

Ruins of Roman gladiator school found in Austria - kevinrpope
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14795756

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mynameishere
_The gladiators, the museum says, were often convicted criminals or prisoners-
of-war, and almost always slaves._

Did you know that Mexican drug gangs sometimes capture groups of civilians and
stage gladiator games between them using crude weapons such as hammers? And
then when the winner emerges after breaking enough skulls, his big reward is
to go on a suicide mission with an assault rifle into an enemy town?

History comes alive.

~~~
nvictor
are you serious? source?

~~~
mynameishere
There's a bunch of links

[http://www.google.com/search?q=mexican+gangs+hammers+gladiat...](http://www.google.com/search?q=mexican+gangs+hammers+gladiator&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-
US:official)

Top one

[http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/06/15/kidnap-victims-
force...](http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/06/15/kidnap-victims-forced-into-
gladiator-style-death-fights-by-mexican-drug-gangs/)

MEXICO CITY -- Mexico's most feared drug cartel was already known for
beheading, quartering and even cooking its enemies, in the brutal narcotics
war gripping the country.

Now the Zetas gang is said to have created a new gladiator-like sport where
innocent kidnap victims are forced to fight to the death, according to sources
cited by The Times of London on Wednesday.

Members of the cartel are said to have dubbed the sadistic spectacle "Who
wants to be the next hitman?"

Victims are armed with hammers and machetes and goaded into fighting for their
survival and the chance to work as assassins. The alleged practice has been
linked to mass graves where the remains of more than 400 people have been
unearthed in recent months.

"We've been given several suggestions that this kind of activity happens," a
source at the US Drug Enforcement Agency told The Times.

A source with links to the drug trade said he had heard detailed accounts of
the new blood sport. "The violence has reached such a level, even the
gangsters are getting sick of it," he added.

Mexico's northern border regions have suffered an explosion of violence as
government forces battle the Zetas -- a drug gang formed in the 1990s by
former soldiers -- and their former bosses, the powerful Gulf cartel, in a
three-way war.

The conflict has claimed nearly 35,000 victims in the past five years,
according to official figures, but the true toll may never be known. Since
2006 at least 5,300 Mexicans have disappeared. Witnesses have reported seeing
large groups of people being snatched from intercity buses by gangs who appear
to act with impunity.

Some kidnap victims have had one hand handcuffed to a car steering wheel, and
a gun placed in the other, to be sent on murder missions. Others have been
found hanged in the streets. Most of 200 bodies discovered in mass graves in
the northeastern state of Tamaulipas were of victims apparently killed with
sledgehammers or burnt alive.

A report in the Houston Chronicle, which drew on an account from an anonymous
drug runner, said: "The elderly are killed. Young women are raped. And able-
bodied men are given hammers, machetes and sticks and forced to fight to the
death."

------
mechanical_fish
I didn't realize ground-penetrating radar worked this well.

(I mean, I realize that the cheesy graphic is an artist's conception, and that
the radar doesn't have that kind of detail. But they can count all the cells
and spot the wooden post in the center of the compound? Nice.)

------
gee_totes
First thing I thought of after reading this headline was Arnold Schwarzenegger

