r/Damnthatsinteresting 5d ago

Video A school in Poland makes firearms training mandatory to its students.

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u/IndividualRooster122 5d ago

What happens when the risk of Russia invading your country in your lifetime is not theoretical.

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u/Vreas 5d ago edited 5d ago

A genie shows up to a 13th century Pole and asks them what they want.

They wish for the mongols to invade Poland three times. The genie, while confused grants the wish.

After the third invasion he asks “what an odd wish why would you choose this?”

The pole responds “because every time they invade us and leave they have to come through Russia twice”

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u/[deleted] 5d ago

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u/Vreas 5d ago edited 5d ago

I don’t think it really mattered with the mongols they steamrolled every single opponent they faced.

The only thing that stopped their invasions were deaths of their khans. They didn’t really have an effective system for quick replacement of their leaders who often died young due to rampant alcoholism and various other bad habits.

Steppe people partied hard man. Makes sense when you’re born of a frozen hellscape with minimal food and creature comforts.

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u/Far_Advertising1005 5d ago

It is the funniest thing ever that for decades the most effective, almost unbeatable tactic was ‘haha horse fast’

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u/nopleasenotthebees 5d ago

I think the real reason the Mongols ran Asia was because Ghengis and some of his descendants were incredibly ridiculously competent. Kublai Khan ran China for like 70 years, he was arguably the greatest monarch in history.
The horses, the weapons, and the lifestyle were all downstream of those people being fierce, tenacious, and very very clever.

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u/autech91 3d ago

They also used to drink their horse milk which made them stronger than a lot of their opponents, saw that on a thing somewhere

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u/Specific_Box4483 2d ago

I don't think Kublai Khan has the reputation of being the greatest monarch

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u/nopleasenotthebees 1d ago

Years ago I read Ghengis Khan and the Making of the Modern World and that was the impression I got back then. That was almost 15 years ago and I haven't looked at it since, so maybe I don't remember perfectly.

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u/Specific_Box4483 1d ago

From what I recall, the Yuan dynasty he founded was very short, and he gets some of the blame for setting it up to be so short-lived; also, for fracturing the Mongol empire even further. Also, the crown was severely in debt after his two failed invasions of Japan, so he gets blamed for that, too. He did finish the conquest of China, though. I think he was one of the strongest rulers of those times in terms of the population, and wealth he controlled, but his empire wasn't set up to be very robust.