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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.'"
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.
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.
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."
Even though many militaries of the past have been particularly successful because of it.
There are no dangerous weapons, only dangerous men.
Ander
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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!
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.
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?
Imagine the horror! I'm not saying 9/11 wasn't tragic for the people involved, but you Americans did far more damage to yourselves afterwards out of fear than the terrorists could ever do. To put the dead toll into perspective, each half hour all over the world more children die of malnutrition, lack of medical care, disease. Imagine that.
I'd quite like to see George Bush fight a war on malnutrition, disease and lack of medical care rather than a war on 'terror'..
which is totally what she said
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.
In reality, they clearly aren't as bad as all that; Hiroshima certainly isn't a deadly wasteland today. But I'm talking about popular perception here, not scientific reality.
So, what you're saying is controlling access to food and medical care can be considered a weapon.
Like in Somalia, where UNICEF is prevented from providing aid to some of the "conflict affected areas".
A Human Right
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'm not saying I agree with everything that's happened since, but please don't belittle the actual issue. There *are*, in fact, a group of fanaticals that would love to kill both you and me, preferably by sawing off our heads on-camera. Should that dominate our lives and our politics? Of course not. But it also shouldn't be casually dismissed as irrelevant, simply because it hasn't happened again recently, or not to you or anyone close to you.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Those are terrorist acts yes, but invading a country is no way to stop terrorism. Terrorists usually operate in small groups and don't really have idealistic ties to any country, but rather have ties to ideology, religion, or sometimes just money.
America was doing nothing about all this until it happened to them too, and then they went waaaaay too overboard on upping their security policies. I don't want to make little of the lives that were lost on 9/11 and the proceeding days, it was tragic, but there really isn't a way of making sure that something like this will never happen again. There have been a few American terrorists (and just plain old homicidal maniacs) as well as those from other countries. Even with a heavy police state there will always be ways of causing problems, many that nobody ever really thinks about (like hijacking a plane and doing a suicide run). You are more likely to catch terrorists early if everyone is being carefully monitored, but what would you rather - live in America of the 90s, or live in a 1984 style "Big Brother is Watching You" dystopia?
PS there have been a couple of terrorist attacks in the UK since September the 11th, one even in the place where I was born (Glasgow), and there was at least one in London. I usually do casually dismiss that kind of thing, you can't just live in fear your whole life. If someone close to me was hurt by terrorist I would be angry and sad as hell, but you really can't "fight" that. You don't know when the next lunatic, fanatic, psychopath or drunken idiot will snap and cause terror in someone's life.
which is totally what she said