The World’s Spookiest Weapons


As purveyors of a fine hacks, we often get pitched on what are generally considered very bad ideas. Luckily, most of these ideas die on the drawing board due to a lack of time and energy or maybe having a shred of moral accountability. There’s nothing that government funding can’t fix though. Popular Science has put together a gallery of The World’s Spookiest Weapons. It’s a who’s who of real and speculative engineering that could lead to our eventual destruction. Opening with the atomic bomb, it moves quickly into more bizarre territory, everything from heat rays, to rail guns, to gassing people with elephant tranquilizers. Our personal favorite is The Rods from God. Imagine getting smote by a precisely targeted metal power pole dropped from space that has accelerated to 36,000 feet per second thanks solely to gravity. What a wondrous world we live in.

[via Acidus]

9 thoughts on “The World’s Spookiest Weapons

  1. Interesting article, although I think it’s highly speculative and written with a flare for the dramatic. All in all there wasn’t anything I haven’t already heard of.

  2. The “Rods from God” was a project called Project Thor.
    It’s detailed quite thoroughly in an essay published in the first “There Will Be War” anthology, Jerry Pournelle, ed, published in the 80’s.

  3. Of course, due to conservation of energy, you need at least the same amount of energy to put these guys in orbit. So if you can launch these things, might as well use the energy directly as bombs. Or not. Bombs are bad.

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