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Worst Roles To Be Assigned in World War 3 · Be Amazed

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Both the first and second world wars were undeniably horrific periods in history, and one thing we can all agree on is that a third world war would be good for nobody.
• 0:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: But what if the worst happens and we really do get swept up in one?
• 0:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, some people would definitely have it worse than others.
• 0:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: So come with me as we take a hypothetical look at some of the worst roles you could be assigned in World War III.
• 0:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: But before we begin on behalf of the BMA's team, I'd like to express our sympathy for anyone affected by the ongoing conflicts occurring right now.
• 0:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Our thoughts are with you, and you have our utmost support and respect, we'll get through this together.
• 0:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: With that said, let's get started.
• 0:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: In the event of a third world war, you might expect outer space to be relatively safe and comparison with the potential armor getting back on Earth anyway.
• 1:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: But you couldn't be more wrong, in fact astronauts would have it tougher than a lot of people on the ground.
• 1:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: You see nowadays we rely on satellites for pretty much everything.
• 1:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: There are over one thousand and one hundred of them circling the globe right now, and without them, it'd be chaos.
• 1:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: We'd lose our phone signal, the internet, our entire military organization, and much more.
• 1:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: See where I'm going with this?
• 1:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 1:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Everyone would want to blow each other's satellites up.
• 1:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: And alongside the disruption that would cause at ground level, it could be fatal for astronauts.
• 1:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: If a missile hits a satellite, the resulting debris can shoot through space at a whopping seventeen thousand five hundred miles per hour.
• 1:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: At this speed, just one golf ball sized piece would be enough to rupture the hull of the International Space Station.
• 2:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: This would depressurize the station pulling all of the air inside out into the vacuum of space, including the air in people's lungs, causing them to suffocate within minutes.
• 2:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: That does not sound like a good way to go.
• 2:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, yeah, picture that but with several different nations, all firing missiles at each other's satellites.
• 2:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: There'd be so much junk flying around that anyone up there wouldn't stand a chance.
• 2:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: But even if this didn't happen, astronauts would still have it seriously tough, they could be tasked with taking the satellite hardware down themselves.
• 2:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: One of the most terrifying things an astronaut can do is a space walk.
• 2:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is where they step outside the ship with nothing but a harness to stop them from floating off into the endless depths of space.
• 2:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: to avoid creating debris and astronaut might have to spacewalk onto a satellite and sabotage it instead of outright destroying it.
• 3:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: This wouldn't just be physically demanding, it'd be outright terrifying.
• 3:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Imagine clinging onto a satellite in the middle of space knowing one false move is all it takes for you to be lost forever.
• 3:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: What if you slipped or worse accidentally blew the thing up?
• 3:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: I can't think of much worse than hurtling through space, all alone, as your oxygen slowly runs out.
• 3:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now let's talk about special ops.
• 3:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Everybody's heard of them.
• 3:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're the most highly skilled well-trained soldiers there are.
• 3:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Speck ops agents vary depending on country, but they're all trained extensively in a wide host of combat and infiltration tactics.
• 3:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Trainies of Britain's special boat service, for example, are expected to complete a grueling four-week endurance test ending in a twenty-five mile march, and only one in ten recruits make it through.
• 3:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Russia's Spetsna's meanwhile trains by running assault courses under live fire.
• 4:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, it's not exactly Scout Camp.
• 4:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: These brutal levels of training however mean that when they're out in the field, special forces really pack a punch.
• 4:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: After all, the U.S.
• 4:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Navy seals are responsible for taking down Osama bin Laden in two thousand eleven, as well as undertaking countless other high-risk assignments that remain state secrets today.
• 4:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: In the event of a third world war, these guys would be sent on the toughest, most life-threatening missions the world has ever seen.
• 4:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let's say the worst happens and nukes become involved, firing them by missile might not be the best idea.
• 4:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Anti-air defenses could take them out before they hit their targets.
• 4:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Instead, special forces could be tasked with delivering the payload in a more covert manner, such as using this many submarine.
• 4:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: These tiny subs are used by navy seal task forces and can squeeze eight soldiers in them with just enough oxygen to navigate the oceans for twenty-four hours.
• 5:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: They could pack themselves in, nuke in the middle, and plunge to a depth of over three hundred feet in order to avoid enemy detection.
• 5:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: But it wouldn't just be cramped, cold, and uncomfortable.
• 5:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: You'd also be maneuvering through the seas with a nuclear bomb bumping against your knees.
• 5:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: And let's say you do manage to get into enemy territory without accidentally setting off the device and blasting yourself into oblivion.
• 5:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's still no guarantee you wouldn't be caught before you could complete the mission.
• 5:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: Man, I got nervous the other day because I had to take a different route into work.
• 5:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'd be useless as part of a spec ops unit.
• 5:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know what, you shouldn't be scared of though?
• 5:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Following my podcast and leaving a five star rating.
• 5:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: All done?
• 5:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Great.
• 5:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, where were we theories about World War III usually gravitate towards nuclear warfare?
• 5:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: But in reality, this is unlikely to happen.
• 5:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: The last thing any leader would want to do is push that big red button, triggering all the other countries to do the same, leading to worldwide and mutually assured self-destruction.
• 6:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: According to several reports, the Chinese government believes biological weapons are the way to win effectively.
• 6:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: And after the chaos COVID-nineteen caused, I'm inclined to agree.
• 6:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: COVID brought the world to a standstill, and it only had a three point four percent mortality rate.
• 6:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: So imagine if something as deadly as the bubonic plague, which has up to a sixty percent mortality rate, was weaponized by being made immune to vaccines and antibiotics.
• 6:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: The potential destruction would be monumental, and if Miss Handled could even wipe out most human life on Earth.
• 6:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: With that in mind, the people creating and testing such a bio-weapon would easily have one of the worst jobs imaginable.
• 6:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: One minor mistake and you could become patient zero for a super virus designed to destroy a human in the worst way possible.
• 7:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Not that the creators would be the only ones with this worry, anybody tasked with transporting the bio-weapon would be at great risk as well.
• 7:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Say your job is to fly the weaponized plague from the lab to a military base.
• 7:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Doing this without a war going on would be stressful enough, but with one, it'd be insane.
• 7:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: What if you came under attack from an enemy?
• 7:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: One bullet in the wrong place is all it'd take for the lethal biological soup to come pouring out and infect the whole world.
• 7:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: And guess who'd be patient zero?
• 7:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's right you.
• 7:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Even if nothing went wrong, the best case scenario is you'd be responsible for the deaths of countless innocent people, because viruses don't discriminate between soldiers and civilians, so unless you're a psychopath, it's gonna suck either way.
• 7:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: But if you think all this is just wild hypothesis, I've got news for you.
• 7:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: In the nineteen eighties the Soviet Union really did try to weaponize the bubonic plague as part of the largest covert biological weapons program in the world.
• 8:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thankfully it wasn't used that time.
• 8:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, does anyone know where you can buy hazmat suits?
• 8:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: A few years ago, if you'd have told me there'd be soldiers flying around using jet packs, I'd have told you to stop binging sci-fi movies.
• 8:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: But in recent years, both the UK and US military have been testing real-life jet suits.
• 8:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Developed by gravity industries, the suits are powered by turbines and can propel you through the air at up to eighty-five miles per hour.
• 8:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: At the moment, they only work for about five minutes, but that's still enough time to get you pretty damn far in a battle scenario.
• 8:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now imagine a full-scale world war has broken out and all sides are fighting for their lives.
• 8:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you had a squad on your side trained with these bad boys, you'd definitely put them to good use.
• 8:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, think about it for a second.
• 8:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're in the middle of a heated battle bullets are flying everywhere and you're given the order to jetpack over the battlefield to reach a vantage point.
• 9:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: For a start, you wouldn't be zipping over there with the grace of Iron Man.
• 9:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: The suits are heavy, you can't use a weapon while you're flying, and it's still new, less than reliable technology.
• 9:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: What if you broke down mid-flight?
• 9:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Even if you didn't, you'd still be moving through the open air and making yourself the number one target for all the enemy troops down below, as well as the aircraft in the sky.
• 9:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not great with heights as it is, but heights plus bullets.
• 9:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, if it was me and one of those suits you definitely know about it, from the suspicious yellow liquid streaming out of my pants as I shot past you.
• 9:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: In any war, air superiority is key.
• 9:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you control the skies, you control the battle.
• 9:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: The US government is hyper aware of this and dumps hundreds of billions of dollars into its Air Force every year.
• 9:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Unsurprisingly, then the US has the largest and most advanced Air Force on the planet with a total of over thirteen thousand aircraft.
• 10:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Russia comes in second with almost four thousand aircraft in China third with around three thousand.
• 10:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: So none of the three superpowers would go down easily in a contest for the skies.
• 10:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: but what of the smaller nations with less money to spare?
• 10:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, if you're a pilot in say Syria or North Korea when War breaks out, I've got some bad news.
• 10:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: North Korea still has active fighter planes from the nineteen fifty Korean War, more than seventy years ago, along with a host of mostly obsolete fighter jets.
• 10:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the Syrian Air Force isn't much better, largely formed from old beat-up planes ravaged by previous battles.
• 10:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Flying miles above the ground towards oncoming fire in an old glorified tin can, sounds pretty close to my idea of hell.
• 10:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Especially when the enemy you're fighting against is coming straight at you in a state of the art fighter jet, half a century more advanced than yours.
• 11:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I don't like the look of those odds.
• 11:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's no doubt that drones play a huge role in modern warfare, and will play an even bigger one in a future conflict.
• 11:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: But who's small enough to get inside and fly them?
• 11:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, the pilots aren't too inches tall.
• 11:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're normal sized humans, operating them from afar.
• 11:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Sounds like a cushy job, right?
• 11:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Assuming the base you're operating from doesn't come under attack, sure, you're physically safe.
• 11:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: But mentally, that's a different matter.
• 11:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: According to reports from the Pentagon, US drone pilots sit in isolated metal boxes with nothing but computer screens for up to twelve hours a day, six days a week, and that's during peacetime.
• 11:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: The pilots often aren't told the purpose of the missions they're sent on, and they have none of the camaraderie of being out in the field with their squad.
• 12:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: They just sit in their booths and watch from a camera as they execute their orders, which often involve slaughtering people.
• 12:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: As well as this, if they see their teammates injured, they can't track them to safety, all they can do is watch completely powerless.
• 12:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: All this means drone pilots actually experience the same rates of post-traumatic stress as actual combat pilots.
• 12:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Whether it's shooting down key targets or flying a bomb into enemy territory, one thing's for sure.
• 12:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Pilating a drone in World War III would be insanely stressful.
• 12:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: If your joystick targeting is off by even an inch, you could accidentally blow up your squad.
• 12:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Jeez.
• 12:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Then it'd be less of a joystick and more of a crushing depression stick.
• 12:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Despite the growing importance of cyber warfare, conventional warfare will always retain some role in a worldwide conflict.
• 12:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: If everybody's satellites are destroyed, guided missiles won't work, and the world will be reverted to a pre-GPS pre-internet era.
• 13:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, like the first two world wars, only with more advanced equipment.
• 13:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: That means if you're a soldier on the front lines in World War III, the danger is going to be on a whole different level.
• 13:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Gone are the days of slow bolt action rifles where each bullet had to be loaded individually for both short and long range attacks.
• 13:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now we live in an era where snipers can purge unseen and use self-steering bullets.
• 13:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Bullets that use tiny fins to correct the course of their flight, allowing them to hit laser illuminated targets over a mile away.
• 13:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: But this enhanced military tech means it's a lot more expensive to arm troops than it used to be.
• 13:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Back in the early twentieth century, countries could afford to keep replacing their fallen.
• 13:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because of this, both World War saw a combined total of around thirty million soldiers lose their lives, not including civilians.
• 13:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Due to the expense of modern equipment, though, this just wouldn't be feasible in a third world war.
• 14:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, without a steady stream of cheap troops to use as fodder, battles would, in theory, be quicker and more decisive.
• 14:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: Tactics have changed a lot too.
• 14:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Trench warfare is largely a thing of the past, but tunnel warfare continues to be a strong strategy in places like the Middle East.
• 14:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: The Islamic State has dug vast underground networks of tunnels across Iraq, forcing western troops to climb in and confront them at a disadvantage.
• 14:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Their pitch black, claustrophobic, and one misstep could set off a booby trap mine that collapses the whole structure.
• 14:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yikes!
• 14:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Fortunately, lightweight robotic devices like the Dragon Runner are now used by bomb dispossers, which can travel across rough terrain and remotely deactivate the bomb or take the hit if the bomb goes off.
• 14:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, if your deep underground, a little robot won't exactly save you from the ceiling caving in.
• 15:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Nope, there'd be no light at the end of that tunnel.
• 15:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: After hearing how bad it can get on the front lines, working on a military base instead seems like a far better option.
• 15:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: You don't have to risk your life in battle, there won't be any active minds lying around, and you get a proper bed.
• 15:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Surprisingly though, you could actually be an even more danger.
• 15:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: You see military bases look safe and secure, but they're really a great big target for the enemy.
• 15:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Colonel Johnny Warden III, an ex-US Air Force officer, theorizes that a good strategic attack involves paralyzing five major aspects of the enemy forces.
• 15:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Two of these are infrastructure and military might, and guess where you can find both?
• 15:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yep, on a military base.
• 15:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: By taking out your bases, the enemy cripples your ability to fight.
• 15:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, yeah, you might have a bed, but it's a bed with a huge target on it.
• 16:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: And military bases aren't the safest of places even when they're not the priority target in a war.
• 16:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Since two thousand nine, there have been at least thirty shootings and other violent episodes across America's bases all committed by the occupants.
• 16:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Do you think a World War would increase or decrease the likelihood of one of these violent episodes?
• 16:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let's see.
• 16:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Hordes of stress soldiers, ex-servicemen, and civilians locked up with a bunch of weapons, trying to keep their heads while a war rage is outside.
• 16:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Hmm, I'm beginning to like the sound of heading off into battle.
• 16:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks to our worldwide reliance on advanced technology, disabling an enemy's tech infrastructure in the midst of a war would leave them devastatingly exposed.
• 16:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: That means hackers would play some of the most critical roles in a world war because their actions can have some of the most devastating consequences.
• 16:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: For example, back in two thousand ten, it was discovered that a computer virus, probably created by the US and Israel, had been used by hackers to infect over two hundred thousand Iranian computers.
• 17:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: The virus called Stuxnet caused a fifth of Iran's nuclear centrifuges to spin out of control and break, crippling the country's nuclear program.
• 17:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that was at a time when there was no war between these countries.
• 17:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
• 17:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: This was possible without the saboteur even leaving their office.
• 17:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: But hold on, if being a hacker is as costy as sitting behind a computer screen, why is it one of the worst roles you could have if war breaks out?
• 17:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, sure you don't have to fight on the front lines, but opposing intelligence agencies routinely and ruthlessly hunt down the most prominent hackers by hitting them where it hurts.
• 17:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Right in their privacy.
• 17:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Only recently, the FBI accused four Russian government agents of maliciously hacking energy companies around the world.
• 17:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now their faces are plastered everywhere, and there's no doubt they're on every major cybercrime database in existence, so international travel just became a big problem for them.
• 18:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: If they're caught, they can waive goodbye to every one of their freedoms.
• 18:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that's in peace time when the Russian government will protect them.
• 18:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: In wartime, it's likely that they won't just be protected, they'll be locked down entirely.
• 18:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: As valuable assets their government will want them under constant surveillance, and that's if they're even allowed to live it all.
• 18:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Marked by enemy nations and practically imprisoned by their own, hackers would have no choice but to obey their state leaders or suffer the consequences.
• 18:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: They'd become very literally slaves to the system, so being a hacker would be less of a life hack and more of a no life hack.
• 18:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: The prospect of spending years fighting in a world war is stressful enough, but there's one job so grizzly, it has one of the highest rates of PTSD in the entire military, and there's zero fighting involved.
• 19:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: The role, a mortuary, affairs specialist.
• 19:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: These are the professionals who go out onto the battlefield and locate fallen soldiers.
• 19:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: They identify what's left, collect their belongings, and take them off the field to return home.
• 19:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: This sounds depressing enough, but then you realize that if biological or chemical weapons had been used, many of these bodies would be disfigured and almost unrecognizable.
• 19:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Not to mention the huge health risk involved in recovering them.
• 19:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, as well as the trauma of lugging the body of your teammate for miles, you might also pick up a nasty bacterial disease.
• 19:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, and one more thing.
• 19:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Mortuary affairs specialists are sometimes required to recover their fallen comrades while battle is still raging around them.
• 19:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: While trying to dodge a hail of bullets is bad enough without struggling to carry a body in your wake.
• 20:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Alright, so we've covered some of the worst roles you could have if War broke out in the eminent future.
• 20:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: But what if it happened twenty-five years from now?
• 20:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, by then, soldiers from some of the wealthiest nations could be fighting on the ground using mechsuits.
• 20:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you heard right.
• 20:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Unbelievably, these thirteen-foot tall, one-point-three-ton metal monsters aren't out of the next Avatar movie.
• 20:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're very real.
• 20:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Korean company Hankook Merai are responsible for developing them.
• 20:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: To activate it, you climb inside the torso compartment, strap in, and boot up.
• 20:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: The motion tracking arms of the mech mimic with the pilot in the torso cockpit does, while the biped election allows the mech to walk over areas that would be hazardous to humans.
• 20:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is merely a prototype, but imagine soldiers using these in ground combat to help assist their units.
• 20:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: They'd be unstoppable.
• 20:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: But wait, why would this be so bad?
• 21:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, if you're stopping around a battlefield in one of these things, everyone on the other team is going to be firing at you.
• 21:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: And as strong as they are, the mix aren't actually unstoppable, and as you can see, they don't have a high top speed, so running away wouldn't really be an option.
• 21:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: One well aimed rocket and the cumbersome metal deck could become your coffin.
• 21:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, but what if it took another fifty years until War broke out?
• 21:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, by the two thousand seventy's artificial intelligence could be advanced enough for unmanned drones and other autonomous robots to be deployed on the battlefield.
• 21:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: In fact, the Libyan government used autonomous drones in Tripoli in twenty-twenty.
• 21:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: The problem with robots, though, they can be hacked.
• 21:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, you can bet there'd be dedicated robot hackers.
• 21:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Though it'd probably be one of the most terrifying roles possible.
• 21:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Imagine being dropped behind enemy lines to disable the hardware of these machines.
• 22:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you got caught, you'd have a literal killer robot coming at you, and all you'd be able to do is sit tight and desperately fiddle with your hacking device.
• 22:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know about you, but I'm no John Connor.
• 22:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: But what if we weren't even further into the future?
• 22:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: What if a world war were to break out in one hundred years?
• 22:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: What would that look like?
• 22:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now we're really getting into the hypotheticals, but technology would have probably advanced so far that nations could have massive space laser levels of superweapon at their disposal.
• 22:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Seriously.
• 22:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Back in World War II, German scientists came up with a crazy idea, a sky-based weapon that reflected the sun's rays down onto Earth in a concentrated beam of intense heat.
• 22:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Without space launching capabilities, they never actually made the weapon.
• 22:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: But with today's technological advancements, this sungun could be a reality one day.
• 22:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: By sending hundreds of reflective satellites up into orbit, scientists reckon they could synchronize them together to reflect one huge solar beam down on the planet.
• 23:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: This would fry everything it touches, which would be a nightmare for any infantry units and be nigh unstoppable if deployed in war.
• 23:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: at least unstoppable from the ground.
• 23:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Our reliance on satellites means that by the twenty-second century battles will probably be waged in space over them, especially if they can be used as superweapons, which yes means there'll be spaceships.
• 23:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: But not quite like the ones you see in movies.
• 23:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: For a start, it'd be seriously tough to shoot a moving target in space.
• 23:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's so vast that to cover any distance, you've got to be going thousands of miles an hour.
• 23:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: And when you're going that fast, it'd be hard enough to hit something stationary, let alone something traveling at the same speed.
• 23:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Plus, the huge cost of building and running a fleet of spaceships means they'd probably be small, one-man vessels.
• 24:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, you'd be up there all alone.
• 24:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: You couldn't look outside either.
• 24:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: The pilot would have to use sensors and GPS to navigate the ships around the world.
• 24:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: So if you got sent up in one of these things, it'd be no Millennium Falcon.
• 24:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Instead, you'd be rocketing towards the enemy in a cramped metal tube with no idea of your surroundings.
• 24:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Nice!
• 24:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: To add to the terror, if a single projectile hit the hull of your craft, it'd be enough to decompress the entire ship, suck the oxygen out, and turn it into your floating metal tomb.
• 24:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Still want to be a spaceman now?
• 24:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Right, I think I've scared myself enough with all this World War Talk.
• 24:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Which of those roles do you think would be the worst?
• 24:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: And can you think of any other theoretical future war roles?
• 24:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: By the way, you might want to check out our episode about the worst roles of the second world war if you're into that kind of thing.
• 24:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for listening.