Real Reason Why China's Invasion of Taiwan Will FAIL

Ever seen anything like this? Or this? How about this? If you have no clue what you're looking at, don't worry. You're about to find out. Today, we are diving into the world of some of the strangest weapons ever invented. Like this Chinese repeating crossbow. Consisting of a top-mounted magazine, with a reservoir of bolts, which would feed the crossbow using gravity. Or this Urumi equipped with a sword with a flexible whip-like blade. And this is just the beginning. Join us as we uncover some of the weirdest and wackiest weapons ever imagined. Starting with rocket-launching wheelbarrows, semi-automatic crossbows, and something called the flying claw. Welcome to the pre-modern era. Who needs gunpowder when you've got a head full of ideas for a bunch of very strange, exotic, and downright crazy new weapons. Now, you may think there are only a few ways to adapt the common sword and shield or catapult and crossbow to get a leg up on the battlefield. But in an age of face-to-face combat, armies did just about everything they could to nullify the enemy's strengths by devising new, and often strange, ways of inflicting pain and terror. Let's look at a few examples. We start in China during the Warring States period, when enterprising Chinese engineers produced the world's first semi-automatic repeating crossbow known as the Choukou Nu. Predating medieval European crossbows by hundreds if not thousands of years, the Choukou Nu incorporated a top-loading feeder and lever repeater design not all that different from your run-of-the-mill nerf guns today. It wasn't subtle, stealthy, nor even explicitly designed for frontline use. But in the hands of civilian self-defense forces or imperial guards, the Choukou Nu could fire almost a dozen sharpened bolts in 15 seconds before clearing the magazine. Speaking of firing a lot of projectiles in a short span, the Chinese also experimented with something called the Wouchei. A thousand years later, during the Ming Dynasty, the spiritual ancestor of the German Nebelwerfer, a terrifyingly loud multiple rocket launcher that struck fear into the hearts of Allied soldiers everywhere during World War II, this Ming-era rocket cart was eventually dubbed the Nest of Bees and saw use as early as the 13th century. Hurling dozens of rocket-propelled poison arrows and fire lances from hexagonal tubes hundreds of meters over the battlefield, these mesmerizing and lethal firework displays were not something you would want to see coming your way. The Chinese didn't stop with long-range multiple rocket-launching wheelbarrows. There was also the Flying Claw, or Zhua, a glorified metal back-scratcher attached to long poles, chains, or ropes designed to bludgeon shields, animals, and people alike. These could not only push your opponent off balance, but could easily scratch the top of someone's skull clean off. Pretty brutal, right? But hold on, we are just getting started. Not far from China's bloody battlefields, ancient Indian dynasties showed their skill in designing exotic weapons for use in hand-to-hand combat. It was during the vowel-rich Vijayanagara Empire that the Katar, a type of punch-dagger, gained widespread use. Katars employ an H-shaped grip, lending the user a firm, strong handhold underneath a prominent blade protruding just above the fist. You could even add forearm straps for extra stability. Katars were strong and pointy enough to pierce enemy chain and scale mail armor, and were a fearsome weapon even if they later became status symbols and ceremonial objects. Fancy, but still deadly. Indian Maratha warriors in the Mughal Empire made use of a similar weapon, the Pata Sword, a high-quality steel blade extending from a steel gauntlet, which shielded the user's forearm and hand from injury and harm. These were often dual-wielded and used against and by mounted forces in tandem with javelins and axes. However, the Katar and Pata pale in comparison, at least in terms of strangeness, to the Urumi, a floppy whip-sword of Indian origin whose spectacular image was equalled by its terrifying output. The Urumi was little more than a lightly protected grip from which a flexible blade, or blades if you want to get ambitious, of thin, edged, high-quality steel could be whipped about to devastating effect. We don't know about you, but we'd almost be as afraid of hitting ourselves as we'd be concerned with hitting our enemy with one of these. Incidentally, if you're into ultimate frisbee and strangely alluring, hard-to-wield weapons, the nomadic Akali Nihang Sikh Immortals may have had just the weapon for you. The Shakram, a circular-bladed throwing weapon originating on the Indian subcontinent, was designed to be worn around the arm or even the neck for easy access, and was used as early as the 5th century BC. Ranging in size from hand-size to two feet wide, Shakrams could be thrown by spinning and releasing the disc from one's finger, underarm, or diagonally with great force, or chucked from the back ranks in a high parabolic arc over the battlefield. These deadly war frisbees were used extensively in hand-to-hand combat and larger battles, their designs spreading into other neighbouring Asian territories from Tibet to Mongolia and Malaysia. We now travel to Ancient Greece, where amid endless conflicts among warring city-states and proto-empires, we find a humble Greek inventor named Archimedes. Medieval legends portray Archimedes as a one-man, DARPA outfit, an ingenious predecessor to the likes of Leonardo da Vinci, who concocted weapons as outlandish as sun-mirror death rays to the claw of Archimedes, a massive wooden grappling device that allegedly used the principle of leverage to capsize marauding enemy ships in defence of his home city, Syracuse. This thing was so awesome, all the cool kids wanted one. Future empires and dynasties would inherit and apply ideas from the Greek world to their own conflicts down through the ages. During the First Punic War, the inexperienced Roman navy adopted the corvus, essentially a portable boarding bridge, used to transfer Roman infantry onto enemy ships where they could fight on their own terms. The Byzantines took extreme naval warfare to another level when they started playing around with extremely flammable oil-based projectiles known as Greek or liquid fire. The concept was genius. In the hopes they might set fire to enemy ships, they refined a highly combustible compound that could be fired from a flamethrowing weapon. Modern scholars believe Greek fire may have been a combination of naphtha oil, a flammable liquid hydrocarbon mixture, or white powdery quicklime, fired from ships using a pressurized nozzle, basically a Dark Age seafaring flamethrower. Allegedly, Greek fire struck so much fear into the hearts of Byzantium's enemies, it was responsible for turning the tide of battle in multiple crucial military engagements, including the first and second Arab sieges of Constantinople. The stuff could even burn on the surface of water. Who says Byzantines wouldn't have loved the smell of napalm in the morning? There are far more weapons we could list, but for now we'll end our waltz through antiquity with some honorable mentions. For mobile weapons platforms, you'd be hard-pressed to find something more fear-inducing than the scythed chariot. Outfitting ordinary chariot wheels with scythed spikes and blades that twirled and whirled to the dance of death as they plowed into enemy ranks, these could maim and scatter even the most hardly-armored formations. If you're a Wolverine aficionado who can't get enough brass knuckles, try out the bag-and-knack, or tiger's claw, yet another Indian melee weapon whose multiple curved blades extend outwards from between or over the knuckles and can easily slash through skin and muscle. If the ordinary throwing star doesn't tickle your fancy, why not try out the mbembele, or kopinga, a hybrid axe-knife combo originating in Central and Southern Africa whose four blades extending concentrically from a lower handle could puncture a poor victim from afar no matter how the weapon was thrown. Oh, and don't try to pull the curved hooks out, they cause more damage that way than if simply left alone. Finally, we would be sloppy if we didn't mention the Mesoamerican atal-atal, a spear-hurling lever weapon that launches a javelin, dart, or arrow-like projectile from a cupped shaft to deadly effect. Sounds confusing? Just think of it as a far deadlier form of the plastic ball-thrower that you take to the dog park, which uses the same scientific principles to please your peppy pup. Make no mistake, atal-atals may look like kids' toys, but proficient Aboriginal, Native American, and Mesoamerican warriors would tell you otherwise. As we move on from spears and swords, the invention of gunpowder shifts gears in the world of weaponry in a big way. But just because things gradually become less hands-on, that doesn't mean they get any less strange. On the contrary. In the early modern era, experimenting with rocketry, crude ballistics, smokeless powder, artillery, and cannon fire led to a dizzying variety of applications, from inventive hand cannons to primitive mines, rocket launchers, and squat, overpowered bombards. When the West started toying around with the concept of gunpowder weaponry in the 14th century, things really took off. The organ gun is a great example of trying to maximize the bang for your buck. Implemented first in the late medieval period, these were a series of small caliber iron barrels mounted onto a wooden platform, often wheeled and rigged, to discharge their projectiles at the same time. Oftentimes, multiple barrels resembling a pipe organ, hence organ gun, would be arranged in a semicircular pattern in order to fire eviscerating salvos in the widest possible arc. Organ guns, as you might expect, were especially effective against infantry. Some even see them as the earliest precursors of the Mitreleus, itself the 19th century precursor to the modern machine gun. Bombard was a term used during the early gunpowder era to refer to guns of any kind, but slowly it came to apply especially to hulking cast iron cannons. One of the earliest bronze cannons was the Basilisk, an insanely heavy, fire-breathing cannon that could fire a 160-pound ball straight into the heart of the enemy. Basilisks weren't very weird per se, but certain iterations verged on ungainly, if not downright impractical. At 24 feet long, one type of Basilisk cannon known as Queen Elizabeth's Pocket Pistol, for example, had a comically elongated barrel three times the length of an ordinary cannon. FYI, we're just getting started with the crazy cannon stories. In the 15th century, an ambitious Turkish military engineer decided to cast a solid bronze siege cannon known as the Dardanelles Gun, or the Great Turkish Bombard. Based on the model of the Orban Bombard, which had successfully been used to lay siege to Constantinople in 1453, the Dardanelles Gun weighed an impressive 16.8 tons, the equivalent of eight cars, and came in at 17 feet long. Its snubby, muzzle-loaded barrel and detachable powder chamber could fire stone balls over two feet in diameter. Sometimes, size does matter. If you want to know how powerful this thing really was, it was still in service 340 years later when the Turkish military used it to repel the British Royal Navy's assault against the coastal fortifications of Constantinople. They inflicted 28 casualties with the antique, not bad for a weapon with a longer history than the United States of America. We leave the early modern era with one final entry, the Gun Shield. For the medieval warrior who just couldn't let go of the past, this would have been the perfect compromise. Well after matchlock guns like the Aquibus came to rule the battlefield and pike-and-shot infantry tactics were adopted near and far, England's Henry VII teamed up with an Italian gunsmith to combine the deadly offensive firepower of the matchlock with the time-tested protection offered by a heavy metal shield. The result? A protruding gun barrel from the middle of a circular shield. A gun shield, in fact. Henry eventually commissioned 100 of these babies for his own personal retinue. Better applied mounted onto some sort of naval vessel than as a standalone infantry implement, the unwieldy gun shield saw little if any service on the battlefield and was quickly consigned to the ash heap of history. Speeding into the 19th century, military technology started advancing at a truly staggering rate. With the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian Wars illustrating the catastrophic devastation possible between well-armed, nationally mobilized forces, military started to experiment with a host of strange weapons that would only be eclipsed in their creativity and potential for destruction by those designed for the industrialized killing fields of the 20th century. If weird weapons are what you want, look no further than the American Civil War. In 1862, a Confederate dentist from Georgia decided that the only thing better than a single-barreled cannon was, naturally, a double-barreled cannon. With the help of the Athens Steam Company, he cast two six-pound guns in the same mold and, pleased with his creation, wheeled his Frankenstein piece outside for its maiden test. The concept seemed logical enough. By connecting both cannonballs with a chain, the weapon would cut through and mow down the enemy somewhat as a scythe cuts wheat. One eyewitness recalled the spectacle. According to reports, one ball left the muzzle before the other and the two balls pursued an erratic circular course plowing up an acre of ground, destroying a cornfield and mowing down some saplings before the chain broke. The balls then adopted separate courses, one killing a cow and the other demolishing the chimney on a log cabin. The observers scattered in fear of their lives. Some reports claimed two or three spectators were killed by the firing. The reports of the deaths have not been substantiated. The watchman promptly reported the test an unqualified success. Yeah, I wouldn't take that conclusion to the bank. Apparently, nobody told the dentist that unless you loaded both barrels with precisely the same amount of powder and fired two identical cannonballs at exactly the same time, they would always buck the weapon into an uncontrollable spin. Most of the most useful innovations during this period put increased firepower into the hands of ordinary infantry and cavalry. Revolvers, repeating rifles and Gatling guns gained traction while failed designs like the harmonica pistol fell by the wayside. Designed by a French inventor between 1859 and 1862, the harmonica pistol was just what you'd expect. It fired slugs from a harmonica-looking slide pushed left or right by the operator. And for reasons unknown but not difficult to surmise, it never really caught on. Now let's talk about World War I and tricycles. You see, World War I had some extremely insane weapons used over four years of grinding attritional warfare. Some of the craziest weapons have been mostly forgotten. At the start of World War I, the world's preeminent industrialized powers began adapting the internal combustion engine for more deadly mechanized pursuits. Over in Tsarist Russia, one madlad of an engineer took early tank design to the next level. Even if it never saw combat, Nikolai Lebedenko's Tsar Tank deserves a mention here. In essence, Lebedenko's design was a reverse tricycle from hell. Rather than using traditional treads, it employed two obscenely large wheels stabilized with a smaller third wheel in the rear to transfer its armored and elevated tank chassis far across the battlefield. Lebedenko's design looked promising at first. A small prototype utilizing a spring motor even caught the attention of the Russian Tsar, who immediately earmarked tens of millions of dollars worth of R&D for the promising project. It certainly looked promising, at least. The two front wheels extending far out in front of the vehicle promised, in theory at least, to resolve the issue of immobility that would become intractably associated with the Great War as time went on. With a single prototype delivered in 1914, Russian observers noticed how the two 250 horsepower engines driving each wheel inefficiently doled out their power. The rear wheel, however, was the real design flaw. The heavy, unpowered stabilizer frequently ended up bearing too much of the vehicle's weight and the vehicle bogged down in tough terrain. Not moving was one thing. Having your field of fire severely limited by two unarmored elephantine wheels affixed to the front was another. During its first and only demonstration, the Tsar tank became stuck and just like that, the Russian death strike was cancelled forever. Sometimes, progress in war runs in reverse. During World War I, the barbaric cruelty of trench warfare rekindled the use of more animalistic weapons like trench raiding clubs, used by the Allies and Central Powers alike. A nice throwback to our cavemen ancestors, trench clubs were lugged into combat by troops deployed to infiltrate enemy trench networks at night. Adorned with sharp nails and spikes, they were certainly quieter than a traditional rifle or pistol if you could silence the enemy's screams as you bludgeoned them from behind. Trench clubs were not the Great War's only paradox. While the Industrial Revolution yielded terrifying new weapons like the machine gun, the tank, the flamethrower and the shotgun, which were utilized with brutal effectiveness in the European trenches, recovered gauntlet daggers reveal how time-tested designs could just as easily get the job done. Similar to an Indian patter sword, the weapon consisted of a large metal gauntlet worn over the user's hand and forearm. Sheet metal protected the wielder from enemy knives and bayonets while inside of the gauntlet itself was a crossbar the wielder grasped with a firm grip. A long metal spike protruded from the end, allowing the wielder to lace it tightly onto their arm for the heaviest of hand-to-hand fighting. Soldiers during World War I did whatever they could to mitigate the devastating impact of the machine gun. A ubiquitous, lead-slinging presence on the battlefield from the very beginning. There were also snipers to contend with. And so, like inventors always do, both sides quickly developed a way of allowing friendly forces to fire on the enemy without having to peek their head above the parapet. Enter the periscope rifle. There were many versions and models, but each retained commonalities. They were fitted with a frame that stabilized the rifle with an attached periscope mirror that enabled soldiers to look down the sights from the safety of their trench. It was a pretty smart design. Modern recreations reveal the modified firearm could accurately fire up to 300 feet away. So, do you think you know what kind of weird weapons you can expect from the World War II era? Well, unless your guess involves the use of animals, specifically bats, you may have jumped to conclusions a tad too quickly. Many of the most outlandish weapons of World War II involved animals who were viewed by the Allied and Axis powers as expendable, cheap, and viable means of focusing the destructive power of modern technology. Just as a dentist had come up with the idea for the double-barreled cannon during the American Civil War, two generations later, yet another American dentist came up with one of the most creative ways to take the war to Japan's doorstep. Bat bombs. Basically, while touring Carlsbad Caverns National Park shortly after Pearl Harbor, Pennsylvanian dentist Lyle S. Adams got the idea that bats bearing tiny incendiary bomblets could be dropped in specially designed canisters over Japan. Naturally, they would seek dark spaces to roost, attics, closets, and the like. And since Japan's urban cityscapes were almost exclusively made of wood, not concrete, the bomblets would explode on a timed fuse and cause pandemonium. Adams, an acquaintance of the president's wife, Eleanor Roosevelt, somehow got the idea to the president's desk, who approved the project for testing. What's most amazing is that the test actually worked. Adams' team had to secure and transport tens of thousands of bats for testing at a secure Air Force site. They had to invent a feasible incendiary device to attach to their tiny little limbs, and they had to work out how to safely drop them over an urban area. Ironically, the team actually invented a substance tailored for the mission that would have made Byzantine hearts of old burn with glee. Napalm. Each bat could carry between 15 to 18 grams of napalm in specialized cellulose canisters. Up to 1,040 bats could be dropped in each air-dropped canister, which, at around 4,000 feet, would jettison its sides and release the bats to roost in their new home. The tests were so successful that multiple armed bats, accidentally released over Carlsbad Army Airfield, roosted under a fuel tank and incinerated the test range. Small-scale testing continued until a fake Japanese village was built at a test site in Utah, where the concept was again proven viable. Ultimately, the project, which was not anticipated to be ready until mid-1945, was overtaken by the Manhattan Project and scuppered by the military. Adams always believed the bat bombs and the thousands of fires breaking out simultaneously over a circle of 40 miles could have achieved the effects of the nuclear blasts without the accompanying loss of life. There were other outlandish plans to use animals in combat. The British were avid experimenters. In 1941, the British Special Operations Executive road-tested the Rat Bomb, explosive-laced rat carcasses designed to be nonchalantly left near German boiler rooms in the hopes they might cause a boiler explosion. The Germans caught wind of the project after intercepting a shipment of rats, and even though the project never came off, the SOE considered the resulting German paranoia a successful byproduct. British scientists also inaugurated Project Pigeon, a surprisingly creative attempt to devise a pigeon-controlled guided bomb. In an era before data-linked satellites, GPS data, and laser guidance, the British believed conditioned pigeons could be relied upon to deliver an unmanned explosive payload to its intended destination. The warhead was cased in a glider-like delivery platform with the pigeon-operated guidance section located in the nose cone. As the warhead approached the target, the pigeon would see a projection of the target on the screen and, with encouragement from dispensed seeds, would peck at it. The corresponding pecks were registered by angular sensors that could center the bomb's glide path back onto target. If the target drifted, the pigeon would follow, offering corrective pecks that redirected the control surfaces. Eventually, electronic signals and processors would replace the birds, and like so many other expensive and ethically questionable animal-related projects, Project Pigeon was eventually shut down. But it illustrated the extent to which total war drove all facets of technological innovation during World War II. The Soviets took a less technical approach. They decided simply to strap explosives onto dogs, specially trained to carry them underneath armored vehicles, tanks, and any other military targets they could find. Unlike the bat, rat, and pigeon bombs, tank dogs were actually used in combat. Between 1941 and 1943 on the Eastern Front, they were initially fitted with timed fused bombs which gave the dogs a chance to escape before detonation. Continual testing trained the dogs to run underneath stationary vehicles in search of food, but dogs were frightened by moving vehicles and their bomb release mechanism repeatedly failed. Naturally, the Soviets took the idea further, outfitting their dogs with bombs that would simply detonate on impact as soon as they encountered an enemy tank. Of 30 dogs used in a preliminary test, only four succeeded in exploding near a German tank. There was another problem the Soviets quickly discovered. After a mission, unexploded dogs would often return to the Soviet diesel-driven tanks they'd trained on or their trainer's positions with their bombs intact. Of that first group, six exploded in Soviet trenches, causing multiple fatalities. The list goes on and on for weird weapons during World War II. The secret British plan to create a 2,000-foot-long stationary aircraft carrier out of pykrete, a mixture of wood pulp and ice, to combat U-boats in the Atlantic. The German Krummlauf, an experimental periscope-type rifle that had a strange curved barrel to fire around corners. The 1,000 Japanese Fugo balloon bombs, released with timed incendiaries over the Pacific jet stream to wreak havoc in the Western USA. Dummy paratroopers, and a German remote-controlled tracked mine known as the Goliath. Moving on, we all know times were super strange during the Cold War. But trust us, the weapons designed during that time were even stranger and kind of hilarious. The 60s was the heyday of weird weapons, a period in which the American obsession with getting a leg up on their Soviet counterparts spawned a variety of kooky projects. The acoustic kitty was one of them. Yes, in the 1960s, the CIA experimented with orally enhanced cats, live cats designated to spy on the Kremlin and Soviet embassies. In a delicate procedure, veterinary surgeons carefully implanted sensitive microphones deep in the ear canal of anesthetized cats. They also inserted a tiny radio transmitter near the base of the skull and a thin wire through its fur. These systems would ostensibly enable the cat to innocuously record and transmit sound from its surroundings. How much did Project Acoustic Kitty cost, you ask? $20 million worth of hard-earned American taxpayer money. Please tell me it worked, you say. Well, it wouldn't be in the theme of this video if the feline spy plot came off without a hitch. The first test occurred outside the Soviet embassy in Washington, D.C. One of the eager acoustic kitty cats was released nearby, whereafter it was hit and allegedly killed by a taxi almost immediately. Subsequent tests revealed the difficulty of getting the cats to behave as the handlers intended, something literally any cat owner anywhere could attest to. The Soviets had a couple of tricks up their sleeves, too. Certain female KGB agents were known to port around lipstick canisters concealing a useful single-shot 4.5mm pistol, a weapon fittingly labeled the Kiss of Death. We're moving into contemporary times now, and you may be thinking that things really should start to make more sense now. Well, we hate to break it to you, but you're still tumbling down the rabbit hole, and these weapons keep getting curiouser and curiouser. Our contemporary modern era has kept a pace with eras past in the conception of weapons whose sheer improbability boggles the mind. Many of these weapons are actually in use today. There is a Personnel Halting and Stimulation Response Rifle, or FASER, a light-based stun gun used by US law enforcement agencies to temporarily disorient and blind people using focused laser beams. Another non-lethal crowd-dispersing weapon known as the Active Denial System uses electromagnetic radiation to create a burning sensation on people's skin, sending them running. Senior officials call it the Goodbye Effect. And while this heat ray doesn't damage the water molecules, it can heat up to 130 degrees at a distance of 500 yards. It seems like so many of history's weirdest weapons are variations on a common theme. There's only so many ways you can usefully innovate a melee weapon, an explosive, or a vehicle. The same goes for the age-old problem of firing around corners. But unlike the German designers of the curved Krummlauf barrel, American engineers created the Corner Shot, a pistol-camera combo affixed to a hinge that enables its users to pivot the barrel 90 degrees and peer around corners. The Corner Shot has proven to be so popular that militaries and law enforcement agencies in 15 countries are now using them. With robotic exoskeletons, AI-driven vehicles and drones, and even destabilizing vomit guns all under development or in use today, our list will certainly continue to grow. The beauty of history is that in its rich and diverse experience, there's always more to discover. If this list reveals anything, it reinforces just how far people are willing to go to improvise ways of killing each other in times of war. Sort of makes you wish we approached our peacetime pursuits with the same zeal. What's your favorite weird weapon? If we missed any, let us know in the comments, and don't forget to subscribe for more military analysis from military experts.