"The epithets of drill instructors or fellow soldiers - 'maggot,' 'faggot,' 'snuffy,' 'pussy,' or simply 'woman' - left no doubt that not becoming a soldier meant not being a man."

- Mark Gerzon

This episodes question is straightforward: why have human societies across cultures, continents, and eras have met the challenge of war in basically the same way: by assembling groups of fighters who were usually exclusively males. The answer I would argue is also straightforward. We just happen to have forgotten it because our societies and our wars do not resemble anything in the prior 300,000 year history of Homo sapiens.

"Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face."

- American boxer Mike Tyson

The viral question of Spring 2025 on Social Media: who would win in a fight, 100 men or 1 gorilla? Here, we look into history for insights into how humans would behave in the situation. And remember, these examples are coming from men specifically selected and trained for months to fight in cohesive groups...

“Of the 403,272 tank soldiers (including a small number of women) who were trained by the Red Army in the war, 310,000 would die. Even the most optimistic troops knew what would happen when a tank was shelled. The white-hot flash of the explosion would almost certainly ignite the tank crew’s fuel and ammunition. At best, the crew—or those at least who had not been decapitated or dismembered by the shell itself—would have no more than ninety seconds to climb out of their cabin. Much of that time would be swallowed up as they struggled to open the heavy, sometimes red-hot, hatch, which might have jammed after the impact anyway. The battlefield was no haven, but it was safer than the armored coffin that would now begin to blaze, its metal components to melt. This was not simply “boiling up.” The tank would also torch the atmosphere around it. By then, there could be no hope for the men inside. Not unusually, their bodies were so badly burned that the remains were inseparable. “Have you burned yet?” was a question tank men often asked each other when they met for the first time. A dark joke from this stage in the war has a politruk informing a young man that almost every tank man in his group has died that day. “I’m sorry,” the young man replies. “I’ll make sure that I burn tomorrow.”

Catherine Merridale, Ivan's War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939-1945