You Might Be a Zombie and Other Bad News - Writers of Cracked dot Com [37]
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 kill someone dead. In part, this difficulty is because we don’t know what ball 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 well 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 brilliant 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—collapsing tunnels, crushing subterranean bases, and probably pissing off any nearby Mole Men (but we’ll 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 drilling warheads, they detonate and collapse 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 killjoy.
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 II the Germans were developing a series of whimsically 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 killing the shit out of them. If you gathered up every Bond villain 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. Originally 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 Allied interrogation, those working on the sun gun stated that it was all