Speaker 1: Yeah, Welcome to Stuff from the Science Lab from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey, guys, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: This is Alison Madam, the science editor how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com. And this is Robert Lamb, science writer at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. Today we're straining a little
Speaker 1: bit outside of our normal purview. We're going to delve
Speaker 1: into the world of military snipers. Well, you know, it's
Speaker 1: kind of a military science and you know we have
Speaker 1: a lot of military stuff under the science banner at
Speaker 1: how stuff works. So yeah, fair games. Yeah, yeah, so, um,
Speaker 1: it was a pretty good article on our site that
Speaker 1: I want to refer you guys to just upfront in
Speaker 1: case I forget um and a certain bye Robert Valdez.
Speaker 1: And we're gonna be talking about a lot of points
Speaker 1: that he covered in Military Snipers. And it's worth pointing
Speaker 1: out that this is one of the few articles that
Speaker 1: has like a video game component to it, right, it does,
Speaker 1: which I played this afternoon. Yeah, Um, did you try
Speaker 1: it out? No? No, I haven't tried it out yet,
Speaker 1: but well it's it's buried. It's on one of the
Speaker 1: latter pages and you have to hit ten hidden targets
Speaker 1: and you're supposed to do it within thirty seconds. So
Speaker 1: you line it up in the scope and then UM,
Speaker 1: hit the hidden target and then I got a hundred points. Wow,
Speaker 1: So you're you're quite the sniper. I'm I'm interested to
Speaker 1: try it out. I was. I always got to kick
Speaker 1: out of out of games that had some video games
Speaker 1: that had some sort of sniper component, like like the
Speaker 1: Metal Gear Solid games specifically the one that came up
Speaker 1: for PS two back in the day. There was like
Speaker 1: an there was one awesome level in particular where you're
Speaker 1: out there among these snow banks and you have a
Speaker 1: sniper rifle and there's another sniper UM, and you try
Speaker 1: you have to try and figure out where the other
Speaker 1: sniper is and you end up like having to identify
Speaker 1: where they are based on UM. You can see their
Speaker 1: breath rising on the other side of this little hill,
Speaker 1: the sniper trying to pick off sniper. Yeah. Battle of
Speaker 1: the Snipers. Yeah, it shows up in a lot of
Speaker 1: video games. You know. It's like the sniper rifle is
Speaker 1: is pretty common these days and your action oriented. So
Speaker 1: in the video games, is there a spotter as well
Speaker 1: or is it just a lone sniper? UM. I can't
Speaker 1: speak for the moment. I know there's some like their
Speaker 1: video games that have titles like sniper you know, but uh,
Speaker 1: most of your games are going to be more like
Speaker 1: solo type deals where you just have one dude with
Speaker 1: and with a sniper rifle, the ones I've seen. Anyway, Okay,
Speaker 1: well here we are. We're going to educate you because
Speaker 1: it's not a lone gunman typically, well at least those
Speaker 1: snipers who are working for law enforcement or the military. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like think of it like chess in a way. You know,
Speaker 1: you have all these special pieces, but they have to
Speaker 1: they have to work as a team. They have you
Speaker 1: have to one piece of support the other. Like you
Speaker 1: don't just send a tank out and do an out
Speaker 1: into the field. You send a tank out with infantry
Speaker 1: support to cover its weaknesses and allow its strength to
Speaker 1: shine through. Right, right, So snipers work in pairs, and
Speaker 1: uh is there even the Beltway snipers. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you remember that, but back in two thousand two
Speaker 1: in the in the US, there was this infamous pair
Speaker 1: of snipers. It was an older guy. It was John
Speaker 1: Allen Mohammed it and he was he was actually executed
Speaker 1: in two thousand nine, and he had a seventeen year
Speaker 1: old accomplice Lee Melbo, and they were in the Washington,
Speaker 1: D C. Area, and I think they were accused of
Speaker 1: killing ten people. Yeah, it was. It was quite the stir, right.
Speaker 1: So they were operating in a pair too. Um, So
Speaker 1: you have the sniper who gets a lot of the glory,
Speaker 1: but really you have the other half, the spotter, who's
Speaker 1: tracking the target while the person pulling the trigger has
Speaker 1: to recover from you know, gun recoil and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: And you also have the spotter who's giving feedback on
Speaker 1: the wind conditions and basically any condition that's going to
Speaker 1: affect the shot. Yeah, if I if I remember correctly,
Speaker 1: the hurt Locker features a great scene where you see
Speaker 1: like a spotter helping a sniper. I haven't seen that.
Speaker 1: I really do. You want to see it. It's really good, excellent.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's it's a pair. Their elite long range
Speaker 1: marksman and they're generally part of a special ops team
Speaker 1: and they obviously can shoot with ridiculous precision, but they
Speaker 1: tend to be even more than that. They're not just
Speaker 1: pulling the trigger. They do more than just rack up
Speaker 1: confirmed kills argualy. Their main role is recon or reconnaissance.
Speaker 1: I feel like that a little bit of jargon I
Speaker 1: threw in there for you. Yeah, that's nice. And so
Speaker 1: they're very skilled at this thing they call the stock,
Speaker 1: as in stocking stokers. Yeah. Stock. So there's even a
Speaker 1: game that you play in sniper school military sniper school.
Speaker 1: I assume they have the equivalent for law enforcements, some
Speaker 1: sort of training program, police academy or like police snipers.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, you need the people who would be
Speaker 1: a part of a swat team. Right, So in um
Speaker 1: in military training, the snipers learned how to stock, and
Speaker 1: so it's really interesting. There's this stock training. It takes
Speaker 1: place in a big, old, open grassy range, right, and
Speaker 1: your sniper students are going to start at one end
Speaker 1: of the range. They're hanging out and about a thousand
Speaker 1: meters down you have your instructors checking out what you're doing,
Speaker 1: how well you're faring, and they're city on top of
Speaker 1: a truck or maybe a tower, and they have the
Speaker 1: spotter scopes so they can see what's going on. They
Speaker 1: can they have these specialized telescopes to see what's happening.
Speaker 1: So they're they're trying to they're like judging them on
Speaker 1: how stealthily I'm coming. So the sniper students have to
Speaker 1: stalk toward the instructors without being seen. Right, So they're
Speaker 1: in this grassy field and you know that the instructors
Speaker 1: are actively looking for them, and the snipers are trying
Speaker 1: to move toward them on the on the deal, you know, stealthily.
Speaker 1: It's very interesting. Would you think you'd be able to
Speaker 1: do that? Well, no, But but they also have some help,
Speaker 1: you know. They they have camouflage, they have the gilly suit,
Speaker 1: which we'll get into a little bit later, which is
Speaker 1: a key part of a sniper's gear. It sounds pretty cool.
Speaker 1: I mean when I was in I was in Boy
Speaker 1: Scouts and we would, uh, you know, you have all
Speaker 1: your sort of official boy Scout things you have to
Speaker 1: do like tie knots and you know, start fires and
Speaker 1: identify trees and all that kind of stuff. But we
Speaker 1: would often like end up displaying these like games out
Speaker 1: in these fields you know where you know, it's stuff
Speaker 1: like you're sort of like playing elaborate hiding go seek
Speaker 1: out in a cornfield in the middle of the night
Speaker 1: or things like that. So I could see where did
Speaker 1: you really play hide and seek in a corn field
Speaker 1: in the the middle of night, because that sounds pretty fun. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll see one group would hide in the field and
Speaker 1: then the other group would have flashlights and they would
Speaker 1: come in looking for you. And it was really frightening
Speaker 1: at times because it's kind of like, on one hand,
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, my goodness, I'm afraid I'm gonna get
Speaker 1: caught by the dudes with the flashlights. And then you
Speaker 1: find like a really dark corner of the field and
Speaker 1: you're you hunker down and then there's like nobody around
Speaker 1: you and it's really quiet, and then you realize, oh,
Speaker 1: my goodness, sound like out in the middle of the
Speaker 1: woods and it's dark, and you started getting kind of
Speaker 1: freaked out about that. So it was quite the adrenaline rush.
Speaker 1: So I could see where one of these stalking events
Speaker 1: and sniper academy could be, uh, could be pretty exhilarating.
Speaker 1: So while they're stalking, they're they're trying to be these
Speaker 1: masters of stealth, and they're doing stuff like reporting on
Speaker 1: the enemy's size, their strength, their location, and this is
Speaker 1: all pretty helpful and radioing that back to the commanding officers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you've got a guy who can get in there close
Speaker 1: without being seen. So I mean the the reconnaissance value
Speaker 1: there is immense, perhaps yeah, generally, perhaps more so than
Speaker 1: his ability to take out a key component of that enemy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so let's talk about that. Who are they trying to
Speaker 1: take out? Not the average soldier, That's the thing, because
Speaker 1: I think that's another thing about video games. There's some
Speaker 1: games where you kind of have a sniper rifle, but
Speaker 1: you're basically just killing everything in sight. And that's not
Speaker 1: what this is about. This is about a precision um strike.
Speaker 1: This is about identifying key person and important aspect of
Speaker 1: the enemy's forces and removing it from play and maybe
Speaker 1: striking a little terror in the process. So who makes
Speaker 1: you think who would you think might be one of
Speaker 1: those key people that you'd want to um, the cook
Speaker 1: because of the cook's gone to know um, well, the
Speaker 1: obviously any kind of command, um kind of in an
Speaker 1: individual in command would be a key target. Uh, somebody
Speaker 1: that has you know, um like a communications officer, you
Speaker 1: know that kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, pilots um Veldes
Speaker 1: also talked about drivers and your communications operators stuff like that.
Speaker 1: So here's something that I hadn't really thought about. Um,
Speaker 1: there's a famous movie scene or maybe many famous movie
Speaker 1: scenes in which the enemy's location is disclosed by say
Speaker 1: the flare of a cigarette, you know, the little orange
Speaker 1: no at the end of a cigarette or the match right,
Speaker 1: you know, and they light up and it's say goodbye.
Speaker 1: So snipers are ultra ultra observe it. That's something they're
Speaker 1: superbly taught in sniper training school. So a sniper is
Speaker 1: gonna see you know, a sniper is gonna be able
Speaker 1: to discern who's who in the battlefield. They're going to
Speaker 1: pick up on all sorts of subtle cues. You know,
Speaker 1: they're looking at the way you know, body language, they're
Speaker 1: looking at say you make the mistake of saluting your
Speaker 1: commanding officer in the field, Well, then what's going to happen? Right,
Speaker 1: And this is actually like becomes more and more important
Speaker 1: as we move farther away from like the the the
Speaker 1: outdated vision of a military where like the guy in
Speaker 1: charge it has a fancy hat, you know, I mean
Speaker 1: you have you have you have combinants who do not
Speaker 1: have uniforms, uh, you know, especially in the field, you know,
Speaker 1: and they probably don't have uniforms at all. You know,
Speaker 1: like if you're insane a situation like in Afghanistan or something.
Speaker 1: To figure out who's in charge, you're gonna have to
Speaker 1: observe and see based on their social interactions and the
Speaker 1: way they carry themselves. You know which guy is the
Speaker 1: is the command unit, right, and so you don't have
Speaker 1: these key people. So a sniffer is going to look
Speaker 1: for something called a target of opportunity. So this could be, uh,
Speaker 1: somebody like an officer taking a break to smoke cigarette,
Speaker 1: or maybe a pilot who's flight checking his helicopter, or
Speaker 1: you know, a guard who's patrolling the camp or the base. Yeah,
Speaker 1: somebody who just suddenly they're an easy target to pick off,
Speaker 1: which in taking that guy out might not actually like
Speaker 1: it's not like, oh my goodness, Doug's gone, so we're
Speaker 1: just gonna give up the war now, you know, we're
Speaker 1: just gonna completely surrender. But but everybody else in Dougs unit,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be like, oh my goodness, Doug just bought it,
Speaker 1: you know, going out to smoke a cigarette. It like
Speaker 1: it breaks down morale, yeah, absolutely, And then it's not
Speaker 1: just people thereafter, it's also material things too, stuff like
Speaker 1: a generator or radio transmitter or um a fuel tank exactly. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: something of gray importance to the force there. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: you were just talking about how a single hit can
Speaker 1: really demoralize the enemy, and so snappers are called force
Speaker 1: multipliers by army strategists, and so it's all that means,
Speaker 1: as you guys could probably guess, is that sniper teams
Speaker 1: can do much more damage than you'd think an individual
Speaker 1: would be capable of causing. Yeah, they can kind of
Speaker 1: spread chaos, you know. So let's get to the other
Speaker 1: half of the team, the spotter. The spotter tracks the
Speaker 1: shots fired, right, Yeah, and you can tell this by
Speaker 1: um And we were talking about these high velocity, long
Speaker 1: range rounds and a lot of times they're gonna lea
Speaker 1: a vapor trail. Yeah. The main way I could relate
Speaker 1: to this because I don't know that I've played a
Speaker 1: video game that had a vapor trail after you fired
Speaker 1: a sniper rifle. And maybe I'm just playing the wrong games,
Speaker 1: but but one game does come to mind, a little
Speaker 1: iPhone um app that everybody plays these days called Angry Birds.
Speaker 1: It's like everybody, like my wife's addicted to it, and
Speaker 1: I've played that. Something's pretty phone addicted to angry birds
Speaker 1: bring up angry birds among iPhone owners, and it's like
Speaker 1: people go crazy for it. And it's like a game
Speaker 1: where you sling shot little birds at little pigs that
Speaker 1: are in fortresses. It's silly, it's cute, but slingshotting birds cute.
Speaker 1: Well they're cute birds. Yeah, So you sling shot the
Speaker 1: bird right and you miss right, But after you fire,
Speaker 1: you can see the trajectory of the shot tracked little dots,
Speaker 1: and so you can then you can sort of correct
Speaker 1: your shot based on that trail. So it's not as
Speaker 1: simple as that with sniper rifles obviously, but it reminds
Speaker 1: me of that. It's it's like, oh, we can see
Speaker 1: based on the vapor trail how the last shot went,
Speaker 1: and we can kind of wrecked based on that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so Vel does um he interviewed an Army Ranger sniper,
Speaker 1: which is pretty cool. Yeah he went after a Yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah he did. And uh, the sniper that Vell does
Speaker 1: quotes says, um kind of just looks like mixed up air.
Speaker 1: You can see through it, but you see the distortion.
Speaker 1: I think of it as if you're ever looking at
Speaker 1: a grill. You're grilling something outside and you can see
Speaker 1: the distorted air kind of rising off the grill, kind
Speaker 1: of like waves and yeah, or if you look across
Speaker 1: asphalt on a really hot day, right yeah, same sort
Speaker 1: of thing, or at least I would think it would
Speaker 1: be the same story. That's that's my interpretation too. In
Speaker 1: the spot are also is going to help your sniper
Speaker 1: to factor in the condition, so you know your wind, weather, visibility, pressure, humidity,
Speaker 1: because remember we're talking about pretty long ranges, and the
Speaker 1: farther you get away, the more precise you have to
Speaker 1: be when you're aiming your weapon, right right, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you have to account for the changes they're going to
Speaker 1: take place over all of that a long distance, be
Speaker 1: it wind or just gravity, yeah, planel gravity can affect
Speaker 1: your shot. So perfect conditions according to sniper, yeah no wind,
Speaker 1: mild weather, clear visibility. But that's not going to happen.
Speaker 1: So given them, you know, there's a rare days a
Speaker 1: snipery team has to correct for things like that. So
Speaker 1: they have to correct for the way, you know, the
Speaker 1: bit of bullets are going to spin and drift, and
Speaker 1: they do that with this thing called MOA or a
Speaker 1: minute of angle. I hope they call it MOA. Maybe
Speaker 1: they call it m o A. I don't know. Snipers
Speaker 1: right in and tell us MOA makes me think of
Speaker 1: like a giant flightless bird, but in m o A
Speaker 1: sounds a little more like military, you know. So this
Speaker 1: is the unit of measurement that snipers use. They rely
Speaker 1: on to to measure accuracy, and their spotters are going
Speaker 1: to help them with figure out how to get the
Speaker 1: best shot and and factor in MOA there or m
Speaker 1: o A right now, the spotter is not just you know,
Speaker 1: along for the ride. I mean, he's armed as well,
Speaker 1: so he's there to provide supporting fire if suddenly the
Speaker 1: sniper becomes the target or they have to you know,
Speaker 1: eat a hasty retreat and uh you know and fire
Speaker 1: some shots along the way. Yeah, he's going to have
Speaker 1: typically like an assault rifle in automatic assault rifle, I mean,
Speaker 1: because remember his his main duty is to protect the
Speaker 1: sniper and thus the unit. Essentially. Here's the other thing
Speaker 1: that I'm not sure spotter is like too much. I
Speaker 1: was reading that being a spotter is kind of like
Speaker 1: being a sniper apprentice. Um, you know, I'll be like
Speaker 1: an extremely valuable one though. We're kind of like a
Speaker 1: golf caddy, right I would I would take extreme offense
Speaker 1: to that if I were, Well, that's what kind of
Speaker 1: what like when you make ca I mean, obviously it's
Speaker 1: not the same thing, but but like calling him apprentice,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like this what he's learning, he's learning
Speaker 1: in the field, And how better are you going to
Speaker 1: learn if you're not out in the field practicing these skills,
Speaker 1: because eventually a lot of spotters will wind up, you know,
Speaker 1: picking up all the knowledge and maybe leading their own team. Well,
Speaker 1: in Caddyshack, the caddies all played golf, and well, anyway,
Speaker 1: I hope not make any more points based on caddy
Speaker 1: shot And this is a podcast, but ultimately it is
Speaker 1: the sniper. He's going to get to make all the calls.
Speaker 1: He's going to get to have the final say. He's
Speaker 1: the one who's gonna be coordinating with command to put
Speaker 1: together the mission, and when they're out in the field,
Speaker 1: he's gonna have the final word in determining stuff like
Speaker 1: root your position, um, you know, rendezvous points and even
Speaker 1: how they're going to escape the scape route. Cool. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's calling the shots. He's a dudent. He's a guy
Speaker 1: calling the shots. He's the guy making the shots and
Speaker 1: the spotters, the guy helping him make those shots. Indeed,
Speaker 1: so what kind of gear are these guys carrying? Some
Speaker 1: pretty pretty high tech stuff at time? Right, Well, if
Speaker 1: you're going for one shot, one kill, you gotta your
Speaker 1: equipment really matters. So a sniper rifle. But that's kind
Speaker 1: of an ambiguous term because sniper rifles can be all
Speaker 1: sorts of there's no set model of sniper rifle. They
Speaker 1: can be uh, they can be a bolt action, so
Speaker 1: that that just means for non gun knowledgeable people like myself,
Speaker 1: a bowl action just means that you have to reload
Speaker 1: after every round fired. Yeah, so what's the disadvantage of that, Well,
Speaker 1: that you have to reload after every shot fired, right,
Speaker 1: and then of course you're that movement, that reloading movement
Speaker 1: could give away your position, right right, and petty much
Speaker 1: anything can give away your position. You know, if you
Speaker 1: have a semi automatic, which is another option for a
Speaker 1: sniper rifle, Um that that also comes with it's you know,
Speaker 1: own special ways of being detected by the enemy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, and all these things are most of these
Speaker 1: weapons are gonna make a lot of sound. I found
Speaker 1: it interesting that these were sniper rifles were often referred
Speaker 1: to as crew served weapons. Yeah. Yeah, the idea that
Speaker 1: it's a it's you know, it's a big gun, but
Speaker 1: unlike all your video games or most of your video games,
Speaker 1: you need two people to operate it correctly. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: like we're talking about before, if you come under fire
Speaker 1: and you've got to get out of there fast, you're
Speaker 1: not really going to want a sniper. Yeah, the sniper
Speaker 1: rifle just becomes luggage at that point totally. I imagine
Speaker 1: ditch it, although I don't know that for sure, but
Speaker 1: if you're if you're beating a history treat I you
Speaker 1: really take in your gear with you. Soldiers abandon their
Speaker 1: gear in the field. Well, I think the general idea
Speaker 1: is that as pricey as gear is, its yeah, it's
Speaker 1: generally pricier to to train the individual, you know, to
Speaker 1: use that equipment. So it's you know, it's kind of
Speaker 1: like the whole ejection seat in an airplane thing, right,
Speaker 1: like a fighter jet. No, no, keep going with us. Well,
Speaker 1: well it's not a perfect analogy, but but like with
Speaker 1: the fighter jet, you have the objection seat because if
Speaker 1: there's something's going wrong with the plane, so you know,
Speaker 1: you'll reach a point where it's better to save the
Speaker 1: pilot than to you know, further endanger the pilot to
Speaker 1: say of the point, okay, okay, I got you. There's
Speaker 1: I mean, there's there kind of comes like a line
Speaker 1: you know that you right, right, So maybe they're ditching
Speaker 1: the sniper riffle, but I imagine they're encouraged to bring
Speaker 1: it back if they can. But yeah, well, the sniper
Speaker 1: riffle is going to be more than your average gun. Obviously,
Speaker 1: it's it's match great, right, So it's it's gonna be
Speaker 1: fine tuned, probably by a professional gun sniff to ensure
Speaker 1: accuracy and reliability. These are the kind of things that
Speaker 1: you know, somebody who would be participating in a professional
Speaker 1: like gun shooting competition, which these are high grade weapons.
Speaker 1: And they were also talking about sniper rifles having this
Speaker 1: free floating barrel and that's going to make sure that
Speaker 1: the barrel touches the least amount of the weapon possible.
Speaker 1: And the idea here is that it's going to help
Speaker 1: with cutting down on vibration from the recoil. They're expensive, right,
Speaker 1: you'd guess that. I mean, they may cost as much
Speaker 1: as fifteen dollars and up, I would imagine and on
Speaker 1: the lower edge, maybe you're looking at eight thousand, and
Speaker 1: of course you're gonna need a sniper scope, and that's
Speaker 1: what the spotter man's. This is the this is the
Speaker 1: scope that like you look through to see what you're targeting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's specialized, you know, specialized telescope. And we do have
Speaker 1: an illustration on the site in case you guys are curious.
Speaker 1: It's pretty cool that we did a while ago. Here's
Speaker 1: my favorite part of sniper equipment. What's that? They're kind
Speaker 1: of hilarious looking. Yeah. Yeah, if you've ever seen it,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like when you see a soul that
Speaker 1: looks like he just spent the night in a swamp,
Speaker 1: or he kind of looks like swamp thing. You know.
Speaker 1: It's got all this liked definitely, you know, foliage hanging
Speaker 1: off of them, and sticks and branches and bramble, and
Speaker 1: it can look a little comical. Yeah. I kind of
Speaker 1: think of it like Chewbacca. But I think of Chewbacca
Speaker 1: a lot these days. Apparently Chewbacca with like leaves cotton
Speaker 1: his fear. Yeah, that's the exact kind of thing it
Speaker 1: looks like. Yeah, so it's just camouflage because The overriding
Speaker 1: point here is that I mean, clearly you don't want
Speaker 1: to be spotted by your enemy, but also you're gonna
Speaker 1: want to blend in with nature. And the important thing
Speaker 1: here is the angle of your gun, you know, the
Speaker 1: straight line of whatever equipment you're carrying. Um, anything out
Speaker 1: of place is going to be spotted by the enemy. Yes,
Speaker 1: I mean especially so this is interesting. Um rifles. They
Speaker 1: make little Gilli suits for their rifles even Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think I've seen those. Yeah, it's kind of like a
Speaker 1: big camouflage sock that gets pulled over the the the barrel.
Speaker 1: Now are you going to tell the history of the
Speaker 1: gil suit because it seems worth if you're Alley, do
Speaker 1: do you remember the history of the Gill series? Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: correct me if I'm wrong, But I believe you said
Speaker 1: it was of Scottish origin. It is, and the idea
Speaker 1: of being back in ye olden times. Yeah, you would
Speaker 1: have Hagets, I believe correct. I'm sure we have Scottish
Speaker 1: listeners who can correct us on these things. But basically
Speaker 1: you'd have your big game preserve that belonged to a lord,
Speaker 1: you know, and uh, the lord would decide that he
Speaker 1: wanted to say, shoot a deer or you know, or
Speaker 1: you know, an arrow or whatever at a deer. Right,
Speaker 1: but the lord doesn't want to actually go out into
Speaker 1: the wilderness and you know, put in all the time,
Speaker 1: you know, and maybe he's not that good, and it's
Speaker 1: the job of his underlings to let him think that
Speaker 1: he's good. The gamekeeper specifically, who I picture, even though
Speaker 1: it's Irish, I picture Darby O Gill from Darby Gil
Speaker 1: in a little People. Okay, as long as we're going
Speaker 1: to keep on with Caddie Shock, it's definitely oh Bill
Speaker 1: Murray Yeah, okay, Yeah, let's change it. Let's picture Bill
Speaker 1: Murray in this silly suit. Yeah, yeah, okay, so I
Speaker 1: got that images. Yeah. So in fact, I think he
Speaker 1: does have a gilly suit and Caddy shactor. Oh he does, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: when he's hunting the gopher. I'm pretty sure he does. Wow,
Speaker 1: it comes back to Caddy. Yeah. So so yeah, Bill
Speaker 1: Bill Murray's character is in this Uh was it Carl? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think it was Carl in this in this gilli
Speaker 1: suit and he goes out into the wilderness and begins
Speaker 1: to stalk, like we're talking other, stalk this deer. And
Speaker 1: he doesn't apparently really have a weapon or anything. He
Speaker 1: just kind of like creeps up as close as possible
Speaker 1: to the deer, the ultimate stalker. Yeah, and then nabs
Speaker 1: it just gan with his bare hands, and I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe he puts it in a sack or you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know, how do you get a deer back
Speaker 1: to the lord's castle or maybe you just hoisted over
Speaker 1: your shoulder. Probably doesn't ride it, but yeah, it gets
Speaker 1: it back somehow. And then he like takes it into
Speaker 1: like say an enclosed wooded area, or I don't know,
Speaker 1: ties it to a tree. It kind of depends on
Speaker 1: how um proficient the lord is at shooting things. And
Speaker 1: then so once the game's delivered, then the Lord can
Speaker 1: come out with his fancy crossbow or musket or whatever. Uh,
Speaker 1: fire is shot, and yeah, he's great. He just killed
Speaker 1: a deer that the the games keeper actually went and
Speaker 1: apprehended with his with his own hands and his skilly suit.
Speaker 1: So that's pretty awesome. I did not know that before today.
Speaker 1: So pretty interesting stuff. Um, So here's something that I
Speaker 1: was wondering. We're talking long range distances for snipers. We're
Speaker 1: talking how far exactly. I mean, I was wondering what's
Speaker 1: the record set here? Well, at first, I think it's
Speaker 1: like when people think snipers and shots fired off at
Speaker 1: a distance, A lot of people think of like JFK
Speaker 1: and stuff. But the distance that Lee Harvey Oswald allegedly fired,
Speaker 1: the distance, Yeah, the farthest distance it was fired was
Speaker 1: what I think. So let's so keep that to peanuts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's peanuts compared to the record. What is the record
Speaker 1: right now? Well, as of this recording, it was held
Speaker 1: by a British soldier, a corporal of Horse. I guess
Speaker 1: that's the British title. I was sort of uncertain about
Speaker 1: this how horse fit into his title, but I guess
Speaker 1: it does. And a corporal of Horse Harrison, and he
Speaker 1: was from Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, and he holds a record of
Speaker 1: about one point five miles one point five miles. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so the distance to his two um is, his two
Speaker 1: human targets, was eight thousand, one d and twenty ft
Speaker 1: or one point five for miles. And they measured that
Speaker 1: with a GPS system and notably it was about three
Speaker 1: thousand feet beyond the weapons effective range. So yeah, that
Speaker 1: just completely puts you know, any talk of Lee Harvey
Speaker 1: Oswald being a sniper to rest, I mean that that
Speaker 1: dude was nothing. Yeah, Harrison Horse Harrison, No, that's not.
Speaker 1: His first name was Fried of its hid at all.
Speaker 1: We should have we should have looked up more about
Speaker 1: British soldier titles, but we didn't because we're focusing on
Speaker 1: snipers today. People. But one point five miles, that's that's amazing.
Speaker 1: I was really impressed. And to imagine that you could be,
Speaker 1: you know, out in this was actually an Afghanistan, that
Speaker 1: you could you could be say, out in the wilds
Speaker 1: of Afghanistan and your enemy is a mile and a
Speaker 1: half away and able to pick you off. That's pretty crazy.
Speaker 1: So you mentioned Lee Harvey as well. Let's go back
Speaker 1: to him for a second. Let's let's do a little
Speaker 1: sniper history as long as we're wrapping things up. So
Speaker 1: according to the Army Sniper Association, the same folks who
Speaker 1: sponsored the annual sniper competition, which I guess you go
Speaker 1: if you're a a super sniper, the U. S Army
Speaker 1: International Sniper Competition. In fact, it's held annually. Uh. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the Army Sniper Association says that the term sniper originated
Speaker 1: from the British occupation of India in the eighteen hundreds. Interesting,
Speaker 1: But when you think about it, we're talking about this
Speaker 1: before we had to have had snipers for as long
Speaker 1: as we've had long range weapons. Yeah, I think that
Speaker 1: as long as we've had a long light range weapon,
Speaker 1: we've had guys um who were stealthy, who were stealthy,
Speaker 1: who were better at it than than the other other
Speaker 1: guys in their team, in their team, in their armed unit,
Speaker 1: or in the army. I get where going. Yeah, so, so, yeah,
Speaker 1: we've always had guys that excel at it, and by
Speaker 1: excelling at it, would be put in a situation where
Speaker 1: to capitalize on that that skill, right, right, So Lee
Speaker 1: Harvey obviously goes down as one of the most infamous
Speaker 1: snipers in history. But yeah, we're not so sure that
Speaker 1: he was a good one. Per se, Oswald was actually
Speaker 1: using a rifle he ordered from the mail. And I
Speaker 1: want to go back for sec I said two, and
Speaker 1: what I meant was actually two six five ft. So
Speaker 1: I was giving him too much credit. Yeah, it's even
Speaker 1: even worse for that guy. Yeah, and he may not
Speaker 1: have been acting alone, but we don't even have to
Speaker 1: get into that. There I'm sure that's like Josh and
Speaker 1: Chuck and Chucker, you know, stuff they don't want you
Speaker 1: to know. We'll let them cover all the JFK conspiracy angles.
Speaker 1: There was something interesting that I had not heard about
Speaker 1: that you had, in that there was a video game
Speaker 1: released um JFK Reloaded, and it was released on the
Speaker 1: forty one anniversary of Jiff Case Assassination Dallas. So this
Speaker 1: this game essentially allowed gamers to get behind Lee Harvey
Speaker 1: assult sniper rifle and recreate the assassination event. Yeah. Remember
Speaker 1: you could take both sides of it. I suppose, but
Speaker 1: I mean first hearing about it, first reading about it,
Speaker 1: I came stumping over to your death, Okay, have you
Speaker 1: heard of this game? And you're like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe they're trying to teach a point about you know, history,
Speaker 1: and which essentially was with the game creators said, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I guess you kind of get if
Speaker 1: you're around a lot of video game violence, you kind
Speaker 1: of become numb to it eventually. And it's kind of like, oh,
Speaker 1: there's a and stupid video games. There's so many like
Speaker 1: stupid and possibly offensive video games out there. It's you know,
Speaker 1: this comes along and you're like, oh, well that's not surprising. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I guess if you if you got the if
Speaker 1: you came closest to recreating the actual shot, you're supposed
Speaker 1: to win a hundred thousand dollars. But I don't know
Speaker 1: if anybody ever did and who that individual was. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that's snipers for you. If you know, we kept talking
Speaker 1: about video games, so by all means you gamers out there,
Speaker 1: if there's if there's actually like a really authentic UH
Speaker 1: Sniper video game on the market, let us know, well
Speaker 1: we we'll mention it, you know, specifically if there's anything
Speaker 1: that involved, because I know there are a lot of
Speaker 1: co op games now, um and I don't really do
Speaker 1: a lot of that, but but it would stand a
Speaker 1: reason you could have a game or one dude is
Speaker 1: the sniper and one dude is you know, holding the scope. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you can always play the game on our article
Speaker 1: military UH Sniper's Work. I think it's on page nine
Speaker 1: or something, but maybe you'll have to click through the
Speaker 1: entire article and read it in all of its fine
Speaker 1: Robert Belts glory. Yeah, and we actually we have a
Speaker 1: lot of really cool military technology, military like science articles
Speaker 1: on the site. So yeah, so we don't touch upon
Speaker 1: it very often, but maybe we'll do that. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: have a lot of cool content to discuss. Hey, so
Speaker 1: I wanted to share a little listener mail if I could, Yeah,
Speaker 1: do it. Well. Back on one of our episodes, we
Speaker 1: requested some of your favorite science quotes and we got
Speaker 1: some from from you guys, and you here are some favorites. So,
Speaker 1: for example, one of our literary named fans, gentleman by
Speaker 1: the name of James Uh, he sent a couple of
Speaker 1: his and so there are some funny ones which he
Speaker 1: gave us a couple of. This was my favorite, he said,
Speaker 1: with the bomb squad, you can usually stop running after
Speaker 1: the first couple of blocks. If it involves the physics department,
Speaker 1: keep going. That's kind of good. But did you have
Speaker 1: a funny one? Oh? I did? Yeah, I love this
Speaker 1: one because this one comes from um, well, this one
Speaker 1: comes from a listener by the name of Andrew and
Speaker 1: it is a quote from a character on Futurama, who
Speaker 1: which is the show I love and I think a
Speaker 1: lot of our listeners are really into it. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: mentioned a bunch. So this is from Professor Hubert J.
Speaker 1: Farnsworth of Mars University. He's one of the main characters,
Speaker 1: like the old decrepit mad scientists and uh he said
Speaker 1: quote technology isn't intrinsically good or evil, it's how it's used,
Speaker 1: like the death ray. So that's you know, because the
Speaker 1: death ray is not intrinsically evil, it's just if you
Speaker 1: use it for evil purposes. And lastly, maybe we'll end
Speaker 1: with a serious one on the gravity and seriousness and
Speaker 1: awesomeness of science. And this one was sent by Bryan
Speaker 1: who says, go science exclamations for equipped with this five
Speaker 1: senses man explores the universe around him and calls the
Speaker 1: adventure science. And that was adminnable, very nice, very nice.
Speaker 1: So as always we love to hear from you guys.
Speaker 1: If you have anything you want to share about snipers,
Speaker 1: science or anything else, um send us an email. It's
Speaker 1: science stuff at how stefforks dot com and check us
Speaker 1: out social networking. You'll find us on Twitter as Lab stuff,
Speaker 1: and you also find us on Facebook. Is just stuff
Speaker 1: in the Science Lab. We'll keep you updated on what
Speaker 1: we're writing about, podcasting about, and thinking about in the
Speaker 1: field of science. That's a little science stuff. Thanks for
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