Love and war might seem like polar opposites, but in 1994, the U.S. military thought that using one might help with the other. Under the directive of the Department of Defense, researchers at Ohio's Wright Laboratory proposed developing a so-called "gay bomb": a chemical weapon that, in theory, would make enemy combatants fall in love with one another, and therefore be much less inclined to engage in warfare.
According to the lab's three-page proposal, for about $7.5 million USD, they would create an explosive weapon that, when detonated, would release chemicals "that would cause enemy soldiers to become gay, and to have their units break down because all their soldiers became irresistibly attractive to one another." However, there wasn't any research backing up the feasibility of their plan. Luckily, sane minds prevailed, and no such bomb was ever made, nor were any of the other far-fetched ideas that the lab came up with, such as flatulence and bad-breath bombs, as well as an explosive device that would cause stinging insects to come and attack anyone exposed.
Other military misses:
- During World War II, the U.S. military developed – and canceled – a "bat bomb" that would deploy thousands of bats and theoretically ruin Japanese paper-and-wood homes.
- The Soviet Union tried to train dogs to crawl beneath Nazi tanks with bombs attached, but the dogs mostly ran away from the gunfire.
- The French Maginot Line was meant to block German forces from attacking in World War II, but the Germans simply went around it.
