10 Ridiculous War Weapons You Won't Believe Were Developed

8. Bat Bombs (USA, World War II)

The inspiration for the end of The Dark Knight Rises.

I promise these won't all be about maiming and killing small animals. After Pearl Harbour, the Americans were seriously pissed off and ready to carry out a massive retaliatory strike. So the concepts for weapons that would devastate Japanese cities started flying around. And one that was given serious consideration was Pennsylvania dental surgeon Lytle S. Adams' Bat Bomb. A large number of hibernating bats carrying time delayed napalm devices would be placed inside a steel canister that would be dropped from a plane and slowed by a parachute. At a height of around 1,000ft the bats would start to warm up, awaken, spread over a wide area, and finally nest inside small crevices across Japanese cities allowing dozens of fires to break out almost simultaneously. In a city where some buildings were partially constructed from paper, wood, and bamboo, this would be a crippling blow. So far, so insane but plausible. But a problem arose during the testing phase when a number of armed bats were accidentally released at an airbase in New Mexico. You can probably see where this is going. The bats roosted under a fuel tank and basically turned the base into an early version of the end of Inglourious Basterds. As well as this considerable collateral damage, the project was just taking too long and costing too much (nearly $26 million when adjusted for inflation) and was ultimately superseded by the creation of the atomic bomb, rendering the bat bomb an unused bit of craziness from a dentist possibly hopped up on his own laughing gas.