Slashdot Mirror
How The Navy Tried To Turn Sharks into Torpedos (undark.org)
Long-time Slashdot reader v3rgEz writes: Documents recently declassified show one of the odder experimental weapons developed after World War II: Weaponized sharks. Guided by sharp electric shocks, the sharks were trained to deliver explosive payloads -- essentially turning them into living, breathing, remote-controlled torpedoes that could be put to use in the Pacific Theater.
Following years of research on "shark repellent," the Navy spent 13 years building a special head gear for sharks which sensed the shark's direction and tried to deliver shocks if the sharks strayed off-course. The journalist who tracked down details of "Project Headgear" published the recently-declassified information on MIT's journalism site Undark, noting that "The shark wasn't so much a 'torpedo' as a suicide bomber... "
Following years of research on "shark repellent," the Navy spent 13 years building a special head gear for sharks which sensed the shark's direction and tried to deliver shocks if the sharks strayed off-course. The journalist who tracked down details of "Project Headgear" published the recently-declassified information on MIT's journalism site Undark, noting that "The shark wasn't so much a 'torpedo' as a suicide bomber... "
It's not suicide, if they didn't have a choice.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Sharkpedo?
Using animals as suicide bombers. Inexcusable.
Might have been simpler and result in less guilt over harming innocent sharks.
Cause you know... sharks with lasers.
Um? They don't have those gills for decoration.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
So what's the verb for extracting oxygen from water with gills?
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
Wasn't there a movie about this?
I just asked my marine-biolog-trained wife and yes, scientists call oxygen exchange via gills "breathing". You could also somewhat more generically say "respiring" but the first definition of respiring in most dictionaries is "breathing". So in both common and everyday scientific use they are interchanegable.
Summary: please go take your pointless pedantism somewhere else, we're all full up here.
So what's the verb for extracting oxygen from water with gills?
"Ventilation" or "Breathing". Both are correct. "Respiration" also works, although that actually describes a more complicated process.
Thanks
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
What, you don't find it entertaining when someone tries to appear smart and smug by making a correction that turns out to be dead wrong, thus showing how arrogance and stupidity go hand-in-hand?
You know all those landmines left after Vietnam that still kill people to this day? Imagine sharks with live ordinance wandering the ocean for decades.
"Ventilation" or "Breathing". Both are correct. "Respiration" also works, although that actually describes a more complicated process.
I remember having this discussion late on a Saturday night in a beer session back in my university days.
The biology major told us that gills work by "exchanging gasses."
What a terrible waste of beer, as we all spit it out or laughed it out our noses.
At any rate, we got a lot of mileage out of that one, as we would say stuff like, "Has someone been exchanging gasses in here?" or "I need to go exchange some gasses."
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I think the first 10 times Barbara did that on /. it was a bit annoying but amusing. Now it's just tiring.
Within the realm of military research, this doesn't seem far-fetched.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I can't imagine what part of this was classified, as it was public knowledge at the time and was written about in newspapers and magazines all over the world.
Immature misunderstanding of how surprise buttsex works.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
There was no "Pacific Theater" AFTER World War II. Sheesh. Certainly not 1958-1971.
So now we're going to see him pop out a rubber "cartilage" shark skeleton that screams "Allahu *BLUB*BLUB!*
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
The sharks were ultimately not willing to go along with being electrically-shocked for more than a half hour at a time and no medium-sized shark had any real load-carrying ability.
We deserve to be eaten
Have gnu, will travel.
Sharknado 5!
I'll see your pointless pedantism and raise you pedantry.
http://www.businessinsider.com...
I found the article quite interesting, mostly because of the mention at the end about the use of beasts of burden on land to carry an explosive to a target.
I'm reminded of something I read a long time ago about some sort of college experiment, competition, or whatever of people trying to race horses by remote control. They strapped a kind of robot to the back of a race horse that could handle a harness and a whip. I don't recall the point of doing this, or at least what point they had in mind, but with reading this article I can see the potential utility.
There are a lot of questions about whether a horse, ox, mule, or whatever would be an improvement over using some sort of mechanical transportation device. There are certainly some ethical questions, as touched on in the article. I will say that if strapping a bomb to a mule, have it wander into enemy territory, and then blow it and enemy asse(t)s to pieces does save the lives of our warriors then I'm all for it. I'm not going to place the value of a mule over that of human lives.
There is certainly value in this research, if only to know what an enemy combatant might be capable of and how to counter it.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
I shit on the lower lifeforms.
Nerds are always pedantic. They think it makes them look smart. That's why we don't talk to them, and just pull up their pants and shove them heads down into wastebaskets.
Then they won't need to be shocked into being a splodeydope.
... by the notorious problems suffered with the U.S.'s conventional torpedoes.
sharkpedo in the water. (I suppose "fish" in the water still works)
I read that they used dolphins to deliver "packages" from the U.S. Navy to targets in Haiphong harbor in the Second Indochinese War (in the Sixties). The U.S. HAS NO HONOR!!!!!