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Message: <blockquote data-quote="bat2007" data-source="post: 6207461" data-attributes="member: 134658">01 .The  Bat Bomb   <img src="http://cdn-www.cracked.com/articleimages/wong/exper/batbomb1.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" />    Working on the premise any weapon is cooler if it flies in the night on  leathery wings, Bat Bombs were proposed by a dental surgeon in the '40s.  Naturally the President thought it was awesome so a plan was rolled out  to make the night unsafe for anyone that didn't want to have small  explosives get stuck in their hair.    The Plan:  Because bats can carry a good amount of weight and tend to sneak into  buildings and such, the plan was to make an army of flying rodent  suicide bombers and release them over Japan. The little fellas had small  napalm explosive kits made for them, which were probably the cutest  incendiary devices ever, and then cases were constructed that would be  dropped from B-29s, releasing the bats.    At dawn, they'd flee to buildings until the timers on their little bombs  went off. So far, so fucking crazy.    <img src="http://cdn-www.cracked.com/articleimages/wong/exper/batbomb2.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" />    What went wrong:   Things got sketchy when some armed bats were accidentally released and  set up shop under a fuel tank on an Air Force base. So, yeah, that  burnt to the ground. But, hey, it proved the damn things worked, so the  people involved looked at that as a silver lining.    Given that the bomb casings they'd made for the bats could hold over  1,000 bats, they assumed just one bomber could hold up to 200,000 little  flaming night terrors and some initial test data concluded these bat  bombs were actually superior to regular fire bombs.    But after a couple million bucks in funding, the plan was scrapped. The  plan was moving forward too slowly, the bats were unpredictable and the  guys at the Manhattan Project were talking about having some kind of  miracle bomb that could do the work of like, a million bats. 02. The  Great Panjandrum   <img src="http://cdn-www.cracked.com/articleimages/wong/exper/panj1.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" />    Getting through enemy fortifications is always tough, what with their  insistence on constructing defenses out of stone and other non-meringue  based substances. Sometimes conventional weapons just can't break  through, and such was the case with the concrete defenses that were part  of the Third Reich's Atlantic Wall that ran up and down the west coast  of the European continent. So the Brits came up with the Panjandrum,  insanity's answer to "what could we do to make explosives more  dangerous?"    The Plan: So how do you get a tank-sized hole in a concrete wall? Well, they  created two giant, wooden wheels joined by a central drum stuffed with  explosives. On each wheel they strapped rockets as a means to propel it  forward at speeds of about 60 miles an hour. Life imitates art, and  sometimes military life imitates Wile E. Coyote cartoons.   <img src="http://cdn-www.cracked.com/articleimages/wong/exper/panj2.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" />    What went wrong: You can probably guess. The rockets that moved the thing had a habit of  flying off during tests, sending the entire structure off course, which  we're thinking created a number of safety issues. After adding more  rockets and another wheel, it was tested again and this time it turned  right back to sea.   <img src="http://cdn-www.cracked.com/articleimages/wong/exper/panj3.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" />     Finally, after many tweaks, it was ready to be tested in front of Navy  officials, scientists and journalists. How could this go wrong?      The ridiculous thing started rolling off as planned, but then like a  drunken hussy with vertigo on a dance floor, it started careening all  over the place before making a beeline for the assembled Navy brass,  discarding rockets and wobbling around before thankfully collapsing and  exploding. Moments later, the Roadrunner went zipping by. 03. Project  Habbakuk   <img src="http://cdn-www.cracked.com/articleimages/wong/exper/iceboat1.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" />    When Winston Churchill got a hankering to smite his enemies, he aimed  for the sky. Actually, he aimed for the ocean, where he wanted to build  Holy Fuck That's Insane island. That was renamed Project Habbakuk. It  was an aircraft carrier. It was an iceberg.    The Plan: Wanting to make an unsinkable aircraft carrier that would be so intense  as to make enemies shit themselves uncontrollably, and with good reason,  the Brits came up with the Habbakuk. Constructed from ice (ever try to  sink an ice cube?) the plan was to make it 2,000 feet long with a deck  to keel depth of 200 feet and walls 40 feet thick. It would displace  2,000,000 tons (compared to the Navy's current Nimitz class carriers  that displace 100,000 tons). So, it was like, really big.    When ice proved to be not entirely feasible a material to build an  aircraft carrier out of, they switched to something called Pykrete,  which was just ice and wood pulp. It was intense stuff that deflected  bullets and since this idea was already probably the craziest thing  anyone had ever heard of, why the fuck not?   <img src="http://cdn-www.cracked.com/articleimages/wong/exper/iceboat2.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" />    What went wrong:  Practicality. A small version had been constructed in Canada that  weighed 1,000 tons and was only 60 feet long to show that the idea could  work. It took three summers to melt the damn thing. The full-scale  model would take $70 million, 8,000 people and eight months to finish,  the finished product could only travel at six knots and once it arrived  where it was going, it would still be made of fucking ice. 04. The  Pain Ray   <img src="http://cdn-www.cracked.com/articleimages/wong/exper/painray1.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" />    The Active Denial System, often referred to as the Pain Ray, is a  futuristic sounding way of making sure someone is about to have a really  terrible day or improperly cooked microwave burritos. Designed as a  method of crowd control, the ADS does just what the nickname suggests,  it causes pain. At a distance!    The Plan: In certain situations, it seems the military doesn't want its own people  getting too close to the danger, but at the same time doesn't want to  start picking off rowdy crowds with a sniper hidden on some kind of  grassy knoll because that makes for very bad press. So developing  non-lethals that make people do what you want has recently become very  popular.     Thus the Active Denial System is born, a long-range weapon that uses  electromagnetic radiation at a high frequency and can be directed at  targets close to 500 yards away. It causes the water molecules in a  person's skin to get "excited," which is a pleasant way of saying it  microwaves you. But not in a permanently damaging sort of way. Maybe.     <img src="http://cdn-www.cracked.com/articleimages/wong/exper/painray2.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" />    What went wrong: Nothing, yet. They've built the thing, and it works. The ADS was first  developed over a decade ago and after many trials and tests, the US  military seems to have a hankering to get them into Iraq very quickly.    A lack of research into long-term effects or prolonged exposure to the  weapon have some people wondering if it's such a great idea, since  probably no one has volunteered to have their eye microwaved yet to see  what that's like, but meh. It's called the Pain Ray, not the Rainbow  Shooter. That's what you get for not dispersing on your own, angry mob! 05 . Malodorants   <img src="http://cdn-www.cracked.com/articleimages/wong/exper/stink1.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" />    Another non-lethal method of crowd control and also a psychological  weapon, malodorants, or stink bombs, are supposed to create a stink the  likes of which you can't imagine. Worse than rotten meat, backed-up  sewage or another trip to the dump with dad to find mom an anniversary  present.      The Plan: Military forces have been playing with this idea for decades. A number  of smells have been patented, including the smell of human feces, which  makes us think we probably owe a hell of a lot of royalties to someone  every day at about 8AM. In the Second World War, some intrepid people  invented the hilariously named Who Me? as a way to make Germans disperse  as well as humiliate them by making them smell worse than people on the  bus.     The US has something called US Government Standard Bathroom Malodor  which is apparently so bad, people who have experienced it actually  start screaming within seconds. Written accounts describe it as smelling  like every bad smell you can think of, put together, times ten. Reports  say it actually creates visible cartoon stink lines in the air. The  military thinks that's as hilarious as we do and wants to throw it at  people.   <img src="http://cdn-www.cracked.com/articleimages/wong/exper/stink2.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" />    What went wrong:  Though the ideas are still being developed, the fact is, historically,  they don't work out so well on account of you're going to end up  smelling like unbelievable ass too. Back in WWII, Who Me? couldn't  really be effectively used since it not only made the target stink, it  made the bomber stink and the entire area where the bomb went off stink.     Stink is a fickle mistress, and obeys no master.Add ++ rep if you like my post </blockquote>

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