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Pentagon Developed 'Laughing Bullets'
plasmadroid writes "It might sound like a joke, but documents unearthed by New Scientist show that the Pentagon actually funded research into 'non-lethal' bullets that would also hit a target with a dose of laughing gas. That way, they'd not only be stunned but incapacitated by fits of giggles. Another idea was to put stink bombs inside rubber bullets. I guess it would work, but the idea of crowds of rioters giggling uncontrollably while being pelted with rubber bullets is truly bizarre..."
I know I laugh every time I pull the trigger.
That's just the way we roll, in my hood.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
i am so pathetic
The freest and most democratic country on Earth spends far too many of its resources on novel ways to control people.
You can't have manslaughter without laughter!
I wonder who the lucky contractor is who is going to be making a fortune off this one? Must be nice to make big money and never have to deliver anything which actually works. We have a military that was having to jerry-rig their own humvee armour and raise money from their parents to buy decent body armour--while contractors like this play around with nitrous bullets and loudspeakers.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The article claims that the bullets would be safe over the entire range. I wonder how they made the bullets strong enough to survive the force of being fired, but weak enough to disintegrate harmlessly when striking flesh at point blanc.
The Joker is working for DARPA now?
Probably an easier way to shoot up for a good time. Just shoot yourself in the foot, laugh all day. Ha.
I thought the use of paintballs filled with CS gas and permanent markers was already fairly wide spread by law enforcement...
Now THAT had me laughing ... except for the price tag - $7.5 million. I guess they wanted to add a whole new meaning to the term "comrades-in-arms."
http://cbs5.com/topstories/local_story_159222541.h tml
Kevin Smith on Prince
U.S. Federal Taxes for the U.S. Military-Industrial-CONGRESSIONAL Complex.
P.S. Fuck Joe LIEberman
"Laughing Gas" won't incapacitate you from fits of laughter. It's a hypnotic agent.
Actually quite a good idea for a payload if the delivery system works.
Imagine a whole army of soldiers laughing their asses off holding the riffle rather than shooting!
See... this is why the terrorists will laugh in your face!
If they use this, FOX will finally be able to show all those crowds of happy Iraqis it always brags about...
I don't know if any other /.ers have been dosed with the stuff, but nitrous oxide didn't make me laugh. Rather, I just felt like I was wrapped in cotton batting and floating, yet fully awake and able to move[1]. Maybe the dental assistant just did a good job of getting the level right.
[1] Almost, but not quite, entirely unlike being drunk.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Can be hazardous? I didn't know bullets were "potentially harmful" if fired at short range. I will have to study this.
On second thought...I'll just look it up.
...than te gay bomb they also worked on.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/4174519.stm
New and improved Joker products! With a new secret ingredient: Smylex.
Vik..vik...Viki Vale.
Make it a malt liquor. I want to be as clever and handsome as possible.
Nitrous Oxide, also known as "Laughing gas" does not make people laugh. Read more here on WikiPedia.
The Stink Bomb Bullets Project was scrapped because of the ineffectiveness against Hippies.
--------========+++Dont Feed The Lab Techs+++========--------
The celebrated British artist drew one of his comic sketches exactly about this during the 1914-18 war.
Looks like there are some gaping holes in the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention..
The US currently spends about 4% of GDP on defense. That is a lot lower percentage than during the Cold War days.
In other words, we have so many resources, we can spare it for military purposes. Don't forget, the US military is the de-facto security force for NATO, the UN, and countries like Japan and Korea.
picture the crowd becoming confused, unable to move, dizzy and falling over, hallucinating... and that lucky few who are allergic to it, vomiting and such. Not such a fun picture as a riot overcome by giggles. It may or may not be better than just pelting them with rubber bullets to disperse. It's intresting that this way more people would probably be detained rather than having a chance to run away.
"if only i had known i would have been a locksmith." -albert einstein
Cast Tasha's Uncontrollable Hideous Laughter.
I am officially gone from
How about the richest, most powerful, most diverse, most influential country in the history of mankind? Or the world's only superpower?
By the way, in light doses N2O is an analgesic. That's right, help the enemy endure their aches and pains!
Geez we are talking bright here.
Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
The question is: would it even work? Or would those contractors get big bucks for possibly the dumbest idea in history?
Laughing gas not only doesn't make people actually laugh, and certainly not in the minute quantities you can fit in a rubber bullet (doubly so considering that you'll aim at the chest, not pump the gas over their nose), it gets people euphoric (a sort of high, basically), might even cause slight halucinations, and it dulls the sensation of pain.
So shoot enough of these in an angry crowd, and now you have a crowd that's (A) angrier, since you just shot at them, (B) manic enough to do dumber things than normally, and (C) a lot less sensitive to pain. Just so, you know, they won't be as deterred by further rubber bullets or tear gas or a police batton. It sounds to me like just what you need to turn some unruly demonstrators into an outright riot. Or an outright riot into hell broken loose.
Especially B scares me. Being high even on nitrous oxide might just impair people's judgment just that tiny little bit needed to do something really dumb. Like "heehee, let's throw a big rock at the cops." Or "heehee, let's get their guns and shoot a bystander." Sure, it's no LSD, but we're talking the kind of situations where it often takes just a spark to go downhill fast. You might need just one guy getting over his inhibitions or thinking he saw or heard the awfully wrong thing, to spark everyone else into going berserk.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
From the "Killer Joke" skit:
"All through the winter of '43 we had translators working, in joke-proof conditions, to try and produce a German version of the joke. They worked on one word each for greater safety. One of them saw two words of the joke and spent several weeks in hospital. But apart from that things went pretty quickly, and we soon had the joke by January, in a form which our troops couldn't understand but which the Germans could".
[Insert pithy quote here]
I can just see the hippies have one more reason to want to start a protest. Can't you just picture them fighting to see who can be in front when the police start using those! We might as well be pummeling them with baggies of mj and poppy seeds!
load "$",8,1
"The freest and most democratic country on Earth spends far too many of its resources on novel ways to protect rioters from themselves."
Funny how the perspective changes when you keep in mind what the real motives are, and discount the dystopian propaganda.
Can't you see the rioting/giggling meme is just part of the viral marketing for the next Batman movie!?!?
meh
Too bad "laughing" gas doesn't make you bust out laughing, rather than makes you tingle or black out.
It would have to take a massive concentration of Nitrous to take down a person in the open air. And if a threshold is broken, it would deprive your brain of oxygen and kill you. I've seen it actually happen to a friend under different circumstances.
I'm sure they found out the hard way, though. There's a reason it wasn't mainstream.
"Please, shut up. Just when I think you can't say anything more stupid, you speak again." -Archie Bunker.
Getting shot is no laughing matter...
Your ad here. Ask me how!
http://cbs5.com/topstories/local_story_159222541.h tml
The Pentagon sought to build a "gay bomb" that would turn enemy soldiers into homosexuals and thus reduce a potent military force into a twisting pile of sweating, spurting young men.
Anyone else seem concerned that the Pentagon is hitting up the Joker for ideas?
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Nitrous Oxide is non-flammable, and that "explosive" reaction you're running your yap about is when the AMMONIUM NITRATE explodes, not the Nitrous Oxide.
l _propellant
Read about how wrong you are here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrous_oxide#Aeroso
Conclusive proof, as if it were needed, that Monty Python were ahead of their time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IysnS5wO60g
For the sarcasm-impaired: The previous paragraph is obviously lunacy. Since it's lunacy, I think having non-lethal alternatives is a GOOD idea. Foes of yesterday may be friends tomorrow (think Japan of WW II, etc.), so even if you're in a war, you may NOT need to kill your foe. It'd be great to avoid killing in many cases. Wouldn't it be great if there were LESS carnage in the future, not MORE? Wouldn't it be great if after a confrontation, most wives / children / parents got their loved ones back?!?
Now this particular approach may not be very effective; maybe another one needs to be investigated instead. The term "non-lethal" is misleading; they DO kill occasionally (they just kill less often), and since they kill sometimes, they need to be reserved for serious situations the way lethal approaches are. That said, if you do not NEED to kill all your foes, having a "mostly non-lethal" alternative would be WAY better than the "mostly lethal" approach we have now.
Yes, there's a risk that non-lethal approaches would be employed to create a police state. But you can have police states with lethal approaches too, and in fact, I'd argue that lethal approaches are more effective at countering civilians. Dead civilians don't try again. If there's a non-lethal approach, the civilians can try again later, something you can't say about lethal approaches.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
to the laughing gas version, they're also working on a bullet filled with laxatives - but that story was probably started for shits and giggles. *** I'll get my things ***
I would think there would be a risk of overdose.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Someone should tell them that Warner Brothers' cartoons lied to them. 'Laughing gas' doesn't really work that way. I'd think they'd have gotten less naive about drug names after all those years of disappointment with the anticlimactic effects of sodium pentothol 'truth serum'.
What I loved is the paint ball gun funded by the LA Co. Sheriff's Dept. The balls contained a noxious substance that made the target immediately start to puke after they were hit.
Probably just as effective as laughing gas but a lot nastier to clean up.
If they can get them smarty-pants scientists to figure out how to make emo bullets, all of the enemy combatants will come out all depressed and demoralized.
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
Lord knows they need a sense of humor.
What?
What was it filled with ? Sildenafil citrate? Poppers?
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
Of course before they use this they'll have to warn the crowd.
"Don't try anything funny, or you'll be laughing for sure"
Let's see, the Islamic terrorists are working on shemical and nuclear weapons and we're working on -- ways to make them laugh and become gay? What then, are they supposed to want to stop fighting and start redecorating their houses?
Try as I might, I just can't see John Wayne hosing down a group with a bunch of funny bullets.
"Stop right there, partner, or I'm going to make you laugh like you've never laughed before."
The men who stare at goats: http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/politicsphilos ophyandsociety/0,6121,1355882,00.html
I'll laugh (what a pun) if they try this at one of the channel parties in Sydney. Half the people there are high on LSD, exctasy and nangs (nitrous oxide) when the riot squad rolls around. Free Nangs for everyone! :P
:D
It'll be the first time in history ravers TRY to get shot
In general, it is safe and legal to kill your children. -- POSIX Programmer's Guide
I disagree. If police can use lethal force, there is much more objection to the use of that force -- this leads to infrequent/unreliable enforcement, which lessens the disincentives to whatever behavior you are trying to curtail.
From the opposite angle, non-lethal force leads to increased use of force, since there are fewer objections to it (both by the public and by the people using the force). This means that it is more useful to a police state. Dead citizens may not repeat unwanted behavior, but killing of citizens leads to massive popular unrest. Note that this is assuming that we're discussing the descent into a police state; once the police state is in place, and media and the populations are controlled, who's going to rise up?
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
(Disclaimer: Warning, read the quote one single (1) word at the time. Having a glimpse on the next work could lead to hospitalization for several weeks)
The only problem with the funiest joke in the world, is that once it is translated from German to anything else, it becomes less succesful even when played on the radio, shouted from a minaret, sung as lyrics in songs on P2P or planted inside porn pictures.
We must find something different to attack pedo-terrorist pirates.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
A good emasure would be for example to see how much in % of the total world military expenditure the US spend (roughly 40% at 600+ billion dollar per year). Furthermore : global issue on US military spending
quote Linking military spending to the GDP is an argument frequently made by supporters of higher military budgets. Comparing military spending (or any other spending for that matter) to the GDP tells you how large a burden such spending puts on the US economy, but it tells you nothing about the burden a $440 billion military budget puts on U.S. taxpayers. Our economy may be able to bear higher military spending, but the question today is whether current military spending levels are necessary and whether these funds are going towards the proper priorities. Further, such comparisons are only made when the economy is healthy. It is unlikely that those arguing that military spending should be a certain portion of GDP would continue to make this case if the economy suddenly weakened, thus requiring dramatic cuts in the military.
I do not know if it is a fair arguing against GDP, but knowing that the US military has got 40% of the total world gross expenditure is scarry, for a nation which was not attacked in its territory by other nation in the last 100 years (I give you Pearl Harbor but one can argue that the mainland USA was not attacked after the Mexico US war), but which attacked many other country outside (Vietnam, Korea, the often forgotten Panama, Irak etc...).
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
If I'm not completely mistaken then N20 or Nitrous Oxide a.k.a. Laughing Gas is the stuff car tuners use to punch some more horse powers out of their engines with. Isn't it highly flammable? I want to see the "Smoking Kills"/"Less-Lethal-Ammo" ad for that one!
http://cbs5.com/topstories/local_story_159222541.h tml =)
--
"Extra Anus Kills Four-Legged Chick" -- Headline
from the wikipedia entry for "less-lethal weapons"
"As different parts of the body differ in vulnerability, and because people vary in weight and fitness, any weapon powerful enough to incapacitate is likely to be capable of killing under certain circumstances. Less lethal ammunition can cause contusions, abrasions, broken ribs, concussions, loss of eyes, superficial organ damage, serious skin lacerations, massive skull fractures, rupture of the heart or kidney, fragmentation of the liver, hemorrhages, and death."
and
"Weapons not designed as lethal instruments can, nevertheless, prove fatal. An estimate by the International Association of Chiefs of Police suggested at least 113 pepper spray related fatalities had occurred in the United States, mostly from positional asphyxia, which is caused by airway-restrictive immobilizing holds that can be exacerbated by pepper spray, which irritates the airway."
-- QED
Just ask e.g. presidential candidate Mitt Romney. He will assure you that Jesus walked around in North America and made it Holy land! You may ask why the natives were not converted to Christians until the Europeans arrived - well that obviously because they didn't understand God's language: English (the King James version of it to be precise)! Next time educate yourself a bit before posting here!
There are stink bombs that are effective at dispersing crowds. There's been quite a bit of research in the identification and synthesis of the chemicals that most humans find to be really disgusting, things like essence of rotting corpse.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
> the Pentagon actually funded research into 'non-lethal' bullets that would also hit a target
> with a dose of laughing gas. That way, they'd not only be stunned but incapacitated by fits of giggles.
The article continues:
"The plan was for soldiers to fire the bullets at the target crowds, then, after they were lying on the ground laughing from the chemicals, to move in and arrest them for drug violations."
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I'm all for the brown noise theory myself
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_note
just because it'd be a hell of a thing to watch
Some people do get fits of laughter, or similar spasmic reactions.
I've experimented with laughing gas some years ago. We filled balloons from N20 capsules via a whipped cream nozzle. Then we inhaled and exhaled into the balloons a couple a times. A couple of times I myself found myself repeating a short sound and movement over and over again, like when you're laughing, or stuttering. However, it felt different, much more spasmic and uncontrolled, yet strangely fun. We always made people sit down because when you take the gas, you have no control whatsoever. You simply fall down.
If these bullets have the same effect, then they would be effective in knocking you down for a minute (not more).
However, I think it's unlikely the bullet will have the same effect. First, the dosis. We used two canisters of N20 per balloon (16g) and we breathed all of it directly. If these bullets release the gas in the air, then they'll need to put a lot of gas in these bullets, under high pressure. Also, it's an explosive gas. Add heat and fire from the gun... sounds pretty lethal to me. Now, perhaps if the bullets inject the gas somehow... but then, why not just use a more powerful drug?
Also, I believe some of the effect is due to oxigen deprivation. The pure gas temporarily disables the intake of oxigen through the lungs. I doubt the bullet has the same effect.
assignment != equality != identity
So is rubber, you stupid twat.
Don't comment on things that are beyond your depth. Like everything.
please say i wasnt the only one to think of poppin fresh
Or they were inspired by this episode of Sponge Bob:
:-)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rUygvs5rhg
"Creativity is allowing ones self to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep" - Scott Adams
That's how they killed my hyena! I knew I'd get to the bottom of this.
The shootings will continue until morale improves....
I'd say more like pulling strings....
Do not attribute to malice that which can be easily explained by incompetence.
....N2O does not make one laugh really. It makes one "High". Ask any Raver. Whippets, see? What are they, stupid? If you could get enough to the enemy though they would be incapacitated, just not by laughing. Standing their drooling like a zombie maybe, but not laughing.
even if you're in a war, you may NOT need to kill your foe.
That won't work in a "conventional war" scenario. If all you're doing is temporarily incapacitating the "other side's" soldiers, you will never win, unless you put everybody in prison camps until the end of the war. But if all you're saying to the other side is, "we'll flag you down with rubber bullets and feed and house you until the war stops", there'll be no shortage of people willing to "fight" you.
Also, how willing is an army to send its boys with rubber bullets and laughing gas against an enemy who can, and will, use real lethal force?
There probably is a lot to be said in favor non-lethal weapons in other scenarios, though, such as asymetrical warfare, occupation (especially if the occupier has to enforce at least a semblance of law and order), or peacekeeping missions. In fact, many UN peacekeeping operations already make heavy use of non-lethal approaches, because most of their work is related with maintaining law and order rather than fighting armed groups (see UN missions in the Balkans for some good examples).
However, what seems to be lacking these days is the political will to take care of such issues, rather than the practical and technical means to do it. I have no doubts that the U.S. army would have done a decent job of preventing lootings in Baghdad, regardless of the techniques used, had it been instructed to do so. It wasn't, and chaos ensued.
in fact, I'd argue that lethal approaches are more effective at countering civilians.
Yes and no. Of course if you're a brutal, ruthless regime that's already hated by the populace, and ostracized by the international community (North Korea, Burma...) then sure, it's just more effective to kill the dissidents. As a side benefit the regime also sends a strong signal to whoever might be tempted to, maybe, join the opposition.
The real concern is in countries with authoritarian or semi-authoritarian regimes that fall somewhere in between the extreme above example, and liberal democracy (unfortunately, a whole lot of countries fall into this category), where the government is still hellbent on controlling its population, but where a degree of freedom of expression and at least a nucleus of opposition, fragile as they may be, exist. If the police or army kill a bunch of people while squashing a protest, there is bound to be more unrest (and international pressure) as a result, not less. For such governments, non-lethal weapons solve the dilemma of using force to repress the opposition, because "nobody got killed, so where's your beef?" A couple of lives get saved, sure, but the regime stays unchallenged (and the dissidents probably end locked up in jail anyways, which may or may not be preferrable to death, depending on the country).
To an extent, this also applies to liberal democracies. But then there are (in theory) enough watchdogs and counterpowers to denounce the abusive use of non-lethal weapons. Whether these counterpowers are actually doing their job is another debate.
Hello! I'm a disaster waiting to happen!
Isn't laughing gas a pain killer, the same pain killer they give to women giving birth and used when pulling teeth. Is that so when you get shot you don't feel the bullets or the cop beating the crap out you?.
Still not as crazy as the gay bomb. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_bomb
The 3 Stooges did this in one of their comedy skits 60 years ago.
I stand corrected. The condoms idea is even dumber.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I don't know about that. I've been under the effects of nitrous oxide, when I had my wisdom teeth removed several years ago. I don't know why they call it "laughing gas," as I didn't find anything funny about the hellish, excruciating pain I experienced during the procedure.
"Before humanity, the stars shone throughout the heavens. After humanity [has gone], the stars will continue to shine"
So you've military bases in 40% of the countries, plans for missile sites and it's all because you're the policeman.
Nothing to do with the political power and influence it gives you. Oh come on.
Deleted
Nitrous Oxide, also known as "Laughing gas" does not make people laugh. Read more here on WikiPedia [wikipedia.org].
Read more here on WikiPedia.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)