Pentagon Developed 'Laughing Bullets' 286
plasmadroid writes "It might sound like a joke, but documents unearthed by New Scientist show that the Pentagon actually funded research into 'non-lethal' bullets that would also hit a target with a dose of laughing gas. That way, they'd not only be stunned but incapacitated by fits of giggles. Another idea was to put stink bombs inside rubber bullets. I guess it would work, but the idea of crowds of rioters giggling uncontrollably while being pelted with rubber bullets is truly bizarre..."
Why do we need the gas? (Score:5, Funny)
That's just the way we roll, in my hood.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Why do we need the gas? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Why do we need the gas? (Score:5, Funny)
Wenn ist das Nunstruck git und Slotermeyer? Ja!...
Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, but.... (Score:2)
(Disclaimer: Warning, read the quote one single (1) word at the time. Having a glimpse on the next work could lead to hospitalization for several weeks)
The only problem with the funiest joke in the world [wikipedia.org], is that once it is translated from German to anything else, it becomes less succesful even when played on the radio, shouted from a minaret, sung as lyrics in songs on P2P or planted inside porn pictures.
We must
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
And one says 'Ouch, that never used to be there!'
Re:Why do we need the gas? (Score:5, Funny)
freedom? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:freedom? (Score:5, Funny)
LOL
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re:freedom? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:freedom? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
But to say America is more free then Britain what a load of bollocks. in the Vietnam era blacks had no real rights
You mean they couldn't vote? Couldn't hold public office? Couldn't own property? You're confusing Jim Crow with Slavery.
protesters got shot pretty often during anti Vietnam protests
Your grasp of history is appalling. Try once, at Kent State University, in 1970.
now they have 'freedom of speech' on lock in such a way that anyone who tries to express free speech is ignored by the media and labelled a nut job, a idiot, a moron liberal, etc.
Are you kidding? The media loves protesters. The media loves any sort of circus. I challenge you to produce a link to a single mainstream media story that labels a protesting person or group "idiot", "nutjob", or "moron liberal".
Freedom of speech only matters when your rich and powerful.
Well yeah, that's always been largely the case. Nobody cares about the poo
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There aren't more than a handful of people in Congress that don't seem to be completely corrupt. And I'm not too sure about them.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Ok, then (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:freedom? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:freedom? (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Would you rather they just used lead bullets when rioters take to the streets?
America is a very peaceful country -- we don't have "rioters taking the streets" every day, or every year, or even every decade. When was the last significant riot in America? . So "Rioters" is a straw-man argument. So why spend huge amounts of time, energy, money on a rare problem that actually costs less than the solution?
"Political Protesters" is the target of these non-lethal systems. As Americans get more and more unhappy with the direction the country is taking, and it is becoming increasingly clea
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The last one of the top of my head was approximately two months ago at the May Day immigration reform demonstration in Los Angeles. It wasn't really a riot because the protesters weren't violent, it was more of a "run the fuck away from the cops because they decided to start shooting at us". However I think it counts because the cops employed tear gas and rubber bullets.
There has probably been a more recent one that I just haven't heard about. There have definitely been larger, more violent protests in other Western countries since then (think G8)
I was actually present near the May Day rally (my wife works for one of the organizers). It wasn't even close to a riot. Heck, by your own admission, the May Day incident wasn't a riot. Hell, it was hardly even a good head busting! The only reason it got so much coverage was because the LAPD had the audacity to hit reporters. And no, you cannot define a riot based on the police firing tear gas and rubber bullets. A riot is determined by the action of the people the cops are firing at. In the absence of vio
Bullshit!! (Score:2, Insightful)
In other words, we have so many resources, we can spare it for military purposes. Don't forget, the US military is the de-facto security force for NATO, the UN, and countries like Japan and Korea.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
...Oblig (Score:5, Funny)
I feel safer already (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder who the lucky contractor is who is going to be making a fortune off this one? Must be nice to make big money and never have to deliver anything which actually works. We have a military that was having to jerry-rig their own humvee armour and raise money from their parents to buy decent body armour--while contractors like this play around with nitrous bullets and loudspeakers.
Would it even work? (Score:5, Insightful)
Laughing gas not only doesn't make people actually laugh, and certainly not in the minute quantities you can fit in a rubber bullet (doubly so considering that you'll aim at the chest, not pump the gas over their nose), it gets people euphoric (a sort of high, basically), might even cause slight halucinations, and it dulls the sensation of pain.
So shoot enough of these in an angry crowd, and now you have a crowd that's (A) angrier, since you just shot at them, (B) manic enough to do dumber things than normally, and (C) a lot less sensitive to pain. Just so, you know, they won't be as deterred by further rubber bullets or tear gas or a police batton. It sounds to me like just what you need to turn some unruly demonstrators into an outright riot. Or an outright riot into hell broken loose.
Especially B scares me. Being high even on nitrous oxide might just impair people's judgment just that tiny little bit needed to do something really dumb. Like "heehee, let's throw a big rock at the cops." Or "heehee, let's get their guns and shoot a bystander." Sure, it's no LSD, but we're talking the kind of situations where it often takes just a spark to go downhill fast. You might need just one guy getting over his inhibitions or thinking he saw or heard the awfully wrong thing, to spark everyone else into going berserk.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
It's a nitrogen compound. Lots of explosive potential. Indeed it can be made by carefully heating ammonium nitrate (see McVeigh, Timothy). But if you apply too much heat, the nitrous oxide can blow up too (see Oklahoma City). How you'd get that stuff to survive a bullet-ride intact is a bit of a mystery to me.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Imagine su
Re: (Score:2)
Some guys in college used to buy the little 10 gram BB-type cylinders of it and release it into a balloon and then inhale the contents; they'd be really wasted for like 60 seconds and then fine.
I can only imagine it being marginally workable if the "bullets" were large (along the lines of a 12 gauge slug) and the g
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, when I read the article, I wondered why they don't use the same delivery method they use
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Non-lethal weapons are hardly a waste of money. Nor are they really intended to protect anybody but the people they're being fired at. That's the point - society has all the "protection" it needs provided by police and military using lead bullets, but are we still so barbaric that we want police to shoot lethal weapons into a group of college kids who had a
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
Re: (Score:2)
Safe for entire range? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Safe for entire range? (Score:4, Informative)
And please, don't misunderstand the non-lethal aspect of the technology. Non-lethal doesn't mean harmless. These rounds would likely cause bruises and sometimes breaks of the skin. I guess it's still better then being dead.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Acquantances of Victoria Snelgrove [wikipedia.org] might disagree with your definition of non-lethal.
Re:Safe for entire range? (Score:5, Insightful)
If we were to define non-lethal as not possible to kill someone with, we couldn't even define marshmallows as non-lethal due to their choking hazard.
I would still rather get shot by a bean bag or teargas dispenser than a bullet or lead slug. Sure, it could kill me, but it is much less likely to.
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is that in any situation where they would have shot you, now that they have non-lethal weapons, they're.....still going to shoot you.
So comparing the effects of lethal and non-lethal weapons is a pointless exercise, don't you think? You could compare non-lethal weapons to other methods of crowd control, or to negotiations. That might make more sense.
Re: (Score:2)
As for other non-lethal weapons, they all have their pros and cons. Water cannons, for example, can drown people. Tear gas can have horrible long-term effects on people who can't get away from it or where it's not sufficiently ventilated. Bean bags and batons can crush bones, wind pipes, and put out eyes. Tazers can be lethal to people with pacemakers or weak hearts.
Even so, there are conditions where each one of these options is the optimal choice. Even when applied
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
This is exactly why police departments, etc. don't ever refer to these things as "non-lethal" (at least not in an official manner). They're properly called "LESS-lethal."
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So, sure, you're right but the overall use of these technologies are certainly much better then an outright firefight or some of the more physical methods used in the past. If it weren't for the development o
Re: (Score:2)
In this context, shouldn't it be gas masks?
Re: (Score:2)
Good call on the Simunition. IIRC, they do require modifications to some weapons ( semi-automatic pistols require weaker recoil springs to handle the lower pressure rounds and still cycle ) so it seems less likely that overpenetration ( i.e. internal organ damage / broken bones ) would be a problem.
Perhaps a similar paintball formula might be useful. Instead of paint, something mixed with dimethyl sulfoxide ( like GHB, Rohypnol, et. al. ) might make an
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Also the range could be set as 10 meters to 200 meters...
Also 'harmlessly' does not mean 'without effect'. You can propel anything at 100 MPH and it's going to cause some damage....
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Almost all bullets have a 'jacket' which protects them from deforming during the discharge and focuses the explosion. It gets cast off almost immediately.
OK, I just burned 5 mod points by responding to this, but, What the Hell are you talking about? Jacketed bullets don't "cast off" anything. The copper jacket is to keep it from deforming in the barrel and in flight, and to control expansion when it hits the target.
The only thing you could possibly mean is a "sabot", which is a usually plastic "shoe" type thing that is very occasionally used to protect the bullet from the rifling of the barrel, and that does fall off early in the flight of the bullet. B
The Joker (Score:5, Funny)
Paintball fills (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
I live in Deep Ellum, an arts/entertainment district in Dallas. The cops here have used mace filled paint balls for crowd control in the past. After last call the clubs would empty into the streets and everyone would just be milling about drunk and ready to fight ( we use to have a pretty bad gang problem in the neighborhood ). The cops would roll up on bikes and shoot a barrage of mace at everyone's feet to get them moving. mace sucks.
Reminds me of the gay bomb they wanted to make (Score:5, Interesting)
Now THAT had me laughing ... except for the price tag - $7.5 million. I guess they wanted to add a whole new meaning to the term "comrades-in-arms."
http://cbs5.com/topstories/local_story_159222541.h tml [cbs5.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Why would that change anything? Seems that someone at Ohio Air Force lab hasn't heard of Alexander the Great or The Sacred Band of Thebes [wikipedia.org]. Now IF a gay bomb could be developed, I think the resulting gay army would probably be more effective against those homophobes in Pen
Re: (Score:2)
OMG! I can't shoot him. He's beautiful!
Re: (Score:2)
I see it as a symptom of the scientific illiteracy pervasive in our culture, which apparently penetrates the military and our "intelligence" agencies to some degree.
We pay for an educational system does tries only weakly to teach of vital critical thinking skills and the basic methodologies and facts of science (and in some ways
Re: (Score:2)
Think of the stakes involved. I'm sure some portion of their budget is slated for "very benefical but very unlikely" projects. For instance, if they thought they could make a satellite that could read thoughts from space, and it only cost $15 million to run a feasibility study, what % chance do you think they would need to make it a wise investment?
I'd probably say that ability is worth (depending on the accuracy) at least $60 billion, so at least 0.025% chance of success. When you think like that, it's
Re: (Score:2)
Laughing Gas is a misnomer (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually quite a good idea for a payload if the delivery system works.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Hee Hee Hee (Score:5, Funny)
Tranquilizers (Score:2)
[1] Almost, but not quite, entirely unlike being drunk.
Re: (Score:2)
"Laughing gas" isn't (Score:5, Informative)
Failed Stink Bomb Bullets (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Heath Robinson invented this in 1914 (Score:2)
Alternative to gas bullets... (Score:2)
Laughing Gas Does Not Generally Make You Laugh! (Score:2)
By the way, in light doses N2O is an analgesic. That's right, help the enemy endure their aches and pains!
Geez we are talking bright here.
Re: (Score:2)
Ob(ligatory) Monty Python (Score:3, Funny)
"All through the winter of '43 we had translators working, in joke-proof conditions, to try and produce a German version of the joke. They worked on one word each for greater safety. One of them saw two words of the joke and spent several weeks in hospital. But apart from that things went pretty quickly, and we soon had the joke by January, in a form which our troops couldn't understand but which the Germans could".
Re: (Score:2)
"My dog has no nose"
"How does he smell?"
"Badly!"
Oh great (Score:2)
Ahh.. Slashdot viral marketing.. (Score:4, Funny)
I submitted a similar story that got rejected (Score:2)
The Pentagon sought to build a "gay bomb" that would turn enemy soldiers into homosexuals and thus reduce a potent military force into a twisting pile of sweating, spurting young men.
Anyone else seem concerned that the Pentagon is hitting up the Joker for ideas?
What was the bomb filled up with? (Score:2)
Prior Art (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IysnS5wO60g [youtube.com]
Stop that project! Killing people is GREAT!????? (Score:3, Insightful)
For the sarcasm-impaired: The previous paragraph is obviously lunacy. Since it's lunacy, I think having non-lethal alternatives is a GOOD idea. Foes of yesterday may be friends tomorrow (think Japan of WW II, etc.), so even if you're in a war, you may NOT need to kill your foe. It'd be great to avoid killing in many cases. Wouldn't it be great if there were LESS carnage in the future, not MORE? Wouldn't it be great if after a confrontation, most wives / children / parents got their loved ones back?!?
Now this particular approach may not be very effective; maybe another one needs to be investigated instead. The term "non-lethal" is misleading; they DO kill occasionally (they just kill less often), and since they kill sometimes, they need to be reserved for serious situations the way lethal approaches are. That said, if you do not NEED to kill all your foes, having a "mostly non-lethal" alternative would be WAY better than the "mostly lethal" approach we have now.
Yes, there's a risk that non-lethal approaches would be employed to create a police state. But you can have police states with lethal approaches too, and in fact, I'd argue that lethal approaches are more effective at countering civilians. Dead civilians don't try again. If there's a non-lethal approach, the civilians can try again later, something you can't say about lethal approaches.
Re:Stop that project! Killing people is GREAT!???? (Score:2)
Yes, shoot-to-injure is a great strategy in traditional warfare -- your enemy must expend resources on treating injured personnel, plus injured or disabled troops returning home are a great morale buster.
I disagree. If police can use lethal force, there is much more objection to the use of that force -- this leads
In addition.... (Score:4, Funny)
Hard to control dosage (Score:2)
Disappointment awaits. (Score:2)
Two Words: Emo Bullets (Score:2)
We Could Use This Against Jihadis (Score:2, Insightful)
Lord knows they need a sense of humor.
Of Course (Score:2)
"Don't try anything funny, or you'll be laughing for sure"
Let's see, the Islamic terrorists are working on shemical and nuclear weapons and we're working on -- ways to make them laugh and become gay? What then, are they supposed to want to stop fighting and start redecorating their houses?
Try as I might, I just can't see John Wayne hosing down a group with a bunch of funny bullets.
"Stop right there, partner, or I'm going to make you laugh like yo