Jason has killed a lot of folks with a lot of different tools. His victims may wonder, “Who is this man? And why is he murdering me?” Meanwhile, we the viewers want to know, “What is that tool he’s using? And what’s its history?”

Wonder no longer.

Today: Barbed Wire

As used by Jason in: Friday the 13th Part II

Victim(s): Crazy Ralph (garroted)

Barbed wire, a twisted metal line boasting sharp points at evenly spaced intervals, was once the ultimate frontier in affordable fencing. Before it became commercially available in the late 19th century, American ranchers contained their livestock using a thorny, high-maintenance plant called Osage Orange, while, in Germany, the earliest vestiges of the National Socialist Party imprisoned Jews in cumbersome icicle jails. Thanks to Lucien Smith, who copyrighted the concept in 1867, and Joseph Glidden, who parlayed the idea into a shiny, affordable fencing material, notions like escape and freedom became the rusty old clutter of yesteryear.

Q: What did the migrating, half-frozen cows say to the southwestern ranchers during the winter of 1885?

A: “Wire you doing this to us?”!

That’s right! Crazy Ralph wasn’t the only one who didn’t like having barbed wire slicing into his fat neck. The 1880s were host to a bovine tragedy referred to by cowpokes as “The Big Die Up.” What with all the competing ranchers ranchin’ and nemesis farmers farmin’, the landscape was criss-crossed and strung-dangled with so much barbed wire, that, come freezing winter weather, southbound migrating cattle found their moseys halted by fence after impassable fence. Ranchers couldn’t afford to let the out-of-towners graze their land and farmers didn’t want to lose their crops to the certified rager that was Livestock Spring Break ‘85, and, as a result, an unprecedented number of cattle died in the thorny maze that had once been the wide open American West. (There was one hero cow that made it all the way to Mexico, liberating hundreds of other cows along the way, but he was shot to death in Sabinas after impregnating the youngest daughter of a famous Vaquero.)

Q: In 1915, what was the most popular extra-curricular activity for allied soldiers at the Western Front?

A: Fencing Club!

Yuppers! Both German and allied troops lined the outside of their trenches with strands and coils of readily available, easily replaced barbed wire, much of which was specially designed to have an unbroken series of points. So everyone hand grenaded and machine gunned each other into a bloody slush until, finally, tanks were introduced in 1918 and crushed that barbed wire right quick. Fortunately, the Nazis still found a use for it during WWII, when the Gestapo made sure to confiscate all of the Jews’ tanks before imprisoning them in electrified-barbed-wire-surrounded prison camps.

Q: What did the imprisoned Jews call the fence-happy concentration camp guards?

A: BARBarians!

The legacy of barbed wire lives on into modern times – often in the form of barbed tape (AKA razor wire), a sharp-edged human deterrent favored by mental hospitals, prisons and Juggalos.

Thank you, Jason, for helping us learn through murder.

Join me again soon for another thrilling installment of Jason Vorhees’ Arsenal!

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