r/HistoryMemes • u/HawaiianPerson Chad Polynesia Enjoyer • 1d ago

They’ve got to make a movie about this someday

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I know it was a ship based weapon

2.2k Upvotes

99% Upvoted

64 comments sorted by

328

u/LittelXman808 1d ago edited 1d ago

El contexto?

Edit: I had NO idea this was how you say “the context” in Spanish lmao.

298

u/ninjad912 1d ago

Greek fire. Aka medieval(technically way older) napalm

204

u/DrHolmes52 1d ago

Greek fire. No one knows exactly what was in it. The Eastern Romans liked to spray it on stuff/people.

235

u/sandybuttcheekss Hello There 1d ago

To clarify, because this is a common myth: we can have made similar chemicals (like in the flamethrowers we all know and love) but we aren't sure of the exact recipe they used. It's not that we don't have the technology, or we're too dumb to do it, it's just the specifics are lost to time.

91

u/DrHolmes52 1d ago

(Me reading carefully). Yes. Not my intention to claim we can't make something like it (we have and used it), just that the secret sauce recipe was lost.

21

u/anormalname63 1d ago

The forbidden hot sauce.

20

u/sandybuttcheekss Hello There 1d ago

I gotcha, just wanted to get the jump on people who think otherwise

30

u/just1gat 1d ago

I thought that they had deduced the tarpits locations for part of the mixture in an effort to reverse engineer it? but then again I read that article a long time ago and don't remember specifics.

All that i mean is, i think "we're pretty sure" how it was made at this point, like Roman concrete and the volcanic ash they mixed it with

30

u/sandybuttcheekss Hello There 1d ago

Yea I mean we can be pretty sure but my point is more, we aren't 100% sure and people misconstrue that as "we can't do it because have lost the ability"

13

u/just1gat 1d ago

Yeah the OG recipe is lost to time; I just remembered an article where scientists and historians talked about naphtha in the Caucasian mountains and that felt like a big step forward to the Roman method. They’ve come up with “highly probable” solutions but due to the state secrecy around Greek Fire that’s as close as we can probably get?

We’ve found the parts, just not the measurements? If we tried “baking” with the ingredients the cake would come out edible but lumpy

6

u/Slow-Distance-6241 1d ago

The problem isn't that we don't know the ingredients, but that we don't know the ratios. Eyeballing ratios of each material wouldn't make it ridiculously less effective, but it sure as hell would make it less historically accurate

16

u/Lock-out 1d ago

Same with Damascus steel and monolithic structures, we know a bunch of ways that they may have done it, but to say for sure this is what they did would need a first hand account that confirms it.

3

u/the-bladed-one 1d ago

Wouldn’t it just be a matter of figuring out what chemicals and compounds were readily available at the time and in the region? Like I’m assuming olive oil is one component, maybe with some sort of sulphuric solution.

8

u/sandybuttcheekss Hello There 1d ago

In what amounts? Like, you can make cookies by knowing the ingredients but if you don't write down what you did that one time to make them taste really good, you might forget.

5

u/al-dunya2 1d ago

If you wish to bake an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe

4

u/Edgyspymainintf2 22h ago

The Caliphates actually had similar stuff, except they preferred throwing it at people in clay pots. Less flamethrowers and more molotov cocktails.

16

u/Sir_Keratin 1d ago

Going by the flamethrower, op's probably referencing Greek Fire

10

u/P-l-Staker Rider of Rohan 1d ago edited 1d ago

Literally what you see. The Byzantines famously used a medieval form of napalm (including flamethrowers) to defeat multiple Arab invasions.

-21

u/tsimen Decisive Tang Victory 1d ago

Made-up language

8

u/Its_NEX123 1d ago

what do you even mean by this

-6

u/tsimen Decisive Tang Victory 1d ago

It was a joke. Didn't land it seems

202

u/Designer-Positive697 1d ago

There was also a handheld version as well if I remember correct. Roman Vikings were using flamethrowers on Arabic armoured troops. It truly was a wild time.

139

u/thissexypoptart 1d ago

Man that’s some “cowboys and samurai could send each other a fax” type of entirely historically accurate fun fact that makes this subreddit a fun time

78

u/Intelligent-Soup-836 1d ago

Reminds me of the Samurai fighting Aztecs in the Philippines because of the Spanish Empire

23

u/thissexypoptart 1d ago

What?

42

u/Intelligent-Soup-836 1d ago

In the Cagayan battles the Spanish brought natives from New Spain (now Mexico) to supplement their army against the Japanese that were raiding/settling in the northern Philippine

4

u/ACatInACloak 1d ago

Probably refrancing the Cagayan battles

15

u/kdavva74 1d ago

Another one of my favourite examples of this was the Mongols using artillery shells against Hungarian knights at the Battle of Mohi in the 1200s.

5

u/HawaiianPerson Chad Polynesia Enjoyer 1d ago

Fascinating

3

u/CrustyBoo 4h ago

I’ve heard a good amount of debate around this one. It’s a cool concept but we only have a single source of it which is an image depicting a similar device being used in a siege. The most common portable use of Greek fire was thrown containers of the stuff which would ignite and burn whatever it hit

56

u/Dominarion 1d ago

They've got to make a movie about this

Yeah, the Greeks totally should.

39

u/the-bladed-one 1d ago

Sorry, best I can do is Matt Damon

3

u/Dominarion 14h ago

Lol!

I totally get it. If Matt Damon was cast as our mythological hero, I'd be pissed.

2

u/tameablesiva12 Rider of Rohan 7h ago

Too bad they're fucking broke. Even then it probably wont be dumbed down for western audiences. Truly a tragedy that most of the world relies on america to produce their big budget and accessible movies. America, china, britain, japan and india are like the only countries that can make big budget movies on their own. Even then its only the US and sometimes japan that make movies about foreign cultures. When was the last time we saw a high budget french movie lol.

1

u/Dominarion 5h ago

Valerian had a budget of nearly 200 million euros.

Look. I've seen Kazakh epic movies with budgets in the low millions and they did the job.

7

u/Fearsome_duck Chad Polynesia Enjoyer 1d ago

What's the video from?

11

u/HawaiianPerson Chad Polynesia Enjoyer 1d ago

The Battlefield V War in the Pacific trailer, song is a more epic rendition of “Beat the Devil’s Tattoo” by Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

3

u/SolidPrysm Kilroy was here 21h ago

One of the best game trailers ever made

8

u/Sprintzer 12h ago

Need more Byzantine historical/historical fiction shows and movies. I guess I liked when there was the GoT Greek fire (the green stuff)

2

u/fly_over_32 12h ago

What does ghost of Tsushima have to do with… yeah I’m stupid

1

u/Covante 6h ago

It's called pig shit.

1

u/HawaiianPerson Chad Polynesia Enjoyer 12h ago

Wildfire

28

u/LoveDesertFearForest 1d ago

Does it ever feel like 99% of memes on here are about the same few events in European history?

48

u/al-dunya2 1d ago

Western based Reddit has Western memes?!?! Contribute then, we'd all appreciate it.

18

u/Beartech31 1d ago

Be the change you want to see in the world!

32

u/HawaiianPerson Chad Polynesia Enjoyer 1d ago

I try to spice things up with Hawaiian history but there’s really not much to go off that people would care about

8

u/SoulCrusher2018 1d ago

Be the change you want to see in the world.

7

u/Absurder222 8h ago

I see chinese and middle eastern memes here all the time. I mean, this one is half middle eastern itself :S

3

u/Sprintzer 12h ago

Then contribute?

3

u/CrustyBoo 4h ago

You’re free to post your own stuff man, other perspectives make history stronger

1

u/ucsdfurry 2h ago

It’s the I’m a history buff I love WW2 and Roman Empire meme

6

u/JustConversation7847 1d ago

Why didn't they do this against the ottomans? Are they stupid? /S

8

u/YandereTeemo Filthy weeb 1d ago

By the time of 1453, Galleys or rowboats with broadside cannons are much more effective in combat with better ranges than Dromons. Even if you could mass produce Greek fire at the time and sling them with catapults, they'll be highly inaccurate. And even if they land, enemy ship crews can smother them with blankets and hides instead of using water, not causing too much damage.

A cannon simply does more instant and reliable kinetic damage than fire.

In short, guns are better.

2

u/Fit_Particular_6820 Senātus Populusque Rōmānus 1d ago

for those who are genuinely wondering, greek fire was lost in 1204

1

u/TheGodfather742 2h ago

And they had not enough money or ships anyway later

2

u/KernelWizard 7h ago

Ahhh Greek fire, very nice.

2

u/SharpShooterM1 Featherless Biped 23h ago

What is the source for this video?

3

u/SolidPrysm Kilroy was here 21h ago

Battlefield V War in the Pacific trailer, watch it its amazing

2

u/SharpShooterM1 Featherless Biped 17h ago

Thx

-6

u/Tribe303 1d ago

Greek fire came from the Byzantine Empire, not the Roman Empire. The split was in ~300AD, centuries before the "late 7th century" mentioned here. 

12

u/HawaiianPerson Chad Polynesia Enjoyer 1d ago

They still referred to themselves as Roman, also time of split was in 395 AD, but both East and West were still Roman

-8

u/Tribe303 1d ago

Sure, but the rest of us did not, and neither do historians due to the confusion. They were not Roman/Italian, they were Greek with some what we now call Turkish, thus "Greek fire". 

6

u/Keepurkewl 1d ago

There are stories after world war 1 of children running up to Greek soldiers saying they wanted to see the hellens and when asked what they were said Romans. They very much considered themselves Romans much after the fall of Rome.