The Deadliest Weapons From Every Time Period

Here are the deadliest weapons from every time period in history. The Stone Age Back when humans still slept in caves, the options for killing each other weren't quite as exciting as they are today. For most of the Stone Age, your best weapon was just that, a stone. They were surprisingly effective. Just one hard hit with a rock is more than enough to crack a human skull like an egg. They also weren't too bad from a distance either. Eventually, someone had the brilliant idea to put a sharpened stone on the end of a stick and call it a spear. Then, some 70,000 years ago, one guy was like, man, I hate that guy over there, but he's too far away to stab him with a spear or even throw a rock at him. Hmm. Ha, you missed. Simple weapons like these were literally all that we had for most of our history as a species. But as civilizations around the world expanded, weapons were forced to become more advanced. The Bronze Age Take, for example, the maquahuitl, an ancient weapon used by the Aztec civilization in Central America. This weapon combined the best parts of a wooden club and a dozen small daggers, with sharp obsidian blades on the sides that were there just to make sure the Aztec's enemies could never survive the wounds this weapon inflicted. Though we all know how that ended up going. A less effective melee weapon with a much cooler story is the trident. It was primarily used for fishing. How exciting. But it also got some action in the Roman Colosseum as the primary weapon of a type of gladiator called a retiarius. A retiarius was traditionally equipped with a trident, a small dagger, and a fishing net, and they would have little to no armor or even clothing. They'd be pitted against fighters with much more armor than them and use their speed and agility to dodge their enemies' attacks and try to tangle them in their net, while simultaneously trying to stab them with their trident. The trident typically only left small, non-fatal wounds so as to make the fight last longer for the entertainment of the audience. In any case, the most prevalent weapons in use during the Bronze Age had to have been slings, swords and spears of various types, including the Egyptian kopesh, as well as the shield. While useful in hand-to-hand combat, they were even better when used in an army formation, such as the phalanx. Every soldier stood shoulder-to-shoulder as they advanced, completely unstoppable. These sorts of weapons were all well and good for fights between individuals or armies, but less effective at taking on the well-fortified castles common to the next period, the Middle Ages. Necessity is the mother of invention, and when the necessity is breaking into a palace and mercilessly slaughtering all your enemies, the inventions are siege weapons. Huge machines usually operated by multiple soldiers that were great at tearing down the dreams of kings. There were so many types of siege weapons that I can't cover them all in this one video, so I'll just go over my favorites. The siege hook was a large device that could be used to literally just pull a wall down by grabbing it and yanking it away. Effective and very simple, 4 stars. The trebuchet was a device invented in ancient China. Larger and more deadly than a catapult, it could throw a stone weighing 200 pounds to a distance of up to 275 meters, or almost 3 football fields. Very terrifying, 5 stars. The ballista was basically a giant, really destructive crossbow. The crossbow is already cool, and making it bigger is a good idea in my eyes. 5 stars. The battering ram was a log held by a bunch of soldiers that they would use to repeatedly hit walls and gates until they broke. How can you even call this a weapon? It may have been effective, but consider how annoying it would have been to use. Imagine the splinters in your skin, the smell of wood irritating your eyes, and the pain if you all dropped it on your poor little toes. 0 stars. My channel is still small enough that I can easily read and reply to every comment I get, so please, let me know your favorite siege weapon in the comments. While technologies like this made armies more formidable on land, other civilizations were busy developing weapons to fight their enemies approaching from the sea. Introducing Greek fire. This was a sticky mixture that could be ignited and burned for hours, even when placed on water, making it incredibly dangerous for your average seafaring warmonger. Roman sailors would spray this flaming mixture onto their enemy's ships through tubes, or load it into hand grenades before tossing them aboard their opponent's vessels. Greek fire was so effective that the Byzantine Empire couldn't afford to let their enemies discover the recipe to create it, and so it became a closely guarded secret. Even today, we don't know exactly how it was manufactured, but it's generally believed to be similar to a modern flammable liquid called napalm. We've come to a point in history where we can begin to discuss the invention of the weapon that fundamentally altered how wars were fought, and changed our existence as a species forever. This weapon is the gun. Modern guns are unreasonably effective at killing people. Just ask any American third grader, they'll tell you. In the year 950, the ancient Chinese decided to put a tube of gunpowder on the end of a traditional spear. When ignited, the tube would spray fire from one end at the attacker's victim. Eventually, they added debris and pellets to the gunpowder, which would also be ejected from the tube. This is the fire lance, and it's basically a spear, a flamethrower, and the world's first gun, all in one weapon. Personally, I would hate to be on the receiving end of this thing. This time period set the stage for a new level of innovation and cruelty in the creation of weapons. The goal was no longer just to kill your enemies, it was to do it in the quickest, most destructive way possible, causing unimaginable pain and suffering so that anyone else would be too scared to fight you. As history shows, this sort of thing would only get worse. World War I completely changed how our species approached violent conflict. The Industrial Revolution had just concluded a few decades ago, and humanity had so many new technologies to try out for the purpose of killing. The soldiers of the First World War saw huge advancements in machine guns and grenades, as well as the invention of tanks and warplanes, which took the fighting to the skies. But these are not the most horrifying weapons used during this time. No, not by a long shot. Imagine you're a soldier in the trenches. You haven't seen any action for a few days now, and you and your fellow combatants are relaxed. You take turns keeping watch, but there's been no enemy activity to report. Suddenly, however, your watchman calls for your attention. An enormous cloud of yellowish-brown smoke is on the horizon, being blown towards you by the wind at an alarming speed. You're a trained fighter, so normally you wouldn't be scared, but in this case, there is no enemy to shoot at. Your only chance is to run from this new horror. And run you do. It's not enough. You are enveloped by the gas completely, and your skin begins to blister as your eyes swell shut. Breathing becomes excruciatingly painful, and you are screaming. So are your fellow soldiers, shocked and disoriented. If any of you somehow make it out of this cloud of mustard gas, you could remain alive suffering the effects for weeks. Swollen lungs, blistered skin, vomiting, and blindness. Before you finally succumb to death. Gas attacks of many varieties were used by both sides in World War I, but none were quite so horrifying as mustard gas. Eventually international treaty laws would ban the use of toxic gas in combat, as the effects were seen as too inhumane. In a war that took the lives of 20 million people, that is saying something. World War I was truly the war to end all wars. Until it wasn't anymore, when a certain Austrian painter decided he wanted to do some pretty terrible things. Poisonous gases were still used, of course, though in slightly different contexts. Like any other war, World War II started, it was fought for a while, countless people died screaming, and then it was over. The way this war concluded, however, is fundamentally different from any other war fought before or since. Here is the story of the final weapon. To put things simply, the Allies and the Axis Powers were in an arms race. Both of them were trying to use recently discovered nuclear technology in order to make a bomb. The final bomb. A bomb so big and destructive the other side of the war would have no choice but to surrender. When an element known as Uranium-235 is compressed sufficiently, it triggers an atomic chain reaction, creating exponential amounts of energy, and thus an enormous explosion. The Americans were the first to figure out how to apply this to a bomb, and not without many scientists and researchers dying to make it happen. Little Boy, the codename for the first nuclear bomb to be used in war, weighed over 9,000 pounds and was dropped over the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945. Tens of thousands of civilians died in the initial explosion, and countless more died of radiation sickness afterwards. World War II officially ended less than a month later. No matter how impressive your tiny mustache is, you can't fight an enemy that can rain horrifying death upon you from the sky. Unless, of course, you can rain it right back on them. Countries around the world entered a nuclear arms race to create the biggest, most destructive bombs possible. It was quickly discovered that the process of nuclear fusion, as opposed to fission, was more effective. This is the same process that occurs in the cores of stars, constantly, for billions of years, recreated for a fraction of a second on Earth. The most powerful explosive to ever be created by humanity was called the Tsar Bomba, created by the Soviet Union and tested on October 30th, 1961. The devastating death cloud created by this explosion was 67 kilometers high, or about as tall as eight Mount Everests stacked on top of each other. The nuclear bomb in all its terrifying forms is, hopefully, the last weapon humanity will ever need. There is no defense against it besides the fear that your enemy will retaliate with its own bombs, and thus no further developments are really necessary. Perhaps with this final nightmare, it's time for humanity as a species to move on, to stop killing each other and start doing something actually productive and meaningful, such as hitting that subscribe button. As always, thank you very much for watching. My name is Alex, and I am really smart. Until next time, farewell!