4 Scary Moments In History That Were Worse Than You Realized

3 The Government Sent Hundreds Of Thousands Of Unfit People To The Vietnam War As "The Moron Troops"

Most people associate the Vietnam War with three things: Creedence Clearwater Revival, Good Morning Vietnam, and John Rambo. Oh, and the protests and death and all that.

In 1966, all those protests presented President Lyndon B. Johnson with a problem. He needed a metric ton of fresh soldiers to feed into the pit of escalating terror Vietnam had become, but couldn't afford the massive backlash that abolishing student deferments or calling up hordes of reserves was sure to create. Luckily for him, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara had a way to do this while avoiding unwanted civil upset from concerned citizens: Simply focus the recruiting effort on poor, unfit, and disadvantaged people.

2 The Worst Enemy Of Napoleon's Army Was Napoleon Himself

Napoleon was notoriously lax in feeding his dreaded Grande Armee. An old Polish saying -- "Bread? There is none" -- was so popular with the troops that Napoleon himself once shot it back at a hungry soldier who asked him for food. Generally, it's the commander's job to boost morale, not engage in cynical memes about starvation.

During the 1798 Egyptian campaign, 55,000 of Napoleon's troops endured a brutal three-day desert march from Alexandria to Cairo. They died like flies from heat, thirst, the occasional Bedouin attack, and suicide. This wasn't particularly good news for the Egyptians, either. By the time the army reached the Nile, half-crazed soldiers tore through the area in a looting rampage that did little to endear Napoleon to the local populace. Of course, Napoleon learned precisely nothing from this exercise in troop hydration, and put his men through an even crazier ten-day desert march, which went exactly as well as you'd think. When they finally reached their destination in Syria, the exhausted troops were greeted with a plague and prompt defeat at the hands of an Ottoman and English coalition.

1 Surviving The Atomic Bomb Was Only The Start Of The Ordeal

The aftermath of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki left over a million survivors worrying about injuries, illness, and homelessness. On top of it all, they were treated as total outcasts and third-class citizens by their own country for the rest of their lives. Back then, radioactivity was invisible, mysterious, and terrifying. Who's to say that the survivors really survived anything at all?

Yeah, you know where this is going.

Japan treated the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki like the ghouls from Fallout. They feared the survivors would spread radiation-related diseases to those around them. Even their scarring was considered contagious. They were dubbed hibakusha -- "atomic bomb survivors" -- and actively shunned by the rest of society. Survivors found it difficult to secure jobs or housing. Many also found it impossible to marry -- after all, there was no telling what crazy mutants their irradiated loins might give birth to. Japan didn't even bother setting up proper healthcare for the victims until the 1950s, because hey, with any luck, they'd all die out.