0:00 Okay, so in 1932, the Australian government deployed soldiers armed with machine guns to wage a literal, formal war against a population of birds.0:11 I’m not kidding.0:12 Last week we talked about the chaos of the Jamestown colony, how a venture capital project in a swamp almost ate itself into oblivion.0:22 This is like the sequel, but somehow even more absurd.0:26 It’s the story of when a modern military went to war with twenty thousand emus… and the emus WON.0:33 The whole thing started because of the Great Depression.0:37 Australia had all these World War One veterans they’d settled on marginal farmland out in Western Australia.0:46 The government promised them subsidies for growing wheat, which...0:51 didn't exactly materialize.0:53 So these poor guys are already struggling, and then twenty thousand emus, on their annual migration, decide this new farmland is a fantastic buffet.1:04 They’re tearing down fences, flattening crops.1:07 It was a genuine crisis for these farmers.1:10 So they go to the Minister of Defence.1:13 And here's the part that I just can't get over.1:17 Instead of, you know, offering agricultural solutions, the Minister, Sir George Pearce, agrees to send in the military.1:26 He sends Major G.P.W.1:27 Meredith of the Royal Australian Artillery, two soldiers, and two Lewis machine guns with ten thousand rounds of ammunition.1:37 The thinking was, it's great target practice for the soldiers, and they'll get some emu skins out of it.1:44 It was supposed to be a turkey shoot.1:47 It was NOT a turkey shoot.1:49 Their first attempt was a disaster.1:52 They spot a mob of about fifty emus.1:55 The soldiers get ready, the farmers try to herd the birds into range, and...2:00 the emus just split up into small groups and run away.2:04 They’re too fast.2:06 The machine guns, designed for stationary targets, couldn't keep up.2:11 After a full day of this, they'd fired hundreds of rounds and killed maybe a dozen birds.2:17 The emus were basically liquid.2:20 They just flowed around the threat.2:22 So for the second attempt, Major Meredith gets clever.2:27 Or so he thinks.2:28 He plans an ambush near a dam where over a thousand emus have been spotted.2:33 They set up the machine gun, they wait...2:36 the birds walk right into the kill zone.2:39 It's perfect.2:40 The gunner opens fire and— the gun jams after twelve shots.2:45 The thousand emus scatter, completely unharmed.2:48 One ornithologist observing the whole fiasco wrote, and this is a direct quote, "The emus' command of tactics has been amazing.2:58 Each mob has its leader...3:00 who keeps watch while his fellows busy themselves with the wheat." They had sentries!3:06 These birds were running a more effective insurgency than most human groups.3:12 And this is where you see the pattern, right?3:16 This isn't just a funny story about birds.3:19 This is the classic playbook of asymmetric warfare.3:23 A big, powerful, technologically advanced force gets completely humiliated by a decentralized, highly mobile opponent that refuses to fight on the stronger army’s terms.3:35 The Australian military had machine guns.3:38 The emus had two strategies: run away really fast, and don't stand in a big group.3:45 And it was UNDEFEATABLE.3:46 We've seen this pattern with insurgents against empires for centuries.3:52 The Great Emu War is just the most hilarious possible version of it.3:57 After about a month of this, the media back in Perth started having a field day.4:03 The headlines were brutal.4:05 The military had fired almost ten thousand rounds to kill, officially, nine hundred and eighty-six emus.4:13 That’s more than ten bullets PER BIRD.4:15 It was an utter humiliation.4:18 Major Meredith himself, in his report, seemed almost...4:22 impressed.4:22 He said if they had a military division with the bullet-carrying capacity of these birds, it would face any army in the world.4:32 He was basically saying the emus had better armor than his soldiers.4:37 So, the military withdrew in defeat.4:40 The press mocked them relentlessly.4:42 The emu problem, of course, was still there.4:46 And the final solution wasn't military might.4:49 It wasn't more guns or a bigger army.4:52 It was better fences.4:53 The government ended up just offering a bounty system and providing stronger fencing materials to the farmers.5:02 The problem wasn't that the emus were an army; the problem was that the wheat was unprotected.5:09 They brought a machine gun to solve a logistics problem.5:13 And that's the real lesson here.5:15 It’s not about the size of your weapon.5:18 It’s about whether you’ve correctly understood the nature of the war you’re actually fighting.
