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Top Secret Military Weapons Revealed · Be Amazed

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Top secret.
• 0:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Are there any two more enticing words?
• 0:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, free pie comes close, but I'm watching my figure.
• 0:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, war is big business, and countless incredible technological marvels have been devised on behalf of this controversial industry.
• 0:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Understandably the development of these game-changing weapons has to be kept super hush.
• 0:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: So from nuclear power tanks to covert heart attack guns, here's some of the most unbelievable top-secret military weapons revealed.
• 0:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh, to be a fly on the wall when a U.S.
• 0:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: official demanded secretive research be carried out into telepathic ray gods.
• 0:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Wait, what?
• 0:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, heard that correctly.
• 0:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: A declassified U.S.
• 0:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Army report from nineteen ninety-eight revealed that at one point the CIA was considering utilizing a selection of energy weapons capable of disorienting targets, creating artificial fevers and even beaming voices into people's heads.
• 1:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: Seriously.
• 1:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: And while some of these insane weapons stayed purely consensual, others were actually tested.
• 1:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: The wildest was something akin to a telepathic ray god.
• 1:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Essentially, when fired at someone, it could make them hear things that weren't audible to anybody else.
• 1:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Whoa!
• 1:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: It worked using something called the fray effect.
• 1:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: Here me out, it turns out that due to its dimensions, the human head is a good antenna for picking a microwave radiation.
• 1:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: And microwaves can be used to transmit sounds.
• 1:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: So by shooting a tightly focused beam of microwaves at someone's head at the right frequency, even deaf people can be made to hear things.
• 1:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: But the sounds only exist inside that person's head.
• 2:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Right.
• 2:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: You can imagine the potential the CIA would have seen this for.
• 2:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know, mind-control or something?
• 2:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Fortunately, it seems that despite successful testing, the weapons were never actually used in the field.
• 2:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Or have I just been programmed to tell you that?
• 2:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: Throughout World War II, Allied and Axis forces decimated each other's cities with air raids.
• 2:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: But as the war raged on, Germany wanted a new more effective way to strike directly at the heart of London, without the British knowing what was coming.
• 2:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Their answer?
• 2:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Enormous, four-hundred-and-thirty-foot-long mega cannons called VIIIs.
• 2:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: Damn!
• 2:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: But hold on, how do you keep a project this big, even remotely secret from the Brits?
• 2:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: You can track the weapons one hundred feet underground, within a sprawling hidden fortress, of course.
• 2:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: The Germans began installing the ginormous guns in Axis occupied northern France, so they could be aimed perfectly across the channel at London.
• 3:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, these guns were devised to hit their target from up to one hundred miles away.
• 3:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: The massive barrels were fitted with pairs of explosive boosters which triggered when the projectile was fired up the chamber past them, propelling it faster and further.
• 3:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: And there wasn't going to be just one or two of these monstrosities, oh no.
• 3:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Twenty-five were commissioned to be built.
• 3:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: As an extra precaution, German military referred to the project as Huckthrough Pumpa, or High Pressure Pump, so any prime years would know what they were talking about.
• 3:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: One and was doomed, surely.
• 3:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, it turns out building a huge underground fortress filled with twenty-five massive cannons isn't so easy to keep secret.
• 3:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: A special RAF surveillance unit quickly noticed this suspicious operation and though they weren't sure what it was, correctly assumed it wasn't good news.
• 3:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: So in November, nineteen forty-three British forces dropped over four thousand tons of aerial bombs onto the side.
• 4:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Despite all this firepower though, the attacks had little impact due to the strength of the underground structure.
• 4:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, a redoubled effort in nineteen forty-four feared much better.
• 4:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: The second attempt used special deep penetration bombs and ended up obliterating the cannons, causing the fortress to cave in, and ultimately saving London.
• 4:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: As it turns out though, the guns might never have fired anyway.
• 4:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: We now know that the V-III was plagued with technical problems from day one, and initial tests weren't very promising.
• 4:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Whatever happened to that famous German engineering,
• 4:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: From the end of World War II through till nineteen ninety one the US and Russia were locked in a battle of conflicting ideologies known as the Cold War.
• 4:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Though not a war in the traditional sense, it was a time of great paranoia with both sides constantly trying to develop new ways of spying on one another.
• 4:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: U.S.
• 4:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: manufacturer Lockheed Martin had a solution.
• 5:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: The SR-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S
• 5:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: That unique angled shape reflects enemy radar signals and a special pain covers the jet which absorbs any signals that aren't bounced off.
• 5:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Making it tough for enemy systems to detect.
• 5:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Outside of its stealth prowess though, the SR-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S
• 5:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: But simply, Mox speed is when an object moves faster than the speed of sound.
• 5:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: So Mox, three point three is roughly three point three times faster than the speed at which sound waves travel, or about two thousand one hundred miles per hour.
• 5:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Whoa!
• 6:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: If this jet black jet was under attack, rather than beginning a base of maneuvers, it simply accelerates to avoid enemy measles.
• 6:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: Crazy.
• 6:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: During the Blackbird's development, in the nineteen sixties, Lockheed needed a way to transport the bees from its factory in California all the way to the test site in area fifty one without revealing what they were moving.
• 6:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: The solution, they set up a fake delivery company called Roadrunner International.
• 6:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now that's what I call commitment to a bid.
• 6:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: This guy's CIA and Air Force operatives covered the humongous cargo from Prime Eyes and drove it some two hundred and fifty miles cross-country.
• 6:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: And nobody was any the wiser.
• 6:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Sounds like something out of a James Bond flick, but amazingly it's all true, though it is a little strange that attract this big dendrony suspicion.
• 6:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: These days it'd be all over Twitter in an hour.
• 6:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: The Cold War era saw the use of a huge variety of secrets by weaponry.
• 6:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Many of which are so ingenious and specter gadget would have been proud to wield them.
• 7:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Meet the lipstick gun, known affectionately as the kiss of death.
• 7:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: This little device looked like an ordinary tube of lipstick, but it was actually a cleverly concealed firearm.
• 7:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, maybe it's a little too murdery for gadget?
• 7:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: When the lipstick's case was swiddled in the right way, a single bullet would be fired from the barrel.
• 7:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: You only got one shot, and it was wildly inaccurate beyond a couple of feet away.
• 7:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: But if a covert assassin got close enough to their target,
• 7:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was more than enough to do the trick.
• 7:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: The makeup murder weapon was discovered in West Berlin at an American checkpoint in nineteen sixty five.
• 7:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was confiscated from a Soviet spy, though we can't be sure who they were intending to use it on.
• 7:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now it's safely housed in the international spy museum in Washington, D.C.
• 7:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Given the secret of nature of spy weapons, there's no telling how many were manufactured or how many were effectively used.
• 8:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: And what they say though, they've looks good kill.
• 8:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Just like everybody else in the world, I'm still waiting for my hovercar.
• 8:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: If things have gone a little differently, we may have already had them.
• 8:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Back in nineteen fifty-two, the Canadian government funded a project to create a vertical takeoff saucer capable of flying at supersonic speeds.
• 8:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Meet the Avro card.
• 8:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: It could float by utilizing an air cushion created by the exhaust of a single jet powered rotor on the underside of the vehicle.
• 8:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: So yes, this is a literal flying saucer.
• 8:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Or at least it would have been.
• 8:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: In nineteen fifty-eight the U.S.
• 8:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: took over the project after Canada deemed it too expensive to continue.
• 8:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: The Army wanted to use it as a troop transport and the Air Force wanted to use it as a supersonic recon plane.
• 8:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Two test guards were eventually produced, but neither of them were fit for either purpose.
• 8:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: But from being supersonic, the saucers could barely hit thirty-five miles per hour.
• 9:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, about twenty-two times slower?
• 9:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: On top of this, they couldn't make it fly any higher than three feet off the ground before it became completely unstable.
• 9:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: Considering how expensive it was looking to carry on, the U.S.
• 9:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: decided to just pull the plug and cut their losses.
• 9:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Don't get me wrong, the Evercar was cool as hell, but cool doesn't defend a nation.
• 9:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: If it did, they just send me to do all their dirty work.
• 9:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, from the studio that brought you the SR-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-
• 9:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: This time, however, its radar reflective shape was so hot that experience pilots didn't even believe it could get airborne when they first saw it.
• 9:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: They were wrong, of course, although only capable of flying at a third of the speed of Lockheeds SR-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S
• 10:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: The Nighthawk was kept so secret that when it was finally acknowledged by the U.S.
• 10:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: government in nineteen eighty-eight, it had already been flying for five years.
• 10:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it wouldn't be shown to the public for another two years after that in nineteen ninety.
• 10:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Despite eventually being phased out in favor of more modern craft, these striking planes are still used for military training today and have a firm place in popular culture.
• 10:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: The government's shroud of secrecy is also given rise to legends of other classified aircraft, like the Aurora Black Triangle.
• 10:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Sightings of this mystery jet began in the eighties and persisted until the early two thousands, despite the U.S.
• 10:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: government denying it ever existed.
• 11:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: According to rumor, it was designed as a successor to the iconic Blackbird and could reach out reaches speeds of mocks six.
• 11:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: The specifics of its capabilities vary from source to source though, as is often the case with hearsay.
• 11:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Given what we know about how secret the Nighthawk was at the time, do you think that something like the Aurora was or is being flown around above us?
• 11:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Or is it just aliens?
• 11:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let me know down below.
• 11:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: For all the ingenious breakthroughs made during the Second World War, there were a fair few dots.
• 11:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Enter the Gustav Rail Cannon.
• 11:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: This beastly behemoth was an enormous one hundred and fifty-five-foot-long cannon that weighed one thousand four hundred and ninety tons, and traveled along rail tracks and theory, creating transportable ordinance of immense power.
• 11:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: The gun was covertly conceived by German arms manufacturer, crewed before the war had even started to assist German forces with a potential invasion of France.
• 12:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: The only thing was by the time they actually did invade France in nineteen forty, the gun wasn't ready.
• 12:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Good start, right?
• 12:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was ready however to be used in the German invasion of Russia two years later.
• 12:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: The only problem was it turned out to be a complete logistical nightmare.
• 12:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: The canon was to be transported to Crimea in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May, in May,
• 12:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: So after all that, how did it go?
• 12:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, impressively it worked.
• 12:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: The colossal weapon was deployed in the siege of Sevastopol, and fired devastating seven-ton shells at the city day in, day out.
• 12:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Within a month, Sevastopol lay in ruins.
• 13:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: However, despite the guns effectiveness, it was the only time it would ever be used.
• 13:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was disassembled and moved near Lenin grout and preparation for another attack, but the attack never went ahead.
• 13:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: With no further use for it, the Germans destroyed the cannon to prevent it from being captured in reverse engineered.
• 13:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Wow, what a massive waste.
• 13:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Get it?
• 13:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because it was really big.
• 13:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: You can have that one if you want.
• 13:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: After World War II ended, everybody thought everything was going to be nuclear power.
• 13:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Cars, homes, and of course, weapons.
• 13:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, in the nineteen fifties, U.S.
• 13:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: automobile manufacturer Chrysler began designing an atomic tank, the Chrysler TV-eight.
• 13:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: The low enriched uranium that was to be used as fuel was a colossal one-hundred-eight thousand times more efficient than diesel.
• 13:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: So whilst the traditional gasoline tank would need to be frequently refueled, the TV-eight could keep on rolling, pretty much forever.
• 13:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: or indeed keep on swimming.
• 14:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yep, the turret was designed to be watertight and buoyant, and the back of the tank was equipped with jets so it could propel itself through the water.
• 14:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Cool.
• 14:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, why don't we see atomic tanks rolling through battlefields today?
• 14:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, ultimately, they just weren't deemed to have any noticeable advantage over conventional tanks.
• 14:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Sure, they could travel for ages, but, and battle most tanks are lost because of other tanks, not because they run out of fuel.
• 14:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: Plus, come on, this thing is nuclear powered.
• 14:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: If it did get destroyed, it'd probably irradiate a huge part of the battlefield, creating even more casualties.
• 14:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no tanks.
• 14:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: As we know the Second World War did go so well for the German Army.
• 14:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: As the tide of battle turned against Germany, it's increasingly desperate leadership scrambled to turn things around.
• 14:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: One answer was the development of so-called Wonderweapons or Vrunda Vafa.
• 14:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: These weapons ranged from a giant orbital space gun to stealth bombers and had varying levels of success.
• 15:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: As you might have guessed, the space gun didn't make it off the drawing board, but it was seriously considered.
• 15:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: The development was kept tightly under wraps from most of the weapons, the German propaganda machine proudly showed some of them up to boost in alien domestic publics morale.
• 15:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: One Vundevaffer that saw actual use in the field was the STG-Fourryful.
• 15:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: The first true assault rifle ever made, and the inspiration for both the AK-Fourry Seven and M-Six-Tain.
• 15:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: But the STG is run of the mill compared to some of the wonder weapons that were rumored to be in production, the most iconic of these is Deklaka, or the Bell.
• 15:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: What the hell was the Bell?
• 15:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, we don't really know, other than it was apparently big and bell-shaped.
• 15:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay then.
• 15:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Some say it was a UFO, others an anti-gravity machine, and other still a time machine.
• 16:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Whatever the mysterious machine was, it's rumored that the technology used to create it was traded to the US after the war and exchanged for a captive German officer.
• 16:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Of course, there's absolutely no evidence to back this up, or that de-glaca itself ever existed in the first place.
• 16:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: If America really did gain access to this tech, where are all the UFO cars?
• 16:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Or time machines on street corners?
• 16:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Still, their rumors had to come from somewhere, didn't they?
• 16:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: As we've established stealthy aircrafts where all the rage during the Cold War, and in the early eighties, secretive plans were well underway for the B-toe spirit.
• 16:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: A US stealth bomber capable of dropping both conventional and nuclear explosives.
• 16:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: In other words, an absolute unit.
• 16:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it would have been pretty big news if the Soviets had caught drift of it.
• 16:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Wouldn't you agree?
• 16:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, in nineteen eighty four Thomas Kavanaugh and Aerospace Engineer who was working on the bomber saw an opportunity for big profit.
• 17:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: See, Kavanaugh was going through a tough divorce and was in a lot of debt.
• 17:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Needless to say, he needed a cash injection.
• 17:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: So in desperation, he managed to get in contact with some Soviet spies and offer over the secrets of the B-toe spirit.
• 17:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Unfortunately, for crafty cavano, however, the Soviet spies he was dealing with turned down to be undercover FBI agents.
• 17:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: He was probably arrested and imprisoned for sixteen years.
• 17:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: Damn.
• 17:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: The B-to-it-self wouldn't even interact with service until a nineteen ninety-seven, when Kavanaugh was in his twelve-year-of imprisonment, and by that time the Cold War was very much over.
• 17:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because of that, and the fact just one of these bad boys cost an astronomical one billion dollars to produce, only twenty-one plans were ever made.
• 17:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: One billion?
• 17:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: And if I was president, we'd be putting that money towards useful things like BMA's merchandise.
• 17:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: Everyone knows about the moon landing in nineteen sixty-nine.
• 18:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was the culmination of an epic space race between the USA and Russia to essentially prove who had the biggest bracket.
• 18:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: But what if both sides had reached the moon at the same time and things had gotten tense?
• 18:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, the Pentagon had a top secret plan for that.
• 18:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: moon guns.
• 18:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, I'm not getting.
• 18:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: A totally real branch of the U.S.
• 18:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Army called the Future Weapons Office spent the fifties and sixties conceiving a series of weapons that could be used to battle the communist for control of the moon.
• 18:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: See, conventional guns wouldn't be very useful in space.
• 18:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: For one, the extreme temperatures could cause the firearms to either freeze up or explode.
• 18:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Secondly, recoil and zero gravity could quite literally send a soldier flying off backwards after firing.
• 18:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: To remedy this, the space shooters were conceived as gas powered or spring-loaded dark weapons that would work whatever the temperature and have minimal recoil.
• 19:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: and some of them were utterly wild.
• 19:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Regardless, the wacky concepts never made it out of the design phase, which I'm just fine with.
• 19:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: The moon doesn't need to be turned into a Fortnite arena thanks.
• 19:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Cast your mind back a few minutes.
• 19:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: Remember the Nighthawk jet?
• 19:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, after its massive success Lockheed Martin set their sights on using the same stealth tech on different things.
• 19:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Stelttoasters, stealth toilets, stealth boats.
• 19:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, only that last one.
• 19:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Though, there could still be a gap in the market for a covert toaster.
• 19:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: The goal was to apply the stealth principles of the Nighthawk to a boat, which they called the Sea Shadow.
• 19:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: This robotic-looking ship was manufactured in nineteen eighty-four in complete secrecy.
• 19:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: To keep the project under wraps, its entire construction took place inside a submersible barge in California.
• 19:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it'd be way too obvious to have huge parts lugged down to the dogs every day.
• 19:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, for all the effort there was put into keeping the shadow a secret, after its testing phase it mysteriously sees development.
• 20:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: And we don't really know why.
• 20:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Eventually in two thousand six the U.S.
• 20:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Navy put the boat up for sale under one condition.
• 20:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: The buyer couldn't actually sail it, and it was only to be used for scraps.
• 20:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: So unsurprisingly, it didn't garner much interest.
• 20:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Man, and I was looking for a new location for my super villain layer too.
• 20:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: Back in the nineteen seventies, the US public's faith in their government was at a historic low point.
• 20:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: President Nixon had just been found guilty of corruption and Congress had been forced to investigate America's intelligence agencies.
• 20:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: They found something utterly insane.
• 20:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: A hitherto unknown CIA heart attack on.
• 20:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yep, this modified cult M-I-N-I-E-E-E-E-N was designed to soundly fire darts made from frozen water mixed with deadly shellfish toxic.
• 20:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Straight after penetrating the victim's skin, the darts would melt releasing the toxin within and shutting down the victim's cardiovascular system.
• 21:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: To an onlooker, and indeed even post-altypsy, it appeared to have been nothing more than a natural heart attack.
• 21:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Shellfish toxin is incredibly hard to detect, and with no bullet, there's no way to trace something like this back to its source.
• 21:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Nobody to hold accountable.
• 21:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Whether the pistol was actually ever used or not, we just don't know.
• 21:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: But my bet's on, it was.
• 21:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: Next in the crazy assassination weapon catalog is the U.S.
• 21:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: military's latest in greatest, the R. IX missile.
• 21:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Also known as the Ninja Bomb.
• 21:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: This thing is absolutely crazy.
• 21:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: See, unlike most missiles, the Arnine X doesn't actually, you know, explode.
• 21:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: So what the heck's the point?
• 21:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Get this.
• 21:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: When the missile is about to make impact with its target, six massive metal blades fold out of it, like some enormous angry Swiss Army knife.
• 21:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: The idea is that this unconventional weapon will land directly on top of its target and get to work without any collateral damage or unnecessary casualties.
• 22:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Hmm, I get it, but man, that sounds terrific for the unfortunate sucker this thing has been programmed to hit.
• 22:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's being utilized right now.
• 22:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: As recently as August, twenty-twenty-two, President Joe Biden announced the successful assassination of Al Qaeda's number one operative, and it turns out that then classified Arnine X was responsible.
• 22:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: It may sound like something out of itching and scratchy, but it definitely seems effective, effective, and absolutely terrifying.
• 22:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Buckle up, we've had attempts to cause heart attacks, beam thoughts, and to people's heads, and wage war on the moon.
• 22:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: But none of those declassified calamities compared... ...and a US scientist wrote to the CIA with a seemingly bonkers idea.
• 22:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: What if we could control lightning?
• 22:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm totally serious.
• 22:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Rather than throw the letter straight into the trash, the CIA generally considered the logistics of harnessing lightning storms as deadly weapons.
• 23:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: The court principle was very basic.
• 23:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Lightning is formed of electricity, which is attracted to the metal.
• 23:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: So by unfurling long lines of metal wire from an aircraft, the CIA hoped the wires would attract lightning, manipulating its path and sending it wherever the US commanded.
• 23:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay then.
• 23:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: The best part, it'd be almost impossible to pin the blame for such an attack on anybody.
• 23:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: In other words, it was the perfect assassination weapon.
• 23:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it'd have to be put down to freak accident, right?
• 23:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't me, it was Thor!
• 23:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: But there were a few layering issues.
• 23:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: First, you'd only be able to utilize lightning if a lightning storm was about to happen, which is one pretty huge if.
• 23:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let's say the weather was on your side though, even then your target would need to be practically inside the storm for the plane to successfully fly overhead, catch lightning on the wire, and lead the electrified wire close enough to the target to shock them.
• 24:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh yeah, and there's also the little thing of flying up there with storm in the first place.
• 24:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Man, forget it.
• 24:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, I'm beginning to see why people just use guns.
• 24:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for listening to the podcast.
• 24:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: We'll see you again next time.
• 24:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: You'll want to be amazed.