3

The Strategic Hamlet Profram Somehow Makes us Lose Vietnam Even More

We suppose on a list like this you could just put "Vietnam" and leave it at that. But of the several million things that went wrong in the course of that war, we think perhaps one was more retarded than the rest.

As you know from Apocalypse Now and, to a lesser extent, Platoon, one problem was that the regular farm folk who we were trying to liberate in South Vietnam, and the commie bad guys we were fighting, were often the same guys.

So we launched the Strategic Hamlet Program to try to separate the bad guys from the good, so we could then kill that first group. Makes sense.

The idea was to set up villages that would be provided with supplies and protection by the non-commie South Vietnam government. The rural folk would all move there and would be so grateful they would support the good guys. This was all based on the scientific principle that, "If you force millions of people to pack up their shit and move to a new place that they have to build themselves with a bunch of strangers, they will love you for it."

2

The Enlarged Homestead Act of 1909 Unleashes Unimaginable Horror

The original Homestead Act of 1862 was, by all accounts, a huge success. It basically gave a plot of undeveloped land to anybody, as long as they promised to do something to improve it (such as open a titty bar or a brothel, perhaps).

But, just like the great movie that gets a shitty sequel, the government came out with the cleverly named Enlarged Homestead Act of 1909 and turned a huge chunk of the country into a living Hell.

How It Backfired:

The Act gave 320 acres to farmers willing to accept land that wasn't considered all that great for farming, due to a lack of water or whatever. This would have been a good place to put up those strip clubs, but instead, people tried to farm the land anyway. No big deal, right?

Well, that useless land they were trying to farm had previously been covered with grass. They plowed over it, leaving exposed soil that, over the years, became as dry and loose as an elderly prostitute. Eventually, winds kicked this dirt into the air.

Not only did all of this dust in the air exacerbate the drought conditions, it looked all manner of badass. No matter how rugged your grandfather was, he probably shit his depression-era burlap pants when he saw this coming...

Not pictured: Satan

Take the above, imagine it happening for ten straight years, and you have the screaming horror that came to be known as the Dust Bowl.

1

China's Great Leap Forward Kills Basically Everyone

There are a lot of fucking people in China. So the idea of using that immense population to help convert mainland China into a more modern, productive society wasn't a bad idea at all. This would mark the first and last decent idea employed during China's Great Leap Forward, a gargantuan clusterfuck which lasted five years starting in 1958.

How It Backfired:

It would be a lot easier to just tell you the ways this shit didn't backfire. That would be none. For instance, one part involved taking all of those peasant farmers and setting them to making steel. In their backyards. Instead of farming.

"What the hell am I doing?"

Have you ever tried to make steel at home? Does that seem like a retardedly impossible thing to do? Congratulations, you are smarter than Chairman Mao.

But perhaps the best example of Great Leap Forward idiocy was the Great Sparrow Campaign. One of the goals of the Great Leap Forward was to rid the country of "the four great pests." That would be rats, flies, mosquitoes and...sparrows? Fucking cockroaches get a pass?

Look at this dipshit.

At any rate, adorably primitive steps were taken to rid the country of the dreaded sparrow, including villagers shooing them away using pots and pans. The reason for this, according to the people behind the plan, was because sparrows fed on seeds, thereby negatively affecting harvests. Unfortunately, the sparrow experts failed to inform the Chinese government that sparrows also ate locusts. So many of them, in fact, that the sparrows were the only thing between China and a full-on Biblical locust plague. With the sparrows finally gone, the locusts swept in.

Remaining harvest levels (meaning the amount the government didn't seize) were already ridiculously low, thanks partly to millions of able-bodied farmers staring confusedly at steel furnaces bellowing smoke in their backyards instead of farming. What crops were left were promptly devoured by an army of locusts.

So the government got their cut of the grain, the locusts got theirs...and about 38 million Chinese citizens got nothing. In the name of not completely bumming you out for the rest of the day, we'll leave the next few years to your imagination.

More from Adam can be found at ScenicAnemia.com

For other expensive disasters, check out Adam's look at 5 Tiny Mistakes That Led To Huge Catastrophes or his investigative report about The Awful Truth Behind 5 Items Probably On Your Grocery List. Or, visit the Cracked.com Top Picks to see what we're looking at instead of working.