Pentagon project to create "gay bomb" rejected

[danaeris]

OK, this is fucked.

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. - - - - "

http://blog.wired.com/tableofmalcontents/2007/06/pentagon_reject.html

This is NOT, so far as I can tell, a hoax.

Comments

[rocketgeek.livejournal.com]

This is really quite old; I think the first time I heard about it was more than five years ago, and it's over a decade old. Thing is, the Pentagon has a department (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, DARPA) whose mission is to invent and study wild and woolly ideas and technology. Their internal rubric is that about 40% of their projects should be failures -- otherwise, they're not pushing the envelope hard enough. It's also not the wildest thing that I've heard from the DARPA crowd. I wouldn't be surprised if they had an official DARPA pot supply to assist in brainstorming. :)

[kallisti.livejournal.com]

I heard about it years ago as well...Wikipedia says:

"Gay bomb is an informal name for a theoretical non-lethal chemical weapon, which a United States Air Force research laboratory speculated about producing.

In 1994 the Wright Laboratory in Ohio produced a three-page proposal of a variety of possible nonlethal chemical weapons, which was later obtained—complete with marginal jottings and typos—by the Sunshine Project through a Freedom of Information Act request.

In one sentence of the document it was suggested that a strong aphrodisiac could be dropped on enemy troops, ideally one which would also cause "homosexual behaviour". The aphrodisiac weapon was described as "distasteful but completely non-lethal". In its "New Discoveries Needed" section, the document implicitly acknowledges that no such chemicals are actually known. It is not known whether this chemical has been developed further. The document also included many other off-beat ideas, such as spraying enemy troops with bee pheromones and then hiding numerous beehives in the combat area."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_bomb

[foms.livejournal.com]

I seem to remember that the sfnal treatment is even older. I'd have to go look up references. I certainly remember something like this used in an sf story for crowd control.

[vyedma.livejournal.com]

Its called make love not war!

[avt-tor.livejournal.com]

One strongly suspects a recreational use for this. ;) Kind of a twist on the "War on Drugs" slogan. Also one really wonders what the military would do if an enemy got their hands on one of these. ("It was da bomb made me do it, Captain. Honey." <wink>)

[cktraveler.livejournal.com]

I support this research.

[acegreco.livejournal.com]

Sweet jebus.

Given the military's views on gays, I wouldn't bloody well be surprised that they actually proposed and considered this...

Is that much of the human race STILL that backward?