A closer look
British authorities during the Second World War mandated that farmers paint white stripes on the sides of their cows so that drivers navigating through mandatory blackout conditions would not constantly crash into livestock. Because streetlights were turned off and car headlights were covered to avoid giving German bombers visual targets, the pitch-black English countryside became a deadly demolition derby of confused motorists and invisible bovines. The government's solution was basically to turn the nation's milk producers into slow-moving, biological zebra crossings. It highlights the sheer absurdity of wartime logistics, where instead of just asking people to drive slower in the dark, officials decided the most logical next step was to dispatch a small army of painters into the fields to give thousands of annoyed cows a high-visibility, tactical glow-up
