Spikes of Doom: Difference between revisions

** The Viet Cong's traps were designed to be somewhat less than lethal so that the enemy would have to evacuate wounded and treat them at a hospital, which they believed to be more damaging to the war effort than simply killing them.

*** There's some truth to that, as it would tie up more soldiers and resources to try to keep a wounded soldier alive than to simply deal with a dead body. Alternatively, the Viet Cong would attack while the other soldiers tried to help the trap's victim.

* [[Caltrops]] are four spikes arranged so that however you drop one, it will land with one spike pointing up (kinda like the jacks in a game of Pick Up Jacks). The idea is to drop them in the road or in a field somewhere to prevent vehicles or cavalry from operating freely without fear of injury or damage. They were used in the Korean War by the Air Force to cut off roads used by Communist supply lines, so they could come back and bomb the disabled supply vehicles. Pictures of the beaches at Normany show giant caltrops designed to hinder landing craft and tanks. Maybe not immediately threatening, but remember that while you're trying to get around these things or clean them up, you've probably got bad guys opening up with [[More Dakka|machine guns]], [[No Kill Like Overkill|artillery]], and maybe even [[Death From Above|air strikes]] if you're particularly [[Butt Monkey|unblessed in life]].

* This is being tossed around as an idea to ward future Earthlings away from highly radioactive places. Played with, since the spikes would be too massive to be really dangerous (Just foreboding) but the radiation is certainly lethal enough. The idea behind it is that most types of radiation that we generate these days has a half-life a lot longer than [[Eternal English|any language we've ever spoken]]. A "Warning, Radiation" sign would go unheeded if no one can speak English or even read. A giant wall of spikes, however, would certainly act as a [[Shmuck Bait|deterrent]].