01x04 - Strange Weapons

[bunniefuu]

Throughout time,

governments and the people

who work for them have done strange

and even terrible things in

the name of national interest.

Tonight, strange

weapons intended to k*ll.

From a weapon fired on the moon

Scientists have to now start figuring out

how to make a g*n that

will work as it does on earth

but on the moon.

To an experimental nuclear weapon

that needs unusual

helpers to make it work

So some genius

decides to enlist an animal

to live inside a nuclear b*mb.

The safety of the entire western world

depends on these barnyard animals.

And even a plot to defeat

Hitler using hormones..

This would constitute a sneak attack

against Adolf Hitler's masculine health,

and he wouldn't even

know it was happening.

Dangerous threats sometimes

inspire strange weapons.

It's time to bring these stories to light.

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At the height of the cold w*r,

the U.S. and Russia

raced to create weapons

to give them an edge.

In the late 1950s, the Soviets come up

with what could be a game changer

a handgun that kills without a trace.

In August 1961, a kgb hitman walks

into a west German

police station and defects.

Bohdan stashynsky is

interrogated by the CIA.

And he spills the beans

on a high-level hit he just carried out

using a top secret g*n that induces

a heart attack on the victim.

He claims to have poisoned

two Ukrainian exiles,

both very much enemies

of the Soviet state.

Stashynsky claims to

have used a modified p*stol

that, instead of firing a b*llet,

sprays a little bit of a spray

of hydrogen cyanide vapor

right into somebody's face.

The CIA have never

heard of a heart-attack g*n,

but it inspires the agency to create

its own untraceable weapon.

And in 1968, a highly

classified science unit,

code name project

mknaomi, gets to work.

When CIA finds out that the

Soviets have a poison g*n,

they set out on a mission to

create something even better.

They want a toxin that's fatal,

untraceable, undetectable,

and would look like natural causes

in the case of the victim, if

they were ever discovered.

Toxins are basically nature's poisons.

They are things that are highly poisonous

that exist out there in the natural world.

They land on something called saxitoxin.

Saxitoxin is found in

contaminated clams,

and it is 1,000 times

more deadly than cyanide.

It works very quickly to

disrupt your nervous system,

interfering with your ability to breathe,

causing heart failure,

leading to a heart attack.

The toxin breaks down quickly

and is likely to have disappeared

before an autopsy is carried out.

It's the perfect poison.

The only problem is, how to deliver it?

The Soviet cyanide g*n

has a lot of drawbacks.

You have to be very close to use it.

You really had to get in somebody's face,

and you had to kind of hope

that the breeze wasn't

blowing towards you.

A change in the wind

could make the person

sh**ting the weapon the victim.

Plus, you never know

whether or not somebody else

is going to be exposed to the cyanide.

The obvious solution is

to use a b*llet, not a spray.

But b*ll*ts create their own problems.

If they use a b*llet or pellet,

it will leave a physical trace,

even if the poison doesn't.

So the mknaomi unit

develops the only way

to covertly sh**t a target with saxitoxin.

They freeze the poison

into a hair-thin dart

that will leave nothing

but the tiniest little pinprick.

But does this strange weapon

ever get off the drawing board?

In 1975, accusations against the CIA

lead to a congressional investigation,

and the agency must answer questions

regarding alleged criminal activity.

CIA director William

Colby must bring out

some skeletons from the closet,

and he reveals project mknaomi.

Congress gets to see

more than just documents.

Have you brought with you

some of those devices which

would have enabled the CIA

to use this poison for

- we have indeed.

- For k*lling people?

Don't point it at me.

It's the kind of thing that would

make James Bond jealous.

Does this p*stol fire the dart?

Yes, it does.

CIA takes a Colt m1911

g*n and actually adjusts it

so that it can be fired

from an electronic chamber

so it's silent,

and it fires frozen darts

instead of firing b*ll*ts.

So that when it fires, it fires silently?

Almost silently, yes.

- Very little, very little

- What range does it have?

- About 100 yards, 100 meters.

- About 100 meters' range?

Right.

The heart-attack g*n is, in

many ways, the perfect weapon.

If you're the victim, you may

not even know you were hit.

You may only feel a sting, a pinch,

or maybe just an itch

before you have a heart attack and die.

For the coroner or investigator

trying to determine the cause of death,

everything is going to

look like natural causes.

It's going to look like

a natural heart attack.

It's now clear that the g*n

not only exists, but it works.

But who were the intended targets?

In the wake of the select committee,

the CIA is forced to release

the largest-ever cache of

declassified CIA projects.

Detailed within are

covert assassination plans

to poison Congolese

president patrice lumumba

and Cuban revolutionary fidel Castro.

There's no direct connection

between project mknaomi

and subsequent assassination attempts.

And the CIA continues to deny

that its heart-attack g*n

was ever used in the field.

But during world w*r ii,

there is a secret weapon

that is fully deployed in American skies.

A silent winter's night is suddenly broken

by the sound of an expl*si*n.

Locals rush out to see

what has happened.

They find debris

and what looks like parts of a balloon

and b*mb shrapnel.

Could it be a homemade

attempt at b*mb building

or a stray military test?

Within days, there are

reports of similar events

coming in from all over the country.

Same sort of debris is

found off the coast of Hawaii,

in kalispell, Montana,

Marshall, Alaska, and Oregon.

Is the United States under attack?

The army's military

intelligence department

investigates.

What they find is that these

are hydrogen-filled paper balloons.

While they look pretty,

these are not party balloons.

The lanterns carry a deadly cargo

four incendiary devices

and one 30-pound b*mb.

The air force is told,

if you see these balloons

while you're flying your plane,

sh**t them down with extreme prejudice.

But one mystery remains.

Who is making these weapons?

The army's military

intelligence department

starts looking at the balloons

to try to figure out

where they came from.

And they realize something incredible.

They're not made of plastic.

They're made of paper that

derives from the kozo tree,

and that tree is native to Asia.

But there's more, because

they're able to analyze

the sand inside the ballast bags

and determine that they

come from a very specific place

the beaches of southeastern Japan.

It's clear Japan is attacking the U.S.

With a very strange weapon

paper balloons carrying bombs

that can travel across the pacific.

The Japanese discover that air currents

at high altitudes travel from west to east.

The deadly balloons, named fu-go,

can ride the jet stream

on a four-day journey,

all the way across the ocean.

It's an ingenious use

of natural resources.

One of the key features

of the balloon b*mb

is that it doesn't have a pilot on board.

And so you can deploy military

force against the United States

without risking your

vital military personnel.

The trouble is, you can't guide it,

and so you don't know

where it's going to drop.

It's indiscriminate.

The b*mb's expl*sive power

isn't enough to do huge damage.

Its real threat is starting fires.

The state of California

is especially vulnerable

to forest fires.

And the Japanese were hoping

that the balloon-b*mb campaign

would trigger forest

fires across the state.

The U.S. military reacts to that

by keeping aircraft on standby

to douse any part of California

that might be affected by a balloon b*mb

that triggers a forest fire.

The government keeps the bombs secret

and out of the press because

they want the Japanese

to think their campaign is failing.

Then disaster strikes.

In may of 1945, a minister and his wife

were taking five Sunday-school

children out for a picnic.

While the minister was parking the car,

his wife took the kids into the forest.

They find a strange

object a large balloon.

When they approach

to get a closer look

They accidentally trigger the

balloon's deadly 30-pound b*mb.

The blast kills everybody

the five children and the minister's wife

and they become the only

mainland American casualties

of world w*r ii.

A Sunday-school picnic

getting ripped apart

is bad news that's going to spread fast.

So the government has no choice

but to come clean with the public.

In may 1945, secret intelligence

on Japanese balloon bombs

is finally released to the press.

In the final reckoning,

the balloons are more

ingenious than effective.

Of an estimated 9,000 fu-go bombs

released by the Japanese,

only 285 are officially recorded

as hitting their target.

In 1954, the British decide to develop

a new kind of nuclear weapon

one that can be buried

underground, like a land mine.

Not surprisingly, the

project runs into problems

right from the start.

In the aftermath of world w*r ii,

britain has a very real

fear that the Soviet union

might launch an as*ault

on Western Europe.

And if so, it will involve

the Soviet hordes,

thousands of tanks and

other armored vehicles,

millions of troops

marching through Germany

on their way to the conquest of Europe.

To boost their defenses,

the military decide

they need a new kind of weapon.

The British have been using land mines

for defensive positions

for hundreds of years.

And they understand

that a single anti-tank mine

might destroy a tank.

But what if you could

destroy 1,000 tanks

with a single land mine?

Strategically placed nuclear land mines

could wipe out an entire invading force.

Plus, the area will be

contaminated with fallout,

forcing the invaders to retreat.

This could be a game changer

a weapon the world

has never seen before.

The British code-name

the project blue peacock.

30 miles outside London,

engineers at a British army research site

begin developing a nuclear land mine.

To save money, they adapt a warhead

that's already in service

called the blue danube.

But there's a challenge.

If you plant a 10-kiloton

nuke in the ground,

it can't be as sensitive

as a regular land mine.

Land mines used during world w*r ii

are triggered through

contact by the enemy

and, unfortunately,

civilians as well sometimes.

But you can't have a

nuclear b*mb going off

because somebody steps on it.

A dog Walker straying

into the wrong field

could accidentally trigger

a 10-kiloton expl*si*n.

They decide to give

the mine an off setting,

rendering it perfectly safe.

It will basically be sleeping underground.

When called into

action, it can be triggered,

either by setting a timer or remotely

by way of a three-mile cable.

Problem solved.

British experts soon

realize something else.

A buried nuclear b*mb

needs more safeguards.

It needs to be waterproof, weatherproof,

and tamper-proof.

You'll have to encase this weapon

in a massive steel shell,

and that makes it both

large and extremely heavy.

You're looking at 7 tons

of weight in this monster.

In 1957, the British army ordered ten

of these nuclear land mines.

They have a plan to plant them

along the west German

border as a method of repelling

a potential Soviet ground invasion.

It soon becomes clear

there's an additional

challenge they've overlooked.

The components to trigger

a blue peacock weapon

are very sensitive to temperature.

They have to be kept

above freezing temperatures.

But putting them in the ground,

underneath the frozen

soil of a European winter,

makes them very vulnerable

to not functioning on command.

So much has been

invested in this weapon.

They need to make it work.

So no solution is off the table.

And they come up with something

just so far outside of the box,

you have to really wonder how

on earth they even got there.

To make this weapon

work, they must keep it warm.

Perhaps there's a way to use

some kind of a biological heating system

a living organism that might

generate enough body heat

to keep everything above

freezing temperature.

Obviously, it can't be a human.

No one's going to sign

up for that type of job.

So they figure it has to be

an animal that can maintain

its own body heat

and tolerate being

kept in a confined space

for days on end.

There's one obvious candidate for the job

chickens.

After all, factory-farmed chickens

are already kept alive in

minimal light and space

similar conditions to

the underground b*mb.

In the event that you

have to basically set a timer

on this atomic device,

you could put chickens

inside the b*mb casing

with enough food and

water to sustain them

in these tight quarters in the darkness.

Their body heat will ensure

that the timer functions

up to a week in the future.

If the blast occurs,

it will create a crater

640 feet in diameter.

The chickens will be

incinerated instantly,

but they will die British heroes.

Before any chickens are roasted,

another solution is found

fiberglass pillows to keep the nuke warm.

The blue peacocks are good to go

until one more problem comes up.

The only way to transport

them to their final location

is by truck.

But once that truck,

loaded with a 7 1/2-ton

steel cylinder, drives off-road,

it will inevitably get

weighed down and stuck.

The mines are so heavy

that transporting them

is hugely impractical

and almost impossible

to do in any covert way.

After so many setbacks,

the project is finally canceled in 1958,

and the British nuclear

land mine is buried forever.

With the passage of time,

even the British civil service

comes to appreciate the absurdity

of project blue peacock.

The files are finally declassified in 2004

on April fool's day.

Strange weapons come

in all shapes and sizes.

In 1961, the Soviet

union decides to create

the biggest one the world has ever seen

whatever it takes.

Nikita khrushchev is absolutely paranoid

that the rest of the world

might think the Americans

are getting the upper

hand in the cold w*r.

According to his reports,

america has five times

the nuclear weapons

as the Soviet union.

So he plans a big event so

the world knows Soviet power

is still here and it's real.

The U.S. has already tested

powerful 15-million-ton hydrogen bombs.

The blast radius of

this weapon is a fireball

4 1/2 miles in diameter.

But Soviet leader

khrushchev is unimpressed.

Khrushchev wants a

b*mb ten times the size

of the largest American

hydrogen b*mb in history.

He demands that Soviet scientists

devise a 100-million-ton b*mb.

The b*mb could k*ll

close to a million people.

Khrushchev makes no

secret of his intentions.

He publicly boasts about it.

Soviet scientists race

to meet his demands.

Scaling a nuclear b*mb to

this level had never occurred.

Khrushchev is

demanding the impossible,

and khrushchev expects results.

Eventually, the lead scientist,

andrei sakharov, succeeds.

They named it project 602,

but it was nicknamed tsar b*mb a.

Tsar b*mb a Russian

for "king of bombs."

Now khrushchev is determined to test it.

When sakharov hears

that they're planning to test

this 100-megaton nuclear

b*mb, he has massive concerns.

There's no way you can set this b*mb off

without creating an enormous region

of radioactive fallout.

Just the act of testing this b*mb

is going to render enormous

areas of the Soviet union

uninhabitable for 1,000 years.

So he takes action.

He goes, and he replaces

half the uranium with lead.

Even sakharov's massively

scaled down tsar b*mb a

is three times larger than anything

the Americans had ever detonated.

The b*mb prepped, it's

time to see what it can do.

But how do you

detonate a b*mb this size

without k*lling the pilot

of the delivery plane?

The plan is to release

the b*mb from an airplane

and have it explode 2 1/2

miles above the earth's surface,

which means that

whatever plane drops it,

it's going to be incinerated.

So this is a suicide mission.

Now, to give the pilot a fighting chance,

they coat the plane with a special paint

that will deflect some of

the blast's searing heat.

They attach a

17,000-square-foot parachute

to the b*mb to slow its descent

to give the pilot time

to get the plane away.

But even after doing all of that,

at best, they have a

50/50 chance of survival.

Even under test conditions,

the devastation on the

ground will be immense.

So the tsar b*mb is

taken to the arctic wastes,

one and half thousand

miles north of Moscow.

Preparations almost complete,

the team hit another stumbling block.

The tsar b*mb is too

big to fit inside the plane.

Normally, if a b*mb is dropping

from underneath a plane,

it's loaded into the b*mb bay

and released when the doors open.

But this b*mb is way too big,

so they just have to

strap it to the outside.

With a makeshift solution in place,

it's time to drop the b*mb.

It's going to take about 30 minutes

to get up to altitude

with this enormous b*mb

hanging from the

fuselage of the airplane.

Once the pilot is at launch altitude,

he releases the b*mb.

This thing is a manmade

natural disaster.

The blast from the tsar b*mb

is so big that it creates

a mushroom cloud

that's 60 miles wide.

That's twice the size of New York City.

It's an absolute catastrophe,

the damage that this single b*mb does.

It collapses houses in an evacuated town

60 miles away.

500 miles away,

the blast wave was

still breaking windows.

The pilot is 30 miles

away, but it's not far enough.

The delivery aircraft was like a leaf

caught in a tornado.

The shock wave is

so big, it hits the plane,

and he actually falls an entire kilometer

before regaining control of the aircraft.

Shockwaves from the blast register

across much of Northern Europe,

letting the rest of the world know

that khrushchev's super b*mb works.

Shock waves of outrage come next.

It turns out that exploding a

giant nuke in the atmosphere

doesn't make you popular.

The test is denounced

widely, not only in america

but also by one of khrushchev's key men

the b*mb's designer, andrei sakharov.

In fact, he was influential

in a 1963 above ground test ban treaty

that went into effect and

was signed by the Soviet union

and the other nuclear powers,

including the United States.

In 1942, the U.S. created

the office of strategic services

a secretive agency designed

to help win world w*r ii

through both espionage and sabotage.

The oss hatches many bold plans,

none stranger than a

plot against Adolf Hitler.

Officers at the oss believe

that they can bring the w*r

to a swift end by eliminating

the leader of the Nazis.

So they draw up these plans

to assassinate Adolf Hitler.

One option to take out

the fuehrer is poison.

Undercover agents in n*zi Germany

could spike Hitler's food.

But how?

It's not easy to simply slip something

into Adolf Hitler's food.

There are levels of protection

all around the fuehrer,

and he even has a food taster.

The oss next turn to an

idea that's the brainchild

of lead scientist Stanley Lovell

And it's a little more outside the box

Spike Hitler's food with sex hormones.

Lovell's team conducts studies

of Hitler's public behavior,

particularly his violent outbursts.

And they come to a

problematic conclusion

that this is a character

trait associated with females

and the emotional instability of women.

Lovell is convinced

that Adolf Hitler is falling

right in the middle of

this gender spectrum,

and that if you just dose

him with a little bit of estrogen,

he would be less inclined

toward violent "confrontationalism"

and more inclined toward engagement.

You could get a peace treaty

out of somebody like that.

Lovell lands on estrogen

as his secret weapon.

Estrogen is the female

reproductive hormone.

If taken by men,

it actually reduces the

male hormone, testosterone,

leading to the man taking on

more female characteristics.

And it makes the perfect poison.

Odorless, it's colorless,

and in the right amounts,

it cannot be detected.

This would constitute a sneak attack

against Adolf Hitler's masculine health,

and he wouldn't even

know it was happening.

The only problem

getting the hormone into Hitler's food.

Hitler is a well-known vegetarian,

and he's a paranoiac

about his food supply,

which means he will only eat

vegetables grown in gardens

under the direct control

of the n*zi regime.

The idea is that an operative

might be able to infiltrate the gardens

and either intercept the produce

or inject it in the ground

with hypodermic needles

filled with estrogen

that will then be conveyed

via the vegetables

to the fuehrer's plate.

But the effects of sex

hormones are gradual.

So we're not talking fuehrer

to fraulein in one single hit.

We're talking about

months before the effects

will even be seen.

Lovell claims to have

put his plan in action,

sending female hormones

to agents behind enemy lines.

But Hitler remained

aggressively confrontational

until the w*r's end.

The plan may have failed,

but that doesn't stop Stanley Lovell.

In 1943, he comes up with

another way to win victory,

this time with a stink b*mb so powerful,

it will derail enemy attacks.

They're looking for

the ultimate stink b*mb

one that's so disgusting,

the enemy is just humiliated

and left incapable of fighting.

A substance or device

that is just so pungent

and eye-watering that

it clears the room out

Is not any different philosophically

than a grenade full of tear

gas that clears the room out

because your eyes are burning.

It's the same kind of principle.

The oss affectionately

names the b*mb "who, me?"

Because if a smell erupts

in a room of people

and someone is blamed,

they typically respond, "who, me?"

As if they're innocent.

There's an entire industry

a hundreds-of-year-old industry

with a lot of science

and engineering behind it

for spreading smells

isolating particular compounds,

blending particular compounds,

storing them, dispensing them.

It's the perfume industry.

To concoct a stink

b*mb suitable for combat,

they seek out the best

nose in the business.

The oss bring in chemical

engineer Ernest Crocker.

Now, Crocker has spent years

developing an almost

encyclopedic study of smells

for the perfume industry.

His challenge is simple

produce a noxious anti-perfume

that agents can deploy

behind enemy lines.

And he conducts months of

tests to create the perfect stench.

Crocker ends up settling

on just a c*ck of chemicals

that assaults the senses.

We're talking about the smell of vomit,

just rancid butter, urine, rotten eggs,

foot odor, and excrement.

Confident his concoction

will repulse German forces

Crocker turns his

attention to the Japanese.

There's this prevailing notion that asians

might actually be more

accepting of filthy smells,

indicative of the deeply r*cist ideas

that are prevalent at the time.

And this leads Crocker

to brew up a second smell

for use in the far east,

with notes of rotting flesh.

The stinking potions are made,

but how do you transport

a smell to the front line?

Now they're faced with another dilemma.

They need a suitable container

to package the noxious weapon.

But this proves much

harder than brewing the smell.

It isn't enough to just come

up with this anti-perfume.

You also need to come up

with something that can carry

this rancid liquid behind enemy lines.

So they spend months

working on a suitable container

one that doesn't leak but one

that can also be easily opened.

Crocker's team ultimately

comes up with the design,

which is a small tube.

And it's mobile and

can fit into a soldier's kit.

The stink b*mb goes into production

with a test run of 600 tubes.

According to Stanley Lovell,

they use Chinese rebels.

The rebels spray it on the

uniforms of Japanese soldiers,

but the w*r ends before

they can actually get

a full-scale as*ault on the senses.

In 1959, vice president Nixon

visits Moscow on a goodwill mission.

But the Soviets don't care about goodwill.

Vice president Richard Nixon

is prepping for a trip

behind the iron curtain.

He will become the first

high-ranking American

to visit Moscow in 14 years.

And he is due to

officially open an exhibition

of American science

and culture in Moscow.

After a recent scare

at the U.S. embassy,

Nixon's security team is on high alert.

The U.S. embassy in

Moscow is reporting high levels

of radiation happening in specific rooms

throughout the embassy building itself.

When you scan for radiation levels,

there's a certain level

that's "acceptable,"

that's just going to exist

within any room or place.

Those readings were

slightly above acceptable.

Nixon's security team

are afraid he's walking into a trap.

They suggest taking

geiger counters to Moscow

to monitor the radiation

levels in his living quarters.

Nixon wants to avoid

any displays of paranoia.

He says no to geiger counters,

but he suggests the team

bring these measuring devices

called dosimeters.

These are pocket-sized instruments

that measure radiation exposure.

The secret service

team travels out to Russia

ahead of the vice president,

taking their dosimeters with them.

White house special agent James golden

is tasked with scoping out

Nixon's Moscow residence

ahead of the vice president's trip.

And one of the things that he does

is he starts to look for

radioactive detection

within where the vice

president was staying.

But their dosimeter devices

don't pick up anything unusual.

Everything's normal, and

there's no sign of danger.

On July 23rd, Nixon

lands at Moscow airport.

What happens next is kept under wraps

and classified for 63 years.

- The nixons arrive.

- The ambassador arrives.

All of the sort of formalities

are starting to take place.

And as a result of that

slightly elevated reading,

agent golden decides to

do basically a second pass,

a second scan to look for radioactivity.

I think he was not expecting to find any.

When they reached

Nixon's sleeping quarters,

something alarming happens.

James golden's dosimeter

soars up to a reading of 35 roentgens.

A roentgen is a unit of measure

for counting your exposure to radiation.

And in the workplace,

a permissible exposure to radiation

is just 1/10 of a roentgen per week.

35 roentgens will have a

physical effect on the body

by attacking its immune system.

It's not immediately fatal,

but prolonged exposure to radiation

can lead to long-term

illnesses, such as cancer.

The Americans suspect the radiation

is caused by microwaves

aimed at the building.

At the time, microwave weapons,

or directed-energy

weapons, don't officially exist.

The American government is

only just starting to develop them.

A directed-energy weapon

is a weapon that can

take focused energy

and drive it through an antenna

at a target a great distance away.

It's silent, it's invisible,

and people don't even

know they're being attacked

until it's too late.

It's terrifying.

If the Soviets are sh**ting microwaves,

they could target the vice president.

The team runs checks

on the rest of the house,

and the readings drop to a normal level.

This is weird.

Nixon's security team

can't find the source

of the radiation, and they

don't want to cause a panic

that will disrupt the

vice president's trip.

The next morning,

the readings are still dramatically high.

So golden and his partner take a gamble.

Because he knows

that that room is bugged

as a CIA officer, we always assume

everyone's listening at all times.

As a result, he does what

we call talking to the room,

and he says, wow, these

radiation levels are so high!

I can't believe it!

And then they wait to see if

the message had any impact.

At 3:30 P.M The dosimeter

suddenly calmed down.

What that tells us is

someone is always listening.

There's no question.

And also what that tells us

is this was something that

the Russians purposely did.

Now, what their motive was, I don't know.

Was it to k*ll? Was it to

hurt? Was it to frustrate?

We don't know the

answer to that question.

Nixon completes his

visit without further issues.

Afterwards, the agents

report their findings.

But their superiors don't want to derail.

Nixon's peace initiative

by accusing the Soviets of a plot.

So James Gordon keeps

his silence Until 1976,

when a scandal hits the newspapers.

1976, the U.S. ambassador to Moscow,

a man named Walter stoessel,

started reporting symptoms.

He was reporting nausea

and bleeding from the eyes.

These are classic symptoms

of radiation poisoning.

There's a real fear that

the Soviet microwaves

are silently attacking Americans

and could be doing fatal harm.

The state department is called

in to conduct a health study

into whether U.S.

diplomatic staff in Moscow

has been affected by radiation poisoning.

With talk of Russian

microwaves all over the press,

James golden tells the

inquiry what he believes

happened during Nixon's visit to Moscow.

Golden believes that there's

a diabolical directed-energy weapon

being used to irradiate

Nixon's room specifically.

But the state department's health study

finds no strong evidence

linking Moscow radiation

to subsequent health problems.

With that, the trail runs cold.

And the Russians have

never been brought to book

for directing microwaves

at American politicians.

In the 1960s,

the U.S. and Soviet union

vied to put a man on the moon.

But what if they both succeed?

Could the cold w*r come to

a head with a lunar shootout?

Engineers at rock island army base

specialize in designing

weapons for combat on earth.

But regular g*ns may not do the job

if w*r breaks out in space.

So the army set up a

future weapons office

to design weapons for astronauts.

We can't go anywhere

without taking a g*n,

even the moon.

The moon is a new environment,

and scientists have

to now start figuring out

how to make a g*n

or how to make a*tillery

that will work as it does

on earth but on the moon.

First of all, the moon has

a very thin atmosphere.

Regular firearms need liquid lubricants

to keep them in working order.

But in a vacuum, lubricants

are liable to evaporate.

And so the g*n's sliding

mechanisms will jam.

What's more, g*ns have recoil

the force that throws a g*n

back after it shoots a b*llet.

But in the moon's low gravity,

the recoil from a regular firearm

could throw the soldier back so violently

that they could leave the lunar surface

and just float off into space.

A radical design is needed

for a reliable firearm

to protect astronauts.

Enter the spring-propelled

spherical projectile.

By replacing the

conventional firing mechanisms

with a compressed spring,

there are none of the

traditional sliding parts.

So it's less reliant on lubrication

and less liable to jam or freeze

in essentially a

zero-atmosphere environment.

A spring-propulsion system like this

also is likely to have less recoil,

ensuring that the lunar soldier

doesn't get thrown back into space

after they pull the trigger.

Another hazard that could

disarm a space soldier

is the moon's extreme temperatures.

During the day, it gets up

to 250 degrees fahrenheit

and plummets at night

to minus-250 degrees.

So the army's regular

m14 r*fle could freeze

or explode under these

extreme temperature conditions.

There's also the risk

of the g*n's metal parts

fusing together in extreme

subzero temperatures.

It's a reaction called "cold welding."

It would render the weapon

immediately unusable.

This is where the

spin-stabilized micro g*n

would come in handy.

The g*n does away with

many of the complex mechanics

of the standard firearm,

so there are fewer parts

that are vulnerable to freezing

or exploding through excess heat.

And it can be assembled

using a variety of nonmetal materials,

like ceramics or plastics,

which is perfect to avoid cold welding.

It would sh**t a 4-pound projectile.

And it could travel at

over 3,000 feet per second.

This could go very far, very fast,

with pretty good accuracy.

But firing off a few rounds on the moon

does come with a caveat.

If you fire a b*llet

and it misses its target,

that b*llet could potentially travel

through outer space forever.

In 1965, the future weapons office

publishes their report,

illustrating a space

g*n for every occasion.

But none of the designs

make it off the drawing board,

because in 1967,

the U.S. signs the outer space treaty,

banning weapons on the moon.

As long as there's

conflict between nations,

governments will continue

to develop strange weapons

some that simply defy belief,

others we hope will never be deployed.