The Voice of God Weapon
It seems some ideas are just too good to give up on. Terry Gross’ guest on Fresh Air last night, Sharon Weinberger, has written a book on fringe science in the defense industry. My favorite wacky idea: the Voice of God weapon. Simply beam a microwave signal at your enemies’ head, and they will hear a voice speaking, intoning the message of your choice, e.g. "LAY DOWN YOUR WEAPONS. SAVE YOUR SOUL." Except, of course, it doesn’t actually work.
More on this at Wikipedia, though the entry doesn’t look too credible.
It’s not too hard to imagine why the Voice of God weapon remains fringe science. Imagine trying to do controlled experiments on this one. So you apply to your Institutional Review Board for Approval to Test Human Subjects. Proposed protocol: beam microwaves at people’s heads… You could try rats, but unfortunately they don’t speak English, allowing you to test only the hypothesis: "rats freak out when they have microwaves beamed at them."
