Credit: Dangerous Minds / Public Domain

It’s a strange but true fact that most inventions and innovations began life as military tech.

Everything from microwave ovens to duct tape to even Pringles was first made for the military as a way of making things more efficient for the troops. It’s actually pretty depressing, the more you look into it and find that the world we live in was shaped by military spending. There isn’t an aspect of life that hasn’t serviced war-mongering capitalists in some way, from fashion to automobiles to the very internet you’re reading this on and, most surprisingly of all, drugs.

It’s common knowledge by now that the dangers of chemical stimulants weren’t really known until long after their ancestors were readily available on drug store counters for decades. The urban myth that the “coca” part of Coca-Cola comes from the fact that literal cocaine was in its recipe is a hundred per cent true. However, the recreational drugs we have today aren’t exactly the same as the ones available back then.

Talking about the “ingredients” of a street drug sounds strange, but it’s true. They are just as much a product of their chemical make-up as anything else and in the late 1800s and early 1900s, the cocaine you could get at a drug store (or in your Coke), wasn’t anything like as addictive or effective as you get today. The reason for that? You guessed it, the military.

After all, the moment that the military thought that they could put a Super Mario-style power-up in every squaddies pack, you can bet they put the GDP of a small country into making it happen.

However, stories like this were why they stopped doing it pretty sharpish.

The soldier who took an entire platoon’s supply of drugs

A particularly dark part of Finnish history is the Continuation War of 1941 to 1944, when they joined with Nazi Germany to fight the Soviet Union during World War II.

A common part of an Axis soldier’s pack was Pervitin, an early methamphetamine to be taken to stay awake and alert while on duty. What’s more, in any given squadron, there was normally some poor squaddie tasked with looking after the whole squadron’s supply of it.

On March 15th, 1944, Aimo Koivunen was a Finnish soldier assigned to a ski patrol around the Finnish border and trusted with this particular responsibility. On March 18th, his group were attacked and surrounded by Soviet Soldiers, but Koivunen and a few other members of his group managed to escape. The group were far from their base but had to make it back or else face a night in the Finnish mountains, a fate worse than pretty much any Soviet soldier. They skied for hours, but then fatigue set in.

If only there were some way that one person could ride on ahead and call in an airdrop for the rest of the team, but that would be too much for any person. Unless they had a truckload of speed to power them ahead. Koivunen took his entire squad’s supply and went on ahead. This was a bad idea. Koivunen entered a state of delirium, then woke up in a ditch with absolutely no idea where he was, separated from his group.

He spent the next few days wandering, being attacked by other Soviet forces and eventually being injured by a landmine. He clung to life in a ditch for a week, subsisting on pine buds and a Siberian Jaybird that he caught and ate raw. After a week, he was found and admitted to the hospital, where he was found to have a resting heartbeat of 200 beats per minute. Somehow, he survived the ordeal and lived to an old age.

Eventually, the military stopped putting drugs like that in their recruits’ packs, and they started showing up where they really belonged. The club!