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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.
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?
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
"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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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]
Can't you see the rioting/giggling meme is just part of the viral marketing for the next Batman movie!?!?
meh
Ok, then how bout the country that god obviously loves the most.
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 ***
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