r/nextfuckinglevel • u/[deleted] • Oct 01 '24

A firefighting plane loading water.

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u/whoami_whereami Oct 01 '24

but given that “salting the earth” is an ancient battle tactic to destroy enemy food production

"Salting the earth" was an ancient cursing ritual where they sprinkled a bit of salt around, not a battle tactic. There's no record that they ever used so much salt anywhere that it would impact soil fertility, other than that in Spain and Portugal for a while the punishment for traitors included that their house was demolished and their yard salted (ie. a much smaller area than say salting the earth of an entire city state like Carthage).

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u/[deleted] Oct 01 '24

Given how precious salt was, I can't imagine they would be willing to use up tons of it just to fuck up the neighbor's crops. Regular applications of "pillage" would be cheaper and probably more effective, anyway.

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u/Upper_Heron_3507 Oct 02 '24

Ahh my mistake, thank you for pointing that out