Latest / Stuff You Should Know / How Suicide Bombers Work
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
- 0:03Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
- 0:08Speaker 1: from house Stuff Works dot com? Hey, and welcome to
- 0:16Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always as
- 0:19Speaker 1: Charles W. Chuck Bryant looking as spry as ever. Have
- 0:23Speaker 1: you ever seen Bad Santa? Yeah? Remember the kid? He's like,
- 0:27Speaker 1: you're granny? Is she spry? And it is. He's putting
- 0:30Speaker 1: on a ski mask and they come in the door
- 0:32Speaker 1: and he goes, Granny, are you spry? Really? Yeah? And
- 0:35Speaker 1: she's like, I'll make you some sandwiches. Now you're looking
- 0:37Speaker 1: very sprited it. Chuck, you've done something that you've never
- 0:40Speaker 1: done in me before. What man? What's going You literally
- 0:42Speaker 1: put a video on your laptop and just turned it
- 0:45Speaker 1: around and then started the podcast. And I'm waiting to
- 0:48Speaker 1: see what happens because I think it might have something
- 0:49Speaker 1: to do with the podcast. Did you see it? Did
- 0:52Speaker 1: it happen? It happened. It's pretty awesome and and it
- 0:55Speaker 1: has nothing to do with what we're podcasting, does it.
- 0:57Speaker 1: I just wanted you to see it. Putty General Interest.
- 1:00Speaker 1: I will be putting that on the Facebook page okay,
- 1:02Speaker 1: because ain't no party like our Facebook pages party. Yeah,
- 1:06Speaker 1: you're into people getting flung off of things. Apparently I'm
- 1:09Speaker 1: in a little a little bit of that mood right now. Yeah,
- 1:12Speaker 1: how how are you doing? I'm great? Well good. We
- 1:16Speaker 1: should probably tone it down a little bit because this
- 1:18Speaker 1: is a grim, grim subject we're about to talk about. Yeah.
- 1:21Speaker 1: That was the first minute, was about all the fun
- 1:24Speaker 1: we're gonna have here. Yeah, so chuck, Um, I got
- 1:27Speaker 1: an intro for you. I was, um jogging you mean?
- 1:30Speaker 1: And I were jogging on tread mills, as is our
- 1:33Speaker 1: want usually, and um, I prefer tread mills because I
- 1:36Speaker 1: can watch TV while I do and just totally forget
- 1:38Speaker 1: that I'm running. Right, the guy kills me, but it
- 1:41Speaker 1: works so well. Like I'm up to like five miles
- 1:43Speaker 1: each time, right, you know what's soubring though I try
- 1:46Speaker 1: to run a single mile on pavement, I don't need to.
- 1:49Speaker 1: There's no TVs on pavement, you know, much different. During
- 1:54Speaker 1: one of these ventures, UM, I was watching CNN and um,
- 2:00Speaker 1: this weird It was Wolf Blitzer and this weird segment
- 2:04Speaker 1: came on where one of wolf Blitzer's journalists was in
- 2:08Speaker 1: Libya meeting with the family of a man who had
- 2:13Speaker 1: blown himself up in a car full of explosives to
- 2:17Speaker 1: um gain entry for Libyan rebel fighters into this city.
- 2:22Speaker 1: It's very disputed city. I can't remember which one. And
- 2:26Speaker 1: the guy was sitting down with the family, the two
- 2:29Speaker 1: daughters and the wife, who were grieving but holding a
- 2:33Speaker 1: picture of the man talked to his best friend, who
- 2:36Speaker 1: picked up the pieces of the guy and I realized
- 2:39Speaker 1: that it took me a minute, but it was dawning
- 2:41Speaker 1: on me that this is exactly what say um Afghani
- 2:47Speaker 1: or Talibani um State Television would do with one of
- 2:52Speaker 1: their suicide bombers. It was just like the embargo on
- 2:57Speaker 1: discussed over suicide bombing as a general rule was lifted
- 3:01Speaker 1: because someone CNN was rooting for blew himself up and
- 3:06Speaker 1: suddenly it was okay. But I mean, like step for step,
- 3:09Speaker 1: it was like a celebration of this man's heroism for
- 3:12Speaker 1: blowing himself up. And I just thought it was really nuts.
- 3:16Speaker 1: And I guess it's probably as unobjective as I should
- 3:21Speaker 1: be throughout this podcast, but it struck me as really,
- 3:24Speaker 1: really strange. I wrote a blog post on it called
- 3:27Speaker 1: um CNN oddly celebrates suicide bombers hero or remember like that.
- 3:32Speaker 1: But it was just so weird, And there's in the
- 3:34Speaker 1: blog post there's video. Somebody found it and posted it.
- 3:37Speaker 1: So there's a video of this weird segment that just
- 3:39Speaker 1: sticks out like a sore thumb. And um, I guess that.
- 3:44Speaker 1: What I learned is that my personal opinion is suicide
- 3:47Speaker 1: bombing is wrong no matter what side is doing it.
- 3:51Speaker 1: I think I would agree with that. All right. So
- 3:53Speaker 1: this is a relatively new thing, right, suicide bombing it's
- 3:57Speaker 1: new because there bombs are fairly new, right, Yeah, But
- 4:03Speaker 1: it's far far more ancient than that. It is the
- 4:06Speaker 1: concept of killing yourself or dying in the name of
- 4:09Speaker 1: religion is pretty ancient. Oh yeah, you want to go
- 4:11Speaker 1: all the way back to martyrdom in general, might as well. Okay,
- 4:14Speaker 1: start at the beginning. Martyrdom is what we're talking about, obviously,
- 4:17Speaker 1: when you talk about suicide bombing, it's forsaking your own
- 4:21Speaker 1: life for a higher cause, for a principle, for your faith,
- 4:25Speaker 1: anything that is not for your direct like earthly benefit,
- 4:30Speaker 1: but maybe benefit later on to elevate your cause, but
- 4:34Speaker 1: benefits for you in the afterlife. And so generally that's
- 4:37Speaker 1: what we suspect make suicide bombers tick. That's what is martyrdom.
- 4:43Speaker 1: And it's because although it is like a very deep
- 4:46Speaker 1: there's a deep religious afiliation between martyrdom and um suicide
- 4:52Speaker 1: like this suicide bombing. It doesn't necessarily have to be religious.
- 4:56Speaker 1: It can be sure your side, your cause, like the
- 4:59Speaker 1: forty one year old oil worker who is Libyan Um
- 5:02Speaker 1: was for the rebel faction. It had nothing to do
- 5:06Speaker 1: with religion. He was just willing to die for his cause,
- 5:10Speaker 1: as all suicide bombers are. Religion kicks it up a
- 5:13Speaker 1: little notch though so well. The and the reason why
- 5:16Speaker 1: is because it's so ingretened. The two are so entangled
- 5:18Speaker 1: from such an ancient place, right like our lamb who
- 5:23Speaker 1: did this article? Who did this? He wrote it? Um
- 5:27Speaker 1: he he he traces martyrdom back to um the second
- 5:33Speaker 1: or third century BC. Right. What with King Nebuchadnezzar. Yeah, yeah,
- 5:39Speaker 1: the famous story in uh in Bible history, the Book
- 5:43Speaker 1: of Daniel. We all know King Nebuchadnezzar gave as the
- 5:47Speaker 1: best boys called them, shad rack mishak the bed nig. Yeah.
- 5:51Speaker 1: I can't, I can't see this three names together without
- 5:54Speaker 1: thinking about that too. Well, these boys were three Jewish guys.
- 5:59Speaker 1: That's probably why they called themselves at in the song,
- 6:01Speaker 1: and they in the in the Bible story, he never
- 6:04Speaker 1: cand as gave him the choice, you can renounce your
- 6:06Speaker 1: Jewish faith or you can burn alive. And they said,
- 6:09Speaker 1: you know what, we're the Beastie boys and we don't
- 6:12Speaker 1: give in to anybody, and so we're gonna not renounce
- 6:15Speaker 1: our faith. They were thrown into the fiery furnace and
- 6:19Speaker 1: they lived, which the lesson there was an early lesson
- 6:23Speaker 1: in martyrdom, which was, hey, you know what, God's gonna
- 6:25Speaker 1: protect those who die in his name. Doesn't it make
- 6:28Speaker 1: you wonder? Like, don't you don't you tend to think
- 6:30Speaker 1: that in stories like that? Somewhere eons ago, something happened,
- 6:37Speaker 1: possibly with these three people. What happened and eventually got
- 6:42Speaker 1: translated into they were thrown into this furnace and they
- 6:45Speaker 1: walked out unscathed, like did somebody like lose their grip
- 6:49Speaker 1: on them? And they skirted across like a camp fire,
- 6:52Speaker 1: you know, and like their robes didn't catch and everybody
- 6:54Speaker 1: was like, oh my god, you know, and and then
- 6:57Speaker 1: it just to just to make it more easily died
- 7:00Speaker 1: juestable for the masses. It was transformed into this larger thing.
- 7:03Speaker 1: My feeling when it comes to parables like this, where uh,
- 7:08Speaker 1: to me, it's obvious that someone wasn't unscathed and a
- 7:11Speaker 1: burning fire was that maybe someone was burned like they
- 7:16Speaker 1: were being tortured and saying renounced religion, being burned with
- 7:19Speaker 1: like fiery torches or something, and they refused and refused,
- 7:22Speaker 1: and they couldn't be broken, and so they were set free.
- 7:25Speaker 1: And that becomes a parable in the way of something
- 7:29Speaker 1: miraculous like this. That makes that makes sense. It's good analysis.
- 7:32Speaker 1: I probably get killed for that, But the point is, Um.
- 7:37Speaker 1: The the idea was that if that God's God's got
- 7:40Speaker 1: your back, if you're willing to die for him, right, yes,
- 7:43Speaker 1: But that eventually transformed into what we what people still
- 7:49Speaker 1: believe today that toil on this planet leads to bounty
- 7:53Speaker 1: in the next life. The Big three. I'll believe that,
- 7:57Speaker 1: and you can trace that back to the early the
- 8:01Speaker 1: early Church, early Jewish faith, early Christian faith, and the
- 8:05Speaker 1: early Muslim faith. UM, and martyrdom goes back just as
- 8:11Speaker 1: far and comes from the same tree. The idea that
- 8:13Speaker 1: if you sacrifice yourself, you're going to gain reward after this.
- 8:18Speaker 1: So what's a few minutes of pain for a lifetime
- 8:21Speaker 1: of happiness and pleasure? Yeah? Right, Well, and the non
- 8:26Speaker 1: suicide version, where you're actually killing other people in the
- 8:30Speaker 1: name of your God goes back to maybe not the
- 8:33Speaker 1: first time, but one good example Robert Use was in
- 8:37Speaker 1: d rather than surrendering to the Roman authorities, a rebel
- 8:41Speaker 1: group basically killed their own themselves and every last man
- 8:46Speaker 1: and woman. This one I think was probably literal, Yeah, probably,
- 8:51Speaker 1: so does like do you think about how that would
- 8:55Speaker 1: be treated today though? Yeah, like the authorities are coming
- 8:59Speaker 1: and you kill every man, woman and child inside and
- 9:04Speaker 1: sounds like a standoff at at Waco or something. Um. So,
- 9:10Speaker 1: but your your point is, I think the larger point
- 9:13Speaker 1: is is that people were willing to kill themselves, kill
- 9:16Speaker 1: those close to them, um, and kill others eventually and
- 9:22Speaker 1: in the name of God, and expected some sort of
- 9:25Speaker 1: reward for it. So you were talking about the rise
- 9:28Speaker 1: of Islam, right, So it was a D six ten
- 9:31Speaker 1: when the prophet Muhammad received his first vision right and
- 9:35Speaker 1: basically was set about going forth to found um Islam,
- 9:41Speaker 1: and within fourteen years, uh, he had amassed something of
- 9:45Speaker 1: of an army and was taking on other people in
- 9:49Speaker 1: in the in the area. Right. It was pretty successful
- 9:53Speaker 1: at it, Right, So what I gained from this, And
- 9:56Speaker 1: I'm certainly not a scholar in Islam at all. I'm
- 9:58Speaker 1: not a scholar in any religion. It um the Islam
- 10:04Speaker 1: came out of a place of strife and battle, and
- 10:10Speaker 1: so thustly this concept of jihad came about fairly early on. Yeah,
- 10:15Speaker 1: there's two two parts to jihad. If you've never you've
- 10:18Speaker 1: heard that word a lot used, probably for the second part,
- 10:20Speaker 1: which was a righteous battle in the physical world. But
- 10:24Speaker 1: the first part of jihad means it's an inward struggle
- 10:27Speaker 1: of the soul uh in Arabic. So it's a two
- 10:30Speaker 1: pronged thing there in the Kuran, basically vindicated defense and
- 10:35Speaker 1: compact in the name of protecting the faithful as well
- 10:40Speaker 1: as retaliation. So it's traced back to the Koran as
- 10:43Speaker 1: far as probably the birth of the notion of something
- 10:46Speaker 1: like a suicide bombing, even though it certainly doesn't say
- 10:49Speaker 1: that anything about that anywhere in the Kuran. So jihad
- 10:54Speaker 1: played a big role in the Crusades, which was the
- 10:57Speaker 1: Christian version of the Holy War right um, and that
- 11:02Speaker 1: was taking it to the Muslim's doorstep, basically invading the
- 11:07Speaker 1: Middle East. Right, Europeans invading the Middle East. It was
- 11:10Speaker 1: the Crusades UM. And so from these conflicts UM, during
- 11:16Speaker 1: the the Dark Ages, the Medieval ages UM, the Crusades uh,
- 11:21Speaker 1: and after the birth of Islam UM, this this idea
- 11:25Speaker 1: of taking a single person and going and doing as
- 11:28Speaker 1: much damage as you possibly could came about. So do
- 11:32Speaker 1: you remember in the Sniper podcast we talked about sniper's
- 11:35Speaker 1: being considered militarily forced multipliers. So are suicide assassins. And
- 11:42Speaker 1: the term assassin actually comes out of this era and
- 11:46Speaker 1: from the Middle East. UM, from the word hashishan Persian word, Uh,
- 11:53Speaker 1: the name of a radical Shiite sect. Didn't know that, Yeah,
- 11:56Speaker 1: So hashish An assassin are one of the same Hashian
- 12:02Speaker 1: Hashihan assassin. Right the the you may recognize the word
- 12:08Speaker 1: hashish as a type of pot residue. So if if
- 12:14Speaker 1: you find it odd that the word hashish pops up,
- 12:16Speaker 1: um be advised that the sect, the Hashihan um smoked
- 12:23Speaker 1: hash as part of their religious ritual. Yeah. They were
- 12:28Speaker 1: also the ones though who would go out and Um.
- 12:30Speaker 1: There they were tasked with um killing like public officials
- 12:36Speaker 1: in very public places to basically terrorize the population. Like
- 12:41Speaker 1: like if you kill somebody like that, you cut someone's
- 12:44Speaker 1: head off in a crowded square, you're gonna die. But
- 12:48Speaker 1: the leaders had just got cut off in front of me,
- 12:50Speaker 1: and now I'm really freaked out. It was the first
- 12:53Speaker 1: early versions, ancient versions that would later become suicide bombings.
- 12:57Speaker 1: But that sect was wiped out by Mongol in twelve
- 13:00Speaker 1: fifty seven, and there was kind of a break on
- 13:03Speaker 1: this activity for a while as far as world history goes.
- 13:06Speaker 1: And then you get to World War Two and the
- 13:09Speaker 1: Japanese Kamakazi pilots who are most essentially suicide bombers except
- 13:16Speaker 1: by way of a plane. Yeah, through the Bushido code. Yeah,
- 13:21Speaker 1: But usually think suicide bombing is someone on foot, but
- 13:23Speaker 1: it can really, you know, you can do. There's been boats,
- 13:26Speaker 1: there's been cars and trucks, humans walking, and then obviously
- 13:30Speaker 1: planes flying into aircraft carriers. Really a male cart filled
- 13:35Speaker 1: with explosives, you're gonna get the same. You're a suicide bomber. Well,
- 13:39Speaker 1: Robert Lamb puts the first modern suicide attack in Lebanon
- 13:43Speaker 1: in nine during War between civil war between Christian and
- 13:47Speaker 1: Muslim militants, and there was a loan suicide bomber Shiite
- 13:53Speaker 1: hit in Iraqi embassy in Beirut, and the US entered
- 13:56Speaker 1: the conflict the next year, and so a side bomber
- 14:00Speaker 1: drove into the U. S embassy I remember that, actually,
- 14:03Speaker 1: killing sixty three people. Yeah, that was in April, and
- 14:06Speaker 1: most folks say this is like the beginning of the
- 14:09Speaker 1: modern suicide mission, right. And then in October two truck
- 14:13Speaker 1: bombs drove into the marine barracks in Beirut and killed
- 14:16Speaker 1: two people French and American I think two D forty
- 14:21Speaker 1: one Marines. So, like you said, that's the birth of
- 14:24Speaker 1: the modern suicide bomber. And unfortunately it's just basically been
- 14:27Speaker 1: gaining momentum ever since. This whole concept of I'm going
- 14:31Speaker 1: to strap a bunch of explosions to myself and walk
- 14:33Speaker 1: into a crowd and blow myself up and kill as
- 14:36Speaker 1: many other people as I possibly can. Yeah, let's poke
- 14:39Speaker 1: around inside the mind because people have been curious what
- 14:42Speaker 1: kind of person does this um? Because obviously, if you
- 14:46Speaker 1: look at UM just from a straight physical standpoint, they
- 14:49Speaker 1: did find between the ages of eighteen and twenty four
- 14:52Speaker 1: is your average age of a suicide bomber. Apparently Israel
- 14:55Speaker 1: conducted studies in the late nineties to figure out what
- 14:57Speaker 1: they you know, who sus eye bombers were, right. So,
- 15:01Speaker 1: so the sense of despondency and teens is playing a
- 15:03Speaker 1: part here. The whole world is against them teens. How
- 15:08Speaker 1: many teens feel that way? I know I did, uh,
- 15:11Speaker 1: and it's no different in other countries. UM combine these
- 15:14Speaker 1: feelings with tyranny. You're oppressed, you're angry. Uh. And then
- 15:20Speaker 1: the final center here is usually and I think they
- 15:22Speaker 1: even have a study that there's some sort of personal
- 15:26Speaker 1: loss attached to the person that ends up being picked
- 15:30Speaker 1: to carry out the mission. Right, their parents were killed
- 15:33Speaker 1: or wounded or put in prison. Yeah, yeah, I'll do it. Yeah.
- 15:38Speaker 1: It wasn't a study, but it said it is readlarly
- 15:40Speaker 1: psychiatrist UM sifted through the lives is how Robert put it.
- 15:44Speaker 1: And they did discover and almost all cases connections to
- 15:47Speaker 1: like slain their wounded family members or friends. And for
- 15:50Speaker 1: the most part they were males. But as times worn on, women, children,
- 15:55Speaker 1: older people have UM all joined the echelons of UM
- 16:00Speaker 1: suicide bombers, right, they're usually very poor. Yeah, um, there was.
- 16:05Speaker 1: Did you hear about the woman from UM I guess
- 16:08Speaker 1: she was a chechen extremist in um Moscow on New
- 16:13Speaker 1: Year's Eve. She had a suicide belt and was getting
- 16:16Speaker 1: ready to walk out into Red Square to blow herself
- 16:19Speaker 1: up and take just tons of people with her, and
- 16:21Speaker 1: she decided it didn't match her purse. She didn't make
- 16:24Speaker 1: it out of the apartment because she got a spam
- 16:27Speaker 1: text from her cell phone provider saying Happy New Year,
- 16:33Speaker 1: and it blew her up really, you know, in her room. Yeah,
- 16:37Speaker 1: in her apartment. She didn't have her cell phone off,
- 16:42Speaker 1: which apparently is standard procedure. Like she they went out
- 16:47Speaker 1: and bought a cell phone just for that purpose. The
- 16:50Speaker 1: provider sent a spam text to everybody, because you know,
- 16:53Speaker 1: cellphone providers have been thinking, like, we're providing service to
- 16:56Speaker 1: somebody who's going to blow up a bunch of people
- 16:58Speaker 1: as a terrorist, the same we want to tell don't
- 17:00Speaker 1: happy New here exactly. Wow, I didn't hear about that.
- 17:03Speaker 1: It's true. So uh. One other common trait is that
- 17:07Speaker 1: they obviously are willing to die for their cause, but
- 17:10Speaker 1: they are also willing to kill for their cause. UM
- 17:14Speaker 1: most terrorists don't have, you know, they have no empathy
- 17:18Speaker 1: for the suffering of other people. And it helps that, uh,
- 17:22Speaker 1: in the case of US versus them, that the them
- 17:24Speaker 1: is very very different from themselves, which is certainly the
- 17:27Speaker 1: case with the Middle East and the United States. It
- 17:30Speaker 1: couldn't be any more different as far as countries go,
- 17:33Speaker 1: and people go, yeah, yeah, there's definitely a whole sentiment
- 17:36Speaker 1: that UM occupation and invasion fans the flames of suicide bombing. Well, yeah,
- 17:44Speaker 1: because that you see your you see Americans as an
- 17:47Speaker 1: invader and an occupier and a savage and a nonbeliever,
- 17:51Speaker 1: which is a big part that that part about jihad
- 17:54Speaker 1: in the Koran says basically like this is what happens
- 17:59Speaker 1: to nonbeliever. This is what you do to nonbelievers. To
- 18:02Speaker 1: an extent, Robert points out that if suicide bombers were
- 18:05Speaker 1: left just completely alone, they might want to back out
- 18:08Speaker 1: or think twice. So that's why they surround them toward
- 18:11Speaker 1: go time with the social network of supporters to say,
- 18:15Speaker 1: you know, you're doing the right thing. They isolate you
- 18:18Speaker 1: from your family and friends and UM show you videos
- 18:23Speaker 1: martyrdom videos to reinforce that what you're doing is you know,
- 18:26Speaker 1: you make a martyrdom video, you make your own saying
- 18:29Speaker 1: like I'm about to blow a bunch of people up
- 18:31Speaker 1: and I can't wait to get to the afterlife. And
- 18:34Speaker 1: I'm like a true UM believer. You're right, I read
- 18:37Speaker 1: that wrong and um and so that that is it's
- 18:41Speaker 1: not only inspiring, it's also like, you can't back out
- 18:44Speaker 1: now you've made your video, like you you this is
- 18:47Speaker 1: your point of no return. Well, because yeah, that'd be
- 18:50Speaker 1: probably even more shameful. But I think people, you know,
- 18:53Speaker 1: that survival instinct is very strong. So there's these people
- 18:56Speaker 1: that are handling them. Usually one of them will go
- 19:00Speaker 1: with the suicide bomber to the target area and we'll
- 19:04Speaker 1: basically keep them encouraged and um on on track and um,
- 19:10Speaker 1: I imagine will blow them up if they decide that
- 19:14Speaker 1: they want to back out. Yeah, well, and beyond that,
- 19:16Speaker 1: sometimes it's planned that way. Sometimes the the assistant is
- 19:22Speaker 1: has the detonator to prevent any kind of backout. I
- 19:26Speaker 1: think that there's probably a backup detonator, Yeah you think, yeah, Okay,
- 19:30Speaker 1: that's my suspicion. So we're talking about the nuts and
- 19:34Speaker 1: bolts of it all A sudden then let's go ahead.
- 19:35Speaker 1: And with that you mean the shrapnel. Yeah, suicide bomber,
- 19:38Speaker 1: it's not a very elaborate, expensive operation that costs about
- 19:42Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty bucks probably worth of explosives and
- 19:45Speaker 1: one human life willing to do so. And you've got
- 19:48Speaker 1: yourself a suicide bomber, whether it's a duffel bag full
- 19:51Speaker 1: of stuff or something you strap on your chest. Uh.
- 19:56Speaker 1: Like you said, they've used trucks and boats. Well, deffel
- 19:58Speaker 1: bags are um apparently out a vogue because you will
- 20:01Speaker 1: get shot in the head if you look like you
- 20:03Speaker 1: are dropping remotely Middle Eastern and you have a duffel
- 20:06Speaker 1: bag at least if you're in London in two thousand
- 20:09Speaker 1: five in your Brazilian right. Yeah. Um, but you were
- 20:14Speaker 1: saying this, it's just one person with a duffel bag
- 20:18Speaker 1: or a vest or a belt. And uh, the the
- 20:24Speaker 1: attack of um a suicide bomber is threefold, right. One,
- 20:28Speaker 1: it kills a bunch of people, so it's terroristic. Two,
- 20:32Speaker 1: it draws a lot of attention to this cause that
- 20:34Speaker 1: at least one person is willing to die for. And
- 20:38Speaker 1: then three it's it's a force multiplier because it has
- 20:41Speaker 1: like a huge effect on morale in the psyche of
- 20:44Speaker 1: the population. But it can also go the other way.
- 20:48Speaker 1: Um has pointed out with World War Two, Um, it
- 20:51Speaker 1: can either Like it's happened both ways in America because
- 20:54Speaker 1: when two forty one Marines were killed in the truck
- 20:57Speaker 1: bombing in nineteen eight for UH, President Reagan said in
- 21:03Speaker 1: his in his memoir that that had a big deal
- 21:07Speaker 1: with his pulling out of that region. Like he was like,
- 21:11Speaker 1: now you know what, forget that these people are willing
- 21:14Speaker 1: to do this. I'm getting my guys out of there.
- 21:16Speaker 1: Or in the case of World War Two with the Japanese,
- 21:19Speaker 1: let's drop two bombs on their country that they won't
- 21:21Speaker 1: be able to recover from because they're willing to fly
- 21:24Speaker 1: their planes into our aircraft carrier. You know, that's not
- 21:27Speaker 1: how the Japanese tell it. How they tell They tell
- 21:30Speaker 1: it like they were starting to make moves that they
- 21:32Speaker 1: were willing to surrender, and the Americans had so much
- 21:35Speaker 1: money invested in this research that they basically needed and
- 21:39Speaker 1: wanted to see what happened. It certainly doesn't surprise me.
- 21:43Speaker 1: There are two versions of that story. That's the way
- 21:45Speaker 1: history works. So Chuck, yes, Um, what I guess what
- 21:52Speaker 1: are these things made up? You said you can fill
- 21:54Speaker 1: a truck belt all this stuff, what is it? Well,
- 21:57Speaker 1: it varies, of course between what your resources are. I
- 22:01Speaker 1: think in the early days they would just re jigger
- 22:04Speaker 1: land mines and I use those. But now it's everything
- 22:08Speaker 1: from T and T too, something called t a TP
- 22:12Speaker 1: triacetone triper oxide and then other plastic explosives stuff. They
- 22:18Speaker 1: can do a lot of damage. And they found too
- 22:20Speaker 1: that uh, the more people around the suicide bomber the better.
- 22:26Speaker 1: Obviously not for those people close in proximity, but if
- 22:29Speaker 1: you hear that there's a suicide bomber suspect and all
- 22:32Speaker 1: of a sudden the crowd disperses, it's gonna have a
- 22:35Speaker 1: blast zone that's much greater and cover a much more
- 22:38Speaker 1: area because the thick, massive people around that person create
- 22:42Speaker 1: basically a human shield, which is pretty serious stuff. And uh,
- 22:47Speaker 1: in London two thousand five, you want to I've talked
- 22:50Speaker 1: about that. Remember, Oh is that when you meant by
- 22:53Speaker 1: shot in the head. Yeah, he got shot in the
- 22:54Speaker 1: head seven times. And he's not a suicide bomber. No,
- 22:57Speaker 1: he's just some guy from Brazil the staken identity. Yeah,
- 23:01Speaker 1: that was a pretty jumpy time, if I remember correctly, Yes,
- 23:04Speaker 1: it was you got anything else? M m oh. I
- 23:09Speaker 1: thought the very end had a very interesting um. The
- 23:13Speaker 1: thing that Israeli settlers were trying was they proposed burying
- 23:18Speaker 1: suicide bombers in pig skin body bags as a way
- 23:23Speaker 1: of discouraging suicide bombers from because I guess if they think,
- 23:28Speaker 1: if I'm gonna be buried in pigskin, that's not the
- 23:31Speaker 1: afterlife that I'm that I'm looking for. But the problem is,
- 23:35Speaker 1: and Robert does a good job pointing, that's how I
- 23:37Speaker 1: think when you the suicide bombing is capable of dehumanizing
- 23:45Speaker 1: on both levels, right, that would have not only um,
- 23:49Speaker 1: I guess, to dehumanize the suicide bomber, but it dehumanized
- 23:55Speaker 1: the Israelis Right. So part of the the whole um
- 23:59Speaker 1: feedback machanism for suicide bombings is that one side doesn't
- 24:03Speaker 1: see the other's human any longer. Right, you're willing to
- 24:06Speaker 1: die for your cause, so you're crazy or um, you
- 24:10Speaker 1: are worth dying to kill because I don't see you
- 24:13Speaker 1: as a person any longer, and so that that would
- 24:17Speaker 1: have been counterproductive. I'm sure, good job. This is a
- 24:20Speaker 1: tough one. Yeah it was. I'm glad we got through it. Man. Okay, yeah,
- 24:25Speaker 1: it's a tough topic. I hope we explained like how
- 24:28Speaker 1: it works in the history and was it good? Maybe
- 24:32Speaker 1: I was? Okay, Okay. If you want to learn more
- 24:34Speaker 1: about suicide bombers, you can type in suicide bombers, um terrorism.
- 24:39Speaker 1: There's another article on how terrorism works. Um. Just type
- 24:43Speaker 1: whatever you want in the search bar at how stuff
- 24:45Speaker 1: works dot com and you will be pleasantly surprised. We
- 24:49Speaker 1: virtually guarantee it, um, I said, handy search bar. So
- 24:56Speaker 1: what do you want to do? No listener mail today?
- 25:01Speaker 1: All right, in lieu of listener mail, because I was
- 25:03Speaker 1: just reading listener mail itist not enough. I saw that
- 25:05Speaker 1: you made a face and kind of like way and
- 25:09Speaker 1: don't have another one ready, So let's just say, how
- 25:12Speaker 1: about just to thank you for for listening? Is that good?
- 25:16Speaker 1: That's what we're doing? Yeah? All right, thank you for listening, everybody? Yeah?
- 25:21Speaker 1: Something simple? That was it? Keep it pure? Okay? All right? Uh,
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