Most Psychopathic Weapon System Ever Designed

Looking at the history of weapon systems, it seems like there isn't much that is off limits. If you can conceive of something really dreadful – something capable of inspiring intense fear – it is by definition a candidate for a weapon.

My vote for the most psychopathic weapon system ever designed would be the US Air Force Supersonic Low Altitude Missile (SLAM), a precursor to the modern nuclear tipped cruise missile. The SLAM weapon system (also called "Project Pluto") was proposed in the 1950's, underwent a complete design cycle, but was never built.

What made this weapon particularly innovative (and horrific) was that the missile itself was nuclear powered, and contained a large and unshielded fission reactor. It could be launched via solid fuel boosters, and then just meander around the planet for days or weeks until it finally found its target.

The missile, which was about the size of a locomotive engine, included a 500 Megawatt nuclear reactor (about half the entire power output of Hoover Dam). The reactor would superheat the air, and use the air expansion as propulsion, permitting the missile to achieve supersonic speeds. The range of the missile was about 100,000 miles, or about four times the circumference of the earth.

In order to keep the weight down, the nuclear reactor was unshielded. This provided an alternative to just bombing your enemy – you could just fly around a target area, at tree-top level, and irradiate the enemy into submission with lethal nuclear fallout. Also, you could crash the missile into a target, which would contaminate and poison vast areas of enemy territory.

Some scientists speculated that just the shockwave and heat from the fission reactor alone (as the SLAM streaked through the skies at 300 feet above ground, at four times the speed of sound) would be hugely lethal.

Coupled with its payload of sixteen 1 megaton hydrogen bombs, which could be lobbed off at various targets during its mission, SLAM was a very terrifying weapon.

You can read more about the SLAM project here.

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The SLAM project was over by 1964. On reflection, it was a very weird and tense time in history. I think it is important to consider the general mindspace of those that thought this up, and not judge them too harshly.

Any comments? In all of recorded history, what would top this?

(Edited to adjust down some statistics for conservative accuracy.)

[edit on 11-1-2008 by Buck Division]

whats the chances of putting one of those reactors into my wheelie bin. it get' s to be such a chore sometimes.

Originally posted by Buck Division
Looking at the history of weapon systems, it seems like there isn't much that is off limits.

Here are a couple of ATS threads, dating back a few years, on the SLAM / Pluto weapon system, as discussed in my OP: here, and also here, as well as here.

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I’m waiting to see if any of the ATS Gurus can meet my challenge for finding a more disturbing weapon system than SLAM. In particular, this morning I’ve been looking at the Cobalt Bomb as a possible candidate. It seems to be a particularly heinous weapon system. However, I can’t seem to find any good info that indicates anyone planned to make (or actually made) anything like a Cobalt weapon – it seems more hypothetical than actual – the stuff of science fiction rather than fact.

Perhaps nobody wants to reply to this thread because the whole subject is too disturbing? I can understand that; I lost some sleep last night envisioning SLAM weapons poisoning the planet. All I can say here is that it is important to look at this clinically, as a cautionary story about what humans are capable of creating.

Achieving that understanding may necessarily entail generating a certain amount of negative energy. However, I am encouraged by the motto of ATS with respect to ignorance.

[edit on 12-1-2008 by Buck Division]

Ever see that anti-tank bomb we developed that drops a bunch of little bomblets? Each one is basically a shaped-charge and a copper plate with some simple guidance circuitry. They find the heat signature of a vehicle engine and drive a molten copper dart through it.

The moment I saw that weapon in action I thought to myself
"Hey! If you can use infrared cameras to find a tank engine, why can't you use infrared cameras to find the heat emitted from a person's retina?"

In that moment I created, on paper, the most disgusting weapon anyone has ever imagined. The thing would be able to destroy an entire platoon with one bomb.

It would simply be dropped from a UAV over a group of soldiers. The cameras would take hundreds of photos each second. Using DSP software designed for the task, the bomblets would start looking for pairs of warm spots about 3 inches apart and maneuver themselves over the spots. When they are close enough to the target, the explosive would fire and drive a molten copper dart through helmets, skulls, and all. There would be no warning for the soldiers on the ground because the bomblets would detonate at the same time.

The really inhuman, or psychopathic, part is when considers that what works well for platoons on patrol will work even better against civilians in cities. Replace the act of dropping one bomb from a UAV with dropping hundreds of thousands (ie. millions of bomblets) from strategic bombers and you can depopulate an entire country.

Jon

[edit on 1.12.2008 by Voxel]

Originally posted by Voxel
The really inhuman, or psychopathic, part is when considers that what works well for platoons on patrol will work even better against civilians in cities...you can depopulate an entire country.

Yeah -- that's something pretty fearful. Uhhh -- may it is better to just embrace rather than deny ignorance after all. (Why did I start this thread again?)

Seriously, this is the kind of weapon probably sitting on the shelf somewhere. Very likely, the drawings and production plans are in some locked filing cabinet, deep within the pentagon.

Imagine if this weapon was to be used against the USA -- do you think we would hesitate in launching some SLAM / Pluto weapons in retaliation?

Great post (if entirely gruesome). You get a star, such as it is.

What about the weapon from the movie the core….where it makes…I think it makes earth quakes or something…..provided it doesn’t ‘kill’ the earth like it did in the movie….

The ultimate weapon is mind control. If you fear any weapon more than mind control, there is no point.

Originally posted by Buck Division
I’ve been looking at the Cobalt Bomb as a possible candidate.

I’ve researched the Cobalt Bomb over the last few days. It is a horrifically evil weapon system, fairly easy to make by any country that has moderately advanced nuclear weaponry.

An interesting ATS thread on the Cobalt Bomb can be found here...

Cobalt Bombs can definitely be classified as a “doomsday” weapons, designed to emit vast and deadly amounts of radiation for long periods of time, making the earth uninhabitable. Fallout shelters are useless against this weapon, unless you have five or more years of underground food and water.

Unlike the “neutron bomb”, which emits a huge blast of radiation that almost immediately dissipates, the Cobalt Bomb spreads deadly radiation that lasts for YEARS, resulting in an astonishingly real doomsday scenario, of the type commonly relegated to science fiction movies.

If you want to disturb yourself even more, Google "radiation sickness". That should provide some context for this thread.

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As far as I can tell, except for some tests by the UK in Australia, this type of weapon was never produced. I want to believe that is true. But given human nature, this seems to me the type of weapon that might be a cosigner to the "Mutually Assured Distruction" doctrine. As such, it might exist, but be held in secret.

There were rumours that the Soviets had plans for synchronous detonation of very powerful thermonuclear weapons planted in long chains in the Atlantic, along the US shores. The idea was to create a massive tsunami wave to swallow a large fraction of the US (and of course Africa and Europe as well, but to lesser degree). I think that one takes the cake.

Jon you did come up with something pretty sick and I do know about those Anti Tank bomblets. However, that is not devastation and despair on the scale of Nuclear explosions and radiation (x 16)!

Hydrogen bombs can be arbitrarily large.

I remember reading a thought experiment about a gigaton bomb.

Essentially, it would be a hydrogen bomb that was so large physically that it would probably have to be towed into an enemy port as a submersible barge behind a submarine, however it would lay waste to an extremely large region - it would closer in explosive power to a medium sized asteroid impact than a normal hydrogen bomb.

reply to post by Voxel


dude... now you're scaring me...

Originally posted by xmotex
Hydrogen bombs can be arbitrarily large.

Arbitrarily large thermonuclear bombs....

This was the premise for the movie Dr. Strangelove, which came out in the 1964. It is a great movie. It is truly one of my favorites!

But it is based upon a disturbing and little known fact:

While there is a definite limit to the size and destructive force of a standard “fission” weapons (A-Bombs) there is NO THEORETICAL limit to the size of a thermonuclear “fusion” weapons (H-Bombs), except the cost, and the ability to deliver the weapon to its target.

In order to make an arbitrarily large fusion bomb, you just keep adding “stages” to the bomb, where each stage multiplies the destructive power.

Two-stage thermonuclear weapons are (apparently) the mainstay of our nuclear deterrent.

In 1960, the USA created a “three-stage” nuclear bomb. It had a yield of 25 Megatons. It was the largest nuclear weapon ever created by the USA, and was called the MK-41.

A picture of this most destructive weapon is available here.

According to the article at the above link, the USA made approximately 500 of these bombs, before retiring them in 1962.

I wonder if anyone ever created a 10 or 20 stage thermonuclear weapon? Or a 1K stage weapon, perhaps? (This is probably doubtful, because it would be too heavy to transport by air, as you say in your post, Xmotex.)

If you read the article at the above link carefully, you will see that there were two versions of the MK-41 produced – a “clean” version, and a “dirty” version.

Yes -- the people working on that project were clearly psychopathic. What were they thinking?

[edit on 25-1-2008 by Buck Division]

Originally posted by rat256
reply to post by Voxel

 

dude... now you're scaring me...

Yeah, I still think Voxel is winning the contest here with his anti-personnel device.

I am sure that somewhere this already exists, along with a report called "A Practical Method For Achieving Genocide".

This weapon plan, including detailed manufacturing schematics, is probably filed in the WGD (Weapon of Global Destruction) office, in the innermost sanctum of the USA Pentagon.

I wouldn't be that surprised if this was really true.

a reply to: Buck Division

well what would happen is some one tunneled into yellostone caldera and set off a 1 to 5 megaton nuke inside the caldera cap? i expect a eruption like that would devastate a large section of north america when mt st. helens blew we had ash lading on the cars from it in wisconsin.

a reply to: proteus33

Nice SLAM res.

I can't believe this is a real conspiracy. It's just not possible. If they were considering 'testing' one and everyone was hesitant, it was for the good reason that it would explode. I find it unlikely they could launch something that heavy secretly. I find it unlikely that the reactor onboard could actively power it's own weight. I find it unlikely that we had the technology to remotely navigate a rocket, when we barely have drone tech today. I find it unlikely that something that dense and heavy would be capable of navigable flight. I find it unlikely that such a thing could get off the ground considering you would need something 10 times the size of the nuclear reactor on board to dissipate heat and act as a radiator. Literally, 90 percent of this rocket would be the radiator. I don't think something like that could fly unless it was housed in a plane the size of several blocks. Definitely not a 'rocket'.

Pretty interesting though. Also the entire idea is so unwieldy and cost and material inefficient that it's simply more effective as an idea that you leak, rather than something you are actually pursuing.

Without pointing to a specific weapon, the entire mindset of warfare is pretty sick. The ideal weapon is not one that kills, but rather inflicts serious but non-lethal injury. If you can blow off a few limbs or blind someone that is tactically better than killing someone. Instead of taking one enemy out of the war by killing him you take out several by severely wounding one and forcing others to his aide. Not to mention demoralizing those whom witness the injury firsthand. And we wonder why so many soldiers suffer from PTSD...

a reply to: Vroomfondel

Sure, let's not blow off SLAM because...of PTSD. Why are you going to throw PTSD into this?

BTW, we actually have a thing called a Hellfire rocket. It's a pretty great piece of tech...but it's 'navigable' in that it has fiber cables connected to the host for 'targeting purposes', but realistically it's like a couple thousand feet worth of banding wire whipping around behind the small rocket. The wire is the destructive piece, and is intended to eviscerate people enmasse. This is how it was designed. It's probably against the Geneva Conventions. It sucks we make stuff like this.

We classify it as an anti-tank rocket. It's not a good anti-tank rocket...it will really mess a human being up that is nearby. It's a gross weapon that DOES exist, rather than this fake thing.

Thomas Pynchon is a fascinating author. He is extremely secretive; his seminal [I]Gravity's Rainbow[/I] contained a great deal of technical info on the V-2 rocket used in WWII, including banalities of its refueling systems and the crew formations used to deploy the weapons, even the factories where SS prisoners assembled the bombs...

Pynchon mentioned several times that on paper, scientists of the era referred to the (then theoretical) atomic bomb as an "X-ray bomb." The primary radiation they could foresee was X-rays, with other wavelengths being an afterthought.

Pynchon claimed that the German bomb-building attempt was overseen by a conglomerate called IG FARBEN (translates something like "Colors, incorporated". IG had developed modern paints.). . In the novel, IG FARBEN stopped development of the German "X-ray bomb" when they realized that it would cause permanent blindness on a continent-wide scale. Blindness would have hurt the market for paint...

I've always wondered if there was any truth to that plot-line in the book...

So the Death Star is off the table with the Star Breaker and Infinity Stone Gauntlet?

I'd say the russian 100 mega ton torpedo.