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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..."
The freest and most democratic country on Earth spends far too many of its resources on novel ways to control people.
"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.
maybe they are only safe for the shooter, not the target...
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.
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.
I recommend researching more of the history of mankind before demonstrating your ignorance of it. Literally everything you said in two short sentences is highly debatable at best.
Between stuff like this and a CIA who wasted millions of $ over 25 years on a program employing psychics (I kid you not), don't you feel so much safer?
Non-lethal weapons are hardly a waste of money. Nor are they really intended to protect anybody but the people they're being fired at. That's the point - society has all the "protection" it needs provided by police and military using lead bullets, but are we still so barbaric that we want police to shoot lethal weapons into a group of college kids who had a little too much to drink while celebrating their team's championship victory one night and end up a little too rowdy in the streets? Should the penalty for that be death?
People here should be encouraging the development of non-lethal weapons, not making jokes about it or calling it a "waste". If you want a less abusive government, the way to get it is to promote things like non-lethal weapons.
Not to mention both the article and article summary here seem to have been written by junior high schoolers - that's around the age when we all learn that "laughing gas" doesn't really make you laugh. Apparently somebody still hasn't figured that out. Nitrous oxide is an anesthetic and a sedative. Shoot a bunch of it at a rampaging crowd and you'll probably end up with a mob of lazy sunbathers instead of bottle-throwers.
OK, I just burned 5 mod points by responding to this, but, What the Hell are you talking about? Jacketed bullets don't "cast off" anything. The copper jacket is to keep it from deforming in the barrel and in flight, and to control expansion when it hits the target.
The only thing you could possibly mean is a "sabot", which is a usually plastic "shoe" type thing that is very occasionally used to protect the bullet from the rifling of the barrel, and that does fall off early in the flight of the bullet. But that's rarely used, and not by any means an "almost all" so, I think I have to back to "what the hell are you talking about".
Also 'harmlessly' does not mean 'without effect'. You can propel anything at 100 MPH and it's going to cause some damage....
Oh, I dunno, I get hit by photons at light speed all the time, and doesn't hurt a bit. Without knowing the energies involved, speculating about what is and isn't lethal is just speculative handwaving.
A baseball could cause the exact injuries that the pepper spray dispenser did to that poor girl.
If we were to define non-lethal as not possible to kill someone with, we couldn't even define marshmallows as non-lethal due to their choking hazard.
I would still rather get shot by a bean bag or teargas dispenser than a bullet or lead slug. Sure, it could kill me, but it is much less likely to.
*sigh* back to work...
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)
Not to downplay the deaths of people involved in these incidents because you're absolutely right; the term 'non-lethal' has been challenged time and time again because of instances such as this. Note that the Wikipedia article does refer to the technology as 'less-lethal' as is being adopted elsewhere.
So, sure, you're right but the overall use of these technologies are certainly much better then an outright firefight or some of the more physical methods used in the past. If it weren't for the development of 'less-lethal' devices Victoria wouldn't even be a footnote on a Wiki page. Deaths during large riots was the norm in the past, not the exception.
Maybe there is a better way to handle it but we have made progress.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Lord knows they need a sense of humor.
What?
Just because you're unhappy with your life, don't take it out on a whole nation.
Yes, indeed anyone pointing out that the USA isn't the greatest nation in all categories *must* be unhappy with their life. They're probably terrorists too.
'Scarry' for who? Not for the people living in the US, that's for sure. "Not attacked by other nations for the last 100 years?" Could the reason be, because they spend "40% of the total world gross expenditure" on military?
Not saying it's right or anything. Just thought I'd connect the dots is all.
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
The US is also supposed to help repel military invasions of all of Europe, all of North America, all of South America, Japan, South Korea...I'd say when you have to defend 40% of the Earth, you can have 40% of the world's defense expenditure.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199