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Bat bomb
- oblio 12y agoIf you want to read about the world's scariest saint: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olga_of_Kiev https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olga_of_Kiev
- adamnemecek 12y agoSeems like the admission criteria for sainthood are laxer than at DeVry.
- krick 12y agoActually not, though it's rather different form what somebody not knowledgeable about religion and, most importantly, history of denominations of the Christian Church would expect. In fact most of saints ("saints" like those who are called "святой", not "блаженный") in orthodox church are rather militant people. Historically, their reasons for being acknowledged as saints isn't starving themselves to death somewhere far in the mountains, but "protecting homeland from pagans" and such.
- maaku 12y agoI once took a class at a Jesuit university named "Witches, saints and heretics." The TL;DR was that these are not disjoint groups of people.
- krick 12y agoWell, Jesuit way to treat thing is very different even from "canonic Catholic" (yeah, sounds a little weird after we have Jesuit pope), not to say about Orthodox Church and it is not unusual for them to conclude that "black and white are essentially one and the same thing after all", so I probably wouldn't relate contents of that class to discussion about some Orthodox saint too much. AFAIK Olga isn't treated as saint in Catholic Church, is she?
- maaku 12y agoI probably should have clarified that the professor was himself a lay person. Basically the term "witch", "saint" or "heretic" was applied based on the social context of the individual, or a moral judgment made by the church or the population surrounding the individual. Heretics were people the Church didn't agree with, saints were those whose actions were approved by the Church. The Church has been known to change its stance over time, and some individuals have fallen into multiple categories at various times. Famously, Joan of Arc was at various points a witch, a heretic, and a saint. Regarding Olga, she christianized Rus and here sainthood was recognition of that. I don't actually know if she was ever considered a saint by the Roman Church.
- galactus 12y agoit seems almost as lax as the nobel peace prize...
- terminado 12y agoNow Olga gave to each soldier in her army a pigeon or a sparrow, and ordered them to attach by thread to each pigeon and sparrow a piece of sulfur bound with small pieces of cloth. When night fell, Olga bade her soldiers release the pigeons and the sparrows. So the birds flew to their nests, the pigeons to the cotes, and the sparrows under the eaves. The dove-cotes, the coops, the porches, and the haymows were set on fire. There was not a house that was not consumed, and it was impossible to extinguish the flames, because all the houses caught on fire at once. ...but no explanation for the spontaneous combustion of the cloth-bound sulfur. Sounds like it was probably a closely-kept, obfuscated military secret like Greek Fire: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_fire
- pandaman 12y agoThe text in Russian talks about burning piece of sulfur-soaked oakum.
- drdaeman 12y agoIt's more of a mythos than a documentary. In reality they could've used more conventional incendiary weapons of the time to burn down Korosten, then historians may have made a nice-sounding legend.
- boomlinde 12y agoMaybe they lit the pieces of sulphur that were attached by strings to the birds before they released them.
- Houshalter 12y agoCertain chemicals will spontaneously combust when wrapped in cloth. They absorb into the cloth, and the increased surface area exposed to the air lets them react with oxygen faster, producing heat. The cloth also insulates it so the heat slowly builds up until it gets hot enough to combust. This is why keeping oily rags are a fire hazard.
- custardcream 12y ago
- ogig 12y agoThis is one of those were reality defeats fantasy. Bat bombs sound a lot more like an orcish weapon than a real thing.
- mabbo 12y agoThe reality is that the atomic bomb wasn't scary because it could destroy a city, it was scary because it could do it with just one drop. America had already flattened 20+ cities before Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but instead of bats, they used large non-atomic bombs. The bats sound cool, but actual bombs were a little bit more dependable.
- swartkrans 12y ago> they used large non-atomic bombs America was dropping napalm on Japanese cities filled with civilians[1]. Firebombing was a popular tactic in the 1940's. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napalm#Military_use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napalm#Military_use
- krick 12y agoWell, USA was using white phosphorus in "cities filled with civilians" in Iraq in 2004 (Fallujah), which is more like "is using". So when talking about scary stuff like incendiary weapons it's better to not to try and fool yourself with words like "yeah, past was dark, but now it is 2014, we have all these conventions and stuff, and even in times of war people know limits of humanity, so worry not". Humans are wicked animals.
- JonRB 12y agoThis ties in well with the fact that the US has not ratified the appropriate Geneva convention on destroying civilian supplies ( http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scorched_earth http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scorched_earth )
- anonymfus 12y agoAccording to Wikipedia, USA signed part of "Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons" which bans white phosphorus in incendiary weapons in 2009 under Obama administration.
- shabble 12y ago
- ShinyCyril 12y agoThese were featured in a great series of books about bats by Canadian author Kenneth Opel called Silverwing [0]. Many fond memories of reading this book as a kid. [0] http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silverwing_(novel) http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silverwing_(novel)
- Kronopath 12y agoFrom the original article: The book Sunwing written by Kenneth Oppel was inspired by this plan.
- chris_wot 12y agoI inspired this article creation - it fell into the "exploding animals" category, mainly because I originally wrote the exploding whale article on Wikipedia.
- 1dl3 12y agoobviously batshit crazy
- 1qaz2wsx3edc 12y agoI clicked the See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-tank_dog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-tank_dog I'm kind of bummed out from that one.
- po 12y agoWow, this sounds like a total clown-car operation: Out of the first group of 30 dogs, only four managed to detonate their bombs near the German tanks, inflicting an unknown amount of damage. Six exploded upon returning to the Soviet trenches, killing and injuring soldiers. and later... Another serious training mistake was revealed later; the Soviets used their own diesel-engine tanks to train the dogs rather than German tanks which had gasoline engines. As the dogs relied on their acute sense of smell, the dogs sought out familiar Soviet tanks instead of strange-smelling German tanks.
- 32faction 12y agoI have a feeling Alfred Hitchcock would've had a field day with this one...
- elwell 12y agoOh... http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20111123184929/batman/images/6/65/Bat_bomb.jpg http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20111123184929/batman/ima...
- mosquito28iei96 12y agoWhy HN is smarter and not the DUMBING DOWN OF AMERICA USA? latest find: Homer about the Trojjjjjjan Wars. Remember the trojan and trojan horse? 1.) use catapluts of dead animals with plenty of fleas into the city, with any luck it would hit the well or water source. 2.) other use of beehives and catapult. 3.) fictional story. THERE IS NO AIR BORNE EBOLA virus. Please believe everythiing in the media and government sponsored news. The use of mosquito and bats (for fruit bats DO NOT carry ebola or is it?) for mosquito carry malaria, dengue fever which is virus. So, the new transformation in the fiction story is the miniturization of mosquito bomb.
- JSno 12y agoit's a shame
- increment_i 12y ago"Think of thousands of fires breaking out simultaneously over a circle of forty miles in diameter for every bomb dropped. Japan could have been devastated, yet with small loss of life." - Dr. Lytle S. Adams I guess Dr. Adams wasn't counting the actual bats here.
- jack9 12y agoThis "Bat Bomb" as well as other pre-atomic strategies, were the subject of a channel 4 news broadcast when I was 15 It specifically interviewed a general (and his daughter) who said that they were shut down by phone when the atomic bomb was chosen as the coup de grace for japan.
- batbomb 12y agothis is where I got my hn name from. I've actually spent a lot of time at dugway. One of my favorite parts about it is the german counterpart of they japanese village mentioned in the article, the German village. There's still a few building (still in use!) out there that were modeled after European villas so the army could test weapons during ww2.
- liadmat 12y agoDon't forget the pigeon guided missile. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pigeon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pigeon http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnKyOfNuSoo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnKyOfNuSoo
- new299 12y agoBy that time it was estimated that $2 million had been spent on the project. It is thought that development of the bat bomb was moving too slowly, and was overtaken in the race for a quick end to the war by the atomic bomb project. I can just see the conversation now. A: "So what are you working on?" B: "Well, we're harnessing the nucleic forces to create a destructive force hitherto unknown to man. How about you?" A: "Um... bats" B: "What?" A: "We attaching firecrackers to bats." B: "OK, um great!" A: "Yea..."
- guard-of-terra 12y agoThis weapon seems to mainly target civians and therefore should not be.