Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
Search

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Slashdot Log In

Log In

Create Account  |  Retrieve Password

Pentagon Developed 'Laughing Bullets'

Posted by CmdrTaco on Mon Jul 02, 2007 08:34 AM
from the we-must-not-have-a-hysteria-gap dept.
It's funny. Laugh.
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..."
+ -
story
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

Pentagon Developed 'Laughing Bullets' 50 Comments More /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More
Loading... please wait.

  • Why do we need the gas? (Score:5, Funny)

    by east coast (590680) on Monday July 02 2007, @08:35AM (#19716421)
    I know I laugh every time I pull the trigger.

    That's just the way we roll, in my hood.

  • freedom? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by flar2 (938689) on Monday July 02 2007, @08:37AM (#19716441)
    The freest and most democratic country on Earth spends far too many of its resources on novel ways to control people.

    • Re:freedom? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Fizzl (209397) <fizzl@@@fizzl...net> on Monday July 02 2007, @08:42AM (#19716499) Homepage Journal

      The freest and most democratic country on Earth

      LOL

      • Re:freedom? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by DrDitto (962751) on Monday July 02 2007, @10:23AM (#19717817)
        In Germany you go to jail if you speak the words "the holocaust never happened".

          • Re:freedom? (Score:4, Insightful)

            by It'sYerMam (762418) <thefishface@@@gmail...com> on Monday July 02 2007, @10:51AM (#19718215) Homepage
            Etc. what? You're the beacon of freedom? I find that hard to believe - we're pretty much all as useless as each other, and if we're not yet, we will be in a few years' time.

              • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

                by Dun Malg (230075)

                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)

            by ConceptJunkie (24823) *
            I always look at it this way. All governments suck, but the U.S.'s government sucks less than most.

              • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

                by ConceptJunkie (24823) *
                Good point, and if there were _any_ candidates worth considering, that would be a good thing, but these days, they're all the same. All beholden to monied interests, all power-grubbing, all self-motivated, all interested in securing re-election through massive spending, all interested in appearances but unconcerned about real results.

                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:Ok, then (Score:5, Funny)

            by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 02 2007, @09:26AM (#19717089)
            Ok, then how bout the country that god obviously loves the most.

            • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

              by estarriol (864512)
              Yes, indeed anyone pointing out that the USA isn't the greatest nation in all categories *must* be unhappy with their life. They're probably terrorists too.

    • Re:freedom? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by MarkPNeyer (729607) on Monday July 02 2007, @08:51AM (#19716591)
      Would you rather they just used lead bullets when rioters take to the streets?

      • Re:freedom? (Score:4, Funny)

        by jandrese (485) <kensama@vt.edu> on Monday July 02 2007, @08:55AM (#19716647) Homepage Journal
        Obviously not, lead is toxic to the environment.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by soren100 (63191)

        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)

            by Dun Malg (230075)

            When was the last significant riot in America?

            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)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The US currently spends about 4% of GDP on defense. That is a lot lower percentage than during the Cold War days.

      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.

        • The US is also supposed to help repel military invasions of all of Europe, all of North America, all of South America, Japan, South Korea...I'd say when you have to defend 40% of the Earth, you can have 40% of the world's defense expenditure.
    • I think you would find it interesting were you to read more on the Delian League (aka the Athenian Empire) [wikipedia.org]. There are some interesting parallels between the ancient Delian League and the post-Cold War United States of America, especially regarding political power structures, foreign policy, and economics. If you can get your hands on Thucydides' History, and read through the first half, you might find that especially educational.

  • ...Oblig (Score:5, Funny)

    by Karganeth (1017580) on Monday July 02 2007, @08:38AM (#19716443)
    You can't have manslaughter without laughter!

  • I feel safer already (Score:5, Interesting)

    by elrous0 (869638) * on Monday July 02 2007, @08:38AM (#19716459)
    Between stuff like this and a CIA who wasted millions of $ over 25 years on a program employing psychics [wikipedia.org] (I kid you not), don't you feel so much safer?

    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)

      by Moraelin (679338) on Monday July 02 2007, @09:17AM (#19716967) Journal
      The question is: would it even work? Or would those contractors get big bucks for possibly the dumbest idea in history?

      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:3, Insightful)

        by DeepHurtn! (773713)
        Y'know, the very stuff you describe may in fact be the point of the whole line of research. It would save their budget on agent provocateurs.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by badasscat (563442)
      Between stuff like this and a CIA who wasted millions of $ over 25 years on a program employing psychics (I kid you not), don't you feel so much safer?

      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

  • Safe for entire range? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by borizz (1023175) on Monday July 02 2007, @08:39AM (#19716463)
    The article claims that the bullets would be safe over the entire range. I wonder how they made the bullets strong enough to survive the force of being fired, but weak enough to disintegrate harmlessly when striking flesh at point blanc.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Kiffer (206134)
      maybe they are only safe for the shooter, not the target...

    • Re:Safe for entire range? (Score:4, Informative)

      by east coast (590680) on Monday July 02 2007, @08:50AM (#19716581)
      Perhaps it's like a Simunition FX [wikipedia.org].

      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)

        by apparently (756613)
        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.

        Acquantances of Victoria Snelgrove [wikipedia.org] might disagree with your definition of non-lethal.

        • Re:Safe for entire range? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Dan Ost (415913) on Monday July 02 2007, @09:51AM (#19717417)
          A baseball could cause the exact injuries that the pepper spray dispenser did to that poor girl.

          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:3, Informative)

            by eth1 (94901)
            "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."

            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)

          by east coast (590680)
          Not to downplay the deaths of people involved in these incidents because you're absolutely right; the term 'non-lethal' has been challenged time and time again because of instances such as this. Note that the Wikipedia article does refer to the technology as 'less-lethal' as is being adopted elsewhere.

          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
    • They probably haven't. The supposedly safe rubber bullets which were used extensively in Northern Ireland as partof crowd/riot control measures still managed to kill quite a lot of people, particularly those shot in the head or at close range, not to mention all the serious injuries caused.

  • The Joker (Score:5, Funny)

    by boristdog (133725) on Monday July 02 2007, @08:39AM (#19716471)
    The Joker is working for DARPA now?

  • Paintball fills (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Baljet (547995) on Monday July 02 2007, @08:40AM (#19716481)
    I thought the use of paintballs filled with CS gas and permanent markers was already fairly wide spread by law enforcement...

  • 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]

    Pentagon Confirms It Sought To Build A 'Gay Bomb'

    (CBS 5) BERKELEY A Berkeley watchdog organization that tracks military spending said it uncovered a strange U.S. military proposal to create a hormone bomb that could purportedly turn enemy soldiers into homosexuals and make them more interested in sex than fighting.

    Pentagon officials on Friday confirmed to CBS 5 that military leaders had considered, and then subsquently rejected, building the so-called "Gay Bomb. Edward Hammond, of Berkeley's Sunshine Project, had used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain a copy of the proposal from the Air Force's Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio.

    As part of a military effort to develop non-lethal weapons, the proposal suggested, "One distasteful but completely non-lethal example would be strong aphrodisiacs, especially if the chemical also caused homosexual behavior."

    The documents show the Air Force lab asked for $7.5 million to develop such a chemical weapon.

    "The Ohio Air Force lab proposed that a bomb be developed that contained a chemical that would cause enemy soldiers to become gay, and to have their units break down because all their soldiers became irresistably attractive to one another," Hammond said after reviewing the documents.

    "The notion was that a chemical that would probably be pleasant in the human body in low quantities could be identified, and by virtue of either breathing or having their skin exposed to this chemical, the notion was that soliders would become gay," explained Hammond.

    The Pentagon told CBS 5 that the proposal was made by the Air Force in 1994.

    "The Department of Defense is committed to identifying, researching and developing non-lethal weapons that will support our men and women in uniform," said a DOD spokesperson, who indicated that the "gay bomb" idea was quickly dismissed.

    However, Hammond said the government records he obtained suggest the military gave the plan much stronger consideration than it has acknowledged.

    "The truth of the matter is it would have never come to my attention if it was dismissed at the time it was proposed," he said. "In fact, the Pentagon has used it repeatedly and subsequently in an effort to promote non-lethal weapons, and in fact they submitted it to the highest scientific review body in the country for them to consider."

    Military officials insisted Friday to CBS 5 that they are not currently working on any such idea and that the past plan was abandoned.

    Gay community leaders in California said Friday that they found the notion of a "gay bomb" both offensive and almost laughable at the same time.

    "Throughout history we have had so many brave men and women who are gay and lesbian serving the military with distinction," said Geoff Kors of Equality California. "So, it's just offensive that they think by turning people gay that the other military would be incapable of doing their job. And its absurd because there's so much medical data that shows that sexual orientation is immutable and cannot be changed."

    • "The Ohio Air Force lab proposed that a bomb be developed that contained a chemical that would cause enemy soldiers to become gay, and to have their units break down because all their soldiers became irresistably attractive to one another,"

      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

  • Laughing Gas is a misnomer (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "Laughing Gas" won't incapacitate you from fits of laughter. It's a hypnotic agent.

    Actually quite a good idea for a payload if the delivery system works.

  • Hee Hee Hee (Score:5, Funny)

    by SEWilco (27983) on Monday July 02 2007, @08:44AM (#19716517) Homepage Journal

    crowds of rioters giggling uncontrollably
    They're called "Jokerz [wikipedia.org]".
  • I don't know if any other /.ers have been dosed with the stuff, but nitrous oxide didn't make me laugh. Rather, I just felt like I was wrapped in cotton batting and floating, yet fully awake and able to move[1]. Maybe the dental assistant just did a good job of getting the level right.

    [1] Almost, but not quite, entirely unlike being drunk.

  • "Laughing gas" isn't (Score:5, Informative)

    by CoolVibe (11466) on Monday July 02 2007, @08:53AM (#19716625) Journal
    Nitrous Oxide, also known as "Laughing gas" does not make people laugh. Read more here on WikiPedia [wikipedia.org].

  • Failed Stink Bomb Bullets (Score:5, Funny)

    by SirStanley (95545) on Monday July 02 2007, @09:00AM (#19716717) Homepage
    The Stink Bomb Bullets Project was scrapped because of the ineffectiveness against Hippies.
  • The celebrated British artist drew one of his comic sketches exactly about this during the 1914-18 war.

  • Ob(ligatory) Monty Python (Score:3, Funny)

    by rlp (11898) on Monday July 02 2007, @09:19AM (#19716991)
    From the "Killer Joke" skit:

    "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".

  • Ahh.. Slashdot viral marketing.. (Score:4, Funny)

    by bigattichouse (527527) on Monday July 02 2007, @09:24AM (#19717057) Homepage
    Can't you see the rioting/giggling meme is just part of the viral marketing for the next Batman movie!?!?

  • Prior Art (Score:5, Interesting)

    by delete (514365) on Monday July 02 2007, @09:48AM (#19717371)
    Conclusive proof, as if it were needed, that Monty Python were ahead of their time.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IysnS5wO60g [youtube.com]
  • That project needs to be stopped right away. What's the use of just temporarily incapacitating people? We need to make sure that anyone on the other end of the gun is dead, dead, dead, so we can forever enjoy the sorrow of their wives, children, and parents! Weeee! (boggle!)

    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.

  • In addition.... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Guerilla* Napalm (762317) on Monday July 02 2007, @10:02AM (#19717559) Homepage
    to the laughing gas version, they're also working on a bullet filled with laxatives - but that story was probably started for shits and giggles. *** I'll get my things ***

All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2009 Geeknet, Inc.