Deadliest Warrior

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The show also is very dismissive of weapons that are less lethal, or simply lack raw killing power and ignore the tactical use, ease of operation, and other factors besides pure damage the weapon can deal.
 
The show also is very dismissive of weapons that are less lethal, or simply lack raw killing power and ignore the tactical use, ease of operation, and other factors besides pure damage the weapon can deal.
  
Another problem is that there is no control to the tests, and the way one weapon may be test, is not the way the apposed weapon is tested. Sometimes this is a necessity, as the two weapons are almost completely dissimilar<ref>One may argue that the show should have put more work into finding weapons that were more like with each other to test</ref> but many times, there is no reason.<ref>One example. Two grenades, one was tested, hanging in a room with test dummies, the other? Put into a Washing machine.</ref> Choice of weapons is also very bizarre sometimes. The IRA, for example, were giving a flamethrower (documented use once during the entire troubles) and a slingshot. Another example was in the Samurai/Viking battle, where the Samurai was given a Kanabō club. This would be the equivalent of turning around and giving the Viking a Mjölnir hammer.
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Another glaring problem is that there are no experimental controls to the tests, and the way one weapon may be test, is not the way the apposed weapon is tested. Sometimes this is a necessity, as the two weapons are almost completely dissimilar<ref>One may argue that the show should have put more work into finding weapons that were more like with each other to test</ref> but many times, there is no reason.<ref>One example. Two grenades, one was tested, hanging in a room with test dummies, the other? Put into a Washing machine.</ref> Choice of weapons is also very bizarre sometimes. The IRA, for example, were giving a flamethrower (documented use once during the entire troubles) and a slingshot. Another example was in the Samurai/Viking battle, where the Samurai was given a Kanabō club. This would be the equivalent of turning around and giving the Viking a Mjölnir hammer.
  
 
==Other problems==
 
==Other problems==

Revision as of 16:35, 1 November 2012

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Deadliest Warrior is a awful television show on Spike TV that portrays two combatants (or groups of combatants in some cases, such as with the IRA vs Taliban episode) that have no chance in hell of ever meeting one another, and pits them against each other, first by performing tests on a random selection of weapons assigned to each side and then by plugging the test data into a videogame.[1] All of this is accompanied by a lot of formulaic bluster by the self-proclaimed "experts" on each side about why "their" guy is better. It may cause some to lose faith in Western civilization.

Contents

Issues

The show has many issues with its testing and conclusions to say the least. Anything drawn from the show is completely worthless due to the incredible amount of methodological errors and tests rigged (intentionally or otherwise) to favor a particular outcome. In 2011, third season host Robert Daly admitted that he had lied about his military experience and resigned.[2] Perhaps unsurprisingly, the show was subsequently cancelled.

The Warriors themselves

The first, and perhaps the most minor of the shows problems, is the fact that they take fighters from all over human history to fight. Almost always these are groups that have never or would never engage in warfare. While this could be forgiven, as fantasy match-ups are the very purpose of the show, it still means the results can't be grounded in history. Another problem ends up being that the warriors are presented from their Hollywood stereotypes rather then any reality of how they behaved or fought.[3] The show's much-vaunted "experts" are also often little more than cheerleaders who know how to handle the weapons chosen for the fighter (most of the time anyway). Even when qualified individuals serve as experts, they generally have little to no actual input into the choice of weapons or anything else involving the simulation.[4]

Due to the show's weapon fetish (see below) the warriors themselves are reduced to the gear they bring into battle. Tactics, fighting style, experience, and other highly important factors in a fight are ignored. Any military professional will tell you that weapons are a small part of the entire package and to focus on only weapons is already going into the hypothetical blind.

The last major problem is that battles were simulated as a one-on-one, head-on fight (though this was later changed for the most part to five-on-five squad battles). The vast majority of battles were and are not fought one-on-one, and many kinds of warriors did not fight head on. For example, during the first episode of the entire show, Apache VS Gladiator, the Apache expert comments on how unrealistic it would be for an Apache to engage in face to face "honorable" combat.

Weapons fetish

This show LOVES weapons, and it shows. One might think that, with the show's love of them, this is where the real work happens, but you'd be mistaken. Testing methods run from worthless to little more than a weapons demo version of a show trial.

The first strike against the testing is that the "experts" are the ones to demonstrate the weapons. This voids all data from the tests as the factors are now gathered from data gathered from the testers rather than from the weapons being tested. These match ups, for lack of a better term, tend to go from debatable balanced (a legitimate US Army Green Berets VS legitimate GRU Spetsnaz) to completely one-sided (A world champion wild west firearms marksman VS a "relative of a mobster" with a Tommy Gun).

The show also is very dismissive of weapons that are less lethal, or simply lack raw killing power and ignore the tactical use, ease of operation, and other factors besides pure damage the weapon can deal.

Another glaring problem is that there are no experimental controls to the tests, and the way one weapon may be test, is not the way the apposed weapon is tested. Sometimes this is a necessity, as the two weapons are almost completely dissimilar[5] but many times, there is no reason.[6] Choice of weapons is also very bizarre sometimes. The IRA, for example, were giving a flamethrower (documented use once during the entire troubles) and a slingshot. Another example was in the Samurai/Viking battle, where the Samurai was given a Kanabō club. This would be the equivalent of turning around and giving the Viking a Mjölnir hammer.

Other problems

The show is laughably nationalistic. All but one time, any warrior even remotely associated with the United States won hands down. Poorly defining the warriors themselves is another problem. One battle had the GSG9, the German Counter-Terrorism force face SWAT. What kind of SWAT? They didn't specify; SWAT forces run the gamut from paramilitary special forces to a deputy with a rifle. It also likes paining historical warriors with modern judgment, completely divorced from whatever realities existed when those warriors actually fought. [7]

See also

External links

Footnotes

  1. Seriously.
  2. see here.
  3. One of the biggest offenders being the Spartan VS Ninja fight, which turned out to be 300 VS bad Chop Sockey films, rather than a reasoned thought experiment on how Spartan Hoplites might fight Japanese Ninjas. (It would probably be a short fight given that ninjas are mostly fictional with minimal historical basis.
  4. see this forum post
  5. One may argue that the show should have put more work into finding weapons that were more like with each other to test
  6. One example. Two grenades, one was tested, hanging in a room with test dummies, the other? Put into a Washing machine.
  7. Perhaps the worst example was how they put the Viet Cong Guerrilla fighters on the same level, as the Nazi SS.
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