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.'"

Comments

Re:The Rods from God

[the_other_chewey]

But if you drop them, won't they just remain in orbit?

Yes, absolutely. It is impossible to just "drop" something on earth from
a stable orbit - remember: You are already constantly falling.


Or will a tiny push be enough to get them down to earth?

I'd expect them to be rocket propelled rods to a certain extent.
Targetting will be a bitch though: You'd have to do a more or less controlled
reentry (tip forward, or the earodynamic breaking would mess with your speed) on
an arced trajectory, and very precisely hold on to your trajectory - even very
minor errors will make the rod completely miss the target.

The whole thing sounds interesting as an idea, but gets complicated very quickly as you
start thinking about an implementation.