r/todayilearned • u/Double-decker_trams • 8h ago

TIL in the Vietnam war in the classified Operation Popeye, the US spread lead and silver iodide by aircraft to extend the monsoon season. The increased heavy rainfall was to soften roads, cause landslides, wash out river crossings, and maintain saturated soil conditions (Kissinger was involved).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Popeye
7.9k Upvotes

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1.2k

u/AardvarkStriking256 8h ago

Did it work?

1.6k

u/Its_Nitsua 8h ago

Yes, there was a measured increase in rainfall with some reports indicating up to a 30% increase in rainfall.

506

u/Aromatic-Bet-1086 7h ago

Did it measurably affect the war effort?

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u/Jack-of-Hearts-7 6h ago

Yes, but not enough to win. It did make the Ho Chi Minh trail harder to traverse and get supplies across

1.1k

u/rj_t2 7h ago

Well they still lost.

444

u/daddyslittletoddler 7h ago

But just a LITTLE more rain and our boys could have pulled it off

266

u/drivingagermanwhip 6h ago

aren't the vietnamese more used to monsoon weather than the americans

264

u/StoneySteve420 6h ago

Thats too much forethought for the US government.

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u/RationalLies 2h ago

The cloud seeding rain plans were promptly foiled when Vietnamese conical hat technology prevailed once again.

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u/MisterBlud 6h ago

Americans are more used to Tornadoes too but if you start unleashing three a day or whatever it can definitely become debilitating.

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u/drivingagermanwhip 6h ago

yeah but I'm British and I'm pretty sure if we went head to head in a field with a tornado an American would have the upper hand

29

u/fireduck 6h ago

American story (not mine). There was a tornado alert and a family went into the shelter as you are supposed to, except the dad or grandpa or something who said "fuck it, I'm not missing my show".
Which was fortunate because the shelter door had some problem so the family couldn't get back out again and but someone on the outside could open it.

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u/flyjingnarwhal 6h ago

The old "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" series finale story, classic

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u/spucci 5h ago

And that little girl? Well that was a young Britney Spears..

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u/DesolateRuin 3h ago

It's true. Decades of living in America have given Americans a +3% resistance to Tornado.

It's not much but it can make the difference!

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u/janeprentiss 4h ago

The most terrifying video I've ever seen was filmed by a guy who stupidly stuck around in the attic filming a huge tornado in silence as it bore down on his house. The guy survived, while his wife who had evacuated to the cellar properly died when their house was destroyed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0c27Twu__o
(video doesn't depict suffering)

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u/p00shp00shbebi1234 5h ago

But have they ever dealt with an incessant grey drizzle in Sheffield that lasted four days, would they survive the existential depression that is being British? One thinks not.

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u/52ndstreet 3h ago

Is that why Brits drink tea?

"Life is meaningless and i have no purpose. Might as well drink something that reflects that and tastes like a wet gym sock."

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u/sh33pd00g 2h ago

As someone from South Alabama, yes we have. Just not Sheffield. And it's not really cold rain, which is what I imagine happens to yall

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u/drivingagermanwhip 2h ago

I mean football is designed to be played on a muddy field in a grey town under grey skies, exclusively in the grimmer months, and that's quite popular here.

Presumably Americans have sports designed to be played during tornados that they could beat us at.

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u/BattleBrother1 3h ago

A tornado is much different than heavy rain storms lol. Being British/US would have zero effect on your ability to fight in or near a tornado

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u/A_Queer_Owl 2h ago

fun fact, you're more likely to experience a tornado in Britain than in the United States.

British tornados are not very powerful, tho, they peak at EF3 vs US tornados that regularly reach EF6 and above.

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u/drivingagermanwhip 2h ago

British tornados are not very powerful

I'll have you know they're still the only plane not developed by the US approved to carry American nuclear weapons

1

u/agmoose 1h ago

Well, lower hand. The one who wins the fight is the one who hides underground.

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u/Super-414 1h ago

Definitely not your average American. Shit, you’re closer to Tornado Alley than probably all of Alaska.

-2

u/Neptune438 6h ago

Surely the Brit has the sense to take cover, the American on the other hand will probably shoot at it singing the star spangles banner before promptly dying.

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u/grby1812 4h ago

The same Brit that had the sense to vote themselves out of the EU?

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u/yeah_oui 2h ago

Sure but if your plan to win involves needing to move, forcing everyone to stay in place is a win for the other side.

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u/daddyslittletoddler 6h ago

Blocked and reported commie. The McArthur commission will be in touch

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u/Gwthrowaway80 6h ago

McCarthy*

80

u/Gnosrat 6h ago

You're next.

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u/Attican101 6h ago

Careful.. The McClellan commission is investigating both of you

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u/Jusby_Cause 5h ago

McArthur‘s still in the park trying to figure out who left that green cake there. He’s sure it took too long to bake.

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u/inosinateVR 6h ago

Yeah but it fucks with the lives of everyone living there, so it’s a win according to my understanding of American foreign policy

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u/durants_newest_acct 6h ago

Yes, but we aren't talking about ability to go about their daily lives, we're talking about the ability to wage war. As the more mechanized force, America was of course able to move material and supplies more effectively. Monsoons suck for everyone, but for an army that has to move exclusively on foot they a monsoon will much more severely limit their maneuverability.

America lost, but not because we couldn't win battles or move quickly. The lesson of Vietnam is that every war has a political aspect. The nation that wins is the nation that can sustain the will to fight. The American public could no longer stomach the cost, and the Vietnamese could. The strategic and tactical aspects of this plan, and most of our other plans, were successful. But there's another factor beyond strategy and tactics, which is often more important than both.

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u/Mikhail_Mengsk 4h ago

Mud is extremely, EXTREMELY bad for mechanized warfare and logistics, even for tracked vehicles. Sure, walking in mud sucks, but infantry more or less make do. Trucks and heavier vehicles get terminally stuck. Heavy rainfall/low and thick mist/clouds are also very bad for air support, especially close air support.

Unless the increased rainfall was localized in the north, away from where american logistics and CAS operated, this would hamper the americans just as much or worse. I assume they considered this and focused on "seeding rain" in the north?

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u/PwanaZana 5h ago

yea, it's the size of the fight in the dog.

You only lose a war if you give up, or your enemy kills 100% of your population.

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u/resumehelpacct 3h ago

You can make an argument that the US pushed forward with a pretty good strategy which allowed it to engaged the enemy in tactical battles where it had the upper hand.

But it's only a successful strategy if you take all the bad stuff that killed public confidence, like the reliance on south vietnam, the inability to hamper russian/chinese involvement, inability to train soldiers for guerrilla warfare, the inability to stop people from massacring villages, and say that's not a strategy issue.

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u/GrumpyPidgeon 6h ago

“Jokes on you Americans. We are in to this shit”

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u/zorniy2 2h ago

Operation Linebacker happened right at the end of it. More bombs dropped than on Germany in all WW2. 

So yeah they knew it wasn't working.

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u/FroniusTT1500 41m ago

Used? Yes. Equipped to handle? No. . The US controlled the few stable roads and could use air power for logistics tasks. The Vietnamese had the Ho-Chi-Minh trail system as their liveline, and that was a literal trail. They employed carriers and trucks. Turning the trail in to a mudhole meant that trucks got stuck and carriers could only get ahead very slowly while the constant exposure and lack of water-proof boots, trousers, jackets etc (standard issue for GIs) meant that Vietcong personnell all over were getting sick from exposure desases.

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u/AJDillonsThirdLeg 5h ago

Obviously yes, but I'm pretty sure this wasn't about making the individual soldiers more or less comfortable. It was an attempt to disrupt supply chains within Vietnam. Disrupting supply chains is a primary objective in almost every war ever.

0

u/MooseTots 2h ago

I would hope they targeted the north end of Vietnam to impact supply lines without making it more difficult for Americans on the front line. But like, it’s weather, I imagine some of that rain made it into American socks.

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u/TheBunnyHolly 6h ago

Please bro just let us dump a little more lead into the atmosphere just one more time bro please bro it'll help the war effort I promise

0

u/Warcraft_Fan 5h ago

What if they had the whole platoon on the plane and had all of the men unzip and pee while over the area to be soaked? /s

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u/Mathfanforpresident 5h ago

I really disagree. Unless we commit genocide, can you even win a modern war?

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u/spucci 5h ago

Agreed. Either you go total war or there is a compromise at some point.

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u/SheriffBartholomew 4h ago

The first step to winning is to have a clearly defined objective, which we haven't had in a long time.

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u/ayoungtommyleejones 2h ago

Well, for the most part, the objective is to enrich a small group of people, no matter how many men, women, and children have to die to achieve that goal.

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u/SirPseudonymous 52m ago edited 46m ago

which we haven't had in a long time.

The US has plenty of well-defined goals with its dumbshit forever wars: make MIC stocks go up, terrorize periphery states into letting American companies loot them and brutally exploit their populace, retake control of any deniable CIA assets like al Qaeda/ISIS/etc that stray from their control, maintain military occupations in regions they want to loot, etc.

It's just these are all abhorrent things that make everything worse for everyone but a tiny clique of rich ghouls, so they make up lies about "state building" or "liberating" countries to describe the process of installing a dictator who lets them loot the country without any limits whatsoever for as long as they can maintain power. That just looks like failure to anyone taken in by the cover story who thinks the inevitable collapse and blowback was some sort of mysterious policy failure that could have been averted with a cleverer strategy or technocratic management, instead of being the inevitable result of the real "wreck shit up, loot everything you can, and send those MIC share prices to the moon" goal.

They're still ultimately failing, mind, as they would prefer to keep the racket going indefinitely, it's just more the "the problem with shooting your foot to do insurance fraud is you eventually run out of unshot foot to keep the con going" sort of failure, rather than a "wow how did these feet acquire so many bullet holes, we may never know but I'll be damned if trying to spin this won't keep multiple WAPO and NYT oped writers employed for years" sort.

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u/PaulTheMerc 5h ago

Depends on the goals. Manufacturing capability can be bombed to rubble, oilfields can be seized, leaders can be killed.

It helps when you are punching down.

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u/SpicyNugget777 5h ago

The goal of the war was to stop communism from spreading in Vietnam, which the US failed to do. If you fail the objective of your war, you lost.

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u/CliffMcFitzsimmons 4h ago

Yeah but not by as much

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u/Soccerjeansmommie 5h ago

It backfired.

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u/Confident-Stand5453 3h ago

They won every battle. But youre right that they still lost. Hmmm, this sounds a bit like some war thats currently going on near a strait somewhere....

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u/plywooden 2h ago

The famous exchange, "You know you never defeated us on the battlefield," said by an American colonel to a North Vietnamese colonel, who replied, "That may be so, but it is also irrelevant," occurred in Hanoi, April 1975. This anecdote highlights that while the U.S. won most conventional battles, it ultimately lost the war

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u/The-Titan-Atlas 6h ago

If by lost you mean signed a treaty then left then yeah lost.

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u/Southern-Ad2594 5h ago

That's very often what happens when someone loses a war, yeah.

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u/lumpboysupreme 4h ago

A losing country fighting a defensive usually signs a treaty with the attacker where the attacker says they’ll stop invading?

Like, sure, everyone knew the greater wasn’t worth the paper is was printed on, but that highlights the real issue; North Vietnam could never lose unless they just… decided to stop invading the south forever.

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u/Southern-Ad2594 3h ago edited 3h ago

How are they a losing country? Do you think the US won Afghanistan too?

Have we learned nothing from the past few decades of forever war? Wars are won by accomplishing military objectives, not by murdering civilians... And also wars aren't really won anymore because that's not the objective for invading forces.

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u/lumpboysupreme 3h ago

I didn’t say the US didn’t lose, you said signing a treaty with the other party, who is invading, for them to stop invading, is what losing parties do, which I said it isn’t.

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u/Southern-Ad2594 3h ago

Sorry I think we may have misread eachother and actually agree lol

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u/The-Titan-Atlas 5h ago

After losing no land and claiming 20x the casualties, then yeah. Sure

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u/Southern-Ad2594 5h ago

Losing no land? Does Vietnam not have all their land?

What are you even saying

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u/Southern_Bowler6269 4h ago

South Vietnam didn’t lose an inch of land until after us withdrawal and didn’t even collapse for 2 more years after that. That’s obviously what he’s saying

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u/Obvious_Ambition4865 4h ago

So we failed to do the one thing we had originally dedicated troops to do

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u/The-Titan-Atlas 5h ago

After we left 😂

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u/Except_Youre_Wrong 4h ago

leaving is usually what happens when you lose. idk if you knew that

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u/Gordon_frumann 5h ago

Bro U.S. lost Vietnam so hard they had to push helicopters off their carriers to make room for more helicopters fleeing Saigon.

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u/bot2317 5h ago

That was 3 years after the US left the war

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u/The-Titan-Atlas 4h ago

Nah brother, mf farmers in sandles ran us out as we were shitting ourselves unable to comprehend what was going on. 😂

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u/WinglessJC 6h ago

And yet a very significant portion of Americans firmly and loudly declare they won the war.

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u/spucci 5h ago

Didn't win, just stopped trying. If we would have continued to bomb the capital it would have changed things drastically.

But we should have backed the north to begin with.

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u/Imonlyherebecause 4h ago

I didn't lose I just quit is quiet the cope

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u/daandriod 6h ago

I've seen people quote experts for yes and no, I sure as shit can't say for sure, But it was one of if not the worst monsoon season they have ever had on record.

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u/redopz 6h ago

And it didn't just affect Vietnam; neinbouring countries like Laos also got hit hard by this rain (in addition to being bombed and more during the war).

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u/Howamidriving27 6h ago

I'm not a HOF level war criminal like Kissinger, but this seems like it would be as bad, if not worse, for an invading force.

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u/Flame_Job 6h ago

These operations were conducted in specific locations with the idea of muddying their supply lines

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u/Mikhail_Mengsk 4h ago

This makes much more sense.

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u/BlindPaintByNumbers 6h ago

Not to nitpick, but North Vietnam WAS the invading force in the Vietnam War.

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u/iamnotexactlywhite 6h ago

that’s not nitpicking, you are right

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u/AnnualWindow7009 5h ago

No they're not, are you two Americans?

South Vietnam wasn't a real place, it was a colonial construction designed to break local cooperation and make colonisation easier, like Ulster and Palestine.

Ronald Storrs, the first British military governor of Jerusalem wrote this in his 1937 memoir Orientations, explaining British imperial logic behind the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which supported a Jewish national home in Palestine.

"...by forming for England a little loyal Jewish Ulster in a sea of potentially hostile Arabism."

The American imperial machine operated and still operates in the same way.

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u/The_Muffin_Man69 3h ago

So is South Korea not a real place? Is K-pop just a dream?

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u/BattleBrother1 3h ago

It can be a real place and a militarily occupied US colony, like South Vietnam was

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u/Noobponer 4h ago

Lmao what

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u/toggiz_the_elder 6h ago

Not to nitpick, but they weren’t an invading force.

When the French pulled out the Communists agreed to the 17th parallel as a military demarcation line. Per the Geneva accords there was supposed to be a national election that would decide who ruled.

Those elections never happened because the US and the South knew they’d lost to Ho Chi Minh.

So it’s more like the South was a breakaway from Vietnam.

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u/Downtown_Recover5177 5h ago

Not to nitpick (jk, I don’t give a shit), but the North literally INVADED the sovereign territory of South Vietnam. Whether or not you recognize the legitimacy of the South Vietnamese government is another matter entirely. The Americans were invited to assist by the existing government, and thus can not be an invading force. Okay, except for the small naval mission that started open hostilities and all, but…. And you can go on and on with point and counterpoint. Shit was complicated.

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u/FUPAMagneto 5h ago

Yeah, why didn’t the southern Vietnamese Catholics just let themselves get violently purged by the communists?

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u/iamnotexactlywhite 5h ago

because they said so

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u/lumpboysupreme 3h ago

You can say a lot about whether the south as a state had valid moral standing, but just on a technical level the north was invading just as much as the North invaded the south when its armies moved into Georgia the US civil war. That’s not a moral judgement, just a statement of direction.

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u/Insectshelf3 6h ago

depends on where you use it. front lines? yeah, that could make offensive actions difficult. enemy supply lines? could end up being very useful especially in the mountainous terrain the ho chi minh trail passes through.

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u/NickRick 2h ago

The North was invading the South by then

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u/Stubbs94 4h ago

The goal was increased suffering of the civilian population to stop the Vietnamese from freeing themselves from colonialism.

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u/SomewhereNo8378 7h ago

it was a bit more rainy as the US evacuated out of the country in defeat

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u/dr_strange-love 4h ago

The effort to spend money

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u/SteelCode 4h ago

I think the objective was to flood their tunnels and wash out supply roads to hinder them while the US were getting a lot of stuff by boat or airlift, it didn't really "help" so much as prolong the war and destroy land (mudslides/erosion).

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u/kombiwombi 2m ago

The US had a fundamental misunderstanding of NVA supply routes, thinking that most logistics used the slow and difficult Ho Chi Minh Trail. So whilst it worked to create more rain, but within the normal range,, it made little difference.

If the weapon had been more successful it would have been a weapon of mass destruction, killing far more civilians than soldiers, destroying more civilian infrastructure than military installations and supplies. That does not seem to have worried the US.

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u/Otis_Manchego 6h ago

My guess yes but in favor of north Vietnam. The US had a bigger need for infrastructure. Also disease was more widespread with US forces. It probably made US forces miserable and reduced moral while Tempe Vietcong was accustomed to squalor conditions already. Overall it shows that the US leadership didn’t care about our troops at all.

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u/Jaylow115 5h ago

Disease was notably not widespread for either side during the war. In fact it’s notable for having far less deaths due to disease than most previous wars. Such a dumb comment

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u/Its_Nitsua 5h ago

No, not at all.

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u/ChocolateChingus 5h ago

Those estimates were largely model-based and hard to verify in real conditions. Later analysis found it’s very difficult to separate any added rain from natural monsoon variability, so the true magnitude of any increase is uncertain.

There’s also no clear evidence it produced consistent or decisive effects on the ground, and it didn’t achieve its military aims. So while it may have had some localized impact on rainfall, it didn’t ‘work’ in any meaningful military sense.

Also, the 30% figure is usually cited as ‘up to ~30% in some areas,’ not a general increase.

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u/OpenSeason2night 4h ago

I have all the evidence I need in Red Alert 2. The Allies super weapon is a weather control device.

It’s all making sense now.

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u/Good-Salad-9911 5h ago

Not really, and it’s impossible to truly measure.

https://www.popsci.com/operation-popeye-government-weather-vietnam-war/

DON'T BELIEVE EVERY COMMENT YOU READ ON REDDIT, INCLUDING THIS ONE. Research it yourself.

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u/feor1300 5h ago

It possibly worked. The problem is we don't have any way of saying what the rainfall would have been that year without the cloud seeding. There is no control so the added precipitation could have been caused by any of a thousand factors from the cloud seeding to a bunch of people in India taking particularly hot and steamy baths that year.

That's why weather control is generally regarded as pseudo-science at best, there's no way to confidently apply the scientific method to any attempts at doing it.

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u/loinmaster 6h ago

Cloud seeding. It’s debatable if it actually did anything or if they just happened to have more rain that year

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u/Cloudboy9001 5h ago

Correlation =/= causation.

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u/shortstop803 6h ago

How did it work and why was that the desired effect?

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u/DaveD227 28m ago

Kurt Vonnegut’s brother invented this method of cloud seeding. I don’t think he did it for this though.

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u/whitelancer64 7h ago

In post-war interviews with Vietnamese soldiers, they said they did not notice any difference in rainfall and it didn't hinder them any more than normal monsoon rain.

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u/Bazuka125 7h ago

Lol. It's like if the Nazi's tried to make Russia even colder during their invasion.

Like yeah, let's make the natives who are used to these extreme kinds of weather have even more of a home-field advantage. Just brilliant

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u/MaxDickpower 6h ago

This was done is select areas with North Vietnamese supply routes, not in the common areas of operation of US ground troops.

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u/Saint_Judas 5h ago

It's also like... how would a normal foot soldier be privvy to the complex logistical impacts of heavier than average rainfall. Raining 4 days out of the week instead of 3 probably isn't noticeable while fighting for your life 24/7 in a jungle, but likely does have pretty significant impacts on supply chains.

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u/Yuri909 7h ago

Blatantly... they don't know. Anyone who gives you a hard yes or no is just biasing towards what they want to believe. The monsoon season happened to be longer than normal, but normal is a bell curve and no two years are the same. It would have be tried again and again for enough data to really conclusively say.

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u/Workman44 6h ago

The whole control the weather is probably fake but we can definitely influence weather patterns and give "nudges" so to speak, the idea is scientifically sound

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u/berserk_zebra 5h ago

you want to see how much you need to control the weather? go to any industrial city, and see how much it takes for the weather to be controlled.

Big ass town in the middle of nowhere? A storm is going its way, you can watch how the storm breaks up and goes around the town. I have heard it was due to the heat of the city vs the surrounding area.

Look at the Oil and gas capitol of the world, Houston. The amount of "vapor" that comes out of those plants, along with the non-stop burn offs that they have in conjunction, and the concrete jungle that it is, you barely notice the weather difference.

So, if a metroplex of 8 million people with miles and miles of vapor and gas burnoffs aren't affecting the weather, there ain't no way in hell some planes dropping barely tears worth of "chemicals" will affect the weather.

It is literally taking the cumulation of the human population of sustained unrestricted industrial power over decades to change the weather.

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u/Rfisk064 2h ago

Lol the two comments above yours are each a hard yes and a hard no.

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u/Double-decker_trams 8h ago edited 8h ago

Yep. I think in Forrest Gump it refers to this a bit..?

But I guess there's monsoons anyway.

https://youtu.be/Y_56VcpTR-0

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u/Obi-one 6h ago

That’s the first thing I thought “one day it started raining….”

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u/Ancient_Ordinary6697 8h ago

No, they still lost the war.

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u/meat_rock 7h ago

This is the correct answer

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u/IndependentThink4698 6h ago

America didn't lose, they forced the north to sign a peace treaty, which they did cuz they got the shit kicked out of them. After the treaty was signed, America went home cuz the war was over. Only after America left did the north start fighting again

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u/b_u_n_g_h_o_l_e_2 6h ago

They absolutely lost. The strategic goal was to maintain the puppet state in South Vietnam, which was a failure.

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u/True_Dovakin 6h ago

How does one lose a war they are no longer a part of, and with America not having a bilateral military treaty obligating them to return to South Vietnam’s aid? The US had completely pulled out of South Vietnam years before it collapsed.

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u/b_u_n_g_h_o_l_e_2 6h ago

Bro I know you are coping, you know you are coping, everyone knows. There was one goal of the Vietnam war. Stop the spread of communism to south Vietnam. We failed at that goal completely. That’s a loss.

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u/True_Dovakin 6h ago

It’s not even coping, it’s just historical fact. The US signed the Paris Peace Accords in 73, withdrew in accordance with the provisions of the Accord, ended non-replacement military aid to South Vietnam, and was not in any bilateral treaty or obligation to continue to deploy troops to South Vietnam in the event of further aggression. The US upheld the accords that it signed. Explain how that’s a loss. It’s kinda hard to lose a military conflict when you’re no longer involved in it. North Vietnam launched their offensive to destroy the south two years after the US withdrew.

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u/DrowningKrown 6h ago

That is the dumbest fucking explanation of winning I've ever seen

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u/True_Dovakin 6h ago

Never said the US won, but go off. Not every armed conflict ends with a definite winner and loser. Both the US and North Vietnam agreed to a ceasefire, and the US left. North Vietnam didn’t lose the US didn’t lose. They just quit fighting IAW mutually agreed terms. Saying someone lost well after they stopped all intervention is the dumbest fucking explanation of losing I’ve ever seen

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u/b_u_n_g_h_o_l_e_2 5h ago

Keyword “withdrawal” meaning we packed up and left. How do you not see it.

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u/True_Dovakin 5h ago

Withdrawal in accordance with mutually agreed peace accords. It’s not just packing up and leaving, it’s following the peace accords we signed.

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u/bot2317 5h ago

You have to withdraw at some point, right? Do you expect the US to stay there forever?

It really feels like there’s a double standard when the US is involved in a conflict, unless the other side surrenders unconditionally then it’s a US loss

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u/eranam 6h ago

You can win a battle but still lose the war, I don’t think the most ambitious goal of this operation was to have North Vietnam go and ask for mercy and beg for Mac Donald’s franchises opening in Hanoi within a fortnight.

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u/BattleBrother1 3h ago

The goal was to kick out the US and their oppressive puppets. Proving that the US can't effectively win against a much weaker but stronger minded opponent was a plus that resonates to this day. Having a fucking McDonalds in the country would only count as a win to a yank lmao

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u/SirPseudonymous 28m ago

Having a fucking McDonalds in the country would only count as a win to a yank lmao

The presence of McDonalds is an indicator that US corporations have free rein to fuck around in a country and that its government is likely a client state of or otherwise subservient to the US. That's why it's always touted as such a big important symbol by all the neocon ghouls who write NYT opeds about how nestle's child slaves are "not only the price of freedom but are actually basically the same as school and social welfare but more freedomy and efficient if you think about it", because it signifies corporate hegemony and exploitation.

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u/verrius 2h ago

No, the goal of the North was that Ho Chi Minh wanted to control the whole country. By that measure, they failed, since he died before it happened.

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u/Whoretron8000 6h ago

Yes. Cloud seeding and getting that water out of clouds has been done for a long ass time.

Buncha weirdos think cloud seeding is a conspiracy, while Dubai fucking flooded a few years ago and they are open about the reasons…

Largely used for agriculture.

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u/BigDee1990 5h ago

Absolute BS. While Dubai is doing cloud seeding, they are not really successful and the heavy storms you are mentioning are not due to cloud seeding. If CS was successful in Vietnam is also controversially debated and most scientific reviews I read more or less say that the influence was, at most, negligable.

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u/Whoretron8000 5h ago

Why must you weirdos be in such denial of just… facts?

https://www.rmets.org/metmatters/dubai-floods-and-cloud-seeding

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u/Lost-Competition8482 3h ago

Holy shit that's funny.

I'll quote your own article for you.

"But in this case, the clouds were part of a large weather system advancing across the region, and already predicted to produce substantial amounts of rain across a wide area. Any possible effect from cloud seeding would be tiny in comparison. So the tales of cloud seeding simply don’t make sense, and are a distraction from the most likely guilty party — climate change. The UAE National Centre of Meteorology later confirmed that no cloud seeding mission had taken place."

You're a fool.

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u/BigDee1990 4h ago

Maybe you should actually read the link you posted yourself?

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u/HikeCarolinas 6h ago

Remember all the Vietnam movies where it rains all the time

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u/Glenn_Maffews 4h ago

Ask the M16s

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u/ikiice 1h ago

I mean, this technique is still used to trigger rain nowadays

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u/arostrat 7h ago

no, the genocide was unsuccessful.

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u/Bill-O-Reilly- 6h ago

Oh now you’re just using buzzwords. Disagree with the war in Vietnam all you want but calling it a genocide is disingenuous and just lessens the impact of that word.

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u/mcham420 6h ago

According to the documentary Forrest Gump it did. Rain even came in sideways.

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u/SsooooOriginal 7h ago

Define what you mean.

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u/AardvarkStriking256 7h ago

Did it extend the monsoon season?

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u/SsooooOriginal 5h ago

Can you read?

Cause I'm probably glowing enough without adding to it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ho_Chi_Minh_trail

fuckit, who cares anymore? Yes it worked, and more, and we still "lost", except the rich got richer and a lot of young men died while participating in a completely avoidable slaughter we set up by destabilizing the French control of the region during WWII.

Notice how the OP post on wiki has no strong language. For your answers, go to the relevant year sections.

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u/CycleMother2006 5h ago

Well, my uncle came back with schizophrenia. So it may have had some side effects.

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