Europe’s Forgotten Bunkers

Posted on August 9, 2015 by wellsdc

Sometimes the temptation of clickbait-y headlines is too much to resist, but sometimes it leads you to something fascinating^*. This was the case with a ViralNova post enticingly entitled “They Stumbled Across This In The Woods… Beneath It Was A Terrifyingly Awesome Secret,” which begins with “Deep in the woods in the middle of northern Germany…”

This piqued my interest for at least three reasons:

Obscure history from World War II and the Cold War are a hobby of mine (and it seems safe to assume that any “terrifyingly awesome secret” found in a German forest dates to that period in history.)
I find the idea of long-lost underground structures fascinating, albeit usually in a tragic way—like the abandoned tunnels in Ghostbusters 2, or the slightly-less-fictional “mole people” (not a very nice term) of Las Vegas, New York, etc.
We’ve been watching the Sundance series Deutschland 83, which just had its season finale.

Deutschland 83 deserves its own post, but to summarize: It is about a young East German soldier sent to spy on West Germany by posing as the newly-assigned aide to a general in the West German Army. I haven’t seen much of the show The Americans, but I suspect they share some thematic similarities. As the title indicates, Deutschland 83 is set in 1983, the year we came closest to nuclear annihilation since the Cuban Missile Crisis 21 years earlier.

Getting back to the ViralNova post, it sets up the story as follows: Continue reading →

Monday Morning Cute: Memorial Day Edition

Posted on May 26, 2014 by wellsdc

I found this picture in an Imgur album, and tracked down photo credits at Retronaut:

“Marine First Sergeant Neil I. Shober of Fort Wayne, Indiana, shares the spoils of war bananas with a native goat, one of the few survivors of the terrific naval and air bombardment in support of the Marines hitting the beach on the Japanese-mandated island of Saipan.” – National Museum of the Pacific War

Saipan is a 12-mile-by-5.6-mile island in the Northern Marianas Islands. From June 15 to July 9, 1944, the U.S. fought to take control of the island from Japan, which had held it since 1914. 71,000 American troops met 31,000 Japanese. The U.S. suffered 3,426 killed and about 13,000 wounded. It was the most costly battle of the Pacific War up to that point for the U.S.

Of the 31,000 Japanese soldiers, only 921 were taken prisoner. The rest were either killed in action or committed suicide. Out of a civilian population of around 25,000 people, an estimated 22,000 died. Many of them committed suicide, allegedly with the encouragement of the emperor, who promised them “an equal spiritual status in the afterlife with those of soldiers perishing in combat,” according to a Wikipedia article citing a book by David Bergamini.

But this goat survived, and got some bananas. Whether this scene is more cute or horrific is up to each of us, I guess, but war is hell.

Photo credit: National Museum of the Pacific War.

So You Want to Motivate People to Get Vaccinated…

Posted on April 17, 2014 by wellsdc

Now that we are seeing outbreaks of diseases that were once relegated to the history books and vaccine labels, and now that even Jenny McCarthy seems unable to control the beast she helped to create, perhaps it’s time for some stronger rhetoric than mere science and mockery.

The following photo was taken during World War II at the 363rd Station Hospital in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea (which was part of Australia at the time):

About 27,000 Allied soldiers contracted malaria in New Guinea during the campaign against Japan, which lasted more than three years, from early 1942 until the war ended in August 1945. Antimalarial drugs were among the most effective tools in controlling the disease.

You didn’t forget your antimalarial meds. If you did, you had a pretty good chance of dying, even without anyone shooting at you.

So go get your dang vaccines. Any questions?

Photo credit: By Otis Historical Archives of the National Museum of Health & Medicine (OTIS Archive 1) ref: D44-145-1 (MAMAS) [CC-BY-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

You Will Never Be as Awesome as Christopher Lee

Posted on January 12, 2014 by wellsdc

Nowadays, most people know Christopher Lee as Saruman the White or Count Dooku. He was awesome as Saruman, but since I generally prefer to pretend that the Star Wars prequel trilogy never happened, I shall withhold opinion on Count Dooku. He’s also one-third of the triumvirate of what I call the awesome old horror actors, the others being Peter Cushing and Vincent Price. (He’s also the only one of the three to live to see the new millennium.)

As this infographic shows, Christopher Lee’s badassery runs deep (h/t Marc): Continue reading →

In the Name of Atheism

Posted on September 14, 2012 by wellsdc

There were non-ideological reasons why World War II was so destructive. Bombs, for example.

The title to this post is intended to be a paradox, if that is even the right word. “Atheism,” in its most basic sense, denotes nothing more than a lack of belief in gods, supernatural forces, and so forth, in the absence of evidence. Atheism is therefore a “negative” viewpoint, in that it only addresses what a person does not believe. Atheism may, but by no means must, accompany “positive” views such as humanism or other philosophies, but by itself the word “atheism” has limited descriptive powers.

That does not stop others from ascribing traits to atheists as a whole, of course. (Part of this post is yet another re-phrasing of an irate Facebook comment, FYI.)

A Facebook commenter alerted me to an article on the website Evidence for God titled “What About Atrocities That Have Been Done in the Name of Religion?” It is yet another effort to move the goalposts on the question of evil in the world, and to cast aspersions on modern-day atheists by citing the activities of people more than half a century ago who may or may not have shared minute aspects of a worldview. The author begins, in the very first sentence, with a logical flaw: Continue reading →

Finland will rock your face off, then kick your ass

Posted on May 2, 2012 by wellsdc

About twenty years ago I spent roughly 24 hours in Finland. Thanks to jet lag, I spent around fourteen of those hours sleeping. What time I did manage to spend conscious, I remember it being quite enjoyable. I mostly remember blondes and a total lack of any sunset.

I also have a poser-ish affinity for European metal bands, many of which hail from the Scandinavian region. I was therefore thrilled to learn that, according to a probably less-than-scientifically rigorous study, Finland has the most metal bands per capita of any country in the world.

It might be worth taking a look at the country, tucked away as it is so tidily up there, kind of out of the way. As it turns out (and I sort of already knew this, but damn), the Finns are kind of, well, epic bad-asses.

History

First off, the Finns didn’t half-ass their prehistory. According to Wikipedia, “prehistoric Finland” persisted all the way up to 1150 CE. While the Normans were conquering England and the Western Roman Empire was celebrating its seventh century of no longer existing, Finland was doing its own thing in such a bad-ass way, no one even bothered to write it down (which is what I assume “prehistoric” means.) People have actually lived there for at least ten thousand years, but as for what was going on before 1150, I guess we just shouldn’t worry our pretty little heads about it.

From 1150 until 1809, Finland was ruled by the Swedes, who as we all know, can slay dragons with the sheer power of rock.

Yngwie Malmsteen's "Triology" album [Fair use]

I think the Swedish National Anthem was chosen from this album

Sweden and Russia fought a war, apparently over Finland, between 1808 and 1809, which Russia won. Finland became a “Grand Duchy” under the rule of the Tsar. That lasted about a century, until the Finns told Russia to piss off near the end of World War I, when Russia really had bigger things to worry about anyway. Finland fought a civil warbetween communists and not-communists, which the not-communists won. Here’s where it gets interesting. Continue reading →

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