a person who actually lives in the middle east, i can see why saying plate would be problematic... but its not exactly deadly either... could range from minor inconvenience to mildly annoying depending on the amount of relevant travel resources...
@@crustybomb115 i've worn plate in the blistering heat before, it's not that bad. The armor is sizzling hot on the surface, but underneath the helmet it was absolutely fine. It's the Gambeson that kill's ya. Like wearing a winter jacket. You sweat like crazy from that. Without decent hydration thst gets dangerous quick.
Weird history be like: -nobody has the strength to carry a 25 kg armor (5 minutes later) -everybody has the strength and precision to just obliterate a chestplate with a warhammer
I work in a door and window factory. Custom doors and windows can be very heavy. After a few months, everybody there can lift and carry far more than their own bodyweight without great effort, without being fatigued, without even slowing down. And many are "normal guys", not huge and hefty bodybuilders. Functional strength develops naturally when you keep using it.
@@pwnmeisteragecarrying bodyweight is easy task for anyone active and not obese. "Functional strength" any bodybuilder can do that without breaking a sweat for hours
My Dive gear weights up to 40-60 kg, depending on what tanks and wether I take stages with me. Now, some of the dive sites I dive at, involve some really long distances walking with your gear on. We sometimes have to even "climb" some really step, bad and old stairs (you know thoses stairs which were carved into a cliff) with the gear. So I could just really laugh at what he said there. Mind you that the things just said are also done by untrained women with a body weight the same as their gear. But a trained Knight isn´t able to carry a 25kg armor which deposes over the whole body and not just on 2 straps on the shoulders??!!
Once you wear a good set of armor you'll really understand why (granted common sense gives you enough of an idea). They feel so protective. Especially when you think about how vulnerable you'd be without it.
Also: "You could get stabbed between the plates" - how is that WORSE than being unarmoured? If I'm not wearing armour, I could get stabbed everywhere I could get stabbed if I were wearing armour, plus all the places where the plate would be in the way!
@@Nobert594 yeah, if you were wearing gambeso or chainmail under it. That said it still possible to stab through that if you use something like a stiletto.
Because without "hundreds of pounds" of armor you could easily dodge, silly! I truly have no idea where these people get their information to get to conclussions like that.
50:30 It is statisticaly true! In the army, head injuries became much more common after the use of helmets Because without a helmet, it wouldn't be an injury, you'd just die!
There's the history of the British soldiers in WW1, when they got their caps switched out for steel helmets. And the military leaders first thought, "do our men become reckless because of these helmets?" But NO, it was exactly as you say!
In Germany there is an old joke, that for motorcycle riders a knitted winter cap (?)/ Pudelmütze is safer than a motorcycle helmet! A scientist took two warermelons , fiitted one with a motorcycle helmet, the other with a knitted winter cap and threw both melons down from a tower. The helmet broke, but not the melon inside. The knitted cap didn' t break, but the melon inside. So a knitted cap is much more difficult to destroy and must be clearly safer.
It's the age old Sherman Tank shit talking. Why were there so many complaints about it? Because you can only shit talk the vehicle if you make it out of the burning wreck, which a lot of Russian and German Tank crews unfortunately did not, hence why the false bias that Shermans are inferior because there are more complaints about it. Source: The Chieftain on M4 Shermans.
@@TheDennys21 I disagree, once detached for the body i think the head has a greatly increased freedom of movement (just it is uncontrollable movement at that point)
I'm always a bit tickled at people saying "you can just stab the vulnerable spots!" Well, yes, but I'd rather have a handful of vulnerable spots than a long and varied list, given the option.
Idiots dont have any idea how hard it is to target small areas on a moving person. Especially if he has a shield, good lord, i did some hema spars for fun and everyone hated the dude who got a shield. Virtuality nothing you can do to him one on one.
It's like saying, "vampires will die if you stake them in the heart," and paint that up as some kind of crippling vulnerability. Yes, but normal people will die if you stake them in the heart or many other places.
@@stoyanb.1668 not only are they moving, but consciously protecting the vulnerable spots they have because they know their own vulnerable spots better than you do.
So if I’m to understand this logic: a welding mask is hard to see through, restricts head movement, can potentially break from use… and therefore is worse than just welding with the naked eye
"Helmets make it more likely to get concussion and internal bleeding" this statement is absolutely correct! Without the helmet you're not going to worry about getting concussed and you're definitely not going to be bleeding anymore. Never again will you be subject to these sorts of injuries.
Yes, you get it Douglas! Being struck in the head while wearing a helmet is far more likely to result in a concussion and internal bleeding. On the other hand, being struck in the head without a helmet is far more likely to result in EXTERNAL bleeding, a broken neck, or a caved in skull. Nobody understands Weird History. They're correct.... from a certain point of view! Hahaha!
There's a statistics story told about the allies issuing better helmets in WW1. They were surprised at first to see the number of head injuries increase instead of decrease. But then realized that was because people getting shot in the head with the helmets were being injured instead of killed.
@@brysonoakley1028 The same thing happened for World War 2 US bombers. They found planes constantly returned with damage to certain parts, and realized they should reenforce the parts that were never damaged because planes with damage in those areas don't come back.
@@brysonoakley1028 Somewhat true but it had more to do with the helmets of ww1 protecting against debris from artillery fire, gunshots to those helmets were still deadly.
It's crazy how much Weird History discounts the training of a knight. Training generally began around the age of 7 as a page. When you weren't performing tasks for your knight you were learning to fight. These weren't people who decided to start wearing armor in adulthood, they trained most of their life to be the best killing machine they could be.
Exactly, and a lot of people think full plated knights were just slow turtles because of the weight of the armor which is also extremely incorrect, they've been conditioned and trained for years and could hold a full sprint while fully kitted up.
@@Memnon45 Yes there is an old video somewhere on youtube. Showing some guy dressed in full plated suit of armour running and doing rolls on the ground. It showed him laying on his back and getting to his feet with as much as effort as if he was wearing none.
@@Memnon45 Being some rando Levy and getting face-to-face with a Knight is probably the most terrifying thing that could possibly occur. Unless you and 10 others dogpile him with daggers, he's gonna have fun absolutely curb-stomping you.
@@Memnon45Yeah, and as I understand it a full suit of plate armor weighs not a whole lot. I don't know for sure, but it seems like it would be way lighter than mail.
@@mage1439 well think of it this way with modern day standard infantry. The body armor plus ammunition and supplies are roughly 25 kg in weight. They're able to function days on end, wether it's training or during operation, with limited sleep and are able to carry another injured soldier. If the modern soldier, with their current equipment, can achieve what they do now, then it's no question what trained soldiers could achieve in medieval periods.
"You could get stabbed between the plates." so, instead of just stabbing me in the chest, my enemy has to take a moment to find a weakspot, the armpit for example, then maneuver himself into a position where he could strike that spot, possible exposing himself, and even when he strikes the armpit, he might simple glance off of the mail there? Absolutely terrible, I don't see any advantage over a simple gambeson.
... All the while dealing with the many variables of combat, like trying not to get shanked by a spear from the enemy, or the enemy's many comrades all of whom would be happy to simplify the situation for you. To wit, the humble tree-based cudgel was apparently a sufficient crushing weapon if used properly - and then comes the knife-point conclusion.
And then of course, theres the fact that no armor makes it extremely easy to get wounded, even if you survive. Wounds on a battlefield in that era are definitely not a good thing.
“You could get stabbed in between the plates” that’s like looking at a modern day plate carrier and saying “well they can still shoot you in the arms and legs, so it’s completely pointless.”
Well.. it's easy to stick a blade between plates.. IF the target is immobile, but rarily your foes in a battlefield were immobile and just standing still. It's like having bigger goalkeepers.
And even if they *are* standing still, if there's chain mail protecting those gaps, I imagine* piercing it would require one to generate quite a bit of force while still maintaining precision. *Admittedly, my only experience with anything even remotely like that is splitting wood with an axe. Not quite the same thing, but I can tell you it is freaking hard to balance power and accuracy.
One misconception that always triggers me is when people act like medieval people were stupid. They had brains, guys, they could think and have common sense, they wouldn't insist on doing something that doesn't work, they would look for alternatives if that was the case. They. Had. Brains
Right. Humans haven't really changed that much in the past few thousand years. People in the medieval period were probably as intelligent on average as anyone in the world right now. The only difference would be education and access to information. Their individual knowledge base was just smaller than ours. I think the issue is that today people tend to equate intelligence with knowledge
I know one indisputable, very specific reason why wearing armour, even modern armour, is worse than just running around naked. Because if your wearing armour, you are more likely to be in combat, which is inherently less safe than running around naked.
Re: the heat problem. Tanks fighting in the desert were like ovens. You could actually fry eggs on the fenders. Funny... none of the tankers seem to have been inclined to abandon them(while still operational) to fight on foot.
Heat can be a problem. Look at the Battle of Sempach. Despite the legend of Arnold von Winkelried, many modern historians believe the turning point in the battle came from the exhaustion of the knights after fighting all day in the heat in heavy armor against their relatively unarmored Swiss opponents. The take away, though, isn't that armor is bad. It is that equipment that has evolved to be used in one circumstance-fighting on horseback-doesn't always make the best transition when used in another. The knights also cut the tips off their poulaines because they weren't suited for walking.
Because most tanks were actually designed to deal with that issue and if not the military always finds a good compromise similar to the surcoats mentioned in the video. The US M1128 MGS for example didn't have air conditioning when first built and was sent to Afganistan so they issued cooling vests to the crew until they could fit A/C to the vehicles.
funny thing, i was a navy navigator in the speed armada (? i think thats the word) from germany, i had a tour in djibouti. that is 20 years ago and we fried eggs on top of the ship down there. yeah not the same thing like a tank in ww2, because we actualy have an ac, but just to confirm this. that stuff gets realy hot in the sun, but even without the ac, you would sweat some more, but its not like you would die inside the ship. or how do they think medieval sailors worked in the ship in this heat?
The logic checks out: - Nothing is better than being near-invincible. - Wearing armor is equivalent to being near-invincible. - Therefore, wearing armor is worse than nothing.
I love how Shad is not alone in the shock and criticisms, because even the "cameraman" _(or the person speaking off-screen)_ is so *shocked* at what he hears from Weird History's video that he actually joins on the conversation with our guy! AND HE'S GOT GREAT POINTS TOO! XD
I love the idea that "There were weak points in the armor, so you may as well not wear it". As though those weak points didn't exist if you weren't wearing armor. Like, if you're not wearing armor, you can still get stabbed in your joints and eyes, but now you can also get stabbed in your arms, legs, and torso, which are much easier targets to hit and your opponent doesn't have to try to grapple you to the ground to have a chance to hit you there.
It's like saying modern armies shouldn't use armored vehicles because the enemy might have rocket launchers. Planes are obsolete because of anti aircraft missiles. Modern infantrymen wear armour that can weigh up to 15kg, yet only protects parts of their torso and head, and it slows them down. Wearing no armour makes it easier for soldiers to dodge bullets. God, it's been a long time since I've seen something as dumb as that Weird History video.
"Helmets can cause a concussion" Yes. The difference is that without a helmet, getting hit in the face with a crossbow bolt or an axe does a lot more than give you a concussion.
I often wish there was a fact check algorithm that prevented upload of videos with P.R.A.T.T. (point refuted a thousand times) desinformation unless they were provided with a disclaimer watermark all over the vid...
@@SonsOfLorgar NOPE! Its a good idea but such a system would be biased and can be abused as a system for censorship. The fact check would be a tool to censor any video that does not support YT's political motives...
Apparently Weird History thinks real life is somehow like Dark Souls where it's better to run around naked to maximize how easy it is to dodge and abuse invincibility frames, lol.
Absolutely correct. They seem to be unaware or outright ignoring the fact that in reality fighting naked only provides half as many i-frames as in Dark Souls and thus was not a viable build.
Dark Souls armour was better than nothing thanks primarily to poise. It was only in the following games that it lost its edge. Still they did slowly bring it back around to having its uses. Still this video was really silly.
Todd over at Todd's workshop did a video on shooting through armor. He got someone strong enough to shoot a legitimate Longbow, and then had them shoot at a properly constructed breastplate. Zero penetration. Also, if armor made it easier to die, especially during the hundred years war, all of one side would have realized "wait a minute, the more armor they are wearing, the easier they are to kill. Maybe we should stop wearing it ourselves?' Instead, there was a race to see who could strap the most armor on themselves. This doesn't even pass the common sense test
I love how their video is so illogical you literally can counter it all with "why the hell were they still wearing armor then???". This is life and death situation we're talking about here, if our ancestors were so stupid they literally spent their own money to make themselves die easier on a bloody battlefield, humanity would have already extincted
As we've seen many times, when some historical weapon/artifact doesnt work its appearances are hard to find in records/art/legends, like the "Gunsword" for example, yet medieval art is full of fully armored soldiers, we have historical records of fights while wearing armor, to say that it didnt work or that it was "more dangerous than its worth" its just nonsensical
Have....Have you ever actually been on the internet before? I am pretty sure if you gave weird history metal armor, told them to march across the desert they would put it on, and never take it off as they, and I quote (from themselves) "literally baked in it". Just saying. Humanity is kinda an oddity to have survived itself.
"While wearing armour, you can only get stabbed in a few very painful places. Therefore it is better to wear no armour at all, so you can get stabbed in all the places, including the less painful ones." Flawless logic.
Real Men fight bollock naked, slathered in war-paint, after killing a goat in holy ritual to earn the blessings of the gods. You pansies with your "armour" and "sensible tactics" need to get on my level.
@@tbotalpha8133 *_Top 5 reasons why the ancient Celts got their asses beat,_* and even then they used LARGE SHIELDS! XD Even without armor, they still acknowledge *_some_* importance of protection.
Now to be fair Shad, the half helmet seen in the last duel was actually invented to address a very specific issue with traditional helmets - in a traditional helmet it’s much harder to see that Matt Damon is wearing it, and so by simply removing a large portion of the face guard it’s much easier for everyone to see that it is, indeed, Matt Damon.
Same with clinches in sword fights. Its an easy way to put Matt Damon and his adversaries faces in frame and have them exchange a few words for extra drama.
I'm actually kinda devistated to learn that armor was only 45-50 lbs. I used to think knights were just hulks that ran and jumped and climbed everywhere in 150 lb. armor.
well another point of consideration is that some armor is fited by size. a small man likely wouldn't wear the exact same size mail shirt as a larger man. and full plate armor had to be fitted to the individual, so a smaller persons armor would weigh a little less by comparison to a larger persons. so an excessively tall man, with broad shoulders and a big chest would have much heavier armor than the average person. not sure if it would get up to 100 pounds though.
Their basically like modern troops in mobility but better balance due to weight being distributed across the body instead of being centered on the back.
Also loving the implication that medieval battles were mostly fought in scorching hot deserts. Ah, yes, the famous desert region of central Europe, land of sands.
And yeah, as a motorcyclist I will carefully avoid wearing my helmet or my leathers next time I'm on the road, as they might increase the chance of concussion and internal bleeding
LoL right? I hear this all the time from table top enthusiasts. Like... yeah. If I were to wear everything that I wear when I'm fighting but, in 90 degree weather for several hours, it definitely wouldn't end well for me. So it's a good thing that I don't live in Florida. Also, in sunny, arid climates covering up is how you avoid heat stroke. Not the other way around. Tons of ancient, desert based armies dressed their soldiers in full armor and they did just fine. :)
I'm reminded of that episode of Mythbusters where there was a myth that steel toed shoes could cut off your toes and be worse then not wearing them. If I remember right they found that not only did it not work, any blow strong enough to cave in the steel will destroy your foot anyways.
Yep Mythbusters tends with some myths the level of force needed to make that possible would at the minimum be lethal. Like knocking your socks off. The level of force they used to actually do that was enough to send shockwaves that damaged a nearby town.
Hell, I actually thought of that as a kid, but then I said to myself "But wait, if it's heavy enough to flatten the steel, then it would crush your foot anyhow", which probably says a lot when a 9 year old could figure that out.
@@yocapo32 many of the people who perpetuated the myth aren't exactly the sharpest tools in the shed(I have even run into a couple of people who still do)
Ya know, this reminds me about Abraham Wald's discovery involving airplane design back in WWII. See, when airplanes returned from battle, they were, of course, examined. Engineers and mathematicians noticed an increased percentage of bullet holes in certain parts of the planes, particularly in the fuselage, and had the brilliant idea that concentrating armor on those spots would allow for greater efficiency in airplane design while simultaneously providing more protection. Of course, you would want to protect from the most damage possible with the smallest amount of expended material, but Wald realized what Weird History seemed to miss: the bullet holes on the returning planes were indicative of survivable damage, not the kind of damage they should be devoting their material to preventing. A plane sporting a fatal injury would obviously not be coming back, so the armor should go where the surviving planes WEREN'T hit, not where the bullets could make contact while still resulting in an operable aircraft. Yes, of course, people in armor probably suffered far more head injuries than the unarmored solider, and they suffered far more wounds caused by the caving of armor too, but that is because the ones who didn't have the armor didn't live to complain about it. What seemingly looks like a largely negative thing on the surface is revealed to be highly advantageous by considering the bigger picture.
When soldiers were issued metal helmets in WW1 reports of head injuries skyrocketed. Not because the helmets made injuries worse, but because soldiers were surviving otherwise fatal head injuries. Deaths were being converted to injuries.
Another thing to add to " just hit the weakspot in the armor ": Theres still the dude inside the armor, who's actively trying to kill you, that you'll have to get around first. I'ts not like he's gonna wait for you to stab him
The whole movie just needs a great big "lacking context" warning across the whole thing. Because they've removed all context to make their claims on just about everything.
“All modern armies are built around the armored vehicle, but being inside of these metal boxes is more dangerous than fighting on the outside. While they do provide increased protection from the front, the enemy needs only to shoot you from behind to nullify that protection.”
@@pretzelbomb6105 Shooting from Behind is not true for all armored Vehicles. Though it was a notable weakspot in many tanks. Your also using the same incorrect fallacy that Shad was debunking. Your stripping away context and critical thinking to say it was more deadly to ride in such a vehicle. But the reality is that it is far safer most of the time and actually takes particular kinds of threats to penetrate many of them. Which means your far less likely to suffer injury than you are outside of the vehicle.
As a (modern) soldier, I can confirm that those who don't believe that a person could wear a 50lb suit of armor and still be effective in combat grossly underestimate the physical capabilities of the average human body. There were many times we received new soldiers who did no athletic activities at all before joining the Army, were below average in all areas of physical fitness, and somehow just barely scraped through basic training. In most of those cases, within about a year or so of regular physical fitness training, those same soldiers were able to run around in full combat equipment, sometimes weighing up to 100lb/45kg (body armor, rucksack, ammunition, food/water, etc.), like the rest of us. This makes me very certain that a medieval European knight, trained from childhood to be physically fit for combat, would be perfectly capable of fighting in armor. Also, I can't tell you how many times we would have LOVED to have all that weight evenly distributed across our bodies like a suit of armor.
I weighed myself before going on patrol one time. I was about 240. Then I put on all my armor, weapons, and equipment. I was about 310. You get so used to it though, the weight feels normal, almost comforting.
Yep, Im not a big guy, but when I joined the Army, I was amazed that many of the smaller guys (5"7' ish) and 150lbs on average had more endurance and could carry just as much weight as the bigger guys. I also always pointed out...I was a smaller target.
People with that belief have also never had a well engineered pack. Their experience is solely with floppy, loose school bags. Pulling weight closer to ones center of gravity makes things much easier to carry.
I've seen clips of a probably 120-130 pound tall but super skinny and half starved Syrian soldier wearing maybe 60 pounds of gear and carrying a rifle, if a person can carry half their bodyweight while being malnourished then anyone saying a well exercising soldier can't possibly carry all that all the time they don't understand anything about anything
"Wearing a helmet can increase your chances of getting a concussion" This is like when in ww1 people started to get more head injuries after introducing metal helmets to troops. For those that don't get it, the people getting injured used to die.
Did someone really say this, lol. Because that's completely insane. Helmets've been protecting from concussion for a long time now, sometimes more, sometimes less efficiently. Someone needs to show him Battle of Nations, or any other heavy contact fighting. No matter what do you think about it's accuracy or whatever, it's certain that without those helmets, dudes' brains would be a pulp after getting hit with a halberd.
Likewise, armor could probably increase your chances of getting a concussion by making you less likely to be killed by stabbing or slashing weapons, and the longer you’re alive and fighting, the more chances you have to be hit with concussive force.
I saw a logic video of a teacher explaining something similar but with planes in ww2. They would analyze the planes to see where they got hit and every plane that came back had like 90% of the damage to the wings. So does that mean the wings are all that get hit? No, obviously, it means that the planes that got hit in the body didn't make it back to base.
As someone who plays a lot of games... someone needs to tell these weird history guys that life isn't a video game. They're suffering from some serious "video game logic" syndrome.
That reminded me a few years back when a guy made a video on viking and portraid them as walmart’s raiders that are complelty inept on the battle field with weapons made of scrap. His main source of info was For Honnor.
You don't imagine how many times I told the people about that (also, ancient life wans't a film. They had lives and problems!) I like playing videogames, but I can differenciate about real life and fiction. I read people that still thinking to recover Byzantium (of course, I suppose that most of them, never fought a war, and they didn't suffer about everything that happens in war), or that Romans were a very respectfull society without religions and fanatism, except that the ruins that was left, they were Lares (places in home to pray the gods) and the Emperor was the Pontifus Maximus, the religious leader (and that until the roman Paganism fall). Yep, sure, for the same "thinking", the Vatican City, it's not a Religious State and the Pope it's not Christian😅😅
You do realize that they’re referring to Constantinople which was founded by Constantine the great, the first Christian Roman emperor. If your going to insult other for supposedly not knowing history, first you may want to learn history…
I'd argue this was even worse than video game logic. I can't think of a single game featuring a mechanic that makes you take MORE damage from blunt attacks while wearing armor. That and the "it could LITERALLY cook you alive!" parts are truly baffling.
"All armies were based around knights in full plate armor by the 15th century" "We associate knights with armor because of specialized jousting armor used in the 16th century" ..... wha.... what? So all armies consisted almost entirely of fully armored knights in the 15th century, but also fully armored knights weren't all that common, and only to be found in 16th century jousting?
15th century is around the time where armies began shifting away from relying on knights so much and towards professional commoner soldiers, mostly paid mercenaries.
To be fair, "based around" is a separate concept from "consisted almost entirely of". WW2 Nazi Blitzkrieg tactics were "based around" armoured spearheads, led by mobile tanks and half-tracks - but the majority of the Wehrmacht were still infantry, artillery, unarmored trucks and horse-drawn carriages.
@@roadent217 That wasn't a nitpick at you, btw, you are entirely correct. Especially as we head towards the 15th century, we see an increasing prevalence of the so-called "men-at-arms"; soldiers who fought mounted, in armor and with weapons befitting a knight, yet who weren't nobles, as the economic growth allowed non-nobles to amass enough wealth to properly outfit themselves for war.
"Heavy armor caused more problems than it solved on the battlefield." It's heavy, expensive, restricts your vision and movement, makes you sweat more, makes you tired faster. At least 6 problems. You don't die. Only 1 problem solved. Yep, causes more problems than it solved. Logic checks out.
Eh, quantifying pros and cons is always wonky. It depends on how you formulate things. You can say "you dont die" and thats one pro. You can also say "you wont get stabbed, you wont get slashed, you wont get bludgeoned, you wont get shot" and you can count that as four pros.
So THAT's why the US military stopped issuing tac vests and helmets to its soldiers seeing as those things weigh almost the same and are for the most part less effective against contemporary weapons than plate was in its day...
@@theblackbaron4119 Although, as the name deODORant shows, the winner would be the less smelly option, in which case the sweaty guy in armor has one over the fellow who's putrefying free in the wind, not to mention if the armored guy also wears deodorant.
"Expending twice as much energy": The History Channels Deadliest Warrior series covered this on their Jeanne D'Arc (Joan of Arc) episode. A well fitted suit of armor hindered the warrior wearing, it very little, which most knights had their armor tailor made to fit them or when inherited, would have it tailored to fit them. The problem from this came when wearing a suit of armor not made from the wearer. To demonstrate it, they took a World Class gymnast, put her in a suit of full plate made to fit here, and she went through her usual gymnastic routines with very little hinderance. It not only did not bind on here, but when the armor pieces fit annd are attached properly, it was virtually weightless as compared to trying to carry the armor around in your arms. I am a medieval reenactor, who used to fight in heavy armor (Although I made mine out of cuir bouilli [boiled Leather], which works great against the blunted weapons we used). A lot of the newer fighters would immedietly strip out of their armor when the fighting was done, but I quickly learned it was a lot easier to wear my armor back to my camp site and strip there, than stip it at the field, and have to carry it back to my camp site.
After being away from medieval reenacting and fighting for some 25 yrs I'm restarting. Taking off armor on the battlefield sounds horrible to do. If it fits well and in decent heath a person should be able to make it back to camp unless there is health concerns. At first I joked about exercising In armor but then found they actually did . I guess I'm going to wear some of it around to get used to weight and make it fit well . I remember army training about every week or so they would load us with another thing to carry. I'm working at getting it all together..
"A hammer strike could bend the plate enough to break bones" Yeah, and imagine what that hammer strike would've done WITHOUT the plate. Getting shot while wearing body armor hurts. It can send you to the ground and leave bruising. Guess what happens if you don't wear it?
@@zterrans depends on the angle of the shot vs the armor, the range and which the firearm is discharged, the size of the firearm itself (pistol vs musket), etc. It could, but I wouldn’t want to bet my life on it
The whole "wearing armor could increase your chances of a concussion" is actually something the british noticed during WW1: after equipping the soldiers with helmets, they noticed a significant rise in the amount of soldiers that were hospitalized. This wasn't because the helmets were bad - instead, the people who were now getting only hospitalized would have instead ended up *dead*.
The same thing's happening even now. Combine that with advances in medicine and surgery, and people survive who would otherwise have died. That's why traumatic brain injuries are so common.
Shad, love you, but you actually did make a mistake. Wearing armor actually did increase the chance of internal bleeding, because any such hit without the armor would simply rip the body open, and therefore the bleeding wouldn't be internal anymore. 😁
Nonsense! A bruise doesn't match the term "internal bleeding". And plate body armor protects you even in the case being run over by a horse. Only sharp weapons make massive external bleeding, armor protects you from severe blunt trauma, too.
"Wearing armor could make a wound worse." Its the excuse a shocking number of people give to explain why they don't wear steel or composite toe boots. If it hits hard enough to fold the steel into you it would've annihilated your toes anyways!
Actual list of ways that medieval armor was more dangerous than wearing nothing: 1. If you're trying to swim and not drown. 2. If you're trying to be sneaky and not make noise and get caught. 3. Maybe if it's a hot day when you don't actually need the protection and so you're just getting heatstroke. That's pretty much it.
If the armor is designed for the user, chances are they may have added leather and cloth into the joints to heavily dampen the sounds. So 2 isnt 'always' and issue
I would like to see the first claim here tested. I think I would be able to swim with 20-25 kilos extra, especially if the weight was evenly distributed.
I was working as a volunteer at a small zoo once, along with a zookeeper student. At one point we had some logs that needed cutting, so he went and got a chainsaw while I looked for safety equipment for him. There was no helmet and visor to be found, but I found a pair of earmuffs and safety glasses. When I brought it to him he refused the glasses, stating it was inadequate protection. But surely lesser protection was better than none right? Nope, he brought up the argument that if something hit those glasse hard enough to penetrate, then it would actually accelerate upon impact and cause even more damage. And of course he knew better because he'd had a 2 day chainsaw crash course. Back when I then became a professional lumberjack, I really wished I would have saved his number so I could call him and tell him how full of shite he was.
Hey shad something i remember from my statistics class was a discussion on why correlation does not equal causation. We were given the example that after issuing helmets to soldiers in WWI there was a spike in recorded head injuries. They almost decided to take the helmets away before some one pointed out there was a corresponding drop in the number of fatalities. Essentially all these new injuries came about because without the helmets the soldiers would have simply died. So yes wearing a helmet does increase your chance or head injury at the cost of lowering your chance of death.😉
The same as the old Grumman aircraft legend: In Ww2, aircraft designers would take the bullet spread across a damaged plane and design planes to be stronger in the damaged parts. Grumman allegedly realized that they should instead reinforce all the *un*-damaged parts because the planes that took damage there never made it back. (the story is often attributed to various people, and was definitely was not first discovered by Grumman, but that's the version I remember off the top of my head)
@@kluevo I believe it was Abraham Wald, a Hungarian Jew who fled to America and thankfully pointed this mistake out. It really is very simple but at the same time one of those problems where you have to be able to not over complicate it at the same time. Many times I have had complex and advanced solutions to very easy problems which were kindly pointed out to me with minimal mockery after :D
Another good story, im not sure how real it is but it can be spun as a riddle, is the story of war helmets. A commander of an army decided to switch from having cloth hats to having bullet-resistant helmets and soon after the number of soldiers hospitalized increased dramatically. The commander asks why and the answer is just that the soldiers that are getting shot are surviving with wounds instead of just outright dying.
I can't wait for Weird History's next video: Guns can jam! Throwing shit is easy, so rocks are better than guns! Seriously though, Shad must be getting tired of having to reply to videos such as this one.
When talking about cavalry charges, they seemed to leave out one of the biggest reasons for them, morale. It's really not easy to stand still in formation when dozens of warhorses are charging straight at you. An undisciplined soldier will want to follow his body's natural urge to turn tail and flee, while a disciplined soldier will know that he's actually far safer staying in formation and bracing for the charge. Getting your enemy to break ranks could lead to victory in that part of the battle, and potentially turn the tide of battle entirely.
An example of staying in formation vs. breaking formation making the difference is the battle of Hastings. Initially the English shield wall turned back the Norman cavalry because the men were battle hardened and stayed in the formation, however when the Normans began to retreat they broke ranks in order to give chase and were subsequently defeated.
I've actually seen the difference as close as you can these days: mounted police charging into groups of protesters to break them up. It's scary as fuck and most groups will break into a panic. But I've also seen groups with more determination stay their line, bunch up and turn back charges by waving flags and signs in the direction of the horses.
@@olenickel6013 I saw something like that too, it was bunch of neonazis and police charged them on horses. Amazing show :D But maybe it was something we have deeply coded in us. You know, for centuries a guy on horse was somebody you had to respect, or you didn't have any offsprings...
The video sounds like it makes valid points about the drawbacks of wearing armor, it just omits the one glaring thing: that people are actively trying to kill you with pointy, staby, smashy objects. Which is what the armor stops, and why you wear it.
No surely you jest, nobody would be trying to kill you with such things in a time period full of conflicts involving such things, nah, just a figment of your imagination. People wouldn't hit you with a weapon if you weren't wearing armor, they'd just lightly slap you and insult your lineage or parents, it's not like they actually want to kill you. (I joke about this but in the back of my head I'm wondering if there's some special snowflake out there that actually thinks anything near what I sarcastically said).
How dare you sir. Everyone knows that man kind only started killing eachother because satan invented guns. Wars must have surely been coreographed dance competitions and slam poetry contests.
@@codyraugh6599 Yo, now I want a video series "Battles throughout history except it's rap battles and dance competitions". Good lord, that would be fire.
Wearing armor is seriously stupid. If you ignore all the positive aspects of wearing armor, and only focus on the negative parts. Also, eating food is probably the dumbest thing you can do, because you could choke. Totally not worth it. Never eat food.
It's a well known fact that the average medieval knight had an intellect near that of a sheep. Not only would they commonly bake in their armor, but if it rained, many would drown simply by the act of looking up, and not knowing to put their heads back down.
@@nickryan3417 I just saw a video that said the Battle of Agincourt actually ended when all the knights just ran off a cliff together. It was witnessed and recorded by the only survivor, Sir Walter Lemming.
@@arcadeinvader8086 Don't be silly, that's why knights had squires. These proto-knight squires would bring their knight food and drink whilst diligently waiting for their knight's armour to rust and fall off and then their knight could escape their armour based prison. A fool proof contingency plan ruined by armourers' move towards steel and rust proofing. It was a conspiracy I tell ya, and that's another reason why there are almost no knights in armour left these days. Which is total and utter proof of this theory.
@@nickryan3417 In theory, maybe, in practice the knights would accidentally ingest almost as much flaked rust as food and end up poisoning themselves, which is why you rarely see them wearing their armor while eating. So while using squires to keep them alive did work sometimes falling over still did usually lead to the death of the knight. The rust proofing was actually just a by-product of trying to make the armor taste terrible so the idiot knights would stop swallowing pieces by accident. It was unsuccessful, but did lead to better metallurgy practices.
Meteors can still pierce the ceiling and kill me. My home is useless. I'll sleep in the dirt from now on. At least that way I can move when I see the meteors hurling down at me.
This reminds me of a story I heard about warplanes that I currently only half-remember. They studied the concentration of bullet holes on a bunch of returning aircraft (I think it was WWII bombers) and layered extra armor on the spots that got shot up the most. The survivability numbers did not improve at all. Then the light-bulb went on for somebody and they began putting the extra armor on the spots that came back clean on the returning planes. The survivability rates improved immediately. This is because the planes that got shot in those places prior to the armor being added didn't return at all, so they did not factor in to the data they gathered. Armor works.
American B-17 Flying Fortress. Can fly without most of the vertical stabilizer - just vary the engines to maintain heading. Can fly with most of the fuselage shot trough - tough on the crew though. Can fly with most of outer wing shot off or holed - lift not needed without bombs. No need for extra armor there. Can not fly: With cockpit shot up - pilots or controls non-functioning. With less than 2 engines. With no fuel. Put extra armor on, which they ended up doing. There are some famous photos of some (one?) really shot up B-17 on an English runway.
In WWI, after issuing steel helmets to troops on the Western Front, the Allies began seeing a sharp increase in troops being injured with head wounds. Obviously, it was because wearing a helmet was worse than wearing nothing at all! Nothing to do with the troops being merely injured and not dead from head wounds.
@@dylantowers9367 I saw it worded perfectly somewhere else. Both instances of it explained here will be quite confusing for those that have never heard about it
Well technically when he said “created more problems than they solved,” dehydration and weight are two problems and being killed is one problem. 😂 As a former soldier who wore modern ballistic armor we had many of the same basic problems, it is heavy and hot, when you add shoulder/upper arm, groin flap (the cod piece of justice), side plates, and throat guard mobility was hampered, I also have worn an 80lb bomb suit and that really sucked but you wouldn’t catch any of us outside the wire without at least our vest and helmet no matter how hot it was. I assume in medieval times soldiers did the same things we did, drink more water, exercise a lot, don’t over eat, use the bathroom whenever you could, and pull at the plate carrier to get air flow. We also didn’t always wear our full armor unless we were expecting trouble or there was a persnickety officer with us. Think about this, in Iraq in 06 it got to nearly 120 degrees (f). We had about 20lbs of armor, add in a standard 210 round loadout, canteens or camelback, medical pack, sometimes a gas mask and night vision you’re looking at 50lbs. Add in an average air assault pack weighing 47-50lbs and you are carrying about 100lbs. Add in 7.75lbs for an M4, maybe another 2lbs if you also had a pistol. Now if you had an M4/203 it was about 11lbs and a few more lbs for grenades, a SAW you had a 300 round belted ammo load and a 17lb weapon, about 30LBs for a 240B, and god help you if you had to carry the base plate for a mortar. We did try to cut weight anyway we could but we managed, and could still walk miles at a go, so logically a knight would have been able to as well.
@@Spartan0430 right! I will readily admit that it sucked... but not as much as 7.62x39 bullet traveling through you at 2,400 feet per second. The Iraqi’s would sometimes ask us for a “cold pill” because they thought the only way we could wear all that stuff was by having a pill that magically kept us cool? I wonder if “weird history” has looked into the medieval “cold pill.”
@@nemoexnuqual3643 HAHAHAHA! Well I can't say I completely blame them for thinking that way after having to deal with that kind of heat all their lives, so the idea of making yourself 30 degrees hotter wearing all that gear must have just absolutely mystified them. But STILL, after 5 years of us fighting over there(at that point in time) I would have thought that the sheer lack of massive amounts of casualties would have clued them in, at least a little, as to why you wore it.
I, an out of shape keyboard warrior, cannot walk for hours and miles while carrying 50-100 pounds of protective gear and other equipment. Therefore, very fit people who are in the prime of their lives and who undergo strenuous exercise daily and train and practice specifically to accomplish this kind of task would also be incapable of doing it. Checkmate, armorites!
just the fact that there were situations in the late medieval period where "can opening" was required to kill someone wearing an incredible suit of armor is enough evidence for me. a situation where a large group of bandits that had only spears and swords ambushing a knight and his entourage could end in an outnumbered but not outgunned situation.
Weird History- the physical exertion from wearing armor was too much for anyone at the time Also Weird History- the strength required to cave in armor wasn't all that unusual So... Which is it then??? Where they so weak that the weight of armor alone would tire them out? Or were they so strong armor was like cardboard to them?
In fairness, the two aren't mutually exclusive; gold armor would be extremely heavy, but most people could get through that with a heavy object and enough effort. How heavy a material is and how strong it is aren't necessarily related.
Also denting any of the plates requires you to input a lot of force behind say a Warhammer, and repeatedly doing that is probably VERY tiring and inefficient as you need to have enough stamina to last through an entire armed conflict
@@SeiichiroAoki It wasn't, because it's heavy and weak (also, would have been difficult to source and outrageously expensive)... which was literally the point I was making; the strength required to lift something and the strength required to break something are not directly proportional.
55:50 I've been saying the same thing forever about the steel toed boot myth. A lot of people say you shouldn't wear steel toed boots on a job site because is something heavy lands on them it could crush the steel and the sharp metal edges would cut off your toes. If something lands on your toes, and it's heavy enough to buckle steel, your toes are going to be gone regardless of what you're wearing. And this is just my personal preference, but a neat and tidy amputation seems preferable to complete avulsion.
If something heavy enough to crush toes but not steel falls your toes will be fine, will protect you most of the time, thus I'd rather have the steel toes than not. It's pretty easy armour works, this vid angered me as much as it did shad lol
In most cases its not even the toes but the bridge of your foot that gets crushed. I think you can get metal plates for that wich you can attach to your shoes by weaving your shoe laces through them.
I think steel toed boots are not made of steel anymore. Instead they now use a type of polymer thats lighter and breaks rather than bends to avoid that.
I like that he thinks knights being cooked alive in their armour was so prevalent that it invalidates the wearing of plate, but doesn't stop to think that if that were true the crusades would have been a week long.
That can really apply to lots of things people in the past did. Modern people look at everything and go, thats so dumb why would they do something that will get them killed, as if everyone in history was just a moron who would blindly walk off a cliff with no regard for their lives. They literally put 0 seconds of critical thought into it. Their first and last reaction is " they're so dumb", and they never spend a single thought on the subject again.
@@dash4800 right, not to mention any of these people teleported to back then would probably die in minutes due to the conditions of which they’d be subjected.
In any case, the Europeans weren't the only ones wearing metal armor in the crusades... the Turks they were fighting also wore metal armor They likely stayed cool by having cloth layers underneath that they'd sweat in and that sweat drenched clothing kept them cool under the armor (it's actually a legitimate way Arab Bedouins stay cool when they're traveling the open desert, wearing extra clothing and letting their own sweat keep them cooled 😉)
One dies of heat stroke-Shad had it right. Heat exhaustion is when you are dehydrated but the body is still able to cool off by sweating. When you can't cool off because you have nothing left to sweat, your temperature goes up and especially your brain gets hot (and that's dangerous) and you have heat stroke. The white surcoat not only reflects a great deal of sunlight by day, but at night it provides a bit of insulation if you wore it at night in the desert. Besides, if a white garment worn in the desert wasn't effective, then nobody would wear them in the desert.
@@Passolargo_Junior This is why you need to remember to cast Mind Blank before you watch Shad's debunking videos, so you're protected from mind-affecting effects. Poor Shad forgot that step.
The English longbow was actually sharp enough to penetrate a katana. Historians theorize the folding process used to give the English longbow its poundage could take 8 to 50 life times and led the English longbow to be the deadliest and sharpest sword in the ancient world.
The Longbow... the rail gun of the medieval battlefield... unless of course, you were fighting a horde of unarmoured dual katana wielding leaping ninjas... in which case, you're screwed.
Hilarious. My modern armor in the army weighed a lot more than my chainmail. And it does take training. We did do obstacles, running, etc… on our armor, just like our historical counterparts. And yes, considerably more fit than most larpers. And people always wondered why I was a stickler for armor proficiency in RPGs…
@@thefisherman0074 lol bro go on a run for multiple miles, up and down hills, carrying casualties and support equipment and tell me how heavy 80 lbs or more on your person is
Some scenarios where wearing armour may be worse than wearing nothing at all; 1. Going for a swim 2. Dancing ballet 3. Doing surgery 4. Receiving surgery 5. Going to court (Not the medieval one)
I was a bit confused by the part about over heating. Have they ever actually been to the desert? People in the middle east for thousands of years have been covering up in layers in the desert because it does keep you cool. It's almost like the soldiers living and fighting in the desert knew something about living and fighting in the desert.
And how many deserts became deadly cold at night? Lots of layers also protects from cold (many deserts lacking wood for enough fires for an army) Source: me and it's -3 in the desert I live in
I went out to play some golf with some friends one summer day. Plan was to get in at least three rounds because the course had an all you can play deal. 7am it was already 80 degrees. Close to 100 in the afternoon. I came adorned with a full brim hat and a light, loose fitting, long sleeve white shirt. My buddies laughed at how silly I looked and how hot I was going to be. Barely through the second round they were burned red an miserable and had to quit. I played all day. Was still tired AF by the end, but I am fat too, so it was to be expected.
@@MrKanilammit yes, with that kind of heat and probably sunlight, you'd burn like crazy playing golf without covering up reasonably and/or applying a LOT of sunscreen, often. Because you'd be sweating, so better also be drinking a lot of water, with the occasional Gatorade or sports drink to replenish lost electrolytes.
People think living in the desert means existing in a constant state of 120°+ infrared sauna. They don't realize "desert" just means "low precipitation/humidity." Drink water and layer up.
I like how they mentioned that helmets are like swimming goggles. Yes swimming goggles do restrict your vision, but they do...let you see under water soooo..... The analogy is great cuz the main detriment is just completely overshadowed by the advantage just like with helmets where the disadvantage of less sight is completely overshadowed with the advantage of not getting your head split open like a melon.
For the many millions of americans who played football when they were young: we all know that while your vision is restricted, with enough practice you figure out how to make the best out of it and retain quite a lot of your capabilities. Sure the medieval helms had more restricted vision, but I think a similar thing will happen. I would also equate it to the fact that our eyes have blind spots, but our brain automatically compensates for them to fill in the blanks. Long term wearing of a helmet creates this same sort of effect where your brain learns how to use the more limited information to create a more complete picture.
Kinda not the best exemple tho cause you can actually see underwater x') it's just a bit more blurry in salt water and also swimming googles aren't that vision restrict at least they weren't last time i used ones.
Also the freedom of wearing armor is that you don't have to constantly keep your head down or behind a shield so it might allow you to see more in that sense.
When I started watching this video I was horrified by the weird history video. By the end, I was just laughing. I know when I was starting to learn about armor, I wanted to figure out how to make armor perfect against everything. I've come to understand though the purpose of armor is to mitigate risk while not getting in the way of you doing your job. If it stopped you from doing your job, it wasn't worth it. What astonished me about this video is it didn't really go into the situations that armor WAS actually a detriment. The main one I know of being water. There are stories of soldiers drowning in rivers while trying to ford them or when falling off bridges or boats. There is a reason why sailors/marines tended to not wear as much armor as infantry. Or at least not wear as much armor when they were on their boats.
@@Katvanished Swimming with weights on is also just hard. It isn't a for sure death depending on the weight of the gear you have on, but it is going to be a rough time.
Yeah, their armor was usually just padded gear later on, etc. Basic leather that was treated to not absorb water like your cloth would, so not much extra weight and still viable.
@@Katvanished You can, it's like swimming with weights on though. Kinda like how the military has a class where they make you swim with gear on. Shedding your gear can mean life or death in the immediate moment when treading water, so snagging an MRE and a few magazines and your rifle, or at least your sidearm and the extra mags for it could be life or death when you reach shore. You can kill someone and take their rifle. Whatever. Knight's armor on the other hand can't be stripped out of and is restrictive / still heavy. Not as heavy as media would have you think, but still heavy. It's not something you can tread water in for more than about ten minutes and that's if you're a swimmer. People back then didn't swim often, if ever. It was rare you learned to swim if you weren't out on ships constantly and even then, rare they knew to do more than doggy paddle, or push their arms downwards against the water to push up, not how to keep afloat by kicking their legs and moving their arms slowly back and forth.
question: in a pen and paper, text adventure style game i played once where you have to make a country, there was an option to ignore cost and equip every soldier with full plate armor, im wondering if thats a good idea or if its better to keep at least some units in brigandine, chain, and gambeson, again this is ignoring whether or not you have the money or logistics to do so, or just assuming that you do have that much and more. just a thought that popped up when i was watching this video cause i was thinking of playing that one again. also im pretty sure if i dont put it here no one will answer so i might as well attach it to someone who seems to know at least more than weird history does which isnt a high bar and im sorry but its the only one i got.
Weird History is the perfect politician: Contradicts themselves every sentence? ✅ Takes info out of context? ✅ Flashy exterior, rotten interior? ✅ Easily debunked claims? ✅ Wrong about everything they claim to know? ✅
So fun fact about the statement "wearing armor makes you more likely to die from internal bleeding" is that it is sort of true. If you are less likely to die from all other causes, like getting stabbed in the heart, then you are comparatively more likely to die from that one. They are looking at the percentage of deaths and not the percentage of total soldiers involved. It's a very common statistical fallacy.
They also are not comparing that percentage of deaths to situations without them. They are basically just looking at a list and pointing at one of the top things and going "that's why" without mentioning it's not all the data to what they are answering, They aren't actual covering the context of what they are using, etc. The Energy thing is another example of them stripping out context and not really showing the actual picture. Most people today are woefully unfit, Particularly to the average person let alone a soldier in previous times. We are basically a society of fat lazy nobles in comparison. But those conditioned to wear those things regularly, Walk around everywhere instead of ride around, and just generally did a lot more physical labor/excersize. The energy drain is nothing compared to what we have today. So thye've basically just taken one data point, removed the context, ignored their incomplete data, and declared it all encompassing again.
28:20 They literally used the exact armor picture that comes up when you google "heaviest medieval armor" which is stated to be upto 50kg however in that same info caption with the picture it states that these armor sets are NOT used in combat but only in jousting competition. This is clear evidence that the makers of the video were working backwards from a conclusion and cherry picking evidence to build a narrative. They're misinforming not informing.
"If you don't read the news, you're uninformed. If you do, your misinformed." Some guy that painted a fence. Honestly we see it all the time the Mainstream entertainment lies all the time.
On the note of helmets limiting visibility: People often forget the tunnel-vision that comes along with fighting situations. In a fight, the VAST majority of people have zero peripheral vision. Trained soldiers and paramilitaries know to "keep their head on a swivel" for this very reason. Wearing a helmet wouldn't limit your vision in reality, it would just mitigate the results of your natural tunnel-vision. I would even hypothesize having a helmet slit to remind you of the limit to your vision would help remind you to keep swiveling your head, thus saving you from getting blindsided.
Helmets also let you keep your head during a fight if you do get blindsided. It is a known fact that it is very hard to pay attention to anything at all if your brains have just been scattered across the adjacent 5 to 15 square feet, after all.
I have a barbutta helmet and I have to say it does limit my line of sight, but in formation fighting I have to asume that left and right of me is still being held by my fellow soldiers. Even my modern helmet in the army limits my senses to some degree but I prefer it over exposing my head.
As a tank nerd You could make this EXACT same video about tanks, bring up the exact same points, and then go to the same stupid conclusion that "In a war, you'd actually be better off outside a tank than inside"
Funny though there was a point in time (1950s) where some countries (mainly France and West Germany) thought that armor past defending against autocannon caliber was pointless which led to the Leopard I and AMX-30 tanks. I mean, that phase went away pretty quickly though once armor tech caught up against munitions tech.
@@MajesticOak Yup! It's the reason the development went from leather to chain to plate! All arms development is connected in the same ways, same lessons at different time periods for different contexts. If your enemy can hit you, make armor that makes it hurt less. If you can't defend, find a way to move faster. If you can't move fast enough to dodge in time, make your attacks from farther away than your enemy can. From the longbow to the Patriot missile, it's all the same theory. :D
Did you know that English longbows were make with a special type of wood that was folded 100 times in order to be able to cut through anything! The French had no chance.
Before I watched this video, I could think of 1 situation where not wearing armor is more benificial than wearing armor. Which is on a boat or while fighting at a place where falling in water is a decent risk, e.g. on bridges or a dock. And that's the one situation they don't even touch on in the video.
"They only wore full metal armor suits in jousting tournaments." "They cooked alive in the desert while wearing full metal armor." So what, are you having jousting tournaments in the middle of the desert with thousands of people jousting each other at the same time, or what? Seems like something is not adding up, weird history.
They were not cooked alive, and it's better to be heated up a little , than being stabbed by arrows, swords, knifes or having your bones cracked by maces.
This legitimately angered me. Like... have they never gone out in the sun before? You survive in arid, sunny climates by covering up and wearing light colors. There's a reason why all those videos from the roads outside Dubai feature guys dressed head to toe in white robes. There are LOADS of ancient civilizations that used heavy armor in desert conditions to great effect. I mean, come on! Have they not heard of the Persian empire? x_x
@@tarrker In reality, metal armor does protect you from direct sunlight, which is very harmful ! Also, wearing some robes on your armor pretty much keeps your armor cool, lol.
@@eu29lex16 I wanted to say this myself but I have almost no experience with it. It's pretty humid where I grew up and we didn't do a lot of out door fighting on sunny days.
@@eu29lex16 Crusaders wore a white tabard, that reflects most of the sunlight, thus minimizing the heat problem. Also, knights did not march fully armored and battle ready, unless they were expecting to be attacked. They had squires, and wagons to carry their gear, and would only "dress up" prior to a battle. Unlike in modern conflicts, they had a lot of time to prepare, since surprise attacks were almost impossible to achieve in the mostly flat desertic lands of the middle east, and you see the enemy forces (and the dust clouds they form) approaching from far away, giving them ample time. So there was no need to remain in their armor 24/7. It is obvious that the original video guy is talking out of his ass. There are always armchair "experts" trying to blow dust in the eyes (or ears) of their unsuspecting audience, trying hard to sound "smart". They should stick to comedy, because they are good at making us laugh.
"Could punch a hole through robocop." I immediately said "citation needed" right before you said "we'd have to test that against robocop." Love you, Shad!
Never mind all Shad's detailed rant about how wrong Weird History is, I really fail to understand how arrows and lances potentially being able to penetrate armor makes wearing armor more dangerous than not wearing it. Do the arrows over-penetrate, dealing less damage or something if you don't wear armor? However, I think there is some point in claiming that having armor increases the chance of having a concussion. If a blow that causes an armored soldier to suffer concussion hits an unarmored soldier, they would be too busy being dead to have any concussions. And internal bleeding would be less likely because it would be a lot of external bleeding instead.
Yep. There are sagas of Viking heroes sprouting arrows like pincushions. The point was possibly cutting their skin (possibly not, gambesons are very effective as Shad says constantly), but the difference between a cut or broken bone and death via injury to the internal organs (a perforated bowel was a ticket to long, slow agonizing death, likewise kidneys and liver) makes the argument they make just so inane as to be completely ridiculous.
Correlation and Causation misconception. The detriments of wearing armor do not simply vanish once you take it off, and the peeps behind Weird History apparently ignored that altogether
An over penetration is worse since you've created a larger wound channel, especially with arrows since if the arrow is still in the wound the shaft actually helps to staunch some of the bleeding. That's the reason bow hunters want a through and through shot.
@@heirofaniu People mentioned it other comments but this comes off as "a soldier shot in the head with a helmet has higher concussion rates than those without", which on a surface level is factually correct. The problem is it doesn't really go the one step further and look at what happens to a soldier who is shot in the head without a helmet, because they typically aren't alive to complain about it after. So the helmet saving their life lead to them having a concussion instead of instant death. That's sorta what that entire string of argument is. Armor caused other injuries, but prevented what would've likely been fetal wounds, thus they lived to talk about the more minor injury.
got flashbacks of people telling me, they refused to wear steel-toed boots because if they were crushed, they would lose their toes. not taking in mind, the weight needed to crush the boots, would cut thru normal boots as well as the person's foot.
I had a several hundred pound pallet lowered onto my foot by a forklift driver. This would have, at the very least, broken a couple of toes. I didn't even notice until I tried to walk away and couldn't lift my foot. Needless to say I love my steel toes and wear them a lot for just about any type of work. So even before I watched the Mythbusters obliterate this myth I was already sold on steel toes.
Good teardown, Shad! "You expend twice as much energy to move around" the real culprit here is leg armor, which has a huge effect on endurance, like unsprung weight affects cars. "An armored person would often find themselves fighting someone less exhausted than themselves" Yes that's the tactic of hitting a tired enemy with fresh troops and has nothing to do with armor.
Shad losing his patience throughout this video is...Fun? I've never seen him so mad before...and I understand it this guy is ACTUALLY enraging to watch Seeing people OUTRIGHT ignore even SIMPLE google searches is infuriating
@@dragonfire72 and modern solutions obviously require modern "intelligence" to come up with them. You can tell that medieval people were too stupid to come up with such clever ideas because they're all dead now.
@@briansmith303 exactly I mean it's obvious that the armor shortened their lifespan by a serious amount. I knew this one guy that was 200 years old, and I saw him put an iron chest plate and he turned to *ash* instantly man.
Hilariously the full statement (which Shad skipped over) was that because you would get stabbed in those weak spots, you would “suffer a more painful death” by being stabbed in the eye, groin(?) etc than just being sliced up with no armor. What? I feel like in a combat scenario you’re more concerned about not dying than how painful your death would hypothetically be.
24:00: "You expend twice the amount of energy to move around" .... wait, does this mean that modern day tanks also use more fuel than regular cars? Why does noone tell the military that cars are much more energy efficient?!
As an infantryman, I can vouch for the fact that we wear on average about 40 lb of armor including helmet. And generally our ruck is about 80 lb. And if you're a machine gunner you're carrying another 27 lb plus the ammo and the spare barrel. If you do not have an A Gunner all in all, you can be carrying up to 150 lb on your person as a machine gunner or up to 200 lb if you are a javelin anti-tank specialist
53:30 I remember Lindy doing a video on a similar misinterpretation regarding the WWI British helmet. Oh no, the armor is increasing injuries! Yes, but those recorded injuries used to be recorded as deaths. Politician level semantics.
they're not recorded as deaths just casualties but the problem is casualty just means a soldier taken out of the fight so it can range from stepping on a lego to being blown to bits
@@indeed8211 Pretty sure armies keep track of injuries and deaths separately as well, for a number of reasons. For one, injured people have to be taken care of somewhere, and can sometimes eventually fight, but the dead are just gone. Casualties are just simpler to report as the number of soldiers who have been hurt.
@@indeed8211 a wounded soldier can recover and be returned to the front, or sent home where he can fill into a job supporting the war effort. A dead man can’t do anything at all.
Sort of like those studies of holes in aircraft to figure out where to armor the plane. The counter intuitive solution was to armor the parts where surviving planes did not return with holes in those areas, because holes in those areas meant the plane did not return.
The Battle of Stamford Bridge is literally a tale of how a better fighting force, the Norwegians under Harald Hardrada, were taken by surprise, unable to get their armor on before the battle, and ultimately forced to retreat because the English WERE wearing armor.
""Using Armor increases the risk of concussions" that reminds me of a scene in a parody movie where the villain pulls throwing blades and states: "These blades are made of Titanium, they could cut through diamonds!" to the hero response: "I am not carrying any diamond!"
Actually the quote was "Titanium Blades! They cut through diamonds!" Hero gasps before acting smug "I'm not wearing any diamonds! Villain looks at him like he wonders how smart he is before throwing the blades which stabs into the dude instantly.
I will point out that guns didn’t cause armor to phase out. Armor simply adapted to use different materials. The US infantry wear body armor and a few have been shot at by rifles and survived. They had bruises but if they didn’t wear armor they would be dead. You make great videos, and I look forward to more.
Why modern armour is worse than wearing nothing: It doesn't prevent injury. It will eventually fail if shot enough times. Doesn't protect you from being shot by a tank.
@TH-camUser "Can you believe people used to wear armour that couldn't protect them from tank shells?" "I know, right? Hey, hand me the antimatter cannon..."
It's always funny when people assume they are just smarter than the ones living at the time when they had to deal with the issue. I remember a different video some guy made about a famous trail to the west that American settlers travelled along. He then showed some rock formations that had wagon trails ground into them from being worn down by a lot of traffic. Then he pointed to a flat grass area next to it and said "They could have just went that way" with an attitude of the settlers being complete idiots. Completely unaware of how stupid it made him look return. Anyone who has camped with a lot of people and travelled when it rained will know that the wagons would have ended up stuck in the mud after a couple has crossed the same area. And the area could have been heavily forested back then too. At that point it's easier and more reliable to travel over the rock formations where it's possible and make plans to do exactly that.
So long as the rocks aren't jagged and don't have too steep of an incline, a horse and subsequently the wagon they are dragging along could quite easily go over any kind of 'rock'. The issue with large and expansive rock formations is that there's nothing growing around there, so if horsey gets hungry it's out of luck for the time being.
@@austincummins7712 dont forget that you are more likely to die in close combat in armour, as you'd get taken out by arrows more easily when not wearing any
I recently saw a video from The Welsh Viking about how re-enactment differs from real battle. The injuries people inflicted in war were absolutely brutal, especially if you weren't worth ransom. If your goal is to kill others and hopefully survive yourself there is little room for mercy or finesse. You have a shot you take it. Anything unprotected is a target. Not wearing armor would have been a death wish. Also, people of the past weren't stupid. They understood how to make it functional and tolerable to wear. Not something to do casually, but if it means coming home a little inconvenience is acceptable.
The origins of the word “Cringe” are believed to be from Middle English, around 1175-1225 AD, one example being Crinchen, and originally meant “to fall (in battle)”
So to not wear your armor was literally cringe.
literally dying from cringe
You actually won the entire internet. Here. Take it. And go as far as you can, m'Lord.
Oof this is why i love the net
no armor? cringe
Someone please fact check this, if that's true than I have to congratulate your genius
"Wearing helmet can increase chances of getting a concussion'. They are kinda correct here. It is literally why people in WW1 didn't want to adopt metal helmets. They discovered that units that had metal helmets suffered a lot more head wounds than units that used traditional caps and other headwear. Of course it was soon discovered that the difference was caused by helmet-less units suffering a lot more fatal casualties. So yeah; helmet increases your chances of getting a concussion by reducing the chances of dying on the spot.
Classic example of statistics abuse.
Yup, survivorship bias. Same with planes coming back with bullet holes.
Hmm yes soldier dead means no concussion.
Brilliantly said
Yea the bombers in ww2 suffered the same type of thinking.
They say that all European Warfare was based around plate armor, but not a minute later they say that our perception of them wearing armor was really only because of jousting. Switched sides faster than a politician there. Amazing
Yes! I was thinking the same thing
The Plate Armor used in jousting is much heavier and less flexible than combat plate armor. Combat armor allows for very agile movements. Jousting armor allows almost no movements. The early perceptions of combat armor was fooled by this difference.
Not to mention they then go on to say that an unarmored opponent would not be tired as quickly. But I thought you just said that all European armies were based on full-plated soldiers! So which is it?
@@davidbock6276 I bet nobody would ever have tried to actually fight in jousting armour, either if they had a choice. That was protective gear for jousting, not for fighting. People wouldn't go into a fight to the death with boxing gloves, either.
@@Chaosmech That's the one I noticed. If everyone is wearing plate, who are these less tired less armored opponenets?
As an Englishmen, I am offended by your implication that the English Longbow is not the best weapon of all time. In response, I have launched an arrow in the rough direction of Australia. Your doom will be with you shortly.
can someone confirm if it has landed yet?
@@LeftJoystick it hit my dogs ass, i truly hate the english.
@@LeftJoystick if shad stops uploading we will know
@@LeftJoystick nah still on its way
I'll wait
The English longbow was actually so powerful that it could pierce through and split atoms mid flight, thus causing destruction only previously possible by dropping pommels
Alright, that's some nice concept right there. Is there a name for a mix between cyberpunk and fantasy?
@ArauJo Jhonatan I think what you are referring to would be called Sci-Fi/Fantasy or Science Fantasy
The english longbow could destroy anything, except for the japanese katana.
@@schwarzerritter5724 the new unstoppable force meeting an immovable object, English longbow vs Japanese katana
The most powerful bows even split quantum strings, the archers tied up rich enemies with string bits.
"You could roast alive in the heat" Yeah, that was a common problem back in the day. Fighting a Dragon is tough business, or the mean medieval flame thrower.
I mean they DID have stuff like Greek Fire and crude cannons but you'd still be better off with that hitting a SHELL around you than BARE FLESH.
Perhaps the writers at Weird History only prepare microwaved meals? This would explain why they feel a person "bakes" so quickly they have no time to react?
@@otakon17 Only problem being that it was too expensive to use agains infantry on a regular basis, which is why it was mainly used in naval battles
Ye 'olde Dreagon's Breathe. The bane of the common Knight.
I mean, that is a valid concern if you have to fight in, say, Africa.
"Knights realized that covering up their armor with cloth prevented it from heating up as much. But now they were wearing armor and cloth, which obviously made it heat up more. So they suffered less heat, but at the cost of suffering more heat."
How does this guy manage to contradict himself that often?
It's like saying "You have to cover up in the Sahara to not die from the heat. But as a consequence, you're still hot." Guess it's pointless then lmao.
@@gabepeterson6414 And it's not even as hot as NOT wearing cloth over your armor, so the consequence of the cloth is, in total, still a reduction of heat
Being generous he may have meant that covering up that much whilst it reduced the heat was still far from an ideal solution... But that's giving them a lot more credit than they deserve >
@@nathanjora7627 That's indeed what I was talking about. Should've worded it better. That's my bad. Thanks for your generosity!
@@gabepeterson6414 Rereading, what you said was quite clear, not sure how I missed it, sorry for the double post ^^"
As a retired wound care nurse I can PROMISE you that the one thing that makes wounds worse is not having your head attached to your body anymore
I doubt that. While it is utterly correct that your chances of survival decrease significantly with a severed head (that sort of injury tends to be rather lethal, I‘m told), the other wounds themselves don‘t get worse because of a lack of said body part. In fact, they may be less dangerous, as it‘s unlikely for wounds to cause inflammation to a headless. That doesn‘t really help the beheaded, of course. I‘m just clarifying the use of language.
@@gi0nbecell yeah, I doubt someone witouth a Head would die from any cranial concussion or brain tumors
@@gi0nbecell It seems you are conflating limbs lost in battle to limb ambutation through medical intervention. A limb lost in battle has all the same risks as a wound that doesnt result in amputation, in addition to the fact that person is pretty much guaranteed to bleed out before the wound could be staunched(every appendage has critical arteries that leads to death in minutes if the blood flow isnt stopped immediately). On top of that, if the limb is already severed, its far less likely you could amputate in more controlled circumstances to remove infected tissue, as the infection has less distance to spread before its beyond the point where the remaining limb can be removed.
@@rc5452 I would think that with the head severed, there is no risk of infection of other wounds at all, due to a significant lack of life. That‘s the whole point. Other limbs you‘re correct, but the head being a rather vital part, I doubt that any treatment, in the field or somewhere more secure, could possibly save you.
We'll need a source on that
You'd think the fact that medieval people designed multiple different weapons, and techniques to specifically try and deal with armor would be a testament to how effective it is.
You'd think anyone who isn't total idiot would work out if armor didn't work, it wouldn't be used for very long time in the past. When it comes for life and death, people in the past were not stupid.
You think the fact that we can recreate and test this scientifically with relative ease that people wouldn't still be arguing about this
You'd think that getting hit in the head would hurt a whole lot less with something in the way to block, or soften the blow.
@@aSipOfHemlocktea there have been a lot of false and dishonest tests. Guys cleaving through aluminum breastplate with axe or sword.
@@lightningpenguin8937 You'd think that they would have done the minimum amount of thinking and research when doing their video.
Shad has managed to make wearing gambeson and brigandine look completely mundane and no more unusual than a hoodie. Honestly I wish they sold gambesons in the mall.
Considering what seem to happen in the world with violent crimes on the raise maybe the will.
I use mine as a winter coat on top of a lighter jacket. Does wonders.
Reminds me of the meme what women think men want, and its a picture of a hot women, then what men really want, and it's a suit of plate mail. I'll take the plate any day XD
@@chesterbonaparte6787 What women think men want them to wear: chainmail bikini. What men actually want them to wear: well-tailored, form-complimenting plate armor.
@@TrueMentorGuidingMoonlight you aren't wrong
I agree with everything you said above Shad, the WH video was, well, being polite, just 'over simplified' at best and plain wrong in places.
"Every european army was built around plate armor" and "Plate armor couldn't be used in the battlefield", yeah that's very "over simplified"
@@jeffjeffersonjunior3679 and apparantly nearly all fights in europe were in deserts... You know, I live in europe and I wasn't even aware we have so much dessert here. I always thought I would have to go to Egypt and finally see the dessert, but no. I just have to time travel.
The fact they would all build their armies around heavy armor. And that the armor is supposed to be more dangerous then wearing nothing at all... The wording is kind of... Stupid.
It’s scary to see corporations start their own history channels. These guys are part of a clickbait corporation
@@jackwriter1908 as a person who actually lives in the middle east, i can see why saying plate would be problematic... but its not exactly deadly either... could range from minor inconvenience to mildly annoying depending on the amount of relevant travel resources...
@@crustybomb115 i've worn plate in the blistering heat before, it's not that bad. The armor is sizzling hot on the surface, but underneath the helmet it was absolutely fine.
It's the Gambeson that kill's ya.
Like wearing a winter jacket. You sweat like crazy from that. Without decent hydration thst gets dangerous quick.
Weird history be like:
-nobody has the strength to carry a 25 kg armor
(5 minutes later)
-everybody has the strength and precision to just obliterate a chestplate with a warhammer
I work in a door and window factory. Custom doors and windows can be very heavy. After a few months, everybody there can lift and carry far more than their own bodyweight without great effort, without being fatigued, without even slowing down. And many are "normal guys", not huge and hefty bodybuilders. Functional strength develops naturally when you keep using it.
With a Warhammer 40k
(Please laugh)
@@HexagonThatReallyLikesVinegar a Warhammer total war. Duh. In my field a warhammer deals 1d8 + mods not 40k though
@@pwnmeisteragecarrying bodyweight is easy task for anyone active and not obese. "Functional strength" any bodybuilder can do that without breaking a sweat for hours
My Dive gear weights up to 40-60 kg, depending on what tanks and wether I take stages with me. Now, some of the dive sites I dive at, involve some really long distances walking with your gear on. We sometimes have to even "climb" some really step, bad and old stairs (you know thoses stairs which were carved into a cliff) with the gear. So I could just really laugh at what he said there. Mind you that the things just said are also done by untrained women with a body weight the same as their gear. But a trained Knight isn´t able to carry a 25kg armor which deposes over the whole body and not just on 2 straps on the shoulders??!!
Anyone who could afford armour, wore one in battle. That alone means the benefits far outweight the drawbacks
Avoiding heaven and killing god´s children is a drawback for sure ;)
@@PROVOCATEURSK
???
@@executeorder6613 I think it's just weird bait.
@@PROVOCATEURSK The armour prevents that, swords and spears do that easily though.
Once you wear a good set of armor you'll really understand why (granted common sense gives you enough of an idea). They feel so protective. Especially when you think about how vulnerable you'd be without it.
Also: "You could get stabbed between the plates" - how is that WORSE than being unarmoured? If I'm not wearing armour, I could get stabbed everywhere I could get stabbed if I were wearing armour, plus all the places where the plate would be in the way!
Wasn't there stuff between the plates too?
@@Nobert594 yeah, if you were wearing gambeso or chainmail under it. That said it still possible to stab through that if you use something like a stiletto.
Like using a car seatbelt is somehow more dangerous than crashing without using it
I also like: "lances and arrow can pierce armor" as if being unarmored would somehow improve the match up
Because without "hundreds of pounds" of armor you could easily dodge, silly!
I truly have no idea where these people get their information to get to conclussions like that.
50:30
It is statisticaly true!
In the army, head injuries became much more common after the use of helmets
Because without a helmet, it wouldn't be an injury, you'd just die!
There's the history of the British soldiers in WW1, when they got their caps switched out for steel helmets. And the military leaders first thought, "do our men become reckless because of these helmets?" But NO, it was exactly as you say!
its called survivor's Bias. WW1 Helmets and WW2 Bomber damage are good and well known examples of this effect.
In Germany there is an old joke, that for motorcycle riders a knitted winter cap (?)/ Pudelmütze is safer than a motorcycle helmet! A scientist took two warermelons , fiitted one with a motorcycle helmet, the other with a knitted winter cap and threw both melons down from a tower. The helmet broke, but not the melon inside. The knitted cap didn' t break, but the melon inside. So a knitted cap is much more difficult to destroy and must be clearly safer.
It's the age old Sherman Tank shit talking. Why were there so many complaints about it? Because you can only shit talk the vehicle if you make it out of the burning wreck, which a lot of Russian and German Tank crews unfortunately did not, hence why the false bias that Shermans are inferior because there are more complaints about it.
Source: The Chieftain on M4 Shermans.
The real mistake is not counting injuries that lead to death.
"A helmet could impair your vision."
Well, getting stabbed in the face would impair my vision even worse so I think I'll stick with the helmet.
Hahahahahahahaha yeah and it "restricts head movement, i think i could move my head in a helmet a lot better than if it was detached from my body.
@@TheDennys21 I disagree, once detached for the body i think the head has a greatly increased freedom of movement (just it is uncontrollable movement at that point)
"A helmet interferes with my psychic abilities"
"Think a bullet might interfere with them more"
I'm always a bit tickled at people saying "you can just stab the vulnerable spots!" Well, yes, but I'd rather have a handful of vulnerable spots than a long and varied list, given the option.
Idiots dont have any idea how hard it is to target small areas on a moving person. Especially if he has a shield, good lord, i did some hema spars for fun and everyone hated the dude who got a shield. Virtuality nothing you can do to him one on one.
@@stoyanb.1668 Stick doesn't care. BONK
Also, consider the following:
Parry this, you fucking casual
It's like saying, "vampires will die if you stake them in the heart," and paint that up as some kind of crippling vulnerability. Yes, but normal people will die if you stake them in the heart or many other places.
@@stoyanb.1668 not only are they moving, but consciously protecting the vulnerable spots they have because they know their own vulnerable spots better than you do.
So if I’m to understand this logic:
a welding mask is hard to see through, restricts head movement, can potentially break from use… and therefore is worse than just welding with the naked eye
That’s what he’s saying.
Do what the pros do.
Remove the mask and weld holding the glass/lenses of the mask instead (wish it was a joke)
@@JonatasAdoM oh oh oooooh. The pros use the glas like a monocel.
@@chreg89 it can help to get tough spots. Preferred using a mirror myself
Ah the Freddy Krueger approach
"Helmets make it more likely to get concussion and internal bleeding" this statement is absolutely correct! Without the helmet you're not going to worry about getting concussed and you're definitely not going to be bleeding anymore. Never again will you be subject to these sorts of injuries.
Yes, you get it Douglas! Being struck in the head while wearing a helmet is far more likely to result in a concussion and internal bleeding.
On the other hand, being struck in the head without a helmet is far more likely to result in EXTERNAL bleeding, a broken neck, or a caved in skull.
Nobody understands Weird History. They're correct.... from a certain point of view! Hahaha!
There's a statistics story told about the allies issuing better helmets in WW1. They were surprised at first to see the number of head injuries increase instead of decrease. But then realized that was because people getting shot in the head with the helmets were being injured instead of killed.
@@brysonoakley1028 The same thing happened for World War 2 US bombers. They found planes constantly returned with damage to certain parts, and realized they should reenforce the parts that were never damaged because planes with damage in those areas don't come back.
Survivorship bias at it’s finest…
@@brysonoakley1028 Somewhat true but it had more to do with the helmets of ww1 protecting against debris from artillery fire, gunshots to those helmets were still deadly.
It's crazy how much Weird History discounts the training of a knight. Training generally began around the age of 7 as a page. When you weren't performing tasks for your knight you were learning to fight. These weren't people who decided to start wearing armor in adulthood, they trained most of their life to be the best killing machine they could be.
Exactly, and a lot of people think full plated knights were just slow turtles because of the weight of the armor which is also extremely incorrect, they've been conditioned and trained for years and could hold a full sprint while fully kitted up.
@@Memnon45 Yes there is an old video somewhere on youtube. Showing some guy dressed in full plated suit of armour running and doing rolls on the ground. It showed him laying on his back and getting to his feet with as much as effort as if he was wearing none.
@@Memnon45
Being some rando Levy and getting face-to-face with a Knight is probably the most terrifying thing that could possibly occur.
Unless you and 10 others dogpile him with daggers, he's gonna have fun absolutely curb-stomping you.
@@Memnon45Yeah, and as I understand it a full suit of plate armor weighs not a whole lot. I don't know for sure, but it seems like it would be way lighter than mail.
@@mage1439 well think of it this way with modern day standard infantry. The body armor plus ammunition and supplies are roughly 25 kg in weight. They're able to function days on end, wether it's training or during operation, with limited sleep and are able to carry another injured soldier. If the modern soldier, with their current equipment, can achieve what they do now, then it's no question what trained soldiers could achieve in medieval periods.
"You could get stabbed between the plates."
so, instead of just stabbing me in the chest, my enemy has to take a moment to find a weakspot, the armpit for example, then maneuver himself into a position where he could strike that spot, possible exposing himself, and even when he strikes the armpit, he might simple glance off of the mail there?
Absolutely terrible, I don't see any advantage over a simple gambeson.
My prediction for next video: Shields were useless
@@spugelo359 40 minute video on “why horses were a disadvantage on the battlefield”
If every spot is equally weak, you have no weak spots. Checkmate armortheists!
... All the while dealing with the many variables of combat, like trying not to get shanked by a spear from the enemy, or the enemy's many comrades all of whom would be happy to simplify the situation for you.
To wit, the humble tree-based cudgel was apparently a sufficient crushing weapon if used properly - and then comes the knife-point conclusion.
And then of course, theres the fact that no armor makes it extremely easy to get wounded, even if you survive. Wounds on a battlefield in that era are definitely not a good thing.
“You could get stabbed in between the plates” that’s like looking at a modern day plate carrier and saying “well they can still shoot you in the arms and legs, so it’s completely pointless.”
Well.. it's easy to stick a blade between plates.. IF the target is immobile, but rarily your foes in a battlefield were immobile and just standing still. It's like having bigger goalkeepers.
And even if they *are* standing still, if there's chain mail protecting those gaps, I imagine* piercing it would require one to generate quite a bit of force while still maintaining precision.
*Admittedly, my only experience with anything even remotely like that is splitting wood with an axe. Not quite the same thing, but I can tell you it is freaking hard to balance power and accuracy.
"You could get stabbed in between the plates." As opposed to getting stabbed literally anywhere if you dont have the plates.
"This shield is only useful from the front" or "This tank has gaps to look out of which you can shoot in"
Reminds me of the anti-border wall argument of "but they can get around the wall so it's pointless!"
One misconception that always triggers me is when people act like medieval people were stupid. They had brains, guys, they could think and have common sense, they wouldn't insist on doing something that doesn't work, they would look for alternatives if that was the case. They. Had. Brains
Yeah, people tend to equate education with intelligence. You generally don't make that mistake if you have either.
This is just fake news invented by the Renaissance men and spreaded by illuminism. MAKE MEDIEVAL PEOPLE SMART AGAIN! THEY HAD FUNCTIONING BRAINS!
There is a term for this
Chronological Snobbery
Right. Humans haven't really changed that much in the past few thousand years.
People in the medieval period were probably as intelligent on average as anyone in the world right now. The only difference would be education and access to information.
Their individual knowledge base was just smaller than ours. I think the issue is that today people tend to equate intelligence with knowledge
@@fnors2 You can bet that in 300 years, people will look at us and say the same thing that's said about medieval folk.
I know one indisputable, very specific reason why wearing armour, even modern armour, is worse than just running around naked. Because if your wearing armour, you are more likely to be in combat, which is inherently less safe than running around naked.
That's what Blackadder should have done instead of sticking things into his nose to avoid combat.
Unless you're in a briar patch in snake country..... Nature's counter to the naked man
Genius
It's safer to wear a fake armor costume, because you're less likely to die in battle and more likely to get Halloween candy
Brilliant. 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻🧠🧠
Re: the heat problem. Tanks fighting in the desert were like ovens. You could actually fry eggs on the fenders.
Funny... none of the tankers seem to have been inclined to abandon them(while still operational) to fight on foot.
Heat can be a problem. Look at the Battle of Sempach. Despite the legend of Arnold von Winkelried, many modern historians believe the turning point in the battle came from the exhaustion of the knights after fighting all day in the heat in heavy armor against their relatively unarmored Swiss opponents. The take away, though, isn't that armor is bad. It is that equipment that has evolved to be used in one circumstance-fighting on horseback-doesn't always make the best transition when used in another. The knights also cut the tips off their poulaines because they weren't suited for walking.
Because most tanks were actually designed to deal with that issue and if not the military always finds a good compromise similar to the surcoats mentioned in the video. The US M1128 MGS for example didn't have air conditioning when first built and was sent to Afganistan so they issued cooling vests to the crew until they could fit A/C to the vehicles.
Why access to a water source was so important in those regions. battle of Hattin wonderful example when you lack that.
funny thing, i was a navy navigator in the speed armada (? i think thats the word) from germany, i had a tour in djibouti. that is 20 years ago and we fried eggs on top of the ship down there. yeah not the same thing like a tank in ww2, because we actualy have an ac, but just to confirm this.
that stuff gets realy hot in the sun, but even without the ac, you would sweat some more, but its not like you would die inside the ship. or how do they think medieval sailors worked in the ship in this heat?
@@senditu3073 Well those ships were made of wood so the issue was the wood sweltering.
"Plated armor made a soldier close to invincible"
"But wearing nothing was better"
We have the receipt, no armor=invincibility
(Excited Sundowner noises)
Somebody tell Mando, the dude really needs to know.
The logic checks out:
- Nothing is better than being near-invincible.
- Wearing armor is equivalent to being near-invincible.
- Therefore, wearing armor is worse than nothing.
* vindicated Conan noises *
All you need is oiled muscles, then sword and axe blows just slide off you.
There's no armor like plot armor
I love how Shad is not alone in the shock and criticisms, because even the "cameraman" _(or the person speaking off-screen)_ is so *shocked* at what he hears from Weird History's video that he actually joins on the conversation with our guy! AND HE'S GOT GREAT POINTS TOO! XD
Yes, Oz (person off-screen) is also great guy. There is much more of him on Shad's second channel Knights Watch.
Oz is the best
he's name is Oz. And he is fat.
Very cool dude though. He would be featured more on main channel if he could fit the frame more often
@@miqvPL lol
@@miqvPL lmao
I love the idea that "There were weak points in the armor, so you may as well not wear it". As though those weak points didn't exist if you weren't wearing armor. Like, if you're not wearing armor, you can still get stabbed in your joints and eyes, but now you can also get stabbed in your arms, legs, and torso, which are much easier targets to hit and your opponent doesn't have to try to grapple you to the ground to have a chance to hit you there.
It's like saying modern armies shouldn't use armored vehicles because the enemy might have rocket launchers. Planes are obsolete because of anti aircraft missiles. Modern infantrymen wear armour that can weigh up to 15kg, yet only protects parts of their torso and head, and it slows them down. Wearing no armour makes it easier for soldiers to dodge bullets.
God, it's been a long time since I've seen something as dumb as that Weird History video.
There is no weak point if you're an entire weak point.
"Helmets can cause a concussion"
Yes. The difference is that without a helmet, getting hit in the face with a crossbow bolt or an axe does a lot more than give you a concussion.
Concussions are obviously worse than death
A splitting headache
@@overlorddante See you'd only suffer death in very brief period of time, whereas a concussion can last a long while so its worse.
@@ChocorocK but death is for ever whereas you will get better from concussion
You won't have a concussion, just a cool little air vent for your pineal gland
These response videos are definitely necessary to avoid further misinformation in the medieval community, and I appreciate them greatly. 👍
I often wish there was a fact check algorithm that prevented upload of videos with P.R.A.T.T. (point refuted a thousand times) desinformation unless they were provided with a disclaimer watermark all over the vid...
Medieval community? 🙃
@@SonsOfLorgar NOPE!
Its a good idea but such a system would be biased and can be abused as a system for censorship. The fact check would be a tool to censor any video that does not support YT's political motives...
@@fallencrusader2975 Agreed. As much as we sometimes feel like it, implementing something like that in practice would be a very bad idea.
@@SonsOfLorgar We used to be able to see the thumbs-down vote count...
Apparently Weird History thinks real life is somehow like Dark Souls where it's better to run around naked to maximize how easy it is to dodge and abuse invincibility frames, lol.
I'm always doing dodge rolls when practicing longsword, I phase right through the blades
which is itself an irrelevant technique on new game+
Absolutely correct. They seem to be unaware or outright ignoring the fact that in reality fighting naked only provides half as many i-frames as in Dark Souls and thus was not a viable build.
Dark Souls armour was better than nothing thanks primarily to poise. It was only in the following games that it lost its edge. Still they did slowly bring it back around to having its uses.
Still this video was really silly.
The ancient, sacred technique IS extremely powerful though th-cam.com/video/4gAxcGkAY2I/w-d-xo.html
Todd over at Todd's workshop did a video on shooting through armor. He got someone strong enough to shoot a legitimate Longbow, and then had them shoot at a properly constructed breastplate. Zero penetration. Also, if armor made it easier to die, especially during the hundred years war, all of one side would have realized "wait a minute, the more armor they are wearing, the easier they are to kill. Maybe we should stop wearing it ourselves?' Instead, there was a race to see who could strap the most armor on themselves. This doesn't even pass the common sense test
breast plate?
I love how their video is so illogical you literally can counter it all with "why the hell were they still wearing armor then???". This is life and death situation we're talking about here, if our ancestors were so stupid they literally spent their own money to make themselves die easier on a bloody battlefield, humanity would have already extincted
It's even in the base principle of nature. If it doesn't work then it's not really used. You don't see sharks in the desert sand for a reason.
@@lightningpenguin8937 and also why sharks are older than trees
As we've seen many times, when some historical weapon/artifact doesnt work its appearances are hard to find in records/art/legends, like the "Gunsword" for example, yet medieval art is full of fully armored soldiers, we have historical records of fights while wearing armor, to say that it didnt work or that it was "more dangerous than its worth" its just nonsensical
Have....Have you ever actually been on the internet before? I am pretty sure if you gave weird history metal armor, told them to march across the desert they would put it on, and never take it off as they, and I quote (from themselves) "literally baked in it". Just saying. Humanity is kinda an oddity to have survived itself.
"While wearing armour, you can only get stabbed in a few very painful places. Therefore it is better to wear no armour at all, so you can get stabbed in all the places, including the less painful ones."
Flawless logic.
And of course, you should not wear anything under your armor to prevent these stabings like mail or gambeson :p
Real Men fight bollock naked, slathered in war-paint, after killing a goat in holy ritual to earn the blessings of the gods.
You pansies with your "armour" and "sensible tactics" need to get on my level.
@@tbotalpha8133 Yeah mate, that's what manly men do. Especially the goat part.
@@tbotalpha8133 *_Top 5 reasons why the ancient Celts got their asses beat,_* and even then they used LARGE SHIELDS! XD Even without armor, they still acknowledge *_some_* importance of protection.
Why would you want internal bleeding when you can have external bleeding? Or look for your leg in the bushes?
Now to be fair Shad, the half helmet seen in the last duel was actually invented to address a very specific issue with traditional helmets - in a traditional helmet it’s much harder to see that Matt Damon is wearing it, and so by simply removing a large portion of the face guard it’s much easier for everyone to see that it is, indeed, Matt Damon.
Maaaaatt DaEmOn !
*Gets stabbed in the eye*
Wouldn't that also likely result in removing a large portion of the face? The bloody remains wouldn't be recognizably Matt Damon. ;)
The infamous Judge "Sly" Dredd syndrome...
You had me in the first half 🤣
Same with clinches in sword fights. Its an easy way to put Matt Damon and his adversaries faces in frame and have them exchange a few words for extra drama.
I'm actually kinda devistated to learn that armor was only 45-50 lbs. I used to think knights were just hulks that ran and jumped and climbed everywhere in 150 lb. armor.
well another point of consideration is that some armor is fited by size. a small man likely wouldn't wear the exact same size mail shirt as a larger man. and full plate armor had to be fitted to the individual, so a smaller persons armor would weigh a little less by comparison to a larger persons.
so an excessively tall man, with broad shoulders and a big chest would have much heavier armor than the average person. not sure if it would get up to 100 pounds though.
if you've ever played football in America honestly armor isn't that hard to move around in. Just a few steps up.
That's roughly the same weight as an olympic bar. Which beginners use to practice squatting.
@@Griede26 and then came time of Italian wars, when regular armies trained together fitting soldiers to pre-made cuirasses by the way.
Their basically like modern troops in mobility but better balance due to weight being distributed across the body instead of being centered on the back.
Also loving the implication that medieval battles were mostly fought in scorching hot deserts. Ah, yes, the famous desert region of central Europe, land of sands.
And yeah, as a motorcyclist I will carefully avoid wearing my helmet or my leathers next time I'm on the road, as they might increase the chance of concussion and internal bleeding
the south of France and Spain do get pretty balmy in the summer
England, well known for its lack of rain and cool fog.
Ah yes.
Scotland is well known for having vast dunes and scorching sand as far as the eye can see.
LoL right? I hear this all the time from table top enthusiasts. Like... yeah. If I were to wear everything that I wear when I'm fighting but, in 90 degree weather for several hours, it definitely wouldn't end well for me. So it's a good thing that I don't live in Florida. Also, in sunny, arid climates covering up is how you avoid heat stroke. Not the other way around. Tons of ancient, desert based armies dressed their soldiers in full armor and they did just fine. :)
I'm reminded of that episode of Mythbusters where there was a myth that steel toed shoes could cut off your toes and be worse then not wearing them.
If I remember right they found that not only did it not work, any blow strong enough to cave in the steel will destroy your foot anyways.
Yep Mythbusters tends with some myths the level of force needed to make that possible would at the minimum be lethal. Like knocking your socks off. The level of force they used to actually do that was enough to send shockwaves that damaged a nearby town.
What, the device designed for protecting feet actually protects feet?
@@na3044 Right? Like they're saying that steel, of all things, is a stronger material than mostly skin and fragmented bones! What a load of bull.
Hell, I actually thought of that as a kid, but then I said to myself "But wait, if it's heavy enough to flatten the steel, then it would crush your foot anyhow", which probably says a lot when a 9 year old could figure that out.
@@yocapo32 many of the people who perpetuated the myth aren't exactly the sharpest tools in the shed(I have even run into a couple of people who still do)
Ya know, this reminds me about Abraham Wald's discovery involving airplane design back in WWII. See, when airplanes returned from battle, they were, of course, examined. Engineers and mathematicians noticed an increased percentage of bullet holes in certain parts of the planes, particularly in the fuselage, and had the brilliant idea that concentrating armor on those spots would allow for greater efficiency in airplane design while simultaneously providing more protection. Of course, you would want to protect from the most damage possible with the smallest amount of expended material, but Wald realized what Weird History seemed to miss: the bullet holes on the returning planes were indicative of survivable damage, not the kind of damage they should be devoting their material to preventing. A plane sporting a fatal injury would obviously not be coming back, so the armor should go where the surviving planes WEREN'T hit, not where the bullets could make contact while still resulting in an operable aircraft.
Yes, of course, people in armor probably suffered far more head injuries than the unarmored solider, and they suffered far more wounds caused by the caving of armor too, but that is because the ones who didn't have the armor didn't live to complain about it. What seemingly looks like a largely negative thing on the surface is revealed to be highly advantageous by considering the bigger picture.
When soldiers were issued metal helmets in WW1 reports of head injuries skyrocketed. Not because the helmets made injuries worse, but because soldiers were surviving otherwise fatal head injuries. Deaths were being converted to injuries.
Also why there were a massive number of amputees out of Vietnam. Before, they would have all just been dead.
I was thinking the exact same thing and was about to comment this myself, especially that last bit.
Intelligently explaining a moronic argument. We need more people like you in this world my friend.
for those curious, the phenomenon is called "Survivorship Bias".
I like how knights were strong enough to cave in armor no problem, but not strong enough to wear it without dying instantly from exhaustion.
Another thing to add to " just hit the weakspot in the armor ": Theres still the dude inside the armor, who's actively trying to kill you, that you'll have to get around first. I'ts not like he's gonna wait for you to stab him
The whole movie just needs a great big "lacking context" warning across the whole thing. Because they've removed all context to make their claims on just about everything.
Wait, Assassins Creed is not real?
Also a gambeson.
“All modern armies are built around the armored vehicle, but being inside of these metal boxes is more dangerous than fighting on the outside. While they do provide increased protection from the front, the enemy needs only to shoot you from behind to nullify that protection.”
@@pretzelbomb6105 Shooting from Behind is not true for all armored Vehicles. Though it was a notable weakspot in many tanks.
Your also using the same incorrect fallacy that Shad was debunking. Your stripping away context and critical thinking to say it was more deadly to ride in such a vehicle. But the reality is that it is far safer most of the time and actually takes particular kinds of threats to penetrate many of them. Which means your far less likely to suffer injury than you are outside of the vehicle.
As a (modern) soldier, I can confirm that those who don't believe that a person could wear a 50lb suit of armor and still be effective in combat grossly underestimate the physical capabilities of the average human body. There were many times we received new soldiers who did no athletic activities at all before joining the Army, were below average in all areas of physical fitness, and somehow just barely scraped through basic training. In most of those cases, within about a year or so of regular physical fitness training, those same soldiers were able to run around in full combat equipment, sometimes weighing up to 100lb/45kg (body armor, rucksack, ammunition, food/water, etc.), like the rest of us. This makes me very certain that a medieval European knight, trained from childhood to be physically fit for combat, would be perfectly capable of fighting in armor.
Also, I can't tell you how many times we would have LOVED to have all that weight evenly distributed across our bodies like a suit of armor.
I weighed myself before going on patrol one time. I was about 240. Then I put on all my armor, weapons, and equipment. I was about 310. You get so used to it though, the weight feels normal, almost comforting.
The thing is back in those days the armor is made to be distributed as your not carrying the supplies you need it's the horse or caravan transport
Yep, Im not a big guy, but when I joined the Army, I was amazed that many of the smaller guys (5"7' ish) and 150lbs on average had more endurance and could carry just as much weight as the bigger guys. I also always pointed out...I was a smaller target.
People with that belief have also never had a well engineered pack. Their experience is solely with floppy, loose school bags. Pulling weight closer to ones center of gravity makes things much easier to carry.
I've seen clips of a probably 120-130 pound tall but super skinny and half starved Syrian soldier wearing maybe 60 pounds of gear and carrying a rifle, if a person can carry half their bodyweight while being malnourished then anyone saying a well exercising soldier can't possibly carry all that all the time they don't understand anything about anything
"Wearing a helmet can increase your chances of getting a concussion" This is like when in ww1 people started to get more head injuries after introducing metal helmets to troops.
For those that don't get it, the people getting injured used to die.
Did someone really say this, lol.
Because that's completely insane. Helmets've been protecting from concussion for a long time now, sometimes more, sometimes less efficiently.
Someone needs to show him Battle of Nations, or any other heavy contact fighting.
No matter what do you think about it's accuracy or whatever, it's certain that without those helmets, dudes' brains would be a pulp after getting hit with a halberd.
Likewise, armor could probably increase your chances of getting a concussion by making you less likely to be killed by stabbing or slashing weapons, and the longer you’re alive and fighting, the more chances you have to be hit with concussive force.
Pretty sure that's a form of Survivorship bias
@@strefs7939 Deaths from head injuries went down, head injuries went up.
I saw a logic video of a teacher explaining something similar but with planes in ww2. They would analyze the planes to see where they got hit and every plane that came back had like 90% of the damage to the wings. So does that mean the wings are all that get hit? No, obviously, it means that the planes that got hit in the body didn't make it back to base.
As someone who plays a lot of games...
someone needs to tell these weird history guys that life isn't a video game. They're suffering from some serious "video game logic" syndrome.
That reminded me a few years back when a guy made a video on viking and portraid them as walmart’s raiders that are complelty inept on the battle field with weapons made of scrap. His main source of info was For Honnor.
You don't imagine how many times I told the people about that (also, ancient life wans't a film. They had lives and problems!)
I like playing videogames, but I can differenciate about real life and fiction. I read people that still thinking to recover Byzantium (of course, I suppose that most of them, never fought a war, and they didn't suffer about everything that happens in war), or that Romans were a very respectfull society without religions and fanatism, except that the ruins that was left, they were Lares (places in home to pray the gods) and the Emperor was the Pontifus Maximus, the religious leader (and that until the roman Paganism fall). Yep, sure, for the same "thinking", the Vatican City, it's not a Religious State and the Pope it's not Christian😅😅
You do realize that they’re referring to Constantinople which was founded by Constantine the great, the first Christian Roman emperor. If your going to insult other for supposedly not knowing history, first you may want to learn history…
"Longbows were more powerful and had greater range" - Okay, guys, who let the RuneScape player in?
I'd argue this was even worse than video game logic. I can't think of a single game featuring a mechanic that makes you take MORE damage from blunt attacks while wearing armor. That and the "it could LITERALLY cook you alive!" parts are truly baffling.
"All armies were based around knights in full plate armor by the 15th century"
"We associate knights with armor because of specialized jousting armor used in the 16th century"
..... wha.... what? So all armies consisted almost entirely of fully armored knights in the 15th century, but also fully armored knights weren't all that common, and only to be found in 16th century jousting?
15th century is around the time where armies began shifting away from relying on knights so much and towards professional commoner soldiers, mostly paid mercenaries.
To be fair, "based around" is a separate concept from "consisted almost entirely of". WW2 Nazi Blitzkrieg tactics were "based around" armoured spearheads, led by mobile tanks and half-tracks - but the majority of the Wehrmacht were still infantry, artillery, unarmored trucks and horse-drawn carriages.
@@roadent217 That wasn't a nitpick at you, btw, you are entirely correct.
Especially as we head towards the 15th century, we see an increasing prevalence of the so-called "men-at-arms"; soldiers who fought mounted, in armor and with weapons befitting a knight, yet who weren't nobles, as the economic growth allowed non-nobles to amass enough wealth to properly outfit themselves for war.
As soon as I saw Weird History's video, I thought: "Shad is for sure going to have a field day with this." Lol
Same XD
Has wired history heard of turbans? Pondered why people in the desert cover as much up as possible
Same! I saw the thumbnail and was like, "oh, oh no" lol
That channel is cringe for history enjoyers
Same here, I'm subbed to them and I was thinking to myself "PLEASE let Shad destroy them for this video"
"Heavy armor caused more problems than it solved on the battlefield."
It's heavy, expensive, restricts your vision and movement, makes you sweat more, makes you tired faster. At least 6 problems.
You don't die. Only 1 problem solved.
Yep, causes more problems than it solved. Logic checks out.
If you're dead you cannot sweat so problem solved indeed :P Therefore not wearing armour is better than any deodorant.
Eh, quantifying pros and cons is always wonky. It depends on how you formulate things.
You can say "you dont die" and thats one pro.
You can also say "you wont get stabbed, you wont get slashed, you wont get bludgeoned, you wont get shot" and you can count that as four pros.
It doesn't really restrict you that much, and it's not actually that heavy, so even then i would count out 2 of those.
So THAT's why the US military stopped issuing tac vests and helmets to its soldiers seeing as those things weigh almost the same and are for the most part less effective against contemporary weapons than plate was in its day...
@@theblackbaron4119 Although, as the name deODORant shows, the winner would be the less smelly option, in which case the sweaty guy in armor has one over the fellow who's putrefying free in the wind, not to mention if the armored guy also wears deodorant.
"Expending twice as much energy": The History Channels Deadliest Warrior series covered this on their Jeanne D'Arc (Joan of Arc) episode. A well fitted suit of armor hindered the warrior wearing, it very little, which most knights had their armor tailor made to fit them or when inherited, would have it tailored to fit them. The problem from this came when wearing a suit of armor not made from the wearer. To demonstrate it, they took a World Class gymnast, put her in a suit of full plate made to fit here, and she went through her usual gymnastic routines with very little hinderance. It not only did not bind on here, but when the armor pieces fit annd are attached properly, it was virtually weightless as compared to trying to carry the armor around in your arms. I am a medieval reenactor, who used to fight in heavy armor (Although I made mine out of cuir bouilli [boiled Leather], which works great against the blunted weapons we used). A lot of the newer fighters would immedietly strip out of their armor when the fighting was done, but I quickly learned it was a lot easier to wear my armor back to my camp site and strip there, than stip it at the field, and have to carry it back to my camp site.
After being away from medieval reenacting and fighting for some 25 yrs I'm restarting. Taking off armor on the battlefield sounds horrible to do.
If it fits well and in decent heath a person should be able to make it back to camp unless there is health concerns. At first I joked about exercising
In armor but then found they actually did . I guess I'm going to wear some of it around to get used to weight and make it fit well . I remember army training about every week or so they would load us with another thing to carry. I'm working at getting it all together..
"A hammer strike could bend the plate enough to break bones"
Yeah, and imagine what that hammer strike would've done WITHOUT the plate.
Getting shot while wearing body armor hurts. It can send you to the ground and leave bruising. Guess what happens if you don't wear it?
The plate can also glance the blow reducing the force of impact which is better than taking direct hit
The bullet bounces off harmlessly, right?
@@zterrans depends on the angle of the shot vs the armor, the range and which the firearm is discharged, the size of the firearm itself (pistol vs musket), etc. It could, but I wouldn’t want to bet my life on it
@@zterrans Yeah obviously. It's common knowledge that armor is worse than no armor, after all.
It's not like power rangers were they make regular weapons not work.
The whole "wearing armor could increase your chances of a concussion" is actually something the british noticed during WW1: after equipping the soldiers with helmets, they noticed a significant rise in the amount of soldiers that were hospitalized. This wasn't because the helmets were bad - instead, the people who were now getting only hospitalized would have instead ended up *dead*.
Survivor's Bias. Same for airplane damage profiles .. i think that was the British as well.
@@18947ful If I remember correctly it might have been americans.
@@ravenwarjoy could be. I am not sure :)
The same thing's happening even now. Combine that with advances in medicine and surgery, and people survive who would otherwise have died. That's why traumatic brain injuries are so common.
Shad, love you, but you actually did make a mistake. Wearing armor actually did increase the chance of internal bleeding, because any such hit without the armor would simply rip the body open, and therefore the bleeding wouldn't be internal anymore. 😁
All my bleeding is internal. That's where the blood is supposed to be
You are technically correct. The best kind of correct.
I said the same thing without reading the comments first, sry
*You had me in the first half, not gonna lie.*
Nonsense! A bruise doesn't match the term "internal bleeding". And plate body armor protects you even in the case being run over by a horse. Only sharp weapons make massive external bleeding, armor protects you from severe blunt trauma, too.
"Wearing armor could make a wound worse." Its the excuse a shocking number of people give to explain why they don't wear steel or composite toe boots. If it hits hard enough to fold the steel into you it would've annihilated your toes anyways!
Actual list of ways that medieval armor was more dangerous than wearing nothing:
1. If you're trying to swim and not drown.
2. If you're trying to be sneaky and not make noise and get caught.
3. Maybe if it's a hot day when you don't actually need the protection and so you're just getting heatstroke.
That's pretty much it.
So... Armor can be bad under... Hyper specifically certain situations... I'm never using armor again!!!!!!!
If the armor is designed for the user, chances are they may have added leather and cloth into the joints to heavily dampen the sounds. So 2 isnt 'always' and issue
The iron also interferes with fairy magic and whatnot.
4. Battles during thunderstorms😎
I would like to see the first claim here tested. I think I would be able to swim with 20-25 kilos extra, especially if the weight was evenly distributed.
I was working as a volunteer at a small zoo once, along with a zookeeper student. At one point we had some logs that needed cutting, so he went and got a chainsaw while I looked for safety equipment for him. There was no helmet and visor to be found, but I found a pair of earmuffs and safety glasses. When I brought it to him he refused the glasses, stating it was inadequate protection. But surely lesser protection was better than none right? Nope, he brought up the argument that if something hit those glasse hard enough to penetrate, then it would actually accelerate upon impact and cause even more damage. And of course he knew better because he'd had a 2 day chainsaw crash course.
Back when I then became a professional lumberjack, I really wished I would have saved his number so I could call him and tell him how full of shite he was.
Yeah, because when ANY projectile hits an obstacle, it accelerates...
Regular glasses can shatter with a strong impact, which isn't fun, but safety glasses are entirely designed to not do that.
@@patrickkenyon2326 Some people are destined for Darwin Awards.
Yes I'm sure the designers of SAFETY glasses didn't think of that ^^
Accelerate upon impact? Someone needs to tell those wood chips to stop defying the laws of physics lol
Hey shad something i remember from my statistics class was a discussion on why correlation does not equal causation. We were given the example that after issuing helmets to soldiers in WWI there was a spike in recorded head injuries. They almost decided to take the helmets away before some one pointed out there was a corresponding drop in the number of fatalities. Essentially all these new injuries came about because without the helmets the soldiers would have simply died. So yes wearing a helmet does increase your chance or head injury at the cost of lowering your chance of death.😉
The same as the old Grumman aircraft legend:
In Ww2, aircraft designers would take the bullet spread across a damaged plane and design planes to be stronger in the damaged parts. Grumman allegedly realized that they should instead reinforce all the *un*-damaged parts because the planes that took damage there never made it back.
(the story is often attributed to various people, and was definitely was not first discovered by Grumman, but that's the version I remember off the top of my head)
@@kluevo I believe it was Abraham Wald, a Hungarian Jew who fled to America and thankfully pointed this mistake out. It really is very simple but at the same time one of those problems where you have to be able to not over complicate it at the same time. Many times I have had complex and advanced solutions to very easy problems which were kindly pointed out to me with minimal mockery after :D
I came here to say this.
@Badatallthis Stuff it’s a common enough mistake that it has a name. It’s called Survivor bias.
Another good story, im not sure how real it is but it can be spun as a riddle, is the story of war helmets. A commander of an army decided to switch from having cloth hats to having bullet-resistant helmets and soon after the number of soldiers hospitalized increased dramatically. The commander asks why and the answer is just that the soldiers that are getting shot are surviving with wounds instead of just outright dying.
I can't wait for Weird History's next video: Guns can jam! Throwing shit is easy, so rocks are better than guns!
Seriously though, Shad must be getting tired of having to reply to videos such as this one.
Fr💀💀💀
Metatron is having an equally hard time reacting to these
When talking about cavalry charges, they seemed to leave out one of the biggest reasons for them, morale. It's really not easy to stand still in formation when dozens of warhorses are charging straight at you. An undisciplined soldier will want to follow his body's natural urge to turn tail and flee, while a disciplined soldier will know that he's actually far safer staying in formation and bracing for the charge. Getting your enemy to break ranks could lead to victory in that part of the battle, and potentially turn the tide of battle entirely.
An example of staying in formation vs. breaking formation making the difference is the battle of Hastings. Initially the English shield wall turned back the Norman cavalry because the men were battle hardened and stayed in the formation, however when the Normans began to retreat they broke ranks in order to give chase and were subsequently defeated.
"Hold your weapon, hold the line". That is how you react to cavalry charge.
Most people with a time machine: something something Hitler.
Me with time machine: don't break formation to chase the retreating Normans.
I've actually seen the difference as close as you can these days: mounted police charging into groups of protesters to break them up. It's scary as fuck and most groups will break into a panic. But I've also seen groups with more determination stay their line, bunch up and turn back charges by waving flags and signs in the direction of the horses.
@@olenickel6013 I saw something like that too, it was bunch of neonazis and police charged them on horses. Amazing show :D
But maybe it was something we have deeply coded in us. You know, for centuries a guy on horse was somebody you had to respect, or you didn't have any offsprings...
The video sounds like it makes valid points about the drawbacks of wearing armor, it just omits the one glaring thing: that people are actively trying to kill you with pointy, staby, smashy objects. Which is what the armor stops, and why you wear it.
No surely you jest, nobody would be trying to kill you with such things in a time period full of conflicts involving such things, nah, just a figment of your imagination. People wouldn't hit you with a weapon if you weren't wearing armor, they'd just lightly slap you and insult your lineage or parents, it's not like they actually want to kill you. (I joke about this but in the back of my head I'm wondering if there's some special snowflake out there that actually thinks anything near what I sarcastically said).
How dare you sir. Everyone knows that man kind only started killing eachother because satan invented guns. Wars must have surely been coreographed dance competitions and slam poetry contests.
@@codyraugh6599 Yo, now I want a video series "Battles throughout history except it's rap battles and dance competitions". Good lord, that would be fire.
Wearing armor is seriously stupid. If you ignore all the positive aspects of wearing armor, and only focus on the negative parts.
Also, eating food is probably the dumbest thing you can do, because you could choke. Totally not worth it. Never eat food.
@@OWnIshiiTrolling Would Ice cream be safe to eat, you probably wouldn't choke on it.
It's a well known fact that the average medieval knight had an intellect near that of a sheep. Not only would they commonly bake in their armor, but if it rained, many would drown simply by the act of looking up, and not knowing to put their heads back down.
This is proven by just looking around you. How many medieval knights can you see? None? There, proof.
@@nickryan3417 I just saw a video that said the Battle of Agincourt actually ended when all the knights just ran off a cliff together. It was witnessed and recorded by the only survivor, Sir Walter Lemming.
And if a knight ever fell over, the armor would be too heavy for them to get back up so they'd just starve
@@arcadeinvader8086 Don't be silly, that's why knights had squires. These proto-knight squires would bring their knight food and drink whilst diligently waiting for their knight's armour to rust and fall off and then their knight could escape their armour based prison.
A fool proof contingency plan ruined by armourers' move towards steel and rust proofing. It was a conspiracy I tell ya, and that's another reason why there are almost no knights in armour left these days. Which is total and utter proof of this theory.
@@nickryan3417 In theory, maybe, in practice the knights would accidentally ingest almost as much flaked rust as food and end up poisoning themselves, which is why you rarely see them wearing their armor while eating. So while using squires to keep them alive did work sometimes falling over still did usually lead to the death of the knight.
The rust proofing was actually just a by-product of trying to make the armor taste terrible so the idiot knights would stop swallowing pieces by accident. It was unsuccessful, but did lead to better metallurgy practices.
Meteors can still pierce the ceiling and kill me. My home is useless. I'll sleep in the dirt from now on. At least that way I can move when I see the meteors hurling down at me.
This reminds me of a story I heard about warplanes that I currently only half-remember. They studied the concentration of bullet holes on a bunch of returning aircraft (I think it was WWII bombers) and layered extra armor on the spots that got shot up the most. The survivability numbers did not improve at all. Then the light-bulb went on for somebody and they began putting the extra armor on the spots that came back clean on the returning planes. The survivability rates improved immediately. This is because the planes that got shot in those places prior to the armor being added didn't return at all, so they did not factor in to the data they gathered. Armor works.
American B-17 Flying Fortress. Can fly without most of the vertical stabilizer - just vary the engines to maintain heading. Can fly with most of the fuselage shot trough - tough on the crew though. Can fly with most of outer wing shot off or holed - lift not needed without bombs. No need for extra armor there.
Can not fly: With cockpit shot up - pilots or controls non-functioning. With less than 2 engines. With no fuel. Put extra armor on, which they ended up doing.
There are some famous photos of some (one?) really shot up B-17 on an English runway.
This Wiki link cites the specific event and has a picture of the infamous bomber diagram: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
In WWI, after issuing steel helmets to troops on the Western Front, the Allies began seeing a sharp increase in troops being injured with head wounds. Obviously, it was because wearing a helmet was worse than wearing nothing at all! Nothing to do with the troops being merely injured and not dead from head wounds.
@@dylantowers9367 I saw it worded perfectly somewhere else.
Both instances of it explained here will be quite confusing for those that have never heard about it
Helped the armed forces understand survivor bias really cool study
Well technically when he said “created more problems than they solved,” dehydration and weight are two problems and being killed is one problem. 😂
As a former soldier who wore modern ballistic armor we had many of the same basic problems, it is heavy and hot, when you add shoulder/upper arm, groin flap (the cod piece of justice), side plates, and throat guard mobility was hampered, I also have worn an 80lb bomb suit and that really sucked but you wouldn’t catch any of us outside the wire without at least our vest and helmet no matter how hot it was. I assume in medieval times soldiers did the same things we did, drink more water, exercise a lot, don’t over eat, use the bathroom whenever you could, and pull at the plate carrier to get air flow. We also didn’t always wear our full armor unless we were expecting trouble or there was a persnickety officer with us.
Think about this, in Iraq in 06 it got to nearly 120 degrees (f). We had about 20lbs of armor, add in a standard 210 round loadout, canteens or camelback, medical pack, sometimes a gas mask and night vision you’re looking at 50lbs. Add in an average air assault pack weighing 47-50lbs and you are carrying about 100lbs. Add in 7.75lbs for an M4, maybe another 2lbs if you also had a pistol.
Now if you had an M4/203 it was about 11lbs and a few more lbs for grenades, a SAW you had a 300 round belted ammo load and a 17lb weapon, about 30LBs for a 240B, and god help you if you had to carry the base plate for a mortar.
We did try to cut weight anyway we could but we managed, and could still walk miles at a go, so logically a knight would have been able to as well.
it's amazing what people can do when they're not only fit but conditioned for specific situations.
@@Spartan0430 right! I will readily admit that it sucked... but not as much as 7.62x39 bullet traveling through you at 2,400 feet per second.
The Iraqi’s would sometimes ask us for a “cold pill” because they thought the only way we could wear all that stuff was by having a pill that magically kept us cool? I wonder if “weird history” has looked into the medieval “cold pill.”
@@nemoexnuqual3643 HAHAHAHA! Well I can't say I completely blame them for thinking that way after having to deal with that kind of heat all their lives, so the idea of making yourself 30 degrees hotter wearing all that gear must have just absolutely mystified them. But STILL, after 5 years of us fighting over there(at that point in time) I would have thought that the sheer lack of massive amounts of casualties would have clued them in, at least a little, as to why you wore it.
I, an out of shape keyboard warrior, cannot walk for hours and miles while carrying 50-100 pounds of protective gear and other equipment. Therefore, very fit people who are in the prime of their lives and who undergo strenuous exercise daily and train and practice specifically to accomplish this kind of task would also be incapable of doing it. Checkmate, armorites!
@@nemoexnuqual3643 Gotta imagine slang terms like "chill pill" probably didn't help with the cold pill misconception
just the fact that there were situations in the late medieval period where "can opening" was required to kill someone wearing an incredible suit of armor is enough evidence for me.
a situation where a large group of bandits that had only spears and swords ambushing a knight and his entourage could end in an outnumbered but not outgunned situation.
Mental memo
Must buy a rondel
Weird History- the physical exertion from wearing armor was too much for anyone at the time
Also Weird History- the strength required to cave in armor wasn't all that unusual
So... Which is it then??? Where they so weak that the weight of armor alone would tire them out? Or were they so strong armor was like cardboard to them?
In fairness, the two aren't mutually exclusive; gold armor would be extremely heavy, but most people could get through that with a heavy object and enough effort. How heavy a material is and how strong it is aren't necessarily related.
@@dominiconeil4693 show me a single set of all gold armor worn into combat
Also denting any of the plates requires you to input a lot of force behind say a Warhammer, and repeatedly doing that is probably VERY tiring and inefficient as you need to have enough stamina to last through an entire armed conflict
@@SeiichiroAoki It wasn't, because it's heavy and weak (also, would have been difficult to source and outrageously expensive)... which was literally the point I was making; the strength required to lift something and the strength required to break something are not directly proportional.
@@dominiconeil4693 then your point was not only pedantic but pointless as well as it pretty much had nothing to do with the argument at hand.
55:50 I've been saying the same thing forever about the steel toed boot myth. A lot of people say you shouldn't wear steel toed boots on a job site because is something heavy lands on them it could crush the steel and the sharp metal edges would cut off your toes. If something lands on your toes, and it's heavy enough to buckle steel, your toes are going to be gone regardless of what you're wearing. And this is just my personal preference, but a neat and tidy amputation seems preferable to complete avulsion.
If you point OSHA in their direction, they won't be saying that anymore. Due to financial ruin or... other OSHA methods.
If something heavy enough to crush toes but not steel falls your toes will be fine, will protect you most of the time, thus I'd rather have the steel toes than not. It's pretty easy armour works, this vid angered me as much as it did shad lol
In most cases its not even the toes but the bridge of your foot that gets crushed. I think you can get metal plates for that wich you can attach to your shoes by weaving your shoe laces through them.
I think steel toed boots are not made of steel anymore. Instead they now use a type of polymer thats lighter and breaks rather than bends to avoid that.
Survivorship bias
I like that he thinks knights being cooked alive in their armour was so prevalent that it invalidates the wearing of plate, but doesn't stop to think that if that were true the crusades would have been a week long.
That can really apply to lots of things people in the past did. Modern people look at everything and go, thats so dumb why would they do something that will get them killed, as if everyone in history was just a moron who would blindly walk off a cliff with no regard for their lives. They literally put 0 seconds of critical thought into it. Their first and last reaction is " they're so dumb", and they never spend a single thought on the subject again.
@@dash4800 right, not to mention any of these people teleported to back then would probably die in minutes due to the conditions of which they’d be subjected.
In any case, the Europeans weren't the only ones wearing metal armor in the crusades... the Turks they were fighting also wore metal armor
They likely stayed cool by having cloth layers underneath that they'd sweat in and that sweat drenched clothing kept them cool under the armor (it's actually a legitimate way Arab Bedouins stay cool when they're traveling the open desert, wearing extra clothing and letting their own sweat keep them cooled 😉)
The way Shad is calling them out on their bs is absolutely hilarious to watch
One dies of heat stroke-Shad had it right. Heat exhaustion is when you are dehydrated but the body is still able to cool off by sweating. When you can't cool off because you have nothing left to sweat, your temperature goes up and especially your brain gets hot (and that's dangerous) and you have heat stroke.
The white surcoat not only reflects a great deal of sunlight by day, but at night it provides a bit of insulation if you wore it at night in the desert.
Besides, if a white garment worn in the desert wasn't effective, then nobody would wear them in the desert.
I love how Shad is just taking periodic psychic damage during every single sentence they say
And I was suffering with the splash damage. Man, the Weird History channel made a big "ooff" this time...
Is the video possibly to troll or something?
In other words the original video causes Shad EMOTIONAL DAMAGE! :-)
@@Passolargo_Junior This is why you need to remember to cast Mind Blank before you watch Shad's debunking videos, so you're protected from mind-affecting effects.
Poor Shad forgot that step.
@@matohibiki Indeed.
The English longbow was actually sharp enough to penetrate a katana. Historians theorize the folding process used to give the English longbow its poundage could take 8 to 50 life times and led the English longbow to be the deadliest and sharpest sword in the ancient world.
Sword? or bow?
😁😁😁
The Longbow... the rail gun of the medieval battlefield... unless of course, you were fighting a horde of unarmoured dual katana wielding leaping ninjas... in which case, you're screwed.
🤣🤣🤣
Laughted a Little too much xD
Hilarious.
My modern armor in the army weighed a lot more than my chainmail. And it does take training. We did do obstacles, running, etc… on our armor, just like our historical counterparts. And yes, considerably more fit than most larpers.
And people always wondered why I was a stickler for armor proficiency in RPGs…
My problem isn't armor proficiency but that even medium armor usually reduces your movement.
Stop your whining it’s only what? 80lbs hit the gym. XD
@@thefisherman0074 who asked?
@@thefisherman0074 lol bro go on a run for multiple miles, up and down hills, carrying casualties and support equipment and tell me how heavy 80 lbs or more on your person is
@@realstreetjesus1953 i was being sarcastic thought the "XD" was a good enough hint my bad
Some scenarios where wearing armour may be worse than wearing nothing at all;
1. Going for a swim
2. Dancing ballet
3. Doing surgery
4. Receiving surgery
5. Going to court (Not the medieval one)
Disagree on the last one. What if you were challenged to judicial combat?
Working as an electrical lineman...
@@samarnadra Knives are involved in surgery, so obviously both the doctor and patient wear plate armor to protect themselves from the knives.
Going for a walk in a thunderstorm.
I was a bit confused by the part about over heating. Have they ever actually been to the desert? People in the middle east for thousands of years have been covering up in layers in the desert because it does keep you cool. It's almost like the soldiers living and fighting in the desert knew something about living and fighting in the desert.
And how many deserts became deadly cold at night?
Lots of layers also protects from cold (many deserts lacking wood for enough fires for an army)
Source: me and it's -3 in the desert I live in
Really incredible, why would not ignorant people from distant places know more?
I went out to play some golf with some friends one summer day. Plan was to get in at least three rounds because the course had an all you can play deal. 7am it was already 80 degrees. Close to 100 in the afternoon. I came adorned with a full brim hat and a light, loose fitting, long sleeve white shirt. My buddies laughed at how silly I looked and how hot I was going to be. Barely through the second round they were burned red an miserable and had to quit. I played all day. Was still tired AF by the end, but I am fat too, so it was to be expected.
@@MrKanilammit yes, with that kind of heat and probably sunlight, you'd burn like crazy playing golf without covering up reasonably and/or applying a LOT of sunscreen, often. Because you'd be sweating, so better also be drinking a lot of water, with the occasional Gatorade or sports drink to replenish lost electrolytes.
People think living in the desert means existing in a constant state of 120°+ infrared sauna. They don't realize "desert" just means "low precipitation/humidity." Drink water and layer up.
I like how they mentioned that helmets are like swimming goggles. Yes swimming goggles do restrict your vision, but they do...let you see under water soooo..... The analogy is great cuz the main detriment is just completely overshadowed by the advantage just like with helmets where the disadvantage of less sight is completely overshadowed with the advantage of not getting your head split open like a melon.
The restrict your vision...from seeing Robert take a mace to the dome.
For the many millions of americans who played football when they were young: we all know that while your vision is restricted, with enough practice you figure out how to make the best out of it and retain quite a lot of your capabilities. Sure the medieval helms had more restricted vision, but I think a similar thing will happen.
I would also equate it to the fact that our eyes have blind spots, but our brain automatically compensates for them to fill in the blanks. Long term wearing of a helmet creates this same sort of effect where your brain learns how to use the more limited information to create a more complete picture.
It's like saying welding goggles cause you to see nothing except darkness, while forgetting that filtering out UV rays saves your eyes from damage.
Kinda not the best exemple tho cause you can actually see underwater x') it's just a bit more blurry in salt water and also swimming googles aren't that vision restrict at least they weren't last time i used ones.
Also the freedom of wearing armor is that you don't have to constantly keep your head down or behind a shield so it might allow you to see more in that sense.
When I started watching this video I was horrified by the weird history video. By the end, I was just laughing.
I know when I was starting to learn about armor, I wanted to figure out how to make armor perfect against everything. I've come to understand though the purpose of armor is to mitigate risk while not getting in the way of you doing your job. If it stopped you from doing your job, it wasn't worth it.
What astonished me about this video is it didn't really go into the situations that armor WAS actually a detriment. The main one I know of being water. There are stories of soldiers drowning in rivers while trying to ford them or when falling off bridges or boats. There is a reason why sailors/marines tended to not wear as much armor as infantry. Or at least not wear as much armor when they were on their boats.
you can actually swim in plate, issue is most people then didn't know how to swim
@@Katvanished Swimming with weights on is also just hard. It isn't a for sure death depending on the weight of the gear you have on, but it is going to be a rough time.
Yeah, their armor was usually just padded gear later on, etc. Basic leather that was treated to not absorb water like your cloth would, so not much extra weight and still viable.
@@Katvanished You can, it's like swimming with weights on though. Kinda like how the military has a class where they make you swim with gear on. Shedding your gear can mean life or death in the immediate moment when treading water, so snagging an MRE and a few magazines and your rifle, or at least your sidearm and the extra mags for it could be life or death when you reach shore. You can kill someone and take their rifle. Whatever. Knight's armor on the other hand can't be stripped out of and is restrictive / still heavy. Not as heavy as media would have you think, but still heavy. It's not something you can tread water in for more than about ten minutes and that's if you're a swimmer. People back then didn't swim often, if ever. It was rare you learned to swim if you weren't out on ships constantly and even then, rare they knew to do more than doggy paddle, or push their arms downwards against the water to push up, not how to keep afloat by kicking their legs and moving their arms slowly back and forth.
question: in a pen and paper, text adventure style game i played once where you have to make a country, there was an option to ignore cost and equip every soldier with full plate armor, im wondering if thats a good idea or if its better to keep at least some units in brigandine, chain, and gambeson, again this is ignoring whether or not you have the money or logistics to do so, or just assuming that you do have that much and more.
just a thought that popped up when i was watching this video cause i was thinking of playing that one again.
also im pretty sure if i dont put it here no one will answer so i might as well attach it to someone who seems to know at least more than weird history does which isnt a high bar and im sorry but its the only one i got.
Weird History is the perfect politician:
Contradicts themselves every sentence? ✅
Takes info out of context? ✅
Flashy exterior, rotten interior? ✅
Easily debunked claims? ✅
Wrong about everything they claim to know? ✅
So fun fact about the statement "wearing armor makes you more likely to die from internal bleeding" is that it is sort of true. If you are less likely to die from all other causes, like getting stabbed in the heart, then you are comparatively more likely to die from that one. They are looking at the percentage of deaths and not the percentage of total soldiers involved. It's a very common statistical fallacy.
They also are not comparing that percentage of deaths to situations without them. They are basically just looking at a list and pointing at one of the top things and going "that's why" without mentioning it's not all the data to what they are answering, They aren't actual covering the context of what they are using, etc.
The Energy thing is another example of them stripping out context and not really showing the actual picture. Most people today are woefully unfit, Particularly to the average person let alone a soldier in previous times. We are basically a society of fat lazy nobles in comparison. But those conditioned to wear those things regularly, Walk around everywhere instead of ride around, and just generally did a lot more physical labor/excersize. The energy drain is nothing compared to what we have today. So thye've basically just taken one data point, removed the context, ignored their incomplete data, and declared it all encompassing again.
Also known as survivorship bias.
This is the exact same bullshit mortality rate math they pulled with Covid
Survivorship bias
Well 75% of car accidents are caused by sober drivers, so we should all drunk drive!
28:20 They literally used the exact armor picture that comes up when you google "heaviest medieval armor" which is stated to be upto 50kg however in that same info caption with the picture it states that these armor sets are NOT used in combat but only in jousting competition. This is clear evidence that the makers of the video were working backwards from a conclusion and cherry picking evidence to build a narrative. They're misinforming not informing.
"If you don't read the news, you're uninformed. If you do, your misinformed." Some guy that painted a fence. Honestly we see it all the time the Mainstream entertainment lies all the time.
On the note of helmets limiting visibility:
People often forget the tunnel-vision that comes along with fighting situations. In a fight, the VAST majority of people have zero peripheral vision. Trained soldiers and paramilitaries know to "keep their head on a swivel" for this very reason.
Wearing a helmet wouldn't limit your vision in reality, it would just mitigate the results of your natural tunnel-vision.
I would even hypothesize having a helmet slit to remind you of the limit to your vision would help remind you to keep swiveling your head, thus saving you from getting blindsided.
Helmets also let you keep your head during a fight if you do get blindsided.
It is a known fact that it is very hard to pay attention to anything at all if your brains have just been scattered across the adjacent 5 to 15 square feet, after all.
@@alanepithet2931 Lol I've heard that!
this is also why helmets had visors-- you could raise it, look around the battlefield, and flip them down when you headed into a confrontation.
I have a barbutta helmet and I have to say it does limit my line of sight, but in formation fighting I have to asume that left and right of me is still being held by my fellow soldiers. Even my modern helmet in the army limits my senses to some degree but I prefer it over exposing my head.
Just like old tanks
As a tank nerd
You could make this EXACT same video about tanks, bring up the exact same points, and then go to the same stupid conclusion that "In a war, you'd actually be better off outside a tank than inside"
Funny though there was a point in time (1950s) where some countries (mainly France and West Germany) thought that armor past defending against autocannon caliber was pointless which led to the Leopard I and AMX-30 tanks.
I mean, that phase went away pretty quickly though once armor tech caught up against munitions tech.
@@MajesticOak Yup! It's the reason the development went from leather to chain to plate! All arms development is connected in the same ways, same lessons at different time periods for different contexts.
If your enemy can hit you, make armor that makes it hurt less. If you can't defend, find a way to move faster. If you can't move fast enough to dodge in time, make your attacks from farther away than your enemy can. From the longbow to the Patriot missile, it's all the same theory. :D
Did you know that English longbows were make with a special type of wood that was folded 100 times in order to be able to cut through anything! The French had no chance.
People who treat fantasy exaggerations of katanas as historical fact be like
@N Fels I think his name was Jack Churchill, he was mad, but not that mad.
I want to give you an upvote but you're at 69 So I can't ruin it
@@bubbykins4864 haha thx i get it now
😆😆😆
Before I watched this video, I could think of 1 situation where not wearing armor is more benificial than wearing armor. Which is on a boat or while fighting at a place where falling in water is a decent risk, e.g. on bridges or a dock. And that's the one situation they don't even touch on in the video.
They also don't discuss its practicality when "courting" your mistress in her boudoir, or other important social occasions.
Dies from an arrow instantly*
@@dontbothertoreply9755 But hey, at least you don't have to worry about a concussion!
Norwegians, who were mostly a maritime, solved it by preferring blackened padded armour.
This man is literally applying dark souls logic to real life.
"They only wore full metal armor suits in jousting tournaments."
"They cooked alive in the desert while wearing full metal armor."
So what, are you having jousting tournaments in the middle of the desert with thousands of people jousting each other at the same time, or what? Seems like something is not adding up, weird history.
They were not cooked alive, and it's better to be heated up a little , than being stabbed by arrows, swords, knifes or having your bones cracked by maces.
This legitimately angered me. Like... have they never gone out in the sun before? You survive in arid, sunny climates by covering up and wearing light colors. There's a reason why all those videos from the roads outside Dubai feature guys dressed head to toe in white robes. There are LOADS of ancient civilizations that used heavy armor in desert conditions to great effect. I mean, come on! Have they not heard of the Persian empire? x_x
@@tarrker In reality, metal armor does protect you from direct sunlight, which is very harmful ! Also, wearing some robes on your armor pretty much keeps your armor cool, lol.
@@eu29lex16 I wanted to say this myself but I have almost no experience with it. It's pretty humid where I grew up and we didn't do a lot of out door fighting on sunny days.
@@eu29lex16 Crusaders wore a white tabard, that reflects most of the sunlight, thus minimizing the heat problem. Also, knights did not march fully armored and battle ready, unless they were expecting to be attacked. They had squires, and wagons to carry their gear, and would only "dress up" prior to a battle. Unlike in modern conflicts, they had a lot of time to prepare, since surprise attacks were almost impossible to achieve in the mostly flat desertic lands of the middle east, and you see the enemy forces (and the dust clouds they form) approaching from far away, giving them ample time. So there was no need to remain in their armor 24/7. It is obvious that the original video guy is talking out of his ass. There are always armchair "experts" trying to blow dust in the eyes (or ears) of their unsuspecting audience, trying hard to sound "smart". They should stick to comedy, because they are good at making us laugh.
"Could punch a hole through robocop." I immediately said "citation needed" right before you said "we'd have to test that against robocop." Love you, Shad!
Never mind all Shad's detailed rant about how wrong Weird History is, I really fail to understand how arrows and lances potentially being able to penetrate armor makes wearing armor more dangerous than not wearing it. Do the arrows over-penetrate, dealing less damage or something if you don't wear armor?
However, I think there is some point in claiming that having armor increases the chance of having a concussion. If a blow that causes an armored soldier to suffer concussion hits an unarmored soldier, they would be too busy being dead to have any concussions. And internal bleeding would be less likely because it would be a lot of external bleeding instead.
Yep. There are sagas of Viking heroes sprouting arrows like pincushions. The point was possibly cutting their skin (possibly not, gambesons are very effective as Shad says constantly), but the difference between a cut or broken bone and death via injury to the internal organs (a perforated bowel was a ticket to long, slow agonizing death, likewise kidneys and liver) makes the argument they make just so inane as to be completely ridiculous.
Correlation and Causation misconception. The detriments of wearing armor do not simply vanish once you take it off, and the peeps behind Weird History apparently ignored that altogether
An over penetration is worse since you've created a larger wound channel, especially with arrows since if the arrow is still in the wound the shaft actually helps to staunch some of the bleeding. That's the reason bow hunters want a through and through shot.
@@heirofaniu People mentioned it other comments but this comes off as "a soldier shot in the head with a helmet has higher concussion rates than those without", which on a surface level is factually correct. The problem is it doesn't really go the one step further and look at what happens to a soldier who is shot in the head without a helmet, because they typically aren't alive to complain about it after. So the helmet saving their life lead to them having a concussion instead of instant death. That's sorta what that entire string of argument is. Armor caused other injuries, but prevented what would've likely been fetal wounds, thus they lived to talk about the more minor injury.
@@heirofaniu The overpenetration was just a joke, really. Apparently sarcasm doesn't work that well in written form.
got flashbacks of people telling me, they refused to wear steel-toed boots because if they were crushed, they would lose their toes. not taking in mind, the weight needed to crush the boots, would cut thru normal boots as well as the person's foot.
I'd rather have 1/1000 chance of my toes being cut off, than a 1/100 chance of my foot being crushed.
I dropped stuff on my toes often enough with and without protection to know the difference.
I had a several hundred pound pallet lowered onto my foot by a forklift driver. This would have, at the very least, broken a couple of toes. I didn't even notice until I tried to walk away and couldn't lift my foot.
Needless to say I love my steel toes and wear them a lot for just about any type of work. So even before I watched the Mythbusters obliterate this myth I was already sold on steel toes.
Good teardown, Shad!
"You expend twice as much energy to move around"
the real culprit here is leg armor, which has a huge effect on endurance, like unsprung weight affects cars.
"An armored person would often find themselves fighting someone less exhausted than themselves"
Yes that's the tactic of hitting a tired enemy with fresh troops and has nothing to do with armor.
Shad losing his patience throughout this video is...Fun?
I've never seen him so mad before...and I understand it
this guy is ACTUALLY enraging to watch
Seeing people OUTRIGHT ignore even SIMPLE google searches is infuriating
Absolutely. There are some EFAP's I can't sit through cause the arguments being critiqued are just too baffling
Shad's not mad, he's just disappointed.
Oh he’s mad….. as hatter.
Dadiversity
It's amazing that they decided that the solution to "armor has weak spots to aim for" is to wear no armor so every spot is a weak spot
If your entire body is a weak spot, your opponent can’t choose one weak spot to target
Modern problems require modern solutions
@@dragonfire72 and modern solutions obviously require modern "intelligence" to come up with them. You can tell that medieval people were too stupid to come up with such clever ideas because they're all dead now.
@@briansmith303 exactly I mean it's obvious that the armor shortened their lifespan by a serious amount. I knew this one guy that was 200 years old, and I saw him put an iron chest plate and he turned to *ash* instantly man.
Hilariously the full statement (which Shad skipped over) was that because you would get stabbed in those weak spots, you would “suffer a more painful death” by being stabbed in the eye, groin(?) etc than just being sliced up with no armor. What? I feel like in a combat scenario you’re more concerned about not dying than how painful your death would hypothetically be.
you have to understand the point if every part is equally weak then there is no weakspot
LOL
24:00: "You expend twice the amount of energy to move around" .... wait, does this mean that modern day tanks also use more fuel than regular cars? Why does noone tell the military that cars are much more energy efficient?!
As an infantryman, I can vouch for the fact that we wear on average about 40 lb of armor including helmet. And generally our ruck is about 80 lb. And if you're a machine gunner you're carrying another 27 lb plus the ammo and the spare barrel. If you do not have an A Gunner all in all, you can be carrying up to 150 lb on your person as a machine gunner or up to 200 lb if you are a javelin anti-tank specialist
53:30 I remember Lindy doing a video on a similar misinterpretation regarding the WWI British helmet. Oh no, the armor is increasing injuries! Yes, but those recorded injuries used to be recorded as deaths. Politician level semantics.
they're not recorded as deaths just casualties but the problem is casualty just means a soldier taken out of the fight so it can range from stepping on a lego to being blown to bits
@@indeed8211 Pretty sure armies keep track of injuries and deaths separately as well, for a number of reasons. For one, injured people have to be taken care of somewhere, and can sometimes eventually fight, but the dead are just gone. Casualties are just simpler to report as the number of soldiers who have been hurt.
@@indeed8211 a wounded soldier can recover and be returned to the front, or sent home where he can fill into a job supporting the war effort. A dead man can’t do anything at all.
Sort of like those studies of holes in aircraft to figure out where to armor the plane. The counter intuitive solution was to armor the parts where surviving planes did not return with holes in those areas, because holes in those areas meant the plane did not return.
statistics 1x1 indeed
The Battle of Stamford Bridge is literally a tale of how a better fighting force, the Norwegians under Harald Hardrada, were taken by surprise, unable to get their armor on before the battle, and ultimately forced to retreat because the English WERE wearing armor.
Too bad those dastardly Normans were too brave to not wear armor, those English may have faired better.
@@georgeprchal3924 what?
@@kdolo1887 sarcasm saying that too bad for the English the Normans were not caught unaware and were fully armored and prepared for battle.
How did you come to the conclusions that Haralds force was a better fighting force that Harolds?
@@dernwine because Harald was of the Varangian Guard.
""Using Armor increases the risk of concussions" that reminds me of a scene in a parody movie where the villain pulls throwing blades and states:
"These blades are made of Titanium, they could cut through diamonds!"
to the hero response:
"I am not carrying any diamond!"
Actually the quote was "Titanium Blades! They cut through diamonds!"
Hero gasps before acting smug
"I'm not wearing any diamonds!
Villain looks at him like he wonders how smart he is before throwing the blades which stabs into the dude instantly.
Dragonfly with Stephen Hawking.
Titanium doesn't cut diamond, breaks it.
@@businessproyects2615 it's based on a movie quote
@@Predator20357 which was a superhero parody of spiderman, had a good laugh with that one but some of the jokes did feel a bit force
I will point out that guns didn’t cause armor to phase out. Armor simply adapted to use different materials. The US infantry wear body armor and a few have been shot at by rifles and survived. They had bruises but if they didn’t wear armor they would be dead.
You make great videos, and I look forward to more.
Why modern armour is worse than wearing nothing:
It doesn't prevent injury.
It will eventually fail if shot enough times.
Doesn't protect you from being shot by a tank.
Any armor that doesn't protect you from a nuke is worthless, why even bother.
Yeah! I need armor to protect me from tank and artillery, yet the greedy companies only give me protection from small arms fire.
@@Ceece20 don't worry about it, minced meat ;)
/This comment brought to a grid reference near you by the heavy mortar gang
It's hotter than not wearing armor.
@TH-camUser "Can you believe people used to wear armour that couldn't protect them from tank shells?"
"I know, right? Hey, hand me the antimatter cannon..."
It's always funny when people assume they are just smarter than the ones living at the time when they had to deal with the issue.
I remember a different video some guy made about a famous trail to the west that American settlers travelled along. He then showed some rock formations that had wagon trails ground into them from being worn down by a lot of traffic.
Then he pointed to a flat grass area next to it and said "They could have just went that way" with an attitude of the settlers being complete idiots. Completely unaware of how stupid it made him look return. Anyone who has camped with a lot of people and travelled when it rained will know that the wagons would have ended up stuck in the mud after a couple has crossed the same area. And the area could have been heavily forested back then too. At that point it's easier and more reliable to travel over the rock formations where it's possible and make plans to do exactly that.
We treat people from the past as if humans only evolved brains recently :V
That's why there is actual value in not just learning history, but learning FROM history!
So long as the rocks aren't jagged and don't have too steep of an incline, a horse and subsequently the wagon they are dragging along could quite easily go over any kind of 'rock'. The issue with large and expansive rock formations is that there's nothing growing around there, so if horsey gets hungry it's out of luck for the time being.
@@The-Singularity-X01 Makes sense why they chose the route they did then
@@The-Singularity-X01 Nothing growing also means less threats.
Fun fact: armour increases the pain caused by many blows, because dead people wouldn't feel the pain anymore
It also increases the chances of exhaustion on the battlefield... because you will live long enough to _get_ exhausted 😁
@@austincummins7712 dont forget that you are more likely to die in close combat in armour, as you'd get taken out by arrows more easily when not wearing any
always remember you are more likely to see a meme of yourself if you wear armor as you are more likely to survive to see the meme.
@@arthurpendragon8192 although it's more likely to become a meme if you dont survive something 😂😂
I recently saw a video from The Welsh Viking about how re-enactment differs from real battle. The injuries people inflicted in war were absolutely brutal, especially if you weren't worth ransom. If your goal is to kill others and hopefully survive yourself there is little room for mercy or finesse. You have a shot you take it. Anything unprotected is a target.
Not wearing armor would have been a death wish. Also, people of the past weren't stupid. They understood how to make it functional and tolerable to wear. Not something to do casually, but if it means coming home a little inconvenience is acceptable.