The Real Butterfly Effect Was More Intense Than the Movie

[00:00:00]This story has one of the hardest hitting endings that I've ever told. And it begins with a man who already accepted he was about to die.

[00:00:10]He was supposed to die accomplishing one final mission. But instead, he failed, or so he thought.

[00:00:19]Because just minutes later, he accidentally changed the world forever.

[00:00:26]>> [music] >> What's going on Midnight Mafia? Thank you guys so much for joining me for another episode. And listen, I just want to say I love you guys. Thank you guys for the last two episodes. They've been doing really well, so let's get this up to at least 200 likes, and I will continue to bring you the most awesomeness episodes ever, okay?

[00:00:46]Capiche? All right, so without any further ado, as of now, it's time to slip into a mind that's not our own.

[00:00:52]Let's go.

[00:00:56]So this story starts out during a brutal heatwave in late June. The kind of heat that makes a collar feel too tight even when it's unbuttoned. A young man wipes his sweaty palm against his thigh, and before he even finishes the motion, it's damp with sweat again. And somewhere behind him, a brass band is tuning in their instruments. And then a horse lets out a loud snort just a few feet away.

[00:01:23]Two women nearby are laughing about something. The kind of genuine laugh that makes you smile just by hearing it.

[00:01:30]The kind of laugh that's only possible when you have absolutely no idea of what's about to happen next.

[00:01:43]Flags were everywhere this day, strung between buildings, pinned to lapels, waved by a kid perched on his father's shoulders a few feet down the curb.

[00:01:54]Because it's a holiday. The kind that matters to some people more than others though.

[00:02:00]And right now most of the crowd just seems glad for a reason to stand shoulder to shoulder with their neighbors out in the sun. So this man is 19. He has a small frame and a face that still looks like it belongs in a classroom. There's a pistol against his ribs and it has never felt heavier than it does right now. He's thinking don't shake. Not now. Not right in front of everyone. See he's been standing in the same 6 ft of sidewalk for almost half an hour. And in that time he's run through what happens next in his head probably about 200 times. But he really has no idea what actually happens next. Today he believes is the most important day of his life. You see 2 years ago he tried to become a soldier. He walked for days to volunteer with fighters pushing back against the empire that runs this land.

[00:02:56]>> [music] >> Ready to give everything for a cause that he had believed in since before he could really even explain why. But they took one look at him 5 ft 6 maybe 120 lb soaking wet and they turned him away. He was too small, too weak. Go home kid. And he never really got over that.

[00:03:18]So when a friend of his showed him a newspaper clipping back in the spring he didn't even hesitate.

[00:03:25]The heir to the empire was coming here to this very city in June. And someone was going to have to do something about that. And he decided right then that somebody was going to be him.

[00:03:41]>> Only you can do this.

[00:03:44]>> I understand.

[00:03:47]>> And he's spent weeks moving in secret now. Trains, safe houses, older men speaking to him in hushed voices about duty, about sacrifice, about the kind of history that gets written in blood. And he was chosen because he was young and quiet and completely unshakable in what he believed. At least on paper.

[00:04:11]His hands don't feel unshakable at all right now. His friend's name is Nedeljko.

[00:04:17]Loud where he's quiet, coughing into a sleeve where he thinks no one's watching, certain, genuinely calmly certain that none of them are walking away from today no matter how it goes.

[00:04:30]There's a strange kind of comfort in that though, you know, nothing left to be afraid of at all once you've already made peace with not seeing next week.

[00:04:38]So, they don't say much to each other before splitting up to take their own positions. And there really isn't much left to say. Nedeljko claps him on the shoulder once, mutter something short in the way men do when they don't want to make a thing of it, and heads off towards his own spot closer to the river. Princip though doesn't watch him go. He can't afford to. Several other young men are already in place along this same stretch of road, spaced out like a firing line across a hundred feet of sidewalk. You got one loitering outside of the bank, another one leaning against the wall by a cafe, and one more further down near the next bridge. Each one of them is carrying in a weapon.

[00:05:21]Each one carrying something else too.

[00:05:24]A small glass vial in their coat pocket.

[00:05:29]Poison.

[00:05:35]You know, something to swallow rather than be taken alive. Nobody standing on this street expects to see tomorrow.

[00:05:44]They say, "Just do it clean. Just do it once."

[00:05:47]And he really doesn't let himself think past that part. And then, all of a sudden, he hears it. Engines. A low, rolling murmur moving through the crowd ahead of him. He's coming, he's coming.

[00:06:00]And word moves down the line before the cars even come into view. You know, hisses passed hand to hand between the six of them spread across these few blocks. And the first one didn't move, whatever the reason. A policeman standing too close, a hand that wouldn't cooperate, a man closest to the bridge let the motorcade rolled straight past him. So, he's thinking, you know, somebody else will do it. There's five more of us left.

[00:06:26]And then, word again. The second one didn't move, either.

[00:06:31]His stomach starts to drop through the pavement. Six cars now, close enough to hear the engines individually.

[00:06:38]Open-topped, moving slow, built more for a parade than protection. Flags mounted on the hoods are snapping in the wind off the river. And in the third car, sitting upright in uniform, heavy with gold braid, is the reason that six teenagers are standing on the street with poison sewn into their coats.

[00:07:01]Then, a crack.

[00:07:04]Deep, metallic. Closer now. Nedeljko.

[00:07:14]>> [screaming] >> His friend who followed him across a continent to stand on this exact street had just thrown his bomb. For one half of a second, Princip lets himself believe that it worked. That everything they swore to each other just came out to be true.

[00:07:33]But, it didn't. You see, this device bounces off the folded roof of the wrong car, rolls under the vehicle behind it, and then detonates, tearing into a line of officers and bystanders. Screaming then spreads throughout the crowd like water finding cracks in stone. People are bleeding on the cobblestone. The band, somewhere behind him, has stopped now playing entirely.

[00:07:59]And the motorcade, of course, it doesn't stop. Now it accelerates.

[00:08:04]And his hand now finds his pistol at his ribs just as the third car draws level to him. Already moving too fast, already past, already gone, swallowed around the corner in a haze of exhaust and screaming before his arm even finishes rising. So, he never fires a shot. He's thinking, "What did you just do? What did you just not do?"

[00:08:28]He doesn't know now if his friend is alive. He doesn't know if the others are still in position or already arrested or worse. He knows one thing. Weeks of planning gone [music] in under a minute.

[00:08:41]So, he does the only thing that makes sense to a 19-year-old who believes it's already over. He just walks away. And he just starts drifting through side streets with no destination. And the noise behind him thinning into confused murmurs and the occasional siren.

[00:08:58]And somewhere back there, someone is crying. A dog keeps barking at nothing in particular. The way dogs do when they can feel something in the air has changed even if they can't understand it.

[00:09:10]At some point, his legs just stop moving on their own. And he's standing near a small corner now, outside a small deli.

[00:09:18]The kind of place that sells cold cuts and bread to shopkeepers and clerks.

[00:09:23]Completely unremarkable. A place to be nowhere in particular.

[00:09:28]And this man's name is Gavrilo Princip.

[00:09:31]19 years old, by his own accounting, already finished.

[00:09:36]It's over.

[00:09:37]19 years old and before noon, it's over.

[00:09:40]And whatever happens to the others now is out of his hands. He failed.

[00:09:44]But, six blocks away, somebody else was making a very important decision.

[00:09:52]>> [music] >> A few minutes earlier, inside that same motorcade, nobody had any idea how close they'd come.

[00:10:00]The man in the gold-braided uniform is the heir to one of the largest empires on the continent. And beside him sits his wife.

[00:10:09]Though on most days officially, she actually isn't allowed to be next to him.

[00:10:14]Because court rules say that she is [music] beneath him, not born into the right bloodline, barred from riding at his side at almost every formal occasion that they've attended in 14 years of marriage.

[00:10:27]And she never once complained about any of it in public. Whatever it cost her privately, she carries it well enough that most people assume it doesn't cost her anything at all. But today's different. He's here in a military capacity, not in a royal one. And for once, the rules bend enough to let her sit beside him in the car, in public, where people can actually see them together.

[00:10:53]And it's the anniversary of the day 14 years ago he signed away his own children's claim to the throne just to be allowed to marry her. And neither of them planned this date lining up, it just did. And listen, he's not usually this calm about his own safety. I mean, just days earlier when their private railcar caught fire before they even left home, he turned to her and joked darkly that it was a promising start to the trip.

[00:11:22]Their own car burning on the way out.

[00:11:25]And people throwing bombs at them once they arrived. She laughed. He hadn't entirely been joking. And for one long adrenaline-soaked minute earlier that morning, he genuinely believed he was not going to survive it. I mean, a bomb now went off less than 15 ft from his car.

[00:11:45]He watched people around him bleed onto the street, and now he's just standing inside town hall.

[00:11:52]High ceilings, a chandelier throwing more light than the room actually needs.

[00:11:57]The murmur of officials still shaking from the blast.

[00:12:01]Someone pressing a glass of water into his hand that he never even asked for.

[00:12:06]Being congratulated on just surviving.

[00:12:08]And he's thinking, you know, let them see I'm not afraid. Let them see it did not work. Because he's not scared. In fact, he's furious. And instead of leaving, instead of getting on the next train out of the city, he does something that says everything about who he was.

[00:12:25]He actually wants to go and see the men wounded in the blast in person at the hospital.

[00:12:31]I mean, it's a decent thing to do, a human thing to do. And before he leaves the hall, he finds his wife across the room. She's still pale from the blast, though she's doing a great job of hiding it in front of everyone. He doesn't say much, he just takes her hand a beat longer than he needs to and says quietly, "We're still here."

[00:12:53]She nods, and that's all either of them at that time needed. But, the visit means the route home has to change. And the one man who knows the new route by heart isn't in the car anymore.

[00:13:07]He's the officer who took shrapnel in the earlier blast, and he's lying in the hospital bed right now, being treated for wounds that he took protecting the very people about to go visit him.

[00:13:21]And nobody else picks up that job.

[00:13:23]The new route exists in exactly one man's head, and that man is somewhere else entirely. And the driver's name is Leopold, 27 years old, hired for trips like this one because his employer trusts his steady hands. And he has spent the whole morning quietly proud to have been trusted with something this important. Sweating through his uniform in the heat, same as everybody else on the street. Nobody has told him a single thing has changed. As far as he knows, he still knows exactly where he's going.

[00:13:57]So, the motorcade then pulls away.

[00:14:00]Six cars, same as before.

[00:14:02]>> [music] >> The driver hasn't been told anything changed. So, he drives the only route that he knows, the one printed in the newspaper days earlier.

[00:14:12]The one that half the city has memorized, including the six teenagers with pistols.

[00:14:19]So, he turns right towards the old town, and the governor of the entire province, riding 2 ft away, doesn't wait a beat.

[00:14:27]He says, "Stop, wrong way."

[00:14:30]So, the car obeys, and it slows, and the old gearing fights the driver's hands as he wrestles it into reverse.

[00:14:38]And for several long seconds, it just sits there, stopped, idling, going nowhere. And believe it or not, it was idling directly outside a small deli.

[00:14:52]>> [gasps] >> So, now back to Gavrilo Princip. He's standing outside that deli when he hears an engine idle down beside him, and he looks up.

[00:15:07]He thinks, "This isn't That's not possible."

[00:15:10]Time does something strange. The crowd noise seems to fall away entirely, replaced by nothing but the low idle of an engine just a few feet away from his hip.

[00:15:22]For one full second, his brain refuses to process what his eyes are actually telling him.

[00:15:29]The man that he failed to kill 20 minutes ago is sitting in an open car, stationary, close enough to touch, closer than he'd ever managed to get on purpose.

[00:15:43]And there's no plan this time. No positioning, no six other conspirators down the street waiting for someone else to move first. There's just a boy, a loaded pistol, and a car that is not moving.

[00:16:05]So, he doesn't hesitate this second time.

[00:16:09]Two shots. That's all it takes.

[00:16:12]The first tears through his neck.

[00:16:14]The second finds his wife seated beside him, striking her in the stomach.

[00:16:20]Neither shot is aimed with any real precision. I mean, a man in a crowd grabs for Princip's arm half a second too late, jostling him as he fires.

[00:16:31]But it doesn't matter because at that range, precision was never really required. She collapses first, falling across his lap. And he stays upright a moment longer, conscious enough to beg her not to die, to live for their children before he goes still, too.

[00:16:50]And just within minutes now, both of them are gone.

[00:16:54]But here's what almost nobody standing on that street corner understood in that moment.

[00:17:00]They weren't watching the end of anything.

[00:17:04]They were watching the beginning.

[00:17:06]>> [music] >> The man that Gavrilo Princip had just killed wasn't simply another government official.

[00:17:13]He was the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir presumptive of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, one of the most powerful empires in Europe.

[00:17:24]Princip hadn't acted alone, either.

[00:17:27]He was one of the several young Bosnian Serb conspirators supported by members of a secret nationalist organization known as the Black Hand, whose goal was to end Austro-Hungarian rule over Slavic territories and unite them with Serbia.

[00:17:46]Now, this is the craziest part, everybody, so listen up because what happened next unfolded with astonishing speed.

[00:17:54]Austria-Hungary blamed neighboring Serbia for the assassination and issued a harsh ultimatum.

[00:18:01]And when Serbia refused to accept all of Austria-Hungary's demands, Austria-Hungary declared war.

[00:18:09]Russia mobilized to defend Serbia.

[00:18:13]Germany backed Austria-Hungary. France entered in support of Russia. Britain then declared war after Germany invaded neutral Belgium. One declaration became another, and then another, and then 3 years later in 1917, the United States entered the war on the side of Britain, France, Serbia, and the other Allied Powers against Germany and Austria-Hungary.

[00:18:40]I mean, the irony is kind of hard to ignore. That frightened 19-year-old who believed he had failed that morning ultimately helped ignite a chain of events that drew America into a war fighting alongside the very nation Princip believed he was helping.

[00:18:59]Just think about that for a second. And by the end of the summer, nearly every major power in Europe was at war.

[00:19:06]And by the time it ended, more than 17 million people were dead.

[00:19:12]History books say that the First World War began with two gunshots, and that's true.

[00:19:19]But, it might be more accurate to say it began with one wrong turn.

[00:19:25]That's right. Two gunshots, one frightened 19-year-old, and one driver who simply took a wrong turn.

[00:19:35]And from there, a butterfly effect that would become known to everybody else as World War I.

[00:19:45]>> [music] >> Now, guys, if you like this origin series where I tie movies and TV shows to real events, then make sure to watch this story right here cuz you're absolutely going to love it. Nobody has really watched this yet. Why? Go watch it. And make sure to hit like on this.

[00:20:00]It truly helps the channel. I love you all. That's all I got for you right now.

[00:20:04]I'll see you next time. Cheers.