From Scythia to South Korea: a potted history of poo in warfare

South Koreans faced a different type of retaliation this week when more than 150 white balloons were allegedly floated across the border by North Korea attached to bags of rubbish and faeces.

It came after the North Korean defence vice-minister, Kim Kang-il, warned that Pyongyang would retaliate in response to anti-North Korean leaflets flown across the border in the opposite direction.

It is not the first time faeces have been used in conflict or in protest actions.

Scythian arrows

The use of poo in warfare is believed to stretch as far back as the fifth century BC. The Scythians, who lived in a territory stretching across central Asia, used arrows dipped in poison made from a concoction of snake venom, human blood and dung or human faeces.

Poison that entered into a puncture wound would probably have caused shock or gangrene.

Chicken poop prison

Khuk Khi Kai, also known as the chicken poop prison, was built by French occupiers in Thailand in 1893 to imprison Thai resistance fighters.

At just 4.4 metres wide and 7 metres high, the prison was topped with a chicken coop from which dung would drop on to prisoners below.

Viet Cong’s punji sticks

Punji sticks were a type of booby trap used by the Viet Cong during the Vietnam war. Often made from sharpened wood or bamboo, and sometimes covered in animal venom, plant poison or faeces, the sticks were hidden and sometimes placed in pits in areas likely to be traversed by enemy troops or in preparation for an ambush.

Most troops wounded by punji sticks were kept out of combat for about the same amount of time as soldiers healing from minor gunshot wounds.

Russian patent for weapon of waste destruction

In 2009, a rather creative invention for soldiers needing to dispose of their waste while sealed inside vehicles during combat was granted a patent in Russia.

The idea involved encasing waste with explosives in artillery shells. “The gun charged with special projectile is targeted on a safety zone or on any enemy target,” the patent states.

Cape Town’s 2013 ‘poo wars’

Not quite a war, as the name suggests, but a protest. In 2013, residents of Cape Town, South Africa, protested against the local government for not doing enough to provide proper sanitation in townships. Authorities had provided portable toilets rather than permanent flushable ones. Protesters decided to use human waste from the toilets to get their point across, in an action that one researcher said “literally dragged the stench from the shantytowns to Cape Town’s centres of political and economic power”.

Protesters dumped bags of waste in government offices, and raw sewerage was thrown at the then opposition leader, Helen Zille. Protesters also dumped buckets of human waste at Cape Town international airport.