Job Discussion Forums

[dyak]

From the BBC website...

US military pondered love not war

The US military investigated building a "gay bomb", which would make enemy soldiers "sexually irresistible" to each other, government papers say.

Other weapons that never saw the light of day include one to make soldiers obvious by their bad breath.

The US defence department considered various non-lethal chemicals meant to disrupt enemy discipline and morale.

The 1994 plans were for a six-year project costing $7.5m, but they were never pursued.

The US Air Force Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio, sought Pentagon funding for research into what it called "harassing, annoying and 'bad guy'-identifying chemicals".

The plans were obtained under the US Freedom of Information by the Sunshine Project, a group which monitors research into chemical and biological weapons.

'Who? Me?'

The plan for a so-called "love bomb" envisaged an aphrodisiac chemical that would provoke widespread homosexual behaviour among troops, causing what the military called a "distasteful but completely non-lethal" blow to morale.

Scientists also reportedly considered a "sting me/attack me" chemical weapon to attract swarms of enraged wasps or angry rats towards enemy troops.

A substance to make the skin unbearably sensitive to sunlight was also pondered.

Another idea was to develop a chemical causing "severe and lasting halitosis", so that enemy forces would be obvious even when they tried to blend in with civilians.

In a variation on that idea, researchers pondered a "Who? Me?" bomb, which would simulate flatulence in enemy ranks.

Indeed, a "Who? Me?" device had been under consideration since 1945, the government papers say.

However, researchers concluded that the premise for such a device was fatally flawed because "people in many areas of the world do not find faecal odour offensive, since they smell it on a regular basis".

Captain Dan McSweeney of the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate at the Pentagon said the defence department receives "literally hundreds" of project ideas, but that "none of the systems described in that [1994] proposal have been developed".

He told the BBC: "It's important to point out that only those proposals which are deemed appropriate, based on stringent human effects, legal, and international treaty reviews are considered for development or acquisition."

Now I'm truly scared...

[matttheboy]

Heard about this on the radio yesterday-seems a pretty good idea to me...i mean, who's going to have enough time for fighting when there are so many pretty men around...?

The question is...would the attacking soldiers have the heart to shoot or bayonet the multitude of star-crossed lovers? Shooting a man with his pants down- i'm sure there something in the Geneva Convention about that...

The biggest problem would be a breakdown in communications resulting in a gay-bomb being dropped at the same time as a halitosis-bomb. But i guess that if it's just sex the men are after they wouldn't be facing in the same direction...

[Ben Round de Bloc]

A flatulent, sunburned soldier with bad breath who's sexually irresistible to others of the same gender and attracts wasps and rats! Who could ask for anything more?

[Guy Courchesne]

Gotta love stories like these. My question is...how does one go about sending these proposals up to the Pentagon? I'm sure we here in Dave's could come up with some interesting non-lethal weapons.

[dajiang]

I think we've heard of the 'world's deadliest joke'?

Invented by the British during WW1 to wipe out the Germans in their trenches. It took scores of translators to translate the original into German as they all died of laughter, never writing down more than a few words before they perished.

http://www.mwscomp.com/python.html

Other weapons:

[twoface]

And what if one of those gay bombs misfired and contaminated your own troops eh? If would be just like Nam all over again with thousands of you Americans running to Canada where love is free! I don't think so.

[guty]

In that case I guess blue-on-blue would become pink-on-pink.