The 10 Most Outrageous Military Experiments

Here is a list of some of the most ludicrous, but occasionally brilliant experiments carried out by military institutions over the years. Some you will most likely have heard of, but other will shock and surprise.

10. Seeing Infrared

The U.S. Navy wanted to boost sailors' night vision so they could spot infrared signal lights during World War II. However, infrared wavelengths are normally beyond the sensitivity of human eyes. Scientists knew vitamin A contained part of a specialized light-sensitive molecule in the eye's receptors, and wondered if an alternate form of vitamin A could promote different light sensitivity in the eye.

I don't know about the rest of you but this is something I would love to have myself. If you read the full segment on the website, it goes on to say that in WW2 Japanese fighter pilots were given Vitamin A preparation which actually increased their ability to uptake the Vitamin. They then followed this with a daily supplement, and some reports suggested there was an improvement of 100% in pilots night vision.

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9. Get Your Plutonium Shot

As the United States raced to build its first atomic bombs near the end of World War II, scientists wanted to know more about the hazards of plutonium. Testing began on April 10, 1945 with the injection of plutonium into the victim of a car accident in Oak Ridge, Tenn., to see how quickly the human body rid itself of the radioactive substance. That was just the first of over 400 human radiation experiments.

Back in the days before radioactive fear gripped the world plutonium and other radioactive metals were used on people to categorise the effects. I'm sure you've all heard of the stories about radium tablets being sold to the domestic market to put in kettles and drinks containers, as though we didn't have enough of the deadly substance in our diet.

www.scientificamerican.com...

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8. Rocket Rider

Before man could launch into orbit and to the moon, he rode rocket sleds on the ground first. NASA scientists developed decompression sleds that could race at speeds of more than 400 mph before screeching to an abrupt halt, and early testing often had fatal results for chimpanzee subjects that suffered brain damage.

So this seems kind of fun until you read the abrupt halt part. I'm pretty sure that even in the 1950s they were aware of f=ma, and other important equations which would lead to the conclusion that an abrupt halt after this speed leads to detached retinas.

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7. Pacifist Guinea Pigs

Most soldiers don't sign up to fight deadly viruses and bacteria, but that's what more than 2,300 young Seventh-Day Adventists did when drafted by the U.S. Army. As conscientious objectors during the Cold War who interpreted the Bible's commandment "Thou shalt not kill" very literally, many volunteered instead to serve as guinea pigs for testing vaccines against biological weapons.

What can I say, Vietnam, or stay and home being injected with God knows what? Tough choice really.

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6. Falling Near the Speed of Sound

When the U.S. Air Force wanted to find out how well pilots could survive high-altitude jumps, they turned to Captain Joseph Kittinger, Jr. The test pilot made several jumps as head of "Project Excelsior" during the 1950s. Each time involved riding high-altitude Excelsior balloons up tens of thousands of feet, before jumping, free falling and parachuting to the desert floor in New Mexico.

So Captain Joseph Kittinger Jr is a total bad ass, and I'm pretty sure these records are still considered impressive amongst free fall enthusiasts today. Roll on the first skydive from space Captain JK Jr would be the first in line to volunteer.

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5. Hallucinogenic Warfare

Psychoactive drugs such as marijuana, '___' and PCP don't just have street value: Researchers once hoped the drugs could become chemical weapons that disabled enemy soldiers. U.S. Army volunteers took pot, acid and angel dust at a facility in Edgewood, Md. From 1955 to 1972, although those drugs proved too mellow for weapons use.

Anyone who has seen Jacob's Ladder will have an inkling into this type of experiment, albeit with some poetic license. There is also a wealth of information to be found on ATS relating to project MK Ultra and it's successors. Check out as well the CIA experiments in France, where they poisoned the bread of an entire village with '___', which lead to mass hysteria, some suicides, and of course some really chilled out people.

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4. Nerve Gas Spray

Threats of chemical and biological warfare led the U.S. Department of Defense to start "Project 112" from 1963 to the early 1970s. Part of the effort involved spraying different ships and hundreds of Navy sailors with nerve agents such as sarin and VX, in order to test the effectiveness of decontamination procedures and safety measures at the time.

I have to say this stuff terrifies me, I think as for quite a few people, my first experience with this stuff was the Tokyo subway attack which left 13 people dead. Then of course we heard about the infamous Saddam Hussein's dedication to producing these types of weapons.

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3. Psychic Vision

Psychics may not hold much credibility among scientists, but the Pentagon spent roughly $20 million testing extrasensory (ESP) powers such as remote viewing from 1972 to 1996. Remote viewers would try to envision geographical locations that they had never seen before, such as nuclear facilities or bunkers in foreign lands.

Probably one of the most outrageous in the list, and I have to say I don't even 'remotely' believe in remote viewing. That is all.

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2. 24/7 Warrior

Sleep can be a warrior's worst enemy, whether during day-long battles or long-duration missions flown from halfway around the world. But various military branches have tried to change that over the years by distributing "go pills" or stimulants such as amphetamines. More recently, the military has tested and deployed the drug modafinil - more commonly known under brands such as Provigil - which has supposedly enabled soldiers to stay awake for 40 hours straight without ill effect.

So I came across this study a few years ago where soldiers in the Gulf were being given different types of medication to combat sleep deprival. Well it appears the military has left the days of stimulants and amphetamines behind and graduated to a completely unknown area of drug therapy. My personal opinion, no sleep leads to insanity, regardless of the lack physical symptoms.

And finally...

1. Build Your Inner Armor

Perhaps super soldiers may not be far off after all, if efforts such as DARPA's "Inner Armor" project find success. Consider efforts to give humans the extreme abilities of some animals, such as the high-altitude conditioning of the bar-headed Goose that has been known to crash into jet aircraft at more than 34,000 feet. Scientists are also eying the Steller sea lion, which redirects blood flow away from non-critical organs during deep sea dives and reduces oxygen demand.

So we still have some time to wait before we have our own veritable Wolverine

But in the mean time scientists and military advisers have been studying the abilities of various animals which can survive extreme conditions, and optimise Oxygen uptake, with the intention of eventually applying these skills to our soldiers.

Couple this with no sleep and you have a Super Soldier...

Either that or an insane sleep deprived Man Bear Pig.

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For the full article check out this link;

www.livescience.com...

[edit on 25-8-2010 by Big Raging Loner]

reply to post by Big Raging Loner


Big Raging Loner

A quality post, thanks for that.... Where do you dig this stuff up from ?

I see there was really no win with number 7, the guinea pigs and I quite like the idea of modification of the body.... I remember playing a game called Deus Ex years ago and that was all about 'augmentation'...

Watched that film, men who stare at goats recently...... It actually has a good meaning to it as well as the subject matter in the title..

Regards

PurpleDOG UK

reply to post by PurpleDog UK


Found it on beforeitsnews.com which had a link to the original source. The articles on beforeitnews itself aren't the best, but they usually do link to the original sources.

I haven't seen Men Who stare at Goats but people keep telling me it's my kind of film. If it's got a bit of underhanded CIA behaviour then I'll definitely have a gander!

Great thread! I love reading about the different experiments they did. It's sad they have to do it on their own people and most the time they don't even know it....which makes me nervous for all those I know in the military currently.

I thought I would add to your list of military experiments

The USS Eldridge has always fascinated me so I thought I would add it to your list.

The Navy admits that the U.S.S. Eldridge took part in an experiment that involved wrapping wire around the hull of the destroyer in an attempt to cancel out the magnetic fields of the metal on the ship. This is known as degaussing. This would render the ship "invisible" to underwater magnetic mines that rely on proximity sensors to trigger the detonation. These sensors operate by detecting magnetic fields around ships. Without the magnetic field, the ship would be able to pass through regions mined with these sensors, invisible to enemy mines, but not to radar or vision.

Uss Eldridge/Project Rainbow/Philadelphia Experiment

I know there are a few threads on ATS in regards to it but I think it's an important one so I added it Hope you don't mind.

S&F from me for sure!

I think my favorite mentioned is remote viewing. I see you don't really believe in it. I believe the mind is capable of things we can't imagine and I believe remote viewing is one of them.

I do think some of the people who promote it are crap but some stuff I have read is pretty amazing.


Another fav are the '___' experiments. It amazes me, but not really, how they just gave unsuspecting people this drug. I would completely flip out. I have read a lot about Frank Olsen and what they did to him was all sorts of wrong and it cost him his life.

The Remote Viewing is the most interesting to me. This program allowed the military to see developments in the Soviet Union, including weapons development, and new techniques of building. The program was "cancelled," but a lot of people still believe it's still active.

reply to post by mblahnikluver


I have to say I hadn't heard of that one! That is pretty cool.

Another one from WW2 is project X-Ray. This involved the attaching of small incendiary devices to thousands of bats. The bats were then to be released above Japanese cities, and would then fly down into the buildings and take roost in the loft. As most Japanese buildings at the time were made of wood, and paper interiors, when the timed incendiary went off it would burn the house to the ground.

The project was abandoned and never used in combat, but it just goes to show the direction military innovation can take in times of war.

www.noahshachtman.com...

This article in wired not only has Bat bombs but also a few other crazy military ideas;

www.wired.com...

reply to post by DocEmrick


Well as you can tell I am not a fan but I would still love to read about a contemporary version of the research.

Many of these experiments have long passed, but can you imagine what they must be cooking up in secret given all the technology available today?

Originally posted by Big Raging Loner
reply to post by mblahnikluver

 

I have to say I hadn't heard of that one! That is pretty cool.

Another one from WW2 is project X-Ray. This involved the attaching of small incendiary devices to thousands of bats. The bats were then to be released above Japanese cities, and would then fly down into the buildings and take roost in the loft. As most Japanese buildings at the time were made of wood, and paper interiors, when the timed incendiary went off it would burn the house to the ground.

The project was abandoned and never used in combat, but it just goes to show the direction military innovation can take in times of war.

www.noahshachtman.com...

This article in wired not only has Bat bombs but also a few other crazy military ideas;

www.wired.com...

I was just reading about the bats in an article on cracked.com about bizarre military experiments. That one is just crazy. They really do waste a TON of money on their little experiments. I believe we read the same article from different sites

Yeah the Philadelphia Experiment (USS Eldridge) is one of my favorites. It's insane what happened. It amazes me the technology they have and we don't even know it. It always comes out later. Imagine what they are doing now!

reply to post by Big Raging Loner


So far the extreme skydive project is another one that makes me think wth were they thinking! I know it was all in the name of science and testing but to jump from that high of an altitude for a test just seems like a death wish, but the guy was alright although in the pic it looks like he is bleeding from his nose.

It was to test a parachute that would help pilots who would be flying in high altitudes incase they had to eject.

Project Excelsior was initiated in 1958 to design a parachute system that would allow a safe, controlled descent after a high-altitude ejection. Francis Beaupre, a technician at Wright Field, Ohio (today Wright-Patterson Air Force Base), devised a multi-stage parachute system to facilitate manned tests. This consisted of a small 6 feet (2 m) stabilizer or "drogue" parachute, designed to prevent uncontrolled spinning at high altitudes, and a 28 ft (8.5 m) main parachute that deployed at a lower altitude. The system included timers and altitude sensors that automatically deployed both parachutes at the correct points in the descent, even if the parachutist were unconscious or disabled.

It was known as Project Excelsior

Apparently Red Bull is backing a new project to test this themselves....um Red Bull does NOT give you wings!

Shouldnt the gay bomb be in here? The bomb that would go off and make people turn gay.
granted it was a study but that should count as experimental development as much as the others on the list.

reply to post by tigpoppa


It certainly should just as outrageous if not more so than some of the other experiments! Just for you;

11. The Gay Bomb

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.

Certainly just as crazy as the others. A potentially game changing form of chemical warfare! Drop some vaporised estrogen on the enemy, or a very potent aphrodisiac, and watch them settle in for a marathon session of Will and Grace!

reply to post by Big Raging Loner


Yeah, i could not believe they were thinking about making a gay bomb! lol How stupid is that! They really thought, if it worked, they would put down their weapons, just because they are now gay lol If that was the case, then i wish we were all gay lol world wuld be a better place

Great list. Thanks for the assembly and posting.


The Men Who Stare at Goats was very funny and enjoyable. While not only making a bit of fun at the things they were trying to research, a good amount of jabbing was done at the military itself for spending time on it.

Nearly everyday I see something that the government is doing or has done and I think to myself, for sure that can't out stupid anything else, but the gay bomb? I'll be laughing my rear off for weeks on this one! Thanks op!

I posted an idea here, about a "master list" of military weapons and was wondering if anyone was interested or had feedback on such an idea.

star and flagBRL

Military about to drug soldiers with male bonding hormone?
new study in the journal Science suggests that the same hormone that underlies love also helps create the sense of solidarity that soldiers experience when they feel united with each other against the enemy.

Giving soldiers oxytocin might make them more cooperative towards their comrades, even willing to self-sacrifice," he said. "But it should [also] make them more likely to launch a preemptive strike against the competing army, with conflict-escalation being the most likely consequence."

Learn more: www.naturalnews.com...

say remember that super cool experiment where the army put sun glasses on the troops and had them watch an atomic bomb go off on the other side of a field?
killing people and breaking things all right

Hi All,

I remember seeing this years ago.. And thought you all might enjoy..




Peace

Rock Ape.

Remember the "Men Who Stare at Goats"? The book came out in 2004 and was then made into a Hollywood- movie that had George Clooney in it. The movie was classified as comedy, and people took it as such.

However, the book mentions e.g. project where the military doing a "bizarre experiment" to implant spider genes to goats for producing valuable and durable silk. This at the time sounded.. well, bizarre to say the least and over the top even for science fiction.

Here is the interesting part:

On January 2012 - so eight years after the book was even published - BBC ran a story titled "The goats with spider genes and silk in their milk". (And this is BBC, not Huffington Post).

The video from the broadcaster can be seen from this direct link.