SPOONBENDER'S TIRE SPIKES: Liquor in the front, poker in the rear of the flying saucer
Edward Hammond's Sunshine-Project has just put on-line some old documents from the Los Alamos National Lab's Non-Lethal Weapons Project, ca. 1994.
At the time, the project was administered by John Alexander. For masters of military pseudo-science trivia, the name is one to elicit a rolling of the eyes or a lunge for the nearest bottle of aspirin.
During his tenure with the US military, Alexander became known for his involvement in screwy projects like the development of psychic weaponry and the use of clairvoyants in reconaissance. (In 1997, these antics were popularized in a book entitled "Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies," by Jim Schnabel. DD seems to recall Alexander being dubbed 'Spoonbender' in it, this having to do with a personal enthusiasm for the old Yuri Geller gag.)
One of the ancestors of DD blog, the Crypt Newsletter, occasionally followed Alexander for the tales of unintended comedy that inevitably resulted.
Conveniently, one article, entitled, "NON-LETHAL WEAPONS ... QUARK, ELISABETH KUBLER-ROSS & CHARM" related:
At the time, Aftergood wrote: "In 1980, Alexander wrote that 'there are weapons systems that operate on the power of the mind and whose lethal capacity has already been demonstrated' [in] 'The New Mental Battlefield,' Military Review, Dec. 1980 . . . In that article, Alexander addressed out-of-body experiences, psychokinesis, and telepathic behavior modification. 'There is sufficient concern about psychic intrusion to cause work to begin on countermeasures such as bioenergy detectors,' he advised . . . 'The information presented here will be considered by some to be ridiculous since it does not conform to their view of reality, but some people still believe the world is flat.'"
"The New Mental Battlefield" has certainly aged well, don't you think? (Time again to paraphrase one of the favored quotes from Dr. Strangelove: "Now, Mr. President, I don't think it's quite fair to condemn an entire program for a couple of slip-ups.")
In any case, the Sunshine-Project has posted an old document -- a poster session for a seminar on pseudo-science, one might call it -- on the non-lethal use of "superacids" for the neutralization of enemy infrastructure.
It seems reasonable only if you don't know a jot about chemistry.
In 1994, Alexander and his non-lethal weapons group at the National Lab apparently became interested in antimony pentafluoride as a "superacid" or "magic acid" to throw upon the enemy. It was a grab-bag idea envisioning the use of exotic compounds for "embrittling" metals, dissolving rubber and -- well, generally degrading anything you wanted degraded.
The work and the paper were genuinely clueless.
The Los Alamos talking points paper fails to even notice that George Olah, the scientist who had discovered "magic acid" for his carbocation chemistry work, which would not have been possible without the use of it, was awarded the Nobel Prize the same year.
Of course, the non-lethal weapons project has nothing to do with Nobel class science. It's just a collection of silly anecdotes on what someone in the military industrial complex who doesn't know anything about science might wish to do with something niftily called "a superacid."
Antimony pentafluoride is a very hazardous compound and combining it with hydrogen fluoride, to form "magic acid," doesn't ameliorate the volatile and tricky character of the materials. In industry, it has a good number of applications but it's not something one can practically envision throwing about on a battlefield. Quantity is an obstacle to use. So is common sense. Maybe it could be for spilling on your patio, if you wish to turn it into a chemical waste dump.
To illustrate the genuine lack of critical thinking in the project, it's useful to review a snapshot from the Alexander document. The snapshot shows an artist's conception of a tire spike, filled with some foolish notional non-lethal chemical weapon, made just for the destruction of tires on enemy vehicles.
Well now, if you're going to throw tire spikes all over the the road, why waste time and effort filling them with a mixture that won't add to the final result?
Whoever thought of this had rocks in their head.
And perhaps it explains why such projects never went anywhere.
The US military's non-lethal weapons projects persist to this day.
They tend to circulate the same flavors of faux science passed off as cutting edge mission-of-mercy endeavor over and over. And although they never lack for enthusiastic press coverage, they never gain much traction, either.
One of the reasons for this must be because of perception among many, earned by this chapter in history, that such programs have been administered and guided by kooks.
Document presentation on "superacids" at Sunshine-Project.Org.
Some more discussion, in Weird vs. weirder at Danger Room blog.
Steven Aftergood's citation on John Alexander in the FAS Secrecy Bulletin, also from 1994.
Edward Hammond's Sunshine-Project has just put on-line some old documents from the Los Alamos National Lab's Non-Lethal Weapons Project, ca. 1994.
At the time, the project was administered by John Alexander. For masters of military pseudo-science trivia, the name is one to elicit a rolling of the eyes or a lunge for the nearest bottle of aspirin.
During his tenure with the US military, Alexander became known for his involvement in screwy projects like the development of psychic weaponry and the use of clairvoyants in reconaissance. (In 1997, these antics were popularized in a book entitled "Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies," by Jim Schnabel. DD seems to recall Alexander being dubbed 'Spoonbender' in it, this having to do with a personal enthusiasm for the old Yuri Geller gag.)
One of the ancestors of DD blog, the Crypt Newsletter, occasionally followed Alexander for the tales of unintended comedy that inevitably resulted.
Conveniently, one article, entitled, "NON-LETHAL WEAPONS ... QUARK, ELISABETH KUBLER-ROSS & CHARM" related:
[Non-lethal weapons] projects - in intellectual thrust - are not unique. They are all, without exception, extensions of the post-World War II US military's desire to formulate a kind of magic-bullet chemical weapon which would make the enemy throw down his rifle, stand up and recite the pledge-of-allegiance. Throughout the Cold War, invariably such attempts met with failure. However, the idea won't die, if only because of the combination of civilian and political distaste for nasty little wars ... and wishful thinking.
... Los Alamos's director of non-lethal weapons programs, Dr. John B. Alexander, crops up infrequently in mainstream media sources like the Los Angeles Times where his thoughts appear as reasonable statements about the suitability of such weapons in international peace-keeping ... However, Steven Aftergood who edits the Secrecy and Government Bulletin for the Federation of American Scientists, dug up a more complete background of Alexander in the most recent issue of that publication. Aftergood is diplomatic in his description of Alexander, but nuts is the word which comes to the mind of Crypt Newsletter editors.
At the time, Aftergood wrote: "In 1980, Alexander wrote that 'there are weapons systems that operate on the power of the mind and whose lethal capacity has already been demonstrated' [in] 'The New Mental Battlefield,' Military Review, Dec. 1980 . . . In that article, Alexander addressed out-of-body experiences, psychokinesis, and telepathic behavior modification. 'There is sufficient concern about psychic intrusion to cause work to begin on countermeasures such as bioenergy detectors,' he advised . . . 'The information presented here will be considered by some to be ridiculous since it does not conform to their view of reality, but some people still believe the world is flat.'"
"The New Mental Battlefield" has certainly aged well, don't you think? (Time again to paraphrase one of the favored quotes from Dr. Strangelove: "Now, Mr. President, I don't think it's quite fair to condemn an entire program for a couple of slip-ups.")
In any case, the Sunshine-Project has posted an old document -- a poster session for a seminar on pseudo-science, one might call it -- on the non-lethal use of "superacids" for the neutralization of enemy infrastructure.
It seems reasonable only if you don't know a jot about chemistry.
In 1994, Alexander and his non-lethal weapons group at the National Lab apparently became interested in antimony pentafluoride as a "superacid" or "magic acid" to throw upon the enemy. It was a grab-bag idea envisioning the use of exotic compounds for "embrittling" metals, dissolving rubber and -- well, generally degrading anything you wanted degraded.
The work and the paper were genuinely clueless.
The Los Alamos talking points paper fails to even notice that George Olah, the scientist who had discovered "magic acid" for his carbocation chemistry work, which would not have been possible without the use of it, was awarded the Nobel Prize the same year.
Of course, the non-lethal weapons project has nothing to do with Nobel class science. It's just a collection of silly anecdotes on what someone in the military industrial complex who doesn't know anything about science might wish to do with something niftily called "a superacid."
Antimony pentafluoride is a very hazardous compound and combining it with hydrogen fluoride, to form "magic acid," doesn't ameliorate the volatile and tricky character of the materials. In industry, it has a good number of applications but it's not something one can practically envision throwing about on a battlefield. Quantity is an obstacle to use. So is common sense. Maybe it could be for spilling on your patio, if you wish to turn it into a chemical waste dump.
To illustrate the genuine lack of critical thinking in the project, it's useful to review a snapshot from the Alexander document. The snapshot shows an artist's conception of a tire spike, filled with some foolish notional non-lethal chemical weapon, made just for the destruction of tires on enemy vehicles.
Well now, if you're going to throw tire spikes all over the the road, why waste time and effort filling them with a mixture that won't add to the final result?
Whoever thought of this had rocks in their head.
And perhaps it explains why such projects never went anywhere.
The US military's non-lethal weapons projects persist to this day.
They tend to circulate the same flavors of faux science passed off as cutting edge mission-of-mercy endeavor over and over. And although they never lack for enthusiastic press coverage, they never gain much traction, either.
One of the reasons for this must be because of perception among many, earned by this chapter in history, that such programs have been administered and guided by kooks.
Document presentation on "superacids" at Sunshine-Project.Org.
Some more discussion, in Weird vs. weirder at Danger Room blog.
Steven Aftergood's citation on John Alexander in the FAS Secrecy Bulletin, also from 1994.
posted by George Smith at 2:34 PM
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