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The World's Spookiest Weapons
DesScorp writes "Popular Science has a piece on some outrageous ideas for weapons; some came to fruition, and others didn't. And while some of the weapons (atom bombs, chemical weapons, bats with bombs strapped to them that seek out homes and buildings at night) are truly frightening, some of them are also kind of silly, such as the Gay Bomb, and the Frisbee bomb that was labeled the 'Modular Disc-Wing Urban Cruise Munition.'"
Best bomb to drop on California: The Nude Bomb
Worst bomb to drop on DC: The Nude Bomb
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
The truth is there is no such thing as a spooky or scary weapon. A non-naive look at the world shows that human beings really don't care about what happens to the rest of the world, as long as the effects aren't felt at home.
We could annihilate 5 billion people on the planet, but the average person (at least in North America) would little more than flinch, so long as their own city or state is not affected.
Or maybe I've just lost all faith in humanity. Either way, society already turns a blind eye to the atrocious acts of mankind. A little more torture and murder won't change the way those in power control the planet and its inhabitants.
sounds like something which could work with remote detonator and claymore mine-like innards.
;)
ok, ok, I'll stop now, geeks should supress such ideas
One that hath name thou can not otter
You must be quite sick in the head to come up with these things.
-- Cheers!
They missed a few. Nazi sound and compressed air weapons, the first "shoot around a corner" gun. The "Amerika Bomber" concept that Heinlein liked so much that he based a lot of his future history series around the concept.
The american Gyrojet rocket pistol.
Why, yes, I AM a Pagan Libertarian.
Worst webpage layout, ever.
The Bombarang was developed in the 1970's, and while technically a success, development on the project was canceled due to unforeseen consequences.
C'mon, you werent expecting one Tom Cruise/gay/phallic symbol joke?
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"In the end, there is simply no weapon more devastating than the truth, delivered in just the right way." - tnk1
The screens were covered with grids of fine wire. The pecking would cause a horizontal wire to touch a vertical wire, completing a circuit and providing the course correction to the bomb's electronics.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
Maybe it's just me, but what I think is the spookiest is not the weapons as such but rather how many of these appear to be explicitely intended for "crowd control".
Now of course, using non-deadly force to stop riots etc. is better than using deadly force. But at the same time, the fact that something isn't deadly - not intended to be, anyway - will also take away people's inhibitions to an extent and make them more likely to actually resort to it.
We're seeing this with tasers already, for example. And in fact, tasers are a good example insofar as that while the manufacturer would like to position them as non-deadly, they in fact are quite so.
I was just reading about this randomly on Wikipedia the other day. A US invention
This sort of opposes the Japanese developed Balloon bomb.
Of course both didn't exactly become conventional weaponary.
If each mistake being made is a new one, then progress is being made.
Exactly where in Heinlein's Future History line do we see the Silbervogel?
'Once scientists, even the dim-witted social scientists, get muzzled, the Western Civilization is finished.' - oldhack
The gay bomb was fabulous!
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
How would you classify those things in a lion's mouth, those things on a bear's feet or that thing a scorpion carries around? They ain't musical instruments, that's for sure.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Show Tune Appreciation Weapon. They felt STAW had a more military sound to it.
Would the Upkeep bouncing bomb from the Chastise mission during WWII fit on this list at all? Its certainly more 'spooky' than some others on that list (airborne laser, vehicle defence et al).
Coincidentally, yesterday was the 65th anniversary of the missions, and there was a reenactment at the dam in the UK that the Royal Air Force No. 617 Squadron trained at. They were to later be called the Dambusters.
Video footage here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7405514.stm
Even though many militaries of the past have been particularly successful because of it.
those things in a lion's mouth = teeth
those things on a bear's feet = claws
that thing a scorpion carries around = I guess you mean its sting
A weapon is a *tool* which can be used to hurt or kill. None of your examples are tools.
What about the N bomb?
There are no dangerous weapons, only dangerous men.
Ander
@=
They're natural rather than artificial tools, but they're tools nonetheless. You are also a tool.
I think that the Predator can claim prior art on that one....
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
How is the parent a Troll and the reply (Child?) Insightful? Surely the parent is more Insightful, or at the very least a potential Conchords reference!
...are we gonna get a newspost about weapons on slashdot that DOESN'T mention "the gay bomb"?
Particles, stuff that matters.
w[=ae]pen; akin to OS. w[=a]pan, OFries. w[=e]pin, w[=e]pen,
D. wapen, G. waffe, OHG. waffan, w[=a]fan, Icel. v[=a]pn,
Dan. vaaben, Sw. vapen, Goth. w[=e]pna, pl.; of uncertain
origin. Cf. Wapentake.]
[1913 Webster]
1. An instrument of offensive of defensive combat; something
to fight with; anything used, or designed to be used, in
destroying, defeating, or injuring an enemy, as a gun, a
sword, etc. Sounds very much like teeth, claws, or stings.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
By Monty Python: The Funniest Joke in the World
Anyone else think that "Airborne Laser" (pic 19) looks like some of the robots on Half Life 2?
I'm not sure if you're serious or not, but I get tired of the whole 'man is the ultimate evil' thing, especially since a lot of the people who believe that back it up with baseless information. Plenty of animals, like bears, kill each other (even their young) under the right circumstances. Animals war with one another (amongst their own species) just like us. In fact, Planet Earth has a segment that shows two tribes of gorillas fighting over territory. Likewise, plenty of different species will fight over things such as food or mates.
Of course, a lot of these conflicts end with one party surrendering rather than death, but the same is true of humans. On Killing does a pretty good job of showing how humans have a natural aversion to killing members of their own species (even in times of war) just like any other animal. And plenty of animals other than humans have been known to use tools. I'm too lazy to find the article, but I remember reading, about a year ago, an account of an ape using a bone to test the depth of the water in a river. It's safe to say that they animal kingdom has the same capacity for 'evil' as man. We just happen to be the dominant species and are very self-centered so no one pays attention to what the other creatures of the Earth are up to.
I was once a horse.
1. An instrument of offensive of defensive combat; something to fight with; anything used, or designed to be used, in destroying, defeating, or injuring an enemy, as a gun, a sword, etc. Are you suggesting that the lion, bear and scorpion were designed?
In either case, here at Microsoft, we feel standards are important. And we have fun, too. Doug Mahugh, Microsoft
compared to a simple book about some god or prophet, i'd say the spookier mind control weapon is religion.
I dont quite get it... They are supposed to be dropped from a sattelite and fall to earth with the power of a nuclear weapon... But if you drop them, won't they just remain in orbit? Or will a tiny push be enough to get them down to earth?
As lions make use of their teeth, scorpions make use of their tails, etc. I think they fall under "anything used"
Where is The Flying Crowbar? I think it must be one of the most scary weapons ever. An unshielded nuclear reactor used to propel a unmanned flight to drop bombs and irradiate the USSR. Possibly one of the most frightening weapons ever attempted.
http://www.merkle.com/pluto/pluto.html
dogs + bombs!
Stop worrying about the weapons and arm yourself.
Crazy people are the ones who are dangerous.
...."Have you mooed today?"...
When they were describing the Worst Smell Ever (like vomit mixed with rotting flesh and burnt hair and everything nasty), I had a realization: I *know* that smell. It's that nasty powdered stuff the janitors always pour on vomit in elementary schools. Extremely foul. As a kid, I always thought vomit smelled like that. But as an adult I've been around sick people numerous times and you know what? Vomit doesn't actually smell that bad. I mean, it doesn't smell particularly *good*, but it's fresh-baked bread compared to that vomit-clean-up powder elementary schools use.
The most *painful* smell I've encountered is industrial-grade PVC cement (the blue kind, not the clear kind). It's not really disgusting, certainly not nauseating, but it will give you a headache faster than nobody's business. Always use in a well-ventilated area. (By "well-ventilated area", I really mean outdoors. By "outdoors" I really mean a mountain-top, preferably on an especially windy day.) A good whiff of that stuff is about like having your hypothalamus caught in a hydrolic vice. Potent.
Which gets me to thinking: what if you mixed the smells of PVC cement, ammonia, and the stuff elementary schools pour on vomit? What kind of area-denial weapon could you make with *that* stench?
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
I guess Atomic Bomb kinda covers it, but still, hardly a respectable list.
Why no mention of the frikkin sharks with frikkin laser beams attached to their heads?
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Those WMDs that Iraq had were spooky, you couldn't even see them!
Deze sig is in 't Nederlands geschreven.
I think the word "spooky" have to be reevaluated. I don't find them "spooky" at all. Many of the mentioned weapons aren't even functional, just ideas and submissions. Some are frightening, yes (like the atomic bomb) but most of them are just ridiculous and some are actually a little bit cool.
So when is the puke lamp going to be sold in your nearest party-supply-store?
Drop countless leaflets for Home Re-fi, Viagra, Penis Enlargement, Earn 1000$ a DAY AT HOME, You won a Free Gift Certificate, and help me get my Millions out of Nigeria. Then while all the soldiers are busy trying to sort thru real communications and your leaflets... attack amid the confusion. Even if it didn't work, at least the military would be better funded thru it's enemies ;)
Oh, what pitiful long-haired bullshit is this? Humans are not the be-all and end-all of violence in nature. Sure, we have the intellect to come up with very dangerous things. Sure, there are those dope-arsed enough to use these things. But as general violence in the animal kingdom goes, we're really quite the softies.
Take dolphins, the poster children of New Age flakies, often put up as these supposedly peaceful, gentle, intelligent creatures that could teach us a thing or two about being in harmony with nature. Bollocks. Dolphins are psychos: murder, violence, gang rape including bestiality and that of their own young --- you name it --- are all staples of dolphin behaviour. Frankly, I wouldn't want to be anywhere near one of these fuckers without someone standing at the ready with a charged harpoon. Where are the dolphin justice mechanisms? If they're so peaceful and moral, where are the dolphin courts and prisons?
Ducks are just as bad. I was sitting by a pond the other day with about 20 or so ducks there. In the space of about half an hour or so, about six fights broke out, half of which were sexually motivated. In the same amount of time, over a hundred humans must've passed by --- a population in whom not one case of violence or sexual harassment broke out.
What about that thing between a horses hind legs?
Now THATS a weapon !
Lots of people seem to single out nuclear bombs but I wonder why. Is it because they make war so easy to "win"? Is this so much different to a conventional bomb of corresponding 'size'?
I guess they aren't too much different to other weapons in the WMD category...
Max.
I guess Clausewitz, Sun Tzu, Machiavelli and Musashi got it all wrong then.
Pesky Turks preventing your Dardanelles invasion? Needs more gay sex.
Can't fight both the Russians and their winters? You guessed right: Not enough gay sex involved.
Roadside bombs in Iraq continually blowing up your troops? Guess what? I've got a fever! And the only prescription...
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
while scary, the airborne laser has only been used to fill a house with popcorn.
The Grandparent was referring to 'anything used in destroying, defeating, or injuring an enemy.'
The 'or' allows for things natural as well as unnatural to be classified as weapons so long as their are used to destroy, defeat, or injure. The examples given, a gun and a sword, are unnatural, but the basis for being called a weapon does not merely rely on the fact that the method or tool used is man-made.
I don't like Linux. This doesn't make me a troll.
But... the Microsoft bomb actually went off...
The Thermobarbaric bomb.
Works the same way dynamite kills fish in a lake. Liquefies your organs. Nasty stuff.
Also, they left out cluster bombs. --The munition which kills and terrorizes civilian populations long after the war is 'over'.
They got the one about crowd control right, though. But the creepiest are the ones you use to screw up the nervous systems of people through the electro-magnetic sphere. (Even though, according to the cell phone companies and half of Slashdot, humans are not affected by non-ionizing EM. Whatever.)
-FL
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Well they're alienating a lot of people because of it. I guess that will further that trend by reinforcing it, though.
The weapon that caused the most damage in Japan during World War II was the M-69 incendiary cluster bomb, which started hundreds of fires from a single bomb casing that spread out nearly 100 little incendiary devices. Given that Japan's cities at the time were mostly built of wood, that's why low-altitude incendiary bombing at night was so devestatingly effective against Japanese cities.
I often wondered why Japan didn't improve fire safety regulations after the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923, which a large fraction of the 143,000 dead was caused by uncontrolled fires AFTER the earthquake.
I hate those fucking things.
> Even though many militaries of the past have been particularly successful because of it.
[citation needed]
I'm not sure I see why gay sex makes them more effective any more than I can see why it would make them less.
But what animals realize that they are mortal? Only one that I can think of.
AFAIK, man is the only creature with morals and ethics. I've never seen anything that could be considered inherently evil that was not the product of man.
Similarly, slight off topic: there are many beautiful things in this world, some created by man - but the only "ugly" things I see are created by man alone.
This... is... Sparta! (Among others).
Happy people make bad consumers.
Dug down for dupe.
What, no sharks with frickin' laser beams?
Being so far down the page just about no-one's going to read this, but I didn't see any technical branches up top.
Some of these weapons I'm pretty sure never made it out of concept because they were impossible. For example the "rods from the gods" kinetic energy weapon makes no sense as to put something in orbit with the potential kinetic energy to be a WMD it's going to take multiple nuke's worth of energy just to lift it to that orbit. Any chump at NASA, or who's graduated a real physics class could have told them that.
Ever watch a dog pack, or cats fight? If the animal does not fear death, why would it stop fighting when losing a battle? Self-preservation. Which is inherently fear of death.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Hmmm. A chemical that turns straight men temporarily gay. Quick! Get Johnny Hazzard to dress up as a Domino's guy and deliver a few 'gay pizzas' sprayed with it to the 'Ultimate Fighter' house in Las Vegas. Have Chi Chi LaRue, Doug Jeffries, and Dirk Yates waiting in the van with a few crates of condoms, plenty of lube, and lots of HD video cameras ready to storm the door and get all the action on tape! In an instant, UFC would go from "The Closest Thing To Softcore Gay Porn On Cable TV" to "The Real Thing" :-D
irrationality and hate
Yeah, but you don't know the meaning of laughter until you read about someone on Fark who found out about ducks the hard way a couple of days ago.
Except you don't see animals using other animals to kill their enemies while hiding in safety.
home
I still want my Gravity Gun
This sig is false.
OMG, I think they've been using this already for years! Now where the hell are my sunglasses..?
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
The scariest bomb! Imagine: a bomb that fills in all the insert blanks in the area! Picture the confusion , the chaos, and the miscommunication! But in all seriousness why does every object somehow seem to be made into a bomb... Sounds like someone at the DoD has been hitting the reefer a little heavy.
WOW, what better way to threaten the Arab world. Arabs apparently have an extreme phobia of gays. We could threaten to "Gay Bomb" them if they don't plummet the price of Oil like they did back in the 80's. Nothing would creep me out more than knowing we made manly Arab men contract an uncontrollable urge to kiss, hug and but ram each other with no antidote in sight.
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
Can you imagine a crowd of unrestrained test subjects turning forks, arbitrary objects in reach or just their teeth against themselves in uncontrolled fashion?
The idea of an externally triggered mass outbreak of Lesch-Nyhan-type behaviour definitively is more spooky than a bunch of refurbished dolphins.
Sweet dreams!
Interesting that one of the "high tech" weapons (Project X-Ray) is essentially a souped up version of Genghis Khan's strategy when he attacked Volohoi - except he probably didn't spend $2 million on research.... and it worked.
Anything can be turn in to weapon given a certain situation and intentions. Especially when we use already defined and very familiar definitions for the term "victim" or a "prey". The spookiest weapons are the ones that make us a victim the way that hasn't been defined yet!
If you're not confused, you're not paying attention
I'm not sure if you're serious or not, but I get tired of the whole 'man is the ultimate evil' thing, especially since a lot of the people who believe that back it up with baseless information.
You are now entering... the Scary Door.
[Scientist mixes vials labeled with different animals.]
Scientist: I have combined the DNA of the world's most evil animals to form the most evil creature of all!
[Scientist pours mixture into cylindrical device. Steam hisses from the cylinder, door opens, a miniature dude steps out.]
Miniature dude: Turns out it's man.
[End credits]
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
John was out in his workshop, putting some last touches on that birdhouse for Miss Hooper next door. He knelt on the floor and hammered a small nail into the roof of the birdhouse, and then laid the hammer down next to it and stood up.
He turned back to his bench, and rummaged around, looking for some grey linoleum to cover the birdhouse roof. Suddenly he stopped. He thought he heard a scraping sound on the floor. He looked, but the only thing there was the hammer - where he had left it.
He turned back to the bench, and kept poking around the stuff there. Another scrape. He turns back and looks. Was that hammer in the same place? He shrugged his shoulders, gave his head a quick shake, and went back to rummaging on the bench top.
Scrape. This time, when he turned around, the hammer was definitely closer. He froze. Should he move? Should he pick it up? Should he run away? What if it attacked him - thoughts raced thought his panicked brain.
The he saw the piece of faint string attached to the hammer and his little brother hiding under the bench, with a big grin on his face. "Had you there for a while, didn't I?"
(OK, so it has plot holes. Sue me.)
I am anarch of all I survey.
Stephen King (under the pseudonym Richard Bachman) wrote a book called [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Running_Man]The Running Man[/url] (totally warped into an Arnold Schwarzenegger action movie), which ends with the protagonist flying a highjacked plane into a tower block. And, although they don't specifially deal with suicide highjackings, many, many works of fiction, often in Hollywood, such as the Die-Hard series, portray terrorism related plots, often in such detail it's a wonder that terrorists don't study and copy them in even more detail.
The movie [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Siege]The Siege[/url] while very fictional and feel good in the end, gives a very good portrayal of the situation after a devastating terrorist attack and the consequences of national paranoia.
In reality, the highjacking of [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_8969]Air France Flight 8969[/url] in 1994, was an attempted suicide highjacking (They wanted to fly into the Eiffel Tower).
The precedents for 9/11/2001 were surely there, all right (no one seemed to remember the WTC bombings in 1993). No one seemed to take much notice up until then, and then, when it finally did happen, everyone went on a patriotic nutcase rave that ended up in 2 bloody and prolonged wars, far more dead than the actual terrorist attacks themselves, and, in a fit of panic, they gave away their constitutional rights to a bunch of people who abused the situation at every possible turn.
The movie The Siege while very fictional and feel good in the end, gives a very good portrayal of the situation after a devastating terrorist attack and the consequences of national paranoia.
In reality, the highjacking of Air France Flight 8969 in 1994, was an attempted suicide highjacking (They wanted to fly into the Eiffel Tower).
The precedents for 9/11/2001 were surely there, all right (no one seemed to remember the WTC bombings in 1993). No one seemed to take much notice up until then, and then, when it finally did happen, everyone went on a patriotic nutcase rave that ended up in 2 bloody and prolonged wars, far more dead than the actual terrorist attacks themselves, and, in a fit of panic, they gave away their constitutional rights to a bunch of people who abused the situation at every possible turn.
I think that your idea that China and Europe are dependent on the sale of their products to the US is true to a certain extent, but, both the Chinese and the Europeans are working very hard on building other markets in Asia, South America and Africa.
China especially spends ridiculous sums on infrastructure projects in Africa and Latin America, all with no strings attached, in order to get a foot in the door economically.
The European conservative economic policies have had a bonus to them in that the Euro is well on its way to becoming the world's standard trading currency, due to the Dollar's continual fall and the huge American deficit causing investors to look elsewhere. The Dollar being the international trading currency had major benefits for the US.
Witness the current high risk debt crisis. It affected Europe far less than the US (or the UK, which liberalised its economic laws to allow such practices) due to the conservative lending laws there.
All is not lost, though, I think the US, given a stable and pragmatic government (and no, I don't know who that would be), could recoup its losses within a decade if truly aimed to do so.
Depending on the species, ducks can live anywhere from 10-30 years. If we say that humans live to be about 75, then that is approximately 1/7 - 2/5 of a human's life span. So 6 fights per 20 ducks per half an hour. That's 30 fights per hundred ducks per half an hour. 100 humans passed by in half an hour, but their life span is different. 100 humans, in order to match the ducks, need to have 30 fights every 3.5 - 5 hours. So it could be that you just saw 100 humans taking a peaceful lunch break in the park in between fights...
I like my coffee the way I like my women - roasted and ground up into little tiny pieces.
Your duck stories intrigue me, and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Prisons and courts do not create a peaceful and moral society. If anything, they're an indicator that said society is imperfectly peaceful or moral, as otherwise they wouldn't need them.
On reflection, I didn't word it very well, the basic implication being that dolphin society seems to deem violent behaviour acceptable.