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The Military Technology

The World's Spookiest Weapons 224

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the criminally-insane-working-for-the-government dept.
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.'"
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The World's Spookiest Weapons More

The World's Spookiest Weapons

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  • The best and the worst... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Jah-Wren Ryel ( 80510 ) on Saturday May 17, 2008 @02:23AM (#23443956)
    Best bomb to drop on California: The Nude Bomb
    Worst bomb to drop on DC: The Nude Bomb

  • The truth is... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 17, 2008 @02:37AM (#23444008)
    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.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Some people I know won't stop talking about that earthquake in China. I disagree. They are like Debbie Downer on SNL, I'm having a conversation, and they bring up flooding or an earthquake.

    • Re:The truth is... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Planesdragon ( 210349 ) <slashdot@castlestee l s t o ne.us> on Saturday May 17, 2008 @02:47AM (#23444050) Homepage Journal

      The truth is there is no such thing as a spooky or scary weapon
      Actually, it's just the opposite. There's no such thing as a NON-spooky or scary weapon. If it's not a dangerous implement of death, it's not a weapon.

      • Re:The truth is... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 17, 2008 @03:26AM (#23444140)
        What about a lead pipe or a carpenter's hammer? These aren't inherently spooky or scary, they're just tools - but I sure wouldn't want someone to enthusiastically apply either to my skull.

        Can you imagine how much pain you could inflict with a standard dinner fork (provided the subject was sufficiently restrained)? Nobody would classify this as a weapon - and it certainly wouldn't inspire fear, until one had been used to pry your fingernails off.

        I guess it just goes to show, it's not the weapon you're wielding that counts, it's how you use it...
        • Lead is pretty scary.. get some in your water supply and you'll eventually turn into a dumb aggressive maniac.

          • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

            by Anonymous Coward
            That explains why some plumbers go crazy and start jumping on turtles and mushrooms while trying to smash bricks with their heads.

        • Re:The truth is... (Score:4, Insightful)

          by jmv ( 93421 ) on Saturday May 17, 2008 @07:16AM (#23444854) Homepage
          Although some tools can be used as "weapons" as you're saying, there just aren't many non-lethal applications to H-bombs cruise missiles and chemical weapons.

          • Re:The truth is... (Score:4, Interesting)

            by cayenne8 ( 626475 ) on Saturday May 17, 2008 @09:10AM (#23445394) Homepage Journal
            "Although some tools can be used as "weapons" as you're saying, there just aren't many non-lethal applications to H-bombs cruise missiles and chemical weapons."

            I dunno, those might actually be the few things that can help us rid ourselves of the damned Formosan Termites [usda.gov] down here in New Orleans, etc. Just made me think of it, 'cause it is getting close to the time for them to start swarming again....every night for about a week, you see swarms of them up around the street lights, and if you house isn't air tight, if you have the lights on...they'll try to swarm in your house too. Lots of fun while cooking a late dinner...

            OH well, if there is a bug or other vermin out there, it grows bigger and better here than anywhere else in the US. I'll not even get into the giant cockroaches that will fly at you....

      • Re:The truth is... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by jollyreaper ( 513215 ) on Saturday May 17, 2008 @09:26AM (#23445518)

        Actually, it's just the opposite. There's no such thing as a NON-spooky or scary weapon. If it's not a dangerous implement of death, it's not a weapon.
        Familiarity desensitizes us. I find our interstate highway system to be the sort of thing a 19th century futurist would dream up to warn us of the dangers of industrialization. It is unimaginable carnage, destruction, and waste. And yet we treat it as just another thing to deal with through the day. The idea of nuclear war has become something we've adapted to knowing of but not thinking about. Contemplating that even now, today, in 2008, one finger pushing the wrong button could send the warheads flying, could see the world swathed in radiation, we've successfully put such things completely out of our minds.

        And if we look at land warfare, the rules of war used to say that you weren't allowed to use shotguns on human beings but .50 cals were acceptable! We're not supposed to use laser weapons to blind soldiers because that's inhumane but we can use thermobaric weapons that suck their lungs out through their mouths! (I've never seen a picture of this but I've seen frogs that have been run over by cars, essentially puking up their entire innards through their mouths, so it seems like a real possibility.)

        I feel a very huge squicky difference between the thought of an Apache chopper firing a Hellfire into a target versus a Predator drone making the firing decision on its own. Hellfire missiles are simple robots designed to seek and destroy targets. But with the Apache, a human is pulling the trigger directly. For now, humans are doing the same with Predators but the Pentagon is working on making them fully autonomous vehicles so that they can make engagement decisions on their own when outside of direct control. Sentry robots are going to be given that same kind of authority. While there's not really much moral difference in directionless killing between an armed robot ready to shoot people with no oversight and land mines and ocean mines that are less complicated ways of spreading irresponsible and uncontrolled death and mayhem, the robot freaks me out more.

    • Re:The truth is... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by BiggerIsBetter ( 682164 ) on Saturday May 17, 2008 @03:07AM (#23444090)

      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.
      I can't really speak for North America, but people travel more and for me at least, between friends and business connections, there aren't many places in the world where I wouldn't be very concerned if something bad happened. E.g., Burma hasn't affected me, but I have (had?) friends in China I can't get hold of since the quake. That's just on a personal level, however so much of our business world is interconnected now, that thinking you won't be affected if half the world disappeared is incredibly naive - just pick most any non-trial, non-handmade product or service, and follow the supply chain...

      • Re:The truth is... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by dargaud ( 518470 ) <slashdot2@SLACKW ... net minus distro> on Saturday May 17, 2008 @11:26AM (#23446196) Homepage
        I thought that being connected was the thing preventing WWIII or somesuch until I read something about WWI. Back then nobility and high bourgeoisie where highly intermarried all over Europe. But still they 'decided' on a war that everybody at the time thought would be a brief kind of reassessment where they didn't think they had much to lose. Unfortunately (?) it bankrupted most European countries, signed the death toll of royalty in Europe (except on some weird island) and gave rise to the US.

        Just look at the current situation in the US: the neocon start a war for the 'good' of 'merica and its net effect is that the US economy now belongs to China. Talk about being patriots !

        • Re:The truth is... (Score:5, Interesting)

          by ScrewMaster ( 602015 ) on Saturday May 17, 2008 @12:41PM (#23446674)
          ust look at the current situation in the US: the neocon start a war for the 'good' of 'merica and its net effect is that the US economy now belongs to China. Talk about being patriots !

          That's not really correct. Much as I dislike the present Administration, the reality is that our government and our private sector sold out to China long before Bush & Co. took office. I agree, there's a substantial amount of high treason involved, but you can't lay this at our President's feet. Well, not all of it, anyway. Hell, Bill Clinton was partly responsible for what has become the largest transfer of scientific knowledge and technological capability from one nation to a hostile totalitarian state in the history of Mankind. Kinda makes you wonder whose side either of these two men is really on. Not ours, that's for sure.

          Even then, you have to go back farther than the previous Administration: this process really began back in the seventies. It's only accelerated to point of economic ruin for the United States within the past fifteen years or so. People don't fully understand the way China looks at the these things: they take a generational approach to foreign affairs. I don't know when the decision was made to take us out of the equation, but there's no doubt that once it was made they followed through with it. Look, the Russians tried the frontal approach: it didn't work, and their Empire eventually collapsed of its own weight, but China is not making that same mistake. They realized that behind the vaunted American military was a capable industrial engine, and that they'd never gain any traction over us until they removed our ability to create wealth and support our military.

          China's leaders may be evil and corrupt by our standards, but they most certainly aren't stupid, and are rapidly taking care of their only real obstacle to world domination, the United States, by using the greed and avarice of our elected and corporate leaders as a weapon. It's working, and probably working better they they ever expected.

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by stjobe ( 78285 )

      A little more torture and murder won't change the way those in power control the planet and its inhabitants.
      Unless, of course, the "torture and murder" is done to "those in power"...

    • Re:The truth is... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by SanityInAnarchy ( 655584 ) <ninja@slaphack.com> on Saturday May 17, 2008 @04:10AM (#23444252) Journal

      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.
      Entirely possible -- we kill millions, and a billion is just another number. The radioactive fallout would probably get to them, though...

      But it doesn't prove your point:

      The truth is there is no such thing as a spooky or scary weapon.
      I'd say it depends on context. A large knife, dripping with blood, particularly when it's still in the hands of the person who last used it, is a very scary weapon.

      Given that just about any weapon can be scary in the right context, I think what you're proving is that nothing is scary when you aren't paying attention to it, no matter how scary it really is.

    • We could annihilate 5 billion people on the planet
      It's in the works.

    • Re:The truth is... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by nguy ( 1207026 ) on Saturday May 17, 2008 @06:18AM (#23444674)
      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

      No, we couldn't, because the US has moved most manufacturing overseas and is completely dependent on Europe and China economically.

      • Re:The truth is... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by DesScorp ( 410532 ) on Saturday May 17, 2008 @06:20PM (#23448750) Journal

        No, we couldn't, because the US has moved most manufacturing overseas and is completely dependent on Europe and China economically.
        China is as dependent on us as we are of them... and I'd argue that we're still at the point where, if they want continued economic growth, they're more reliant on us than the opposite. Remember, China has to have someone to sell all that stuff to. If the American market disappears tomorrow, so does China's prosperity. They only have our balls in a vise if we refuse to squeeze theirs.

        Same thing with Europe... they're farther ahead in terms of infrastructure than China (well, Western Europe is, anyway), but the same thing applies. Europe needs American markets and dollars too. Look at all of the stuff Americans buy from Europeans. Airliners, petroleum (hello BP and Dutch Shell), automobiles, etc. I'd wager that Sweden would be less of a social-democratic paradise if Americans weren't putting significant money into their economy buying their Volvos, Saabs, and Ikea furniture. Germany would be hard hit if the BMW's and Benz's stopped rolling off the docks. Add to that the fact that US companies have factories in Europe and China, and European companies have factories in America and China, and that shows just how tightly integrated and interdependent we all are economically. Even China is now looking to build plants in America. Economic dependency isn't a one-way street.

    • Re:The truth is... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ZeroExistenZ ( 721849 ) on Saturday May 17, 2008 @07:00AM (#23444808)

      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.

      I suppose this is true. I think it's partially because of becoming desensitized and not allowing it to affect onself too much because of the flood of these messages. Numbers also are meaningless to many; if one would report 3000 people being killed, noone would react. If one would give 1 person a face (documentary, reportage, ...) people would feel affected and connected. (disgust, confusion, empathy, ... depending on what's being brought across.)

      This connection would fade over time though, as it's not related to one's own life. If someone in your family or environment dies, you're confronted with his or her absence on a regular base. The memory of some flickering screen is less strong and doesn't integrate or reconnect as strongly with your frame of reference as your own, direct experiences.

      Perhaps it's a good coping and survival mechanism, to be able t shrug it off. If I wouldn't be able to shrug of the news I hear every day, I'd be unable to live my life; I'd be saving puppies and bulls in Spain, protecting seals on the north pole, trying to end world hunger, giving Russian futureless boys perspective to lower the crime rates, start an organisation to help people with difficult personal problems, fight at the side of the innocent in Iraq, protest at the White house for more US citizens rights, would pound my fist on the table in the parlement, reform the police, reshape the educational system, take away the need for fugutives to emigrate, spend my life finding cures against AIDS and cancer, shelter all the homeless, and build rockets to fly to Mars. (because that would be cool)

      If I sum it up, it's almost like news is there to give you a feeling of helplessness, and accept the fact your influence in the world is limited and puny.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by J_Omega ( 709711 )
        Numbers also are meaningless to many; if one would report 3000 people being killed, noone would react.

        Then explain the "reaction" of 9/11.

        Agreeing with the OP: What percentage of North Americans truly care about the x-mas tsunami, the Myanmar cyclone, or Chinese earthquake?

    • 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.

      I cannot say I agree with you. I was in downtown Portland when the Iraq war protests were at their peek. I had never seen so many people out and about in that town, not even at the waterfront when festivals were taking place. I couldn't even drive home until after 9 because the streets were so thick with the protestors. From what I've heard, San Francisco was even worse. Lots of people cared.

    • Re:The truth is... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Original Replica ( 908688 ) on Saturday May 17, 2008 @12:42PM (#23446680) Journal
      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.

      There are some pretty good arguments that we actually live in one of the least violent times in human history. [edge.org]

      The criminologist Manuel Eisner has assembled hundreds of homicide estimates from Western European localities that kept records at some point between 1200 and the mid-1990s. In every country he analyzed, murder rates declined steeply--for example, from 24 homicides per 100,000 Englishmen in the fourteenth century to 0.6 per 100,000 by the early 1960s.
      With the 24 hour News cycle and instant global communications, we now see and hear about bad things from all over the world. The earthquake in China would have only been a small blurb in a western paper 50 years ago and would have been almost unknown in the western world 100 years ago. Darfur wouldn't have been an issue to anyone outside of Africa 100 years ago. I would say that rather than turning a blind eye to atrocities, we are paying ever closer attention. The total numbers of atrocities may be going up, but the number per capita is going down, after we reach our global peak population (predicted for 2070) then the amount of global violence should decline as humans become ever more civilized and our populations slowly decline.
  • 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 ;)

  • Sick (Score:2)

    by tsa ( 15680 )
    You must be quite sick in the head to come up with these things.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by somersault ( 912633 )
      Whenever I used a frisby I tend to think how it would be cool to put knives around the edge and let them flick out from the centrifugal force. I am not an especially violent person (though I do enjoy martial arts movies and occasionally martial arts as well), I just think it would be an interesting weapon :p Frisbees are great fun on their own, and very intuitive to curve and direct once you have your throwing techniques down properly, so they'd probably make pretty good delivery systems for explosive and s

  • Not very complete (Score:5, Informative)

    by paganizer ( 566360 ) <thegrove1@NospaM.hotmail.com> on Saturday May 17, 2008 @02:45AM (#23444034) Homepage Journal
    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.
    • Exactly where in Heinlein's Future History line do we see the Silbervogel?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jez9999 ( 618189 )
      Also nanotechnology, and very toxic substances. Imagine if the 9/11 guys had managed to inject a large dose of ricin into the twin towers' ventilation system.

      • Re:Not very complete (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 17, 2008 @05:47AM (#23444584)
        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.

        • Re:Not very complete (Score:5, Insightful)

          by somersault ( 912633 ) on Saturday May 17, 2008 @07:39AM (#23444938) Homepage Journal
          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'..
          • LBJ started the War on Poverty [wikipedia.org] back in 1964... We've spent trillions of dollars, and employed millions of "soldiers" (government employees) and by all measures [wikipedia.org] it's been an abject failure.
          • You want to invade Somalia or something?

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Dutch Gun ( 899105 )

            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'..

            As much as I appreciate the idealistic sentiments of what you're saying, I can't agree with how you dismissively put 'terror' in quotes. The collapse of the WTC towers and crashing of those planes was undoubtedly pretty damn terrifying to those trapped inside. A bomb exploding on a train, or bus, or at a nightclub is undoubtedly terrifying as well. These were all real events that happened to real people, and they were perpetrated deliberately by others with a political or religious agenda.

            I'm not saying

            • Re:Not very complete (Score:4, Insightful)

              by somersault ( 912633 ) on Saturday May 17, 2008 @01:50PM (#23447046) Homepage Journal
              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.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by grassy_knoll ( 412409 )
          So, what you're saying is controlling access to food and medical care can be considered a weapon.

          Like in Somalia [unicef.org], where UNICEF is prevented from providing aid to some of the "conflict affected areas".
      • I would have thought the point was more to take out the stock exchange and screw up America's economy, but I guess taking out people working in the towers would have been a bit more of a setback than just taking out the computers, as the computers have backups (I wonder if the terrorists even knew that!). Just killing thousands of people seems to be a bit of a pointless exercise in itself.
        • Just killing thousands of people seems to be a bit of a pointless exercise in itself.

          Unless there's more to this than meets the casual eye, see the link in my sig for the movie Zeitgeist. Rallying the support of people to start a war and make a profit might just be worth a "few" lives for some people.
    • I know it is fictional, but, I've always wanted to see the "gun" as described in the novel, Logan's Run. Not that pussy one in the movie, but the one from the book with the different charges...especiallly the 'homer' that would home in on body heat, and when it hit, would unravel your nervous systems. Remember, the homer never misses....

      :-)

      Damn...I gotta dig that book out again. SOOOO much better than the stupid movie....

  • Not mentioned in this (Score:5, Funny)

    by Konster ( 252488 ) on Saturday May 17, 2008 @02:59AM (#23444074)
    The Bombarang was developed in the 1970's, and while technically a success, development on the project was canceled due to unforeseen consequences.

  • You mean Cruise munition isnt the Gay Bomb? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    C'mon, you werent expecting one Tom Cruise/gay/phallic symbol joke?

  • They Missed Some (Score:5, Funny)

    by joelleo ( 900926 ) on Saturday May 17, 2008 @03:11AM (#23444100)
    21. The Slashdot - Unleashing hordes of un-/poorly-informed armchair scientists|lawyers|doctors|engineers|*, causing chaos and confusion with their variety of often conflicting and/or innacurate information, recipes, opinion, straw-men, and/or social advice.

  • Pigeon Guided Bombs in World War II (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MichaelCrawford ( 610140 ) on Saturday May 17, 2008 @03:15AM (#23444104) Homepage Journal
    My grandfather, who served in the Navy during WWII, told me that pigeons were trained to peck at images of ships on a screen. The trained pigeons were then used to guide bombs dropped on Japanese ships.

    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.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by fodi ( 452415 )

      My grandfather, who served in the Navy during WWII, told me that pigeons were trained to peck at images of ships on a screen...
      ...now, pull my finger. Hahaha!
      • I read that something similar was trialled, but never saw action. Presumably this is because it didn't work, rather than for humanitarian (or pigeonitarian) reasons.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by FinchWorld ( 845331 )
      I believe they worked to some extent to in testing, though I don't think they were ever deployed. Though from it they learned they you could train them to tap when they see a certain colour, so they were (and maybe still are) used to find people in orange jackets lost at see or similar.

    • Re:Pigeon Guided Bombs in World War II (Score:4, Informative)

      by RDW ( 41497 ) on Saturday May 17, 2008 @05:11AM (#23444450)
      Mentioned here, along with the cat bomb, anti-tank dog and exploding rat (no, really):

      http://www.oddee.com/item_91684.aspx [oddee.com]

  • Crowd control? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 17, 2008 @03:17AM (#23444124)
    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.

  • Bat bomb (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Haoie ( 1277294 )
    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.

  • Hey (Score:5, Funny)

    by kitsunewarlock ( 971818 ) on Saturday May 17, 2008 @03:35AM (#23444160) Journal
    The gay bomb was fabulous!

  • Upkeep - Bouncing Bomb? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Richard_at_work ( 517087 ) on Saturday May 17, 2008 @03:45AM (#23444188)
    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 [bbc.co.uk]

  • Heinlein quote... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Majin Bubu ( 455010 ) on Saturday May 17, 2008 @04:06AM (#23444240)
    There are no dangerous weapons, only dangerous men.

  • When... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Sobieski ( 1032500 )
    ...are we gonna get a newspost about weapons on slashdot that DOESN'T mention "the gay bomb"?

  • They forgot "The Funniest Joke in the World" (Score:5, Funny)

    by BuGless ( 31232 ) on Saturday May 17, 2008 @04:48AM (#23444370) Homepage
    By Monty Python: The Funniest Joke in the World [youtube.com]
  • 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?

    • Re:The Rods from God (Score:5, Interesting)

      by the_other_chewey ( 1119125 ) on Saturday May 17, 2008 @05:45AM (#23444576)
      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.
    • Right! A rocket engine will be required to slow it down so the new, more elliptical, orbit intersects the earth at the target coordinates. Probably a steering rocket will be required as well. I guess that it will take quite a while before the munition impacts and quite a few of the satellite pairs will need to be deployed to ensure that they will be positioned to hit a target within several hours of the decision to fire. So this weapon will be good only against stationary targets.

  • What, no Neutron Bomb? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by The Real Nem ( 793299 ) on Saturday May 17, 2008 @06:17AM (#23444668) Homepage
    I guess Atomic Bomb kinda covers it [wikipedia.org], but still, hardly a respectable list.

  • Those WMD in Iraq (Score:5, Funny)

    by Koohoolinn ( 721622 ) on Saturday May 17, 2008 @06:44AM (#23444742) Homepage
    Those WMDs that Iraq had were spooky, you couldn't even see them!

  • The Spam Bomb (Score:4, Funny)

    by hyperz69 ( 1226464 ) on Saturday May 17, 2008 @07:17AM (#23444860)
    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 ;)
  • 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...

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Haeleth ( 414428 )

      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'?

      Fallout. Radiation sickness. Conventional bombs can create just as much devastation, but they either kill you outright or they don't. What people don't like about nuclear weapons is the idea that their effects remain as a silent killer for generations to come.

      In reality, they clearly aren't as bad as all that; Hiroshima ce

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by canajin56 ( 660655 )

        In addition, modern nukes are much cleaner than the dirty bombs that were dropped on Japan. Hydrogen bombs actually have almost no long term fallout. Unfortunately they never use straight hydrogen bombs, they are always part of the three stage "Trinity" Thermonuclear devices, which are quite dirty due to the third stage.

        What's scarry is of course, that the first stage of a "trinity" device is small enough to fit in a briefcase, and level a city block. But that has nothing to do with it being nuclear

  • No. 19 (Score:2, Funny)

    by Freeside1 ( 1140901 )
    while scary, the airborne laser has only been used to fill a house with popcorn.

  • Geez. This article is naive. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Fantastic Lad ( 198284 ) on Saturday May 17, 2008 @08:50AM (#23445282)
    There are some real weapons which are far scarier.

    The Thermobarbaric bomb. [bbsnews.net]

    Works the same way dynamite kills fish in a lake. Liquefies your organs. Nasty stuff.

    Also, they left out cluster bombs. [digg.com] --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

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by MtViewGuy ( 197597 )
      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

  • F-Bombs (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I hate those fucking things.
  • 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 h

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