(stately fanfare)
- Beverly! Hi. Oh, I know. It's been wild, right?
(calm gentle music) When things finally
open up after the siege, I think I'm finally gonna
go on that Italian getaway I've been putting off for years, just to be out of these walls and get a little normalcy, right? (catapult clunking)
(air whistling) What's that sound? Is that a... What is, what is that? (Caitlin screams)
(body thuds) ♪ The Middle Ages were magic ♪ (easygoing music)
Biological warfare. I'm not gonna lie, weaponizing disease to
take out major populations is a bit of a terrifying thought for me, as it is for most people. But what you may not realize is that humans have been
trying to weaponize diseases for thousands of years. Of course they have. Long before they even understood them. Today, we're talking about
perhaps the most insidious act of biological warfare ever attempted, involving airborne corpses. Let's just do the title card again. ♪ The Middle Ages were magic ♪ (Caitlin sighs) In the 14th century, the city of Caffa, now in Ukraine, was
diverse and cosmopolitan. It was right on the ocean,
but protected on land by two rings of heavy, fortified walls. The city has been purchased
by Italian merchants from the Mongolian Golden Horde and rose to monopolize
trade in the region. Relations between the Christian traders and the Muslim Mongols
were frequently strained, and in the 1340s, Jani Beg, the reigning Kahn of the Golden Horde, attempted multiple assaults
on the walled city. The multi-year siege of Caffa had begun. - [Crowd] Hooray! - But by 1346, the siege was going poorly, no thanks to a pesky
outbreak of the Black Plague among the Mongol troops. According to an account from the time, the soldiers "died as soon as the signs of disease appeared on their bodies: swellings in the armpit or groin caused by coagulating humors, followed by a putrid fever." The Golden Horde could not
continue their siege of Caffa with their troops dying
en masse from the plague. Sorry, boys. Guess it's time to pack up and head home. Oh, no. Not just yet. The Mongols were like, "Bros, we've got all these plague bodies. Now, hear me out. They're stinky. No one wants a city full of
disease-y, stinky corpses. Naruz, why don't you and
Timur load up those corpses onto the catapult and,
hmm, just spitballing here, fling 'em over the wall?" (air whistling)
What's that sound? And that's what they did. They just kept catapulting
their plague corpses into Caffa. Now, imagine you live in Caffa. You've been besieged and trapped inside the walls of the city for years, and then one day, you're
eating a sandwich, and plague-infested corpses
begin raining down from the sky, (body thumps)
plopping at your feet. "What seemed like mountains of dead were thrown into the city," wrote Gabriele de' Mussi in
his 14th century account, which, like all medieval accounts, tends to have a few
holes in the narrative, including him not actually
being there for the siege, but it's the best we have. "The Christians could not hide
or flee or escape from them, although they dumped as many of the bodies as they could into the sea.
(water splashing) And soon the rotting
corpses tainted the air and poisoned the water supply, and the stench was so overwhelming." No one wants a catapult
assault of corpses. I think we can all agree. On the list of things you want interrupting your bread making or weaving, it's darn near at the bottom. The real question, though, is were those flying
corpses a hideous nuisance, or were they responsible for
an act of biological warfare, ultimately spreading the Black Plague, first through the citizens of Caffa and subsequently through
the entire Mediterranean? - [Crowd] Hooray! - De' Mussi believed it
was biological warfare. "One infected man could
carry the poison to others and infect people and places
with the disease by look alone. No one knew, or could
discover, a means of defense." Over time, the historical truth became that traders in Caffa were able to escape the siege on trade ships by sea and after the assault took the plague with them to Genoa, Venice,
and "other Christian areas." When the sailors arrived and mingled with the people in the new city, "it was as if they had brought
evil spirits with them." Men and women started dropping dead. So the plague had arrived in Italy and spread throughout Europe via these survivors
from the siege of Caffa who contracted the plague
from catapulted corpses. ♪ The Middle Ages were magic ♪ Given that more than a
third of Europe's population would go on to die from the
plague, this is no small claim. Flying Mongol corpses caused the plague. Done. This video was made with generous dona- (record scratches)
Well, not quite. There are two workable hypotheses about how the flying corpses may have helped spread the illness, if they did spread the illness. Hypothesis one: manhandling
mangled Mongols. According to historian of
biological weapons Mark Wheelis, there is a reasonable chance
that the people in Caffa who were handling the mangled
and decomposing bodies that were flung over the wall could have had open wounds
on their hands or body, thus putting themselves at
risk for plague transmission. It's the same reason modern funeral directors wear
personal protective equipment if someone died from
an infectious disease. Let's say, um, Kevin of Caffa has been piling up plague corpses all day. Remember, there were
allegedly literal mountains of plague corpses catapulted into Caffa. And he gets cuts on his hands, because schlepping corpses is hard work. If he grabs a plague corpse and his open wound comes into contact with the corpse's open wound
and blood from the corpse, Kevin could be infected with the plague. This is not the most likely scenario. Wound-to-wound is not holy palmers' kiss. That's a little Shakespeare. He would come later. - [Shakespeare] Hmm. - And while this could account for some of the plague spreading in Caffa, it doesn't account for the
further spread of the plague throughout Italy and Europe. It's not like the Mongols
were also flinging corpses across the sea into Britain. The reality, modern scholars believe, was much more mundane, which
brings us to hypothesis two. If you're a fan of this channel, you already know what I'm gonna say. ♪ It was rats ♪ It was rats. The historian Wheelis believes
that the spread to Europe was likely the same as it was elsewhere: fleas and rats. It was rats. We've talked about this before in our "Bubonic Plague
in San Francisco" video. ♪ The bubonic plague in America ♪ But basically, rats, which
are everywhere, have fleas. Rats get the plague and
are bitten by fleas. The rat dies, and the
fleas jump to a human, bites them, et voila. ♪ Yeah ♪ The human has the plague! - [Crowd] Hooray! - And the cycle continues. ♪ Yeah ♪ "Rat infestations in
the holds of cargo ships would have been highly susceptible to the rapid spread of the
plague," Wheelis wrote, "and even if most rats
died during the voyage, they would have left
abundant hungry fleas." Those fleas were there to
greet, and then infect, the unsuspecting humans
unpacking the ships. It's no surprise that flying
corpses were a sexier narrative than rats and fleas as a
mode of plague transmission. I mean, the title of this video
is about the flying corpses. We didn't call it "It's Probably
Rats Again" for a reason. It was rats. It also fits how humans
understood, or misunderstood, disease transmission
for thousands of years. Well into the 19th century, the Western world believed that
mere proximity to a corpse, plague-infected or not,
could make you ill. People believed that
disease was in the odor, the fumes, the miasma, the
bad air around the dead. And while a form of the
plague, the pneumonic plague, is spread by inhaling respiratory droplets from coughs or sneezes, a corpse is not gonna
be coughing or sneezing. If it sneezes, it's not a corpse, is what I always say. Even if the plague rats
scurried into the ships, can we really call Caffa ground zero for spreading the plague
in Italy and then Europe? Not really. Caffa was not the only Crimean port that the Mongols controlled and thus not the only port
exposed to the plague. Plus, there were overland
trade routes to Europe. Either way, and put this on the screen for those corpse besmirchers out there: living people are always
going to be better at spreading disease than dead bodies. Even if the catapulting corpses didn't kill a third of Europe, still a wild story, right? That the Mongols even
came up with that idea... What if I told you that the siege of Caffa was not the first time this had happened? ♪ The Middle Ages were magic ♪ Of course medieval people
catapulted more dead stuff at their enemies. If you're gonna go to the trouble of building a 65-foot tall catapult, you're gonna use it to
fling some gnarly stuff. This is men we're talking about here. Hi, everyone. (chuckles) It's been a rough week. In my last video, I made the claim that men enjoy launching
dead things by catapult. I wish to apologize and say that not all men want to
fling corpses by catapult. For example, the French
catapult, or trebuchet, was built not just for boulders, but also to fling the
weight of a dead horse into besieged towns. Catapulting dead horses into towns in an attempt to make its people sick from bad horse air or water contamination was not as uncommon a
practice as you might think in the Middle Ages.
♪ Were magic ♪ During the Crusades, attackers would fling pretty
much any horrific thing they could get their
hands on over city walls: the corpses of leprosy victims, excrement, animal carcasses, still-living victims of illness. Sometimes, they'd bundle everything up into a terrible package and fling the whole thing over the wall. An extra special delivery. Death positive as we all are here, there's definitely a psychological element to having dead things
showered down upon you. As in, no, thank you. And in case you were like, "Good Christians would
never fight in such a way," have you read anything about
the Middle Ages, my friend? I have some bad news. In 1097, during the First Crusade, Christian Crusaders laid siege to the walled city of Nicaea. At first, the Turks behind
Nicaea's walls were all like, "We got this. We are safe behind these
primo thick walls." But the Crusaders were like, "Hold my mead." And then the Turks hear
the unmistakable sound of hammering and wood chopping. That's catapult building sounds. And the Turks were like, "Oh, no." And the Crusaders start
catapulting huge boulders at Nicaea's walls. So the Turks send out soldiers
to fight the Crusaders, but that doesn't go so well for them, and all the soldiers are killed. The Crusaders cut off the
heads of the slain Turks, load the heads onto their catapult, and rain the heads of the fallen Nicaeans down upon their living comrades. (Caitlin exhales) This move was less
about biological warfare and was more just a good
old-fashioned horror show. So traumatized were the Turks of Nicaea that they promptly surrendered. The last known corpse flinging
as bio-warfare scenario we know of would come in 1710 when the Russians were fighting the Swedes in the Great Northern War. Russian troops catapulted
plague-infected corpses over the walls of the
Swedish-held city of Reval, now the capital city of Estonia. Unlike the Mongols, the Russians won. Go team plague corpse. - [Crowd] Hooray! - Even if, in the year of our Lord 2021, we don't believe in miasma
or bad corpse air anymore, even funeral professionals
can have trouble letting go of this millennia-long slander of the corpse as somehow sinister. When I was giving a talk at a conference, a funeral director confronted
me during the Q&A to say, "A dead body can have diseases
and things that may spread. How do you justify leaving
a body at home unembalmed that may have these diseases?" This is a criticism I have
received countless times when advocating for families taking care of their own dead in the home. From the way some funeral directors talk, you would think I was trying to catapult Mongol plague bodies directly into the living rooms of
these innocent families. Grandma had breast cancer. She did not have the plague. If biological warfare
is part of our future, which it may be... Humanity's great. I have no notes. The weapons will not be
poor, innocent dead bodies. Again, living people are
always going to be better at spreading disease than dead bodies. But at the end of the day, no
more launching corpses, folks. Let's leave that to the
medieval experts, because... ♪ The Middle Ages were magic ♪ (peaceful music) You might be wondering,
"Why is Caitlin relaxing? She should be hard at work
creating more content. Where's our videos?" All in good time, my babies. Mother needs a break. That means, for the
rest of July and August, we won't be releasing any new videos on our main YouTube channel. Instead, we'll be taking that time to research, write, and
shoot some big videos we have planned for the fall, videos that need a little more TLC. That's, uh, travel, love, corpses. Oh, but there's content. There's content. For those of you on our Patreon, we will still have our monthly vlog as well as exclusive,
fully-produced Patrons-only videos in the months of July and August. The story quickly became that she died by choking on a sandwich. Another popular prank was for local high school
seniors to steal Eugene. And if you're not a Patron, no sweat. We have an Instagram where
we're gonna have new content. What I'm saying is, you're gonna have to try hard
to have a true break from me. If that's what you want,
why do we need a break? I thought this was going really well. Jason! Okay, have a good summer, deathlings. Caitlin out. This video was made
with generous donations from death enthusiasts just like you. 'Kay, I'm a medieval woman. I'm, like... (upbeat music) It was rats. Ra-ra-ra-rats. Rats. Rats. Ra-ra-ra-rat. Rat. Ra-ra-rat. Rat. Ra-ra-ra-rats. Ra-ra-ra-ra-rat. Rat. Ra-ra-rat. Rat. Ra-ra-ra-rats. ♪ It was a ♪ Ra-ra-ra-rat. Rat. Ra-ra-rat. Rat. Ra-ra-ra-rat. Ra-ra-rat. ♪ It was a ♪ Rat. Rat. Fun.
- [Crowd] Hooray! Ra-ra-ra-rats. ♪ It was ♪
Fun. Fun. Fuh-fuh-fuh-fuh.
- [Crowd] Hooray! Rats. It's still not the best, you know? If it's not the best,
not for this channel. Rats. It's a corpse falling on my head. Spoiler. Rats. Ah, I love the smell of
failure in the morning. Rats. Fix my hair. Fix my shirt, and... Rats. (Caitlin laughs haughtily) There's turkey? No. It was rats. One of my ears is stuffed. It's always cutting me off when I'm trying to talk about catapulting dead horses. It's like, come on. Rats. It's most certainly rats. Caitlin out.
I came here to see if anyone had posted this! Caitlin Doughty is awesome. I really hope the boys can talk with her for Patreon or a relaxed fit or something.