Cannon fodder

Cannon fodder is an informal term for military personnel who are regarded or treated as expendable in the face of enemy fire. The term is generally used in situations where soldiers are forced to fight against hopeless odds, such as occurred during trench warfare in World War I. The term may also be used to differentiate infantry from other forces (such as artillery, airforce or the navy), who generally have a much better survival rate.

The term derives from fodder - food for livestock - but in this case soldiers are the metaphorical food sent against cannons. The term may have been introduced during the U.S. Civil War as a result of massed infantry charges against fortified enemy positions.

Other uses

In popular culture, the term has become an example of a stock character. For example, in works of fiction, particularly science fiction, cannon fodder is a (sometimes collective) term used for unnamed or otherwise unimportant characters whose sole purpose in the story is to die in battle or other types of conflict to add to the bodycount in order to give the appearance of grandiose battles (see also stormtrooper syndrome).

In video games, cannon fodder is a term for small, easily destroyable enemies, like those found within scrolling shooters. In fact, there was a game with the title Cannon Fodder produced in 1993 by Sensible Software.

Cultural and literary references

• The hero of the satirical novel The Good Soldier Svejk is drafted into the army as cannon fodder during World War I.

• The video game Cannon Fodder made light of the expression by portraying the deaths of the animated soldiers in the game humorously, and allowing the player to quickly replace lost soldiers with new ones.

• In the movie Starship Troopers, the motto for enlisting troops is "You want to live forever?", implying that enlistees may as well die serving in the armed forces as they will inevitably die. As the troops are invariably vastly outnumbered by the alien enemy, they can be seen as examples of "cannon fodder".

• In the first Blackadder series, the term is arrowfodder, referring to the same term, before cannons.

• Fans of the Gundam anime series commonly refer to pilots of Zaku II and Leo mobile suits as being nothing more than mere cannon fodder due to the relative ease of the better equipped protagonists at killing them while in battle.

See also

• Forlorn hope, the initial wave of troops attacking a fortress or other strongpoint, who usually took horrendous casualties.
• Redshirt, a character whose sole purpose is to die violently soon after being introduced. This idea was widely used in the Star Trek series.
• Sacrificial lamb, a metaphorical reference for a person who has little if any chance of surviving an upcoming challenge, but seeks to sacrifice him or herself for the common good.