You Might Be a Zombie . . . (15 page)

Does it work?

Not yet! The problem isn’t in creating the plasma itself—Dr. Koloc has been able to generate rings of various sizes for a while now—no, the problem is sustaining that plasma ring for a long enough period to kil someone dead. In part, this difficulty is because we don’t know what bal lightning is exactly or how it works. And having even the vaguest understanding of something is a very helpful step when you’re trying to put it in a gun and shoot planes out of the sky with it. So at this stage in the game, the military having a lightning cannon would be akin to a kindergartener owning a revolver that fires calculus.

3. DEEP DIGGER

What is it?

Chances are you’ve heard the term
bunker buster
before—the name of a bomb capable of destroying hardened underground structures, as wel as a girl with a big ol’ booty who knows how to use it (we made that one up, but we still stand behind it as a bril iant and accurate nickname). A typical bunker buster bomb has a timer that’s activated once the bomb is released. The explosive is set to detonate only after the bomb has enough time to crash through a certain number of floors within a structure. The Deep Digger is the next logical step: Rather than simply crashing through your ceiling and exploding, the Digger actually propels itself through the earth or concrete—tunneling into bases—before it goes off.

And that’s pretty terrifying, but where does nature come into all this? well, the massive pulse created by the Deep Digger actually triggers a localized mini-earthquake upon detonation—col apsing tunnels, crushing subterranean bases, and probably pissing off any nearby Mole Men (but we’l cross that bridge when it rises from the earth to wreak vengeance on our children).

Does it work?

Oh yes, and their mass-production could mean the end of underground bunkers or underground anything that’s not a Deep Digger, for that matter, in modern warfare. The newest version of the Deep Digger can reach depths of 150 feet, where, after separating into a group of twenty dril ing warheads, they detonate and col apse all structures up to 300 feet below the surface for a 200-yard radius.

“But wait, couldn’t bunkers be built below 300 feet?” you ask, because you’re kind of a kil joy.

Yes, but there’s something you’re not thinking about: Every bunker needs an entrance leading to the surface. The damage isn’t done by exploding the bunker; it’s done by sealing the earth around the people inside of it. So, if you want to be technical about it, the Deep Digger is a nonlethal weapon like mace or tear gas; that is, if mace buried you and your friends alive until you suffocated or cannibalized each other.

2. THE SUN GUN

What is it?

During World War I the Germans were developing a series of whimsical y named
Wunderwaffen
, or “wonder weapons,” which, despite sounding like a warfare strategy developed by the Care Bears, were actually terrifying. These
Wunderwaffen
were designed to be both practical and theatrical—intimidating foes while also kil ing the shit out of them. If you gathered up every Bond vil ain superweapon and whipped them into a mixture of dubious science and murder, added a dash of the occult, and baked it in an oven preheated to clown-shit-crazy degrees, you’d get the sun gun. Original y designed in 1929, the sun gun was pretty simple: A space station in orbit held a hundred-meter-wide mirror, which it used to focus concentrated sunlight on any point on the planet. It was like a gargantuan Nazi child roasting human ants with his space magnifying glass, if that helps you picture it.

Did it work?

If you’re reading this right now, chances are your grandparents weren’t melted alive by space Nazis—but that isn’t because the mirror didn’t work; the Nazis just never finished building it. There weren’t enough resources (or spaceflight) at the time, but researchers were able to determine the necessary size required of a mirror to burn up a city and even what materials they could use to construct it.

During all ied interrogation, those working on the sun gun stated that it was all merely a matter of time and manpower to get a ful y functioning prototype.

They weren’t wrong of course. It just would have taken much more time and manpower than they could muster. Seeing as these were the same people who thought Hitler was an awesome boss and that the “nation” of Poland was more of a suggestion, real y, nobody was too surprised when it turned out they were ful of shit.

1. THE VORTEX CANNON

What is it?

Another
Wunderwaffen
, or will y Wonka’s weapons of whimsy, the vortex cannon worked on the idea that even small -scale turbulence could knock fighter planes out of the sky. The Nazis figured if they could create turbulent skies on demand, they could economize on the massive resources they spent building shel s for antiaircraft artil ery and start really getting serious about the giant sun laser. A Nazi scientist named Dr. Zimmermeyer developed the

first version of the vortex cannon, which was astoundingly simple technology considering we’re talking about a tornado gun: A giant mortar barrel was sunk into the ground and loaded with shel s containing coal dust, hydrogen, and oxygen. When the shel s detonated, they would create a mini-vortex strong enough to bring down any planes within a hundred meters and cause everybody witnessing it to quit the war because “dark wizardry” isn’t covered under the Geneva Conventions.

Did it work?

Holy shit . . . yes?! At one point in history, the Nazi forces had a functioning tornado gun they used to whirl planes out of the sky? Presumably Indiana Jones got to them before it could be deployed, as that is the only conceivable reason why we won the war against the Axis of Ridiculous Superweapons.

Wel , actually it was because the gun didn’t work nearly as reliably as conventional antiaircraft weaponry. Considering the whole appeal of the vortex cannon was that it was supposed to consume fewer resources than a normal gun to take down a plane, the Axis decided to stick with the stupid, boring old explosive shel s.

So real y, it all boils down to this: The only reason you’re not living in a fantastical comic book world of wacky doomsday devices is because the people in accounting ran the numbers, and supervil ainy, while totally feasible, was just too damned expensive.

REMEMBER
DARE? Those brave police officers came into your school and told you nothing good ever came from drugs? They were lying too.

4. FRANCIS CRICK DISCOVERS DNA THANKS TO LSD

Francis Crick is the closest the field of genetics gets to a rock star, which it turns out is pretty damn close. In 1953, he burst through the front door of his Cambridge home and told his wife, Odile, to draw two spirals twisting in opposite directions from one another. She drew what he described, having no clue that her sketch would become the most reproduced drawing in the history of science: a first draft of the double helix structure of DNA that scientists today still describe as “bal s on.”

The drug: LSD

When not discovering the key to life, and winning the Nobel Prize for it, Crick spent the 1950s and ’60s throwing all -night parties famous for featuring that era’s favorite party favors: LSD and bare-naked breasts. Crick never made it a secret that he experimented with the drug, and in 2006 the London
Mail
on Sunday
reported that Crick had told many col eagues that he was experimenting with LSD when he figured out the double helix structure.

Why it makes sense

The double helix is essential y the
Sgt. Pepper’s
of scientific models, a ladder that’s been melted and twirled by a pasta fork, or the two snakes from the caduceus if one of them was boning the other with a hundred dicks (depending on whether the artist ate the good or bad acid). Now, obviously scientists don’t arrive at models by doodling on their Trapper Keepers and picking out the shape that looks the coolest. Crick was a fan of Aldous Huxley’s
The
Doors of Perception
, a study of the human mind undertaken, like all good studies, while driving around LA on mescaline.

Huxley wrote that the sober mind has a series of filters on it that basical y prevent abstract thought. Evolution put them there to keep you from plowing your car into a tree while gazing at the mind-blowing beauty of its foliage. But Huxley and Crick thought drugs like mescaline and LSD could temporarily remove those filters. So rather than melting his mind into a lava lamp of trippy shapes, Crick probably used LSD to get unfiltered access to a part of his brain most normal people rarely use.

Before you go trying it . . .

While Crick never official y wore a tinfoil hat, he was known to argue that life was seeded on earth by a race of prehistoric aliens, a theory that has yet to gain widespread acceptance among the scientific community or really anyone who isn’t a character on
The X-Files
or a member of the Church of Scientology.

3. FREUD AND COCAINE INVENT PSYCHOANALYSIS

Freudian psychoanalysis is one of the most influential and controversial theories of the twentieth century. While you can argue its merits all day, you can’t deny that it created an entire branch of medicine and, more important, gave us the two best seasons of
The Sopranos
.

The drug: cocaine

The first ten years of Sigmund Freud’s career were like a roving cocaine pep ral y. He wrote cocaine prescriptions for his friends with headaches, nasal ailments, or just to “give [their] cheeks a red color.” He wrote cocaine-fueled love letters to his wife in which he referred to himself as a “wild man with cocaine in his blood.” Oh, and he also published a paper called
On Coca
, wherein the basic thesis was: Cocaine is freaking awesome. You should really think about trying some.

After one of his friends overdosed on the drug, Freud quietly folded up his cocaine pom-poms and sweater-skirt combo, and went on to found the theory that bears his name. But according to Freud biographer Louis Berger, it may also have played a part in the less-embarrassing second act of his career.

Why it makes sense

Apparently, before cocaine Freud was an emotional y sterile, social y awkward lab rat. Flash forward to a series of all -night cocaine benders in which Freud and his friend Fleischel stayed up all night discussing their “profoundest despair.”

Scarfreud 2: Freudface

This probably sounds familiar to anyone who’s been around people on the drug or has at least seen the movie
Boogie Nights.
Cocaine gives you a preternatural ability to talk about yourself, and according to Berger (who is a professor emeritus of psychoanalytic studies at the California Institute of Technology), it was responsible for Freud’s enthusiasm for discussing how you feel about your mother.

Before you go trying it . . .

Fleischel, the friend who sent Freud on the path toward psychoanalysis, was also the friend the drug ended up kil ing.

2. A COKE ADDICT MAKES A COKE-FLAVORED COLA AND CALLS IT COKE

Coca-Cola is the biggest brand in the history of the world. Sure, it’s mostly just soda water and sugar, but they sel about 400 billion cans of the stuff a year, an average of more than sixty cans to every single human being on the planet.

The drug: Coke has it right there in the name

When Coca-Cola was invented in the summer of 1885, sodas were advertised for their health benefits. Dr. Pepper got its name from the Texas physician who marketed it as a cure for impotence. Coca-Cola was able to stand out in the crowded market because its purported side effects weren’t total and utter bul shit.

John Pemberton, the Atlanta pharmacist who invented Coca-Cola, named it after the coca leaf, one of the ingredients he claimed cured everything from depression and nervousness to morphine addiction. If that sales pitch sounds familiar, congratulations, you could beat a chimpanzee in a game of memory. Coca is the leaf that produces cocaine, and like Freud, John Pemberton was a big fan.