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Disclaimer: I'm no student of geography, geology or earth science. Since Quora is a medium for sharing knowledge, I'm hereby posting an article from the Science News Magazine which elaborately answers your question. All credits go to the magazine and the author and no part may be reproduced without permission.The MountainAuthor(s): Sid PerkinsSource: Science News, Vol. 160, No. 21 (Nov. 24, 2001), pp. 334-335Published by: Society for Science & the Public StableURL: Page on JSTOR .Accessed: 02/06/2014 06:56 .America's most dangerous volcanoBy SID PERKINSJust after dusk on Aug. 14, at an amphitheater in Mount Rainier National Park's Cougar Rock campground, a deep grumbling sound began to drown out a park ranger who was regaling visitors with an interpretive lecture about the park's natural wonders. The rumble quickly grew to a freight-train-like roar. That's when the ranger ran to a creek near the amphitheater and saw a large flow of mud and debris surging down the normally placid channel. "It rumbled up on the ridge until about 10:30 [p.m.]," says Jill Hawk, chief ranger at the national park. Although the camp- ground was never threatened, large pulses of rocky mud continued to sweep down the mountainside for more than 5 hours that evening, and smaller clumps followed for the next 5 days. It was a natural wonder all right. Park rangers and scientists flew over the area on Aug. 15 and determined that the event was simply a landslide, not something worse-like an earthquake or volcanic eruption. A week or more of hot, sunny weather had accelerated the melting of a glacier on the south side of the mountain. The excess water had saturated a steep slope of earth and rock. The soggy mix eventually broke away and raced downhill. The landslide was small in geologic terms, says Hawk, but it was plenty big enough to scare campers. She notes that the ranger's interpretive lecture that balmy evening turned into an opportunity to dis- cuss the hazards of living in the shadow of a glacier-covered volcano. Mount Rainier, locally known simply as “the mountain," is the tallest peak in the Cascades, a chain of mountains that parallels the Pacific Coast from British Columbia to northern California. Mount Rainier’s summit bears the largest crest of glacier ice on any mountain in the lower 48 U.S. states. Scientists say the height, steepness, and cubic mile of ice make the steep- sloped peak worth watching. However, they’re most concerned about the rap- idly growing population in the picturesque valleys of the region, which earns the currently dormant Mount Rainier the title of most dangerous volcano in America.The landslide of Aug. 14 provides an example of the many powerful surprises that mountains like Rainier can drop on those nearby. The slump of debris began at an altitude of about 2,740 meters above sea level and didn't halt until it had dropped to an altitude of about 762 m, says Patrick T. Pringle, a geologist with Washington State's Department of Natural Resources. Similar but larger phenomena, called glacial outburst floods, also strike from on high. These torrents, which are sudden releases of water stored within or at the base of glaciers, can contain about 100,000 cubic meters of water, says Joseph S. Walder, a hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey's Cascades Volcano Observatory in Vancouver, Wash. That's the volume of several dozen Olympic-size swimming pools. At peak discharge, these glacial outbursts often match stream flow rates experienced only in the worst of floods. At least three dozen glacial outburst floods have occurred in Mount Rainier National Park during the past century. Bridges, roads, and park facilities have been damaged or destroyed on at least 10 occasions. Even so, Walder notes, the effects of such floods don't normally reach beyond the boundaries of the park. Mount Rainier's most far-reaching and therefore most dangerous threats derive not from landslides and glacial outburst floods but from its volcanism. As with most volcanoes, the mountain’s past behavior gives a preview to its future hazards. Writ- ten history in the area goes back only about 180 years-a period much too short to adequately represent the activity of a volcano that’s hundreds of thousands of years old. Indeed, the documentary evidence includes a record of only one eruption, in the 1840s. But the sedimentary evidence- including deposits rife with pumice and volcanic ash, or tephra-suggests that Mount Rainier has erupted at least 11 times in the past 10,000 years. The 1980 eruptions of south- western Washington's Mount St. Helens showed that even relatively thin accumulations of tephra can disrupt social and economic activity over a broad region. Downwind, in the eastern part of the state, the communities of Yakima, Ritzville, and Spokane received between 1 and 8 centimeters of ash and came to a near standstill for up to 2 weeks. More dangerous than tephra are so called pyroclastic flows, which roll down a volcano rather than towering above it (SN: 1/13/01, p. 21). The hot gases, ash, and rock particles form a dense fluid that travels at 10 to 100 m per second and typically hosts temperatures above 300?C. The flows' high densities, velocities, and temperatures blow down, bury, or incinerate everything in their path. Scientists have found only a few deposits near Mount Rainier that resulted from pyroclastic flows. One such layer that’s about 2,500 years old shows up about 12 kilometers southwest of the volcano’s summit, and another, 1,000 or so years old, appears about 11 km northeast of the mountain. However, pyroclastic deposits near the mountain may be rare only because the ash flows were often converted into something more dangerous before they left the mountainside, Walder says. When the hot ash in ground-hugging pyroclastic flows sweeps across glaciers, it can melt prodigious amounts of ice and snow. This water mixes with the ash and other debris to form a lahar, which looks and flows like wet concrete. Lahars can travel at speeds up to 100 km per hour on Danger from Mount Rainier looms over communities near the dormant volcano, including Orting, Wash., which is built on ancient mudflows up to 6 meters thick. steep slopes near the volcano and can reach much farther from the volcano than pyroclastic flows can. In 1998, the U.S. Geological Survey issued a report stating that lahars pose a greater threat to communities around Mount Rainier than any other volcanic phenomenon. More than a dozen volcanic lahars have spewed from Mount Rainier in the past 6,000 years. About 1,200 years ago, a lahar that spilled down valleys on the northeastern slopes of the volcano filled both forks of the White River with 20 to 30 m of debris. The lahar's front edge flowed more than 100 km to reach the spot where the city of Auburn sits today. About 1,000 years before that, a similar lahar filled the Nisqually River southwest of the mountain to depths as great as 40 m and flowed all the way to Puget Sound. Scientists have discovered the de- posits from more than 60 lahars that occurred in the past 10,000 years. Many of these have been so-called cohesive lahars, which form avalanches that con- sist primarily of ancient volcanic rocks weakened by exposure to the elements. In particular, sulfur gases spewed by the volcano react with rainwater to form sulfuric acids, which gradually break the rocks down into clay. The largest of Mount Rainier's post-Ice Age lahars was the Osceola Mudflow, which struck more than 5,600 years ago and inundated the White River valley with more than 3.8 cubic kilometers of material. Its leading edge reached all the way to Puget Sound. Deposits from this event now cover about 550 square kilometers and ex- tend as far as the Seattle suburb of Kent. Another cohesive lahar, dubbed the Electron Mudflow, was spawned by the collapse on the west flank of the volcano about 600 years ago. This lahar was more than 30 m deep when it entered the Puget Sound lowlands near the present-day town of Electron, more than 60 km away. All of the major river valleys that drain Mount Rainier have been inundated with lahars, says Pringle. Many of the commu- nities northwest of the volcano have been built in whole or in part atop these sediments. The town of Orting, north- west of the volcano, sits on deposits from both the Osceola and the Electron Mudflows. Evidence of lahars' potential to destroy is directly underfoot. When the debris from these lahars comes to rest, it often swallows entire forests. In the area sur- rounding Orting, for example, the Elec- tron Mudflow entombed a stand of ma- ture Douglas firs. Excavations during construction of subdivisions and sewers around the town in the past 9 years have exhumed the deeply buried stumps of more than 100 trees. The most impressive stump, Pringle notes, measured more than 7.5 m in circumference about 1 m above the ancient ground level. It would be one of the largest Douglas firs in Wash- ington State if it were still alive today. The relentless growth of populated subdivisions shows that residents- to-be either don't realize they're in an ash flow-prone zone or aren't worried about it. Some members of the emergency- response community have a different view. "I wouldn't build a home or a school there," says Ed Reed, a program manager with the Pierce County Department of Emergency Management in Tacoma.To assess the risk from Mount Rainier, scientists have combined remote sensing, geologic mapping, and com- puter modeling into an evaluation of materials that might be swept up into a lahar. Volcanic rocks are poor conductors of electricity when they are newly formed, but as they weather and become saturated with water, they conduct electricity up to 300 times better, explains Thomas W Sisson, a volcanologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif. Also, fresh volcanic rocks are slightly more magnetic than ones that have been weathered and weakened, he notes. Sisson and his colleagues have flown helicopters equipped with electromagnetic detectors at low altitude over the mountain to locate such degraded rocks, which might crumble and contribute to a mudslide. By broadcasting radio waves along flight paths about 250 m apart, the researchers mapped the mineral degradation on Mount Rainier. They found that only the upper, west slope of the volcano has an appreciable thickness of weakened rock. Most material of this kind fell off the mountain 5,600 years ago in the Osceola Mudflow, says Sisson. The horseshoe-shape crater left behind-similar to the one left by Mount St. Helens' 1980 eruption-faces east, he notes, and it filled up with fresh lavas that today form a relatively strong, stable core. Sisson and his team reported their findings in the Feb. 1 NATURE. He and another group of USGS colleagues recently extended that research. By combining the distribution of weakened rocks with geologic maps that show the steepness of the terrain, they constructed a computer model of the mountain. Then they sliced the model at nearly 30 million different combinations of angle and depth and calculated the capability of the rocks below the slices to resist the force of gravity and hold up the mass of rocks above. In other words, they estimated whether the rocks could prevent a landslide. Even though the mountain's north face is the steepest, Sisson and his team found that the upper, west side of the volcano would be most likely to produce lahars that contained more than 0.1 cubic kilometer of material, an amount about one-third the size of the Electron Mudflow. The team published its results in the September GEOLOGY. These findings may allow emergency-response officials and scientists to concentrate their monitoring on the portions of Mount Rainier that most threaten the surrounding population. Sisson and his colleagues are now turning their remote sensors to Mount Adams and Mount Baker, two other Washington State volcanoes in the Cascade Range. Some of the rocks on Mount Adams are about 30,000 years old, and some of those on the slopes of Mount Baker were deposited there about 18,000 years ago. By comparing the depths to which the minerals are weathered, it may be possible to accurately estimate the rate at which rocks lose their strength and capability to support the material upslope. Lahars can be triggered by seismic activity or the movement of magma inside a volcano as well as by ash flows sweeping across glaciers. Scientists want to find out how often these debris flows sweep down a mountainside without warning. Sisson says that with one exception-the Electron Mudflow, about 600 years ago- all of Mount Rainier's lahars occurred during periods associated with volcanic activity, when eruptions also laid down tephra deposits. Maybe an eruption also stimulated the Electron Mudflow but left no evidence, he adds. It's possible that the eruption produced little or no ash, that the tephra fell in winter and then washed away with the spring melt, or that scientists just haven’t found the ash deposit yet. A definite link between lahars and volcanic or seismic activity would be good news for those living in the mountain’s shadow. Fortunately, remarks Sisson, "volcanoes usually give warning signs that an eruption's on the way." The construction of homes and sewers in Orting has exposed more than 100 huge stumps, the remains of old-growth forests that were smothered by mudflows from Mount Rainier.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please [email protected]. . 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As a child, I had a lot of insecurity issues, I was awkward at making friends and was the brunt of a lot of bullying. I had come to the conclusion as a teen, that any positive changes would have to be initiated by me. A part of that process was entering and signing up for clubs, etc. that made me feel uncomfortable and pushed me out of my comfort zone.My high school posted registration posters for our county’s Junior Miss Scholarship Pageant Program, I gave the details to my parents and they ok’d me to participate. I found a Tennessee Williams monologue and reworked it from the original to my own interpretation. We were poor but my parents took me to several thrift stores and garage sales and helped me find what I needed for my talent costume and pageant dress. Everything I wore to participate in the pageant was second hand and too short for my 5’8” frame but I didn’t care. I used money I’d made from babysitting to buy an interview outfit for the judges.The big night came, I was up against some of the most popular cheerleaders from every county school. I believe I was the only participant in the pageant who wasn’t a cheerleader, which would explain why I did so poorly in the dance portion of the pageant. That being said, I absolutely nailed the talent section. It was Awesome! I won the pageant but not only did I win and become my county’s Junior Miss, but I won best interview and best talent as well.

Please click on images to see them full sized.Above: The “peak” of the Mongol “Death Machine.”Aboe: Genghis Khan and his “Death Machine.”The Peak years of the Mongol army were from 1206 -1227, from it’s invasions of the Western Xia Dynasty, till approximately 1250–55, about 12 years after the Invasion Of Europe.Above: The path of just part of the path of Genghis Khan’s “Machine.” “The Machine” didn’t stop, didn’t slow down, didn’t even pause for 40 years, just ground it’s way across much of the planet, killing/grinding 40,000,000 people, and damaging untold numbers of ruined lives.This was the first and “greatest” Mongol army, the one that captured most of the Mongol empire and the one that killed the lion’s share of the 40,000,000 people who died, credited to have been killed by the Mongols.To put 40 million dead in the 13th century into perspective, it would be like, in todays terms, the Mongols killed around 750,000,000 people. The US currently has about 330,000,000 people. So kill every one in America, twice over, and still have about 100,000,000 more to kill.Above: Genghis’ original Mongol army was THE “greatest” most terrible army that ever fought.Genghis, in his genius built it, trained it and led it until other generals he cultivated, Jebe and Subutai, for instance, became “greater” generals than he and he gave them most of the control at a tactical, grand tactical and even more and more responsibility on a strategic level.This was the army that fought on a number of campaigns:1205, 1207–1208, 1209–1210,-1225–1227 Invasion of Western Xia.1207, Conquest of Siberia1211–1234 Conquest of Jin dynasty1216–1220 Conquest of Central Asia and Eastern Persia1216–1218 Conquest of the Qara Khitai1219–1220 Conquest of Khwarazm1220–1223, 1235–1236 invasions of Georgia and the Caucasus1220–1224 invasion of the Cumans1227–1227 invasion of India (they failed)1223–1236invasion of Volga Bulgaria1231–1259 invasion of Krea1235–1279 Conquest of Song dynastyWinning all but India.Above: Map of the Mongol empire. It was over twice the size of Rome’s.The Mongol army stayed at it’s peak through the Mongol Invasion of Europe, 1236–1242 and through campaigns thru 1253, but after that started to deteriorate as the old soldiers passed or retired, as Subutai and the other great officers retired or passed.Deteriorated because it’s enemies became familiar with it’s tactics and weapons and because the quality of the Mongol soldier himself eroded.The original, Great army was about 98% successful in battle and with the revolutionary training, tactics and leadership became THE “greatest” army in history (probably a bit better than the next contenders, Phillip/Alexander’s Macedonian army.)Above: Mongolia. Beautiful but incredibly harsh, unbelievably dangerous.Above: Mongolia. The purest steel comes from the hottest fires and the heaviest hammers. Mongolia is a very tough place to live even in 2018. In the 13th century only the very strongest would have survived. Some very pure “steel” came from the “fires” of this unforgiving land.It was basically unbeatable for over 40 years (Alexander’s was unbeatable for 12) and, even after 50 years of study, the original Mongol army never fails to amaze and horrify me.Above: After”The machine” goes through…Genghis Khan was one of the greatest pure military genius’ that ever lived. A man very much like Cyrus the Great and Phillip II of Macedonia. the three greatest nation builders and army creators.And the world hopes and prays it never sees the likes of him again.From being able to travel 100 miles a day, day after day on the advance. Let me repeat that: able to travel 100 miles a day, day after day…Tell me any army in 2018 that can match that speed on the ground on the advance. Tell me any army ever…From using a recurve, composite bow with greater power than the famed English longbow, a bow deigned so well it was half the length of the longbow and could be fired while mounted, a bow that could effectively kill at 300 yards.Above: The Mongols used many different arrowheads including, (to the woe of the European armored knights,) armor piercing arrowheads.From becoming an army designed to live off the land and their mare’s milk, having no traditional supply wagons or even supply lines for an enemy to disrupt or capture.From being able to outmaneuver any army it faced, it’s reconnaissance the best for over a thousand years, it’s soldiers trained almost since birth to ride and shoot, (the Mongol children got their first riding lessons at age 3 and received their first bow at 5. By age 14 they were expected to ride, hunt and fight as a adult.)Above: Mongol rider of today. Equestrian historians believe the two greatest riding horse soldiers were the Comanche and the Mongol.From having discipline that was rock-solid and whose morale was sky-high.From wearing laminate armor, (only plate protects as well,) plus additional armor of boiled leather and also silk shirts for protection.Above: Mongol weapons and different types of armor.From having an army who could fight day or night, (very, very few armies ever fought at night and while the Mongols couldn’t hit anything at night, they would maneuver using colored lanterns to guide them, reaching much better positions for the morning battle.)From having an army that could fight in winter, also something few armies could or would do. They used the frozen rivers as highways and bridges both.Above: The Mongol’s army was based, like the Roman legions, on the decimal system. Soldiers in units of 10, 100, 1000 and 10,000. The Tuman was their 10,000 formation. With each Mongol soldier having an average of 5 remounts, that meant a tuman would have a minimum of 50,000 horses attached to it. The Mongols would have a tuman break it’s way through the snow, creating a path for the army, then rotating tumans as they tired, they could plow through snow quite quickly.From having horses who had been bred for centuries not for speed but for endurance. Horses that were quick, but not fast, but they could literally trot for days. They grazed on grass, but if necessary could eat scrubbier stuff. The Mongol riders all had 4–5 remounts that they could switch to when one horse got tired and they could travel amazing distances this way. The Mongol saddle had been cleverly designed to give the rider fill access of angle to shot even straight behind, but to also allow the rider to sleep in the saddle. This allowed the Momgols to move all day and night with half the soldier leading the horses while half slept.Above: Mongol saddles allowed them to sleep in the saddle. By half the soldiers leading the horses and half sleeping they could cover incredible distances in short periods of time.From having horses on campaign who were all mares that were all milked daily, providing the Mongols with a large, daily ration of protein. The Mongols all hunted constantly and this self-sufficiency allowed the Mongols to, again, move without a supply train or lines.Above: Then could ride at top speed and hit what they aimed at. Historians have come to believe that the Mongols were so “in touch” with their horses, horses that they spent almost literally their entire lives on, that they could time their bowshots to when the horse had all four hoofs off the ground, that moment of minimum vibration/horse movement. Yes, you read right.They were created and trained first by Genghis Khan and then by the subsequent generals. They were skilled in many tactical formations and maneuvers, most significantly more sophisticated than their foes.They were, more and more, accompanied by the warcraft experts from the counties they captured, the best being the Chinese engineers that brought fortress building, siegecraft, sapping wall, trebuchets, and gunpowder.Above: Mongols besieging a Chinese city, assisted by Chinese and Middle Eastern engineers giving them highly developed trebuchets, and wall sapping.And they were commanded by some of the finest generals in history. Genghis Khan himself was excellent but his “Dogs of War,” Jebe and Subutai being the most famous, were simply amazing, and I rate Subutai as equal if not better than Alexander the great.After this 40 year “Golden Age,” the Mongol armies declined, in some cases quite rapidly. Their unique tactics became known, the weapons countered and the soldiers were not the “lean and hungry” steppe “wolves” of Temujin’s time. Genghis Khan’s soldiers literally had nothing, and nothing to lose. Just a few herd animals out there in the freezing winds of Mongolia, those and their ever-present bows. But the soldiers who came after inherited from the first, original army, land, palaces, treasure, slaves, women, and simply were spoiled. They didn’t have the same drive, the same dedication, the same “hunger,” the same ‘”desire.Above: They mostly fought mounted but some fought dismounted, especially with extra powerful bows.The Mongols changed in another way after the brilliant conquests of Genghis Khan; they became, in many ways, absorbed. China, despite Sun Tzu, wasn’t alway exactly the toughest enemy and the Mongols conquered much of it. And this was the undoing of the Mongols. In trying to help his people prosper, Genghis Khan, in a way, destroyed them.Sitting on cushions in heated Chinese palaces beat freezing their asses off sitting in a felt yurt, (tent,) in the middle of a wind/snowstorm in Mongolian. Chinese rice wine tasted a hell of a lot better than “kumiss,” (fermented mare’s milk-rotting milk. I tried it once. Key word is “once.”) Beautiful, slim, clean, long-raven-haired Chinese princesses were a lot more appealing than their own fur/wool cloak-wearing, covered-head-to-toe-with-rancid-grease-to-protect-from-the-cold smeared, never-bathed-once-in-their-lives Mongol girls. And bit by bit they came off the steppe, stopped being Mongols and became…fiercer Chinese.Above; Modern Mongol girl. Ancient Mongol Yurt.The Mongols worshipped the open blue sky first and foremost, and then the things in it, the sun, moon, stars. They loved and gloried in the sky. But more and more the Mongols that came after Genghis spent more and more time under palace ceilings, more and more they looked not at the sky, but down at the gold in their hands.These were a complex, highly intelligent people. They were nomads but they were NOT barbarians.Their greeting, toast, saying, prayer, farewell was: “Until the Sun falls…But, some last thoughts about the “Greatest” Army in history;That first, original army of Genghis Khan’s was, IMO, the “greatest” that ever marched…er, rode. It’s unmatched performance continued after his death when it was commanded by Subutai. But after he, and the last of the original soldiers retired it began to slip.Above:Battle of Mohi, Hungary, 1241. The entire Hungarian army was wiped out. The Mongols then destroyed much of the country. Estimations say between 25–40% of the population died.But for that first 40 years…It’s taken me 50 years to really understand, at least a bit, about the reality of that first “Great army. And sometimes “reality” can be a scary word . (“I would rather be slapped with the truth than kissed by a lie.”)Above: The “reality” of the Mongol invasions.But let me try to explain:That original, “Great” army that Genghis Khan invented and then led, was a “War Machine.” And that’s part of the key to understanding something made from his true genius,( but a genius of Death.) Something so amazing. Something so horrifying.It was a “Death Machine.” A “Terror Machine.”“The Machine” ground along for 40 years, eating and eating and eating, conquering, capturing, killing, maiming, enslaving, raping, disabling, destroying and grinding lives every inch of the way, fueled and oiled and fed by unquenchable suffering.It ate up whole countries and their people were swallowed or it “meat-grinded” them out.Above: Grinder.Above: In the Mongol invasion of Europe they met European armored knights at the battles of Mohi in Hungary and Legnica in Poland. The Mongols annihilated both the Hungarian and Polish armies, and doing so with in two days of each other. The great general Subutai directed both winning battles…even though they were 500 miles apart…over mountains.“The Machine” has been given responsibility for the deaths of 40,000,000 people. Forty million people!Figures currently point to 10% of the world population died directly by the Mongols. If these calculations are correct, this would make the Mongol invasions the deadliest acts of mass killings in world history.Above; This is what vast areas of China, Central Asia, the Middle East, Russia, Eastern Europe looked like after “The Machine” rolled through. I am not exaggerating.10% of the entire world’s people killed in about 40 years by an army that never probably fielded more than 100,000 men. 100,000 men is nothing. Napoleon, when he began his disastrous invasion of Russia had 800,000 men with him, (he came out with 27,000, the worst defeat in world history up to that time.) You can fit 100,000 people into a modern soccer stadium.Above: The cleverly designed Mongol saddle allowed the Rider to fire in any direction including to the rear, but to also cradle him, allowing him to be able to sleep in the saddle.40,000,000 divided by 100,000 equals 400. Each Mongol soldier was responsible for 400 lives lost. 400 lives for every Mongol soldier…!? And of course, many of those soldiers may have never seen a battle field, been stationed as occupying troops or to guard Mongolia. Granted the vast majority of these dead were from hunger, want, freezing, and disease. But even still…Above: Slaves were marched to different Mongol cities or were sent to follow “The Machine” to aid it in anyway.Above: We are talking many millions of people enslaved. The lines of slaves must have sometimes stretched for hundreds of miles.Above: “I rode a tank and a general’s rank when the Blitzkrieg raged and the bodies stank…pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name…ah, what’s puzzling you is the nature of my game…”As “The Machine” went from country to country it first destroyed the nations’ armies, usually quickly and efficiency, as no army on earth could even comprehend it, let alone successfully fight it as it was almost a modern army somehow transported back to 13th century Mongolia.(Very, very strange. Even Phillip’s Macedonian army was based on the Theban style, itself based on the Spartan. But this army of Genghis..it defies belief. It didn’t come directly out of nowhere, but…pretty close. Genghis’ new tactics, the use of the Mongols’ natural abilities of archery, self-sufficiency, their horseman ship and independence coupled with the overall needs of the army, combined with the tecnnical superiority of their bow and horses, all together it made an army that was literally centuries better than any of their opponents. Centuries ahead…I have never really been able to comprehend that.Above: The most dangerous military unit on earth for over two centuries.Imagine let’s say it’s… 2018, and a small Asian country, out in the middle of nowhere, with a small population suddenly, just like THAT!!!, appears and one after another totally destroys and outfights almost every single army on earth, no matter what it’s size or technical level. It makes slaves of everyone, kills everyone, rapes everyone. Leaves us all in a state of abject terror. It’s basically impossible to imagine. But that’s what happened in the 13th century.Above: “Are you…death?” “Sometimes…but perhaps…not today.”This simply doesn’t happen in warfare. There is no comparison that I can find. There can be a breakthrough in thinking/tactics/strategies or weapons, as with Gustavus Adolphus’s Model Army or Phillip/Alexander’s army, with the changing of unit’s line placement, the longer sarissas and Alexander’s new use of his horse creating the first shock calvary in history. Not even counting Alexander’s amazing tactics.But even the Macedonian army was only, perhaps, at best, a century ahead, which in itself is almost beyond belief.But century”s” ahead?Above: Mongol officer. “The Machine” used these talented men to conquer most of the world with small armies in record time.(I’ve been working on an answer asking what an equal number of Genghis Khan’s Mongols would do up against an equal number of Napoleon’s soldiers. 20,000 would be an average number for the Mongols although small for the French.)(A little preview:(Let’s see: French smoothbore muskets that can barely hit anything 100 yards away vs Mongol recurve composite bows that can kill reliably at 300 yards away. )(French muskets that can fire at best 2 rounds a minute vs Mongol bows which can fire 12 arrows a minute, realistically 8.)(French soldiers with no armor but wool uniforms vs Mongols with laminate armor, reinforced by boiled leather and silk shirts next to their skins.)Above: Their bows wherefore powerful than the English longbows, but their recurve design allowed them to be half as long, making them capable of firing from horseback.(French soldiers with less than 60 cartridges in their pouches or Mongols carrying 60 arrows at all times plus Mongol soldiers ordered to ferry fresh bundles of arrows to the frontline troops plus Mongol soldiers ordered to ferry arrows to the ferry-ers! Allowing a single Mongol archer to have potentially 600 arrows in a battle.)(Standard in Napoleon’s army was two cannon per 1,000 men and for every 40 artillery pieces, 24 are smaller 6-pounders and 16 12-pounders. Solid shot is useless against mounted troops over 300 yards away and constantly moving so it must be grape/canister. The spread of canister balls at 300 yards is severe. Mongol’s would be hit of course, but not before they would rain down hell on the French infantry. Of course hitting targets with a bow from 300 yards would be made a lot easier if their targets were massed sort of like, I don’t know….French columns…)As I’ve come to know ”The Machine,” I literally get terror chills down my spine. It’s almost supernatural, an army so terrible and so advanced over all others. It is almost spooky, even eerie.Above: Mongols mainly fought mounted but some were given even more powerful bows, which were fired by dismounted Mongols. Regular bows could kill at 300 yards, but “these shoot a mite further,” as Matt Quigley would say.After destroying the enemies’ armies “The Machine” would run wild over the countryside, laid siege to fortresses that needed to be reduced, avoiding the others, it stole every piece of livestock, every sheath of wheat, every piece of treasure.Above: “The Machine” never stopped, never even paused for 40 years. It was always “hungry.”“The Machine” approached nations, forts, towns with diplomates offering them two choses: surrender, which meant mercy but also looting, some enslavement, raping and taxation, or total destruction.At first many nations scoffed at the Mongol’s diplomates and refused to negotiate sometimes even killing Genghis’ ambassadors…The Mongols ALWAYS kept their word, something very rare in history. When they said “mercy,” they meant it and when they said “total destruction,” they meant it. And if it took them 50 years, they would besiege or pursue or fight, until they had totally defeated their enemies. And then turned the surrounding areas into moonscapes.“The Machine” was so crafty, so wise. It would let “escaped” citizens loose to spread the word of what the Mongols could and would do, both the “total destruction” and the “mercy.”Above: When the Mongol bows so decisively beat the European knights in Hungary, Poland and Russia, it signaled the beginning of the end of the armored knight as the master of the battlefield. The subsequent slaughter of the heavy armored French knights at Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt by the English longbows put the nails in the coffin and the day of the missile/ranged weapons arrived and exists to this day with firearms.And when it was “total destruction,” these were truly apocalyptic times, certainly for the tens of millions of people who “The Machine” rolled over.Above: Thousands of cities burned.“The Machine” killed so many people and enslaved, chased away, and starved so many others that it induced population displacement on a scale never seen before, especially in Central Asia and even in Eastern Europe. As much as 30–40% of Hungary was destroyed when “The Machine” blitzed through. So many people in Poland were killed that when the Mongols left, they put out messages thought out Europe, inviting people to resettle in Poand, offering tax breaks and other incentives . They did something also almost unheard of: they invited Jews to come and live there, the people who had been chased from “door to door” for centuries. Many came and thrived there and the Jews were exactly what Poland needed.But when the Black Death hit it again less than a century later, it again decimated the country and the Jews. And again the leader Casimir put the call out to Europe to come to Poland, and again, manyJews arrived. And from these two population destroying events, many millions of Jews were able to call Poland “home.”Until 1939 when the Nazis invaded…And the Jews faced a new incarnation of “The Machine.”Above: The Mongols could fight in winter, almost unheard of in all of military history. It usually meant defeat for those who did. Not the Mongols. They used frozen rivers as highways and bridges.‘The Machine” enslaved the people and armies and the slaves would be sent to Mongolia or else would plod slowly after the fast moving, never resting “Machine.” If sent to Mongolia or other Mongol cities they were put to work at manual labor and the women became the playthings of the local Mongol soldiers. If the women were young and attractive they were sent to Genghis Khan himself who was the most terrible serial rapist in history with over 60,000 modern descendants in Mongolia/China/Siberia/Central Asia alone. No one knows how many girls he raped and impregnated but it must have ben many thousands as he demanded a girl every night. The girls had to be the youngest, most beautiful and virgins, and if he didn’t think the girls met his standards he gave them as “playthings” to his officers.Above: Millions (with an “M”) of women were forced into sexual slavery by “The machine.” Women at that time (any time) were treated terribly, as property, but at the hands of “The Machine,” they faced cruelty, subjugation, slavery, rape, suffering on a scale they could never have imagined.The slaves that marched with “The Machine” were used in different ways. The women, again, were raped by the army, and the slaves were used to do everything from manual labor, to filling enemy moats and ditches with their still living bodies. They were used as arrow/crossbow fodder. The were marched in front of attacking soldiers as shields in attacks on castles and forts.Above: The enslaved were so tortured, beaten, killed, raped, maimed that they were “put to sleep” by their own minds as a defense mechanism to ”escape” the horror of their situation. They were stripped of their humanity by men who knew just how to subjugate and subdue large numbers of people.Above: “We have so many archers our arrows will block out the sun.”“Good, then we’ll fight in the shade.”Private Joker: A day without blood is like a day without sunshine.“The Machine” spread so much pure terror that whole nations surrendered before the Mongol army had even arrived. Many fortresses and fortified cities surrendered in advance of their arrival because the defenders knew what would happen to them if they resisted.There were cases of individual Mongol soldiers riding in to a town ahead of “The Machine,” and finding hundreds if not thousands of cowed peasants, heads bowed, waiting to surrender to the Mongols. The single soldier would scream at them, intimidate them, order them about, even striding around the prostrate people killing one here and another there to gain more fear/power over them…Above: “The Machine” is made up of individual soldiers who together created “The Machine.”Crazy Earl: These are great days we're living, bros. We are jolly green giants, walking the Earth with guns. These people we wasted here today are the finest human beings we will ever know. After we rotate back to the world, we're gonna miss not having anyone around that's worth shooting.Above: “The Machine” would burn every wood structure down, take ever stone structure down, rock by rock, every piece of livestock would be stolen, ever piece of any crop would be taken, the fields themselves would be burnt, woods and forests would be burned. At times even entire rivers were damed or diverted. You could travel for 250 miles in any direction and see…nothing.Above: Nothing.There are also stories of when”The Machine” ground its way through Khwarazm, Genghis wanted a huge area utterly destroyed s they had resisted “The Machine,” and wanted to make an example out of them. He ordered his men to exterminate the local population. Just wipe it off the map. His soldiers were each given a quota, and it seems that each soldier had to kill between 250–300 people apiece. And to do it quick as “The Machine” was in a hurry.250–300 people slaughtered by each soldier… It is estimated that up to 12,000,000 people died in what is now Iraq and Iran, the biggest single massacre of the entire Mongol wars. The biggest single massacre in the history of the human race.“The Machine” ground on.It so utterly destroyed the populations of Persia that it wasn’t until the early 1900’s that Iran and Iraq recovered.There are historians who study Muslim culture and history who believe that it was Genghis Khan that created the present day atmosphere of conservatism, of fundamentalism, of Jihad, in the Middle East.Above: “The Parthian Shot” i.e.”Parting” shot. One of “The Machine’s” tactics. Private Joker: I wanted to see exotic Vietnam... the crown jewel of Southeast Asia. I wanted to meet interesting and stimulating people of an ancient culture... and kill them. I wanted to be the first kid on my block to get a confirmed kill!When he came through Persia and almost wiped them off the face of the map, it changed the survivors in many ways as you can imagine. Europe was at that time in the Middle, or “Dark Ages,” devastated by political, military, learning, technical, and economic setbacks/problems. Rome going bankrupt and then being repeatedly invaded put Europe into a kind of “nuclear winter,” being locked in feudal systems/technological freezes/financal woes that didn’t really change till the “Rebirth.”Above: It was the “end of the world” for much of the worldBut other nations were not so connected/tied in with Rome and were not affected by it’s downfall, in some cases on the contrary.Persia was at it’s highest plateau since Alexander had come through yelling, “Everybody out of the Pool!” It was in some ways part of the tales told of in “The 1001 Arabian Nights.” There were technological advancements, breakthroughs in music, poet, medicine, astronomy, the economy was good, people were relatively happy, things were looking good and then….WHAM!!!!!!“The Machine” hit them almost out of nowhere. Decades later Muslim armies would be able to fight off the much inferior Mongol army but for now, they were totally outclassed, out-maneuvered, out-fought.Above: What the destroyed countries look and smelled like after “The Machine” went through is unimaginable. The vultures and worms were well fed.Genghis offered them “surrender” or “die.” And they killed his ambassadors, letting Genghis know exactly what their answer was…Maximus: How long has our envoy been gone?Valerius: Nearly two hours. Will they fight, sir?Maximus: We shall know soon enough.[In the distant, the cries of the barbarians can be heard - "ihr seid hunde" (you are dogs!). A horse rides towards them with a headless horseman on its back....]Maximus: They say no.[The white and bloodied horse rides within the ranks of the men. A barbarian comes to the forefront of the German lines, waving the horseman's head, tossing it into the mud....]GERMAN BARBARIAN: Ihr seid verfluchte hunde!(You are damned dogs!)[As the barbarian calls out his cry, his mangy band of barbarians emerge from the forest, shaking and waving their spears and shields, ready to fight.]Quints: People should know when they are conquered.Maximus: Would you, Quintus? Would I?Above: Mongol laminate amor was second only to plate. The Mongols all wore a silk shirt under their armor. The silk’s tight weave would help to stop arrows from penetrating and equally help to pull them out if they did.…Genghis gave them just what they asked for, “die.”All of that scholarship, advancement, learning, light, hope, happiness was eaten by “The Machine” in a relatively short time. The ones still living couldn’t even begin to comprehend what had hit them.Above: After the Persian armies were slaughtered, some of the people did try to fight back. They never even slowed “The Machine.”Persia wandered along for some centuries, much of it under the Mongol yoke. But bit by bit they pulled themselves out from under.But the light, the learning, the hope, the joy was gone, never to return. There was a political position one read about in “Sinbad the Sailor,” and “Ali Baba and the Forty Theives,” the Caliph of Baghdad, revered and important. Genghis had a superstition about shedding “royal blood,” so the Caliph was wrapped in a Persian rug and kicked to death. To this day, the position of the Caliph of Bagdad has never been reinstated.Above: The most independent. self-suficient soldier in history was the Mongol horseman. The are only matched today by elite SEAL, SAS, Marine Force Recon or Delta Force special forces wo can enter hostile country, move, survive and fulfill missions. That was the Mongols “daily bread.”Some historians believe that the cruelty, death, terror, devastation, rape, enslsvement of so much of the Muslim culture and country and people, drifted them towards fundamentalism, violence, disappointment, pessimism, bitterness, xenophobia. prejudice, jihad. Perhaps it isn’t so, but there could not be two more different “Persia’s” than before and after “The Machine.”Murder, executions, torture, rape, cannibalism, starvation, disease, maimings, blindings, were a daily occurrence in Persia and elsewhere around the globe as “The Machine” subjugated it’s conquered lands.When Alexander conquered Persia he left in intact, even going so far as to adapt some of it’s culture and dress, marrying off some of his soldiers to Persian girls, even incorporating some Persian military units into the Macedonian army. He just took their money and “ran” leaving them pretty much intact. “The Macine,” not so much…“The Machine’s” inexorable grinding through the world and how it terrified people into submission was not unlike how the Nazis in WWII rounded up and destroying the Jews. And Soviets.Above: The Mongol soldier carried 60 arrows but each of his 4–6 remounts also carried 60 arrows apiece. About 300 arrows. In battle there were Mongols who only relayed fresh quivers of arrows to the fighting soldiers and Mongols who only relayed fresh quivers to the relayers. In battle a Mongol could realistically have as many as 600 arrows to fire. In contrast, European crossbowmen usually went into battle with 12 bolts. You read right, Twelve.I read in one chatroom where some total fool asked “…why didn’t the Jews resist, if they HAD fought they could have beaten the Germans, I mean there WERE six million of them. Or if others hadn’t fought then “I” would have, by god! Even it meant my death!”The Jews were incredibly brave in the face of another “Death/Terror Machine.” Many Jews resisted. The Nazi’s WANTED them to resist. Those were the first to be murdered. Quickly. Coldly. With little effort. Seeing these folks resist and then dying was a huge psychological key to cowing all the rest. It is not unique to the Jews and Nazis, it is an historical given, It is a ”human psychology” given. It’s exactly what “The Machine” did.Above: One of the Mongol’s favorite tactics was to feign retreat, let the enemy pursue them, draw them out further and further till their unit cohesiveness was destroyed, and then…WHAM!! turn around and kill them.And as for that coward who wrote that, a coward because it is ALSO a ”human psychology” “given” that it is the most cowardly people that stay away from any possible trouble, then beat their chests and proclaim the brave acts they WOULD DO “if they only had the chance.”About 99% of people have a genetic code to live ‘till morning, to keep their families alive, and doing something “brave” but foolhardy doesn’t fit into that coding. Terror combined with self-preservation is a powerful mix and the Mongols totally understood it and used it as “The Machine” ground on. They used it as the Nazis did to subdue, giving people the tiniest hope that they MIGHT live, to subjugate them right till the very second they threw your living body into that enemy castles’ moat or put you in the gas chamber. The Mongols and the Nazis both understood terror and horror and made them both their friends and allies.This type of “down-the-block tough,” from people who are cowards yet try to sound tough are truly maddening. “Down-the-block tough” is when you start arguing with some one, it gets potentially rough, you run, run away, and when you’ve walked a block away from that person, you turn around and yell, ‘Yeah and your mother.’”Above: The Mongol arrows were around 2 ft. long and were constantly being manufactured by the Mongo soldiers as they rode. They could fire 12 arrows a minute until tired then about 6–8 per minute. The Bows had such strong pull weights and they fired them mounted, they had to have had the back/arm strength of The Rock.(“Back in 1968, at the age of 22, Donald J. Trump seemed the picture of health. He stood 6 feet 2 inches with an athletic build; had played football, tennis and squash; and was taking up golf. His medical history was unblemished, aside from a routine appendectomy when he was 10. But after he graduated from college in the spring of 1968, making him eligible to be drafted and sent to Vietnam, he received a diagnosis that would change his path: bone spurs in his heels. The diagnosis resulted in a coveted 1-Y medical deferment that fall, exempting him from military service as the United States was undertaking huge troop deployments to Southeast Asia, inducting about 300,000 men into the military that year. The deferment was one of five Mr. Trump received during Vietnam. The others were for education.”- NY Times)Above: “The Machine” grinds on. There have been many other “Machines” in the past from many different countries. But none as terrible as the Mongol’s. Chanting: “This is my rifle. There are many others like it but this one is mine. My rifle is my best friend. I will keep my rifle clean and ready, even as I am clean and ready…("He's a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren't captured," Donald Trump about John CMcCain. “In October 1967, he (John McCain) was shot down, seriously injured, and captured by the North Vietnamese. He was a prsoner-of-war for six years until 1973. He experienced episodes of torture and refused an out-of-sequence early repatriation offer. The wounds that he sustained during the war left him with lifelong physical disabilities”-WIKI)(“Donald Trump on Monday claimed he would have run into a Florida high school to prevent a gunman from carrying out this month's mass shooting, even without a weapon. "You don't know until you test it, but I really believe I'd run in there even if I didn't have a weapon,” Trump told a gathering of governors at the White House.”-Fox News)Above: A sight you would seldom see: a Mongol dismounted. Private Cowboy: We're the Lusthog Squad. We're lifetakers and heartbreakers. We shoot 'em full of holes and fill 'em full of lead.Genghis’ enemies were always given a choice, “an offer they couldn’t refuse:” total surrender and you will be robbed of a certain percentage of your goods (usually 40–60%, the Mongols weren’t entirely selfish,) and some will be taken as slaves, and some of your women will be taken and raped….Or else…total destruction, “leaving you, your family, your town and your nation totally destroyed in the worst, most terrible ways we can imagine..and we’re pro’s…we can imagine a lot.”Give in or else…Kay: Tell me, Michael. Please.Michael: Well, when Johnny was first starting out, he was signed to a personal services contract with this big-band leader. And as his career got better and better, he wanted to get out of it. But the band leader wouldn't let him. Now, Johnny is my father's godson. So my father went to see this bandleader and offered him $10,000 to let Johnny go, but the bandleader said no. So the next day, my father went back, only this time with Luca Brasi. Within an hour, he had a signed release for a certified check of $1000.Kay: How did he do that?Michael: My father made him an offer he couldn't refuse.Kay: What was that?Michael: Luca Brasi held a gun to his head, and my father assured him that either his brains or his signature would be on the contract.Kay: ...Michael: ...That's a true story.Above: What do you think this is the Army, where you shoot 'em a mile away? You've gotta get up close like this and - bada-BING! - you blow their brains all over your nice Ivy League suit.The Mongols killed in battle mostly by their “super bows,” but also quite a bit from by hand weapons. But they by far killed most by stealing all of the crops, livestock, food supplies and letting the people die of hunger, thirst, cold, exposure, want, disease, all truly terrible ways to die. But they killed in other ways, ways that helped to spread the terror they needed to cow enemies and subdue the occupied nations they were occupying…Above: Armageddon for 10% of the world in just a few short years.Door Gunner: Git some! Git some! Git some, yeah, yeah, yeah! Anyone who runs, is a VC. Anyone who stands still, is a well-disciplined VC! You guys oughta do a story about me sometime!Private Joker: Why should we do a story about you?Door Gunner: 'Cuz I'm so fu*kin' good! I done got me 157 dead gooks killed. Plus 50 water buffalo, too! Them's all confirmed!Private Joker: Any women or children?Door Gunner: Sometimes!Private Joker: How can you shoot women or children?Door Gunner: Easy! Ya just don't lead 'em so much! Hahaha! Ain't war hell?Above: Hieronymus Bosch/Hell.It was one of the greatest examples of psychological warfare in the history of warfare. This relatively tiny army marched along, and conqured in about 40 years an empire over twice the size of Rome’s. They killed 40,000,000 people. And their greatest weapon was not their bows, their horses, their speed, their supply self sufficiency, their amazing training, even their almost unmatched leadership.Their greatest weapon was terror.They were the most effective army in history. The greatest led, had the greatest technical “lead” over their foes, the fastest moving, the greatest killing power per man in any era until 800 years later with 20th century firearms.It was one of the cruelest armies, one of the most coldhearted armies. The Mongol soldiers seem to have done this killing in an almost matter-of-fact way, they even fought in total silence, something more terrifying than shouts. Not even Rome, not even the Huns, not even the Nazis, killed like the Mongols.Above: Genghis Khan gives thanks to the open sky. “The Machine” has won again.They were the most terrible army.The were the “greatest” army because they were the most terrifying army in history.It was a “Death/Terror/Horror Machine.”Thanks for reading my rant.If you get a chance please check out some more of my answers some about the Mongols, or other military history. -PeteAbove: The Mongols constantly hunted as they moved. They were masters at it, able to feed them selves with out a supply train or lines, because their bows were accurate enough to reliably take small game at 35 yards and they had the skill to utilize that technology. Tremendous in any era. The best any English longbowman could do was 25 yards.Extra “Bonus:”I heard this song and thought of “The Machine.” It’s by “A Perfect Circle,” and captures, IMO, a tiny part of the horror of the Mongol invasions, the slow, incessant almost rhythmic cadence/advancement of “The Machine.”Above: “The Machine” just kept killing and we have never seem anything like it before, and although there have been imitations, some good ones, it stands alone in history. Let us all pray we never see anything like it again.(“The Machine” never stopped, never rested, never even paused for over forty freakin’ years, just kept grinding and destroying from the Pacific Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea, from Siberia to Egypt to Afghanistan to Iraq to Austria. It just…never… stopped. It ate 40,000,000 people. And if 40,000,000 were devoured, it must have destroyed the lives of how many others…?)The song also catches a bit of the terror that was used to subdue many more millions of people than they ever killed. Subdued them to “sleep,” to inactivity, to sheep-like existences, to total servitude/surrender so they could be worked to death, raped, used as arrow fodder, even to have their living bodies cast into moats or ditches.This song WILL creep you out, I guaranty.It’s called “Counting Bodies Like Sheep To The Rhythm Of The War Drums.”Above: GO BACK TO SLEEP!!!!