At night our scientists
slightly change the gravitational field of the Earth, and your country will be under water
(unofficial interview with an odious politician)
For several millennia, any fresh idea or invention has found mandatory application in military affairs. There are no exceptions to this rule. Unfortunately, it must be recognized that war is an integral part not only of our history, but also of culture. Intraspecific competition among dominant animals has always taken the most dire forms. Above predators very zealously defend their territory and death in duels is normal for them. Homo sapiens was no exception, all the more, thanks to his intellect, he perfected the art of killing his own kind to perfection.
The last century has shown this in all its glory - there were only two world wars. In addition, nuclear weapons have finally been invented, which are the most radical of the "force" methods of solving problems. However, the capabilities of this weapon are such that, apparently, it will not be used, or its use will be very limited.
This became a prerequisite for the creation of new types of weapons that would combine the striking power of atomic bombs and, at the same time, would not give the entire spectrum of negative consequences of their possible use. The very concept of new weapons assumed the use of natural forces of nature in the form of weather or other phenomena.
Thus, the projected geophysical weapon seemed ideal: it made it possible to inflict serious damage on the enemy, did not have detrimental consequences for the one who used it, and, most importantly, deflected not only direct accusations of its use, but also nullified all possible suspicions of it. … The only thing left was to create such a weapon.
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The most serious types of geophysical weapons - the use of natural phenomena in the lithosphere and hydrosphere - were abandoned almost immediately. Humanity is not yet able to significantly influence the processes of movement of tectonic plates or ocean water masses. You can, of course, throw an atomic bomb of 100 megatons into some lithospheric fault or ocean to create earthquakes or tsunamis, however, such a trick will give out the "hero of the occasion" with his head.
Therefore, the inventors focused on climate weapons - the impact on the air masses is much easier to carry out. I must say that the first projects of such devices were developed back in the 19th century, almost simultaneously with the advent of aviation. However, it was only in the middle of the 50s of the XX century that the American B. Vonnegut figured out how to condense clouds with silver iodide or disperse them with carbon dioxide. Thus, humanity has learned to create or prevent artificial precipitation.
The first military use of such methods was carried out by the American army during the Vietnam War. In about six months, about 6 thousand tons of silver iodide was dispersed from military aircraft, which led to a threefold increase in precipitation in the areas of hostilities and caused many problems for the Vietnamese army. However, the use of such methods in a more arid climate was not successful - the consumption of the reagent substance increased tenfold.
The next step was the creation in 1971 in France of a device called a meteotron. It was a giant fan blowing warm, humid air vertically upward. Thus, an area of low pressure was artificially created above the meteotron, which led to the formation of small cyclones.
It should be noted that practically simultaneously with Western scientists, similar experiments were carried out in the USSR, moreover, Soviet achievements sometimes significantly exceeded Western ones. For example, the so-called "supermeteotron" created in 1979, which consisted of six AM-3 engines, made it possible to supply air with a temperature of 1100 ° C to the upper atmosphere at a speed of more than 500 m / s. This installation has been used for several years in Armenia to create artificial rains.
The United States and the USSR almost simultaneously tried to find methods of influencing typhoons and tornadoes, and although neither side was able to achieve either the creation of typhoons or their destruction, a huge amount of valuable information about the nature of typhoons subsequently helped to avoid serious consequences caused by their impact.
Be that as it may, but still something was still invented, since a convention was quickly developed on the prohibition of the use of impact on nature for military purposes, to which both superpowers joined. Further research on the creation of natural phenomena by human hands was carried out, at least officially, exclusively in a "peaceful" manner.
There were some funny things about climate weapons. At the end of 1997, the HAARP system for studying the ionosphere was launched in Alaska. The very appearance of its antenna field caused a feeling of fear in most of the inhabitants, both in the United States and abroad. The headlines of newspapers and the then emerging Internet were full of phrases like "Americans want to kill everyone!" or "death rays are invented and the US wants to try them!" etc. However, in people related to microwave technology, they only caused a smile. The power of the system for such radio frequencies was low (about 4 megawatts), and the project itself was just a reduced copy of the Soviet SURA system, built 20 years before HAARP. The maximum that such structures were capable of was to cause auroras in their immediate vicinity.
These days, the influence on the weather is limited to the creation of clouds over the vineyards during dry periods or their dispersal a week before the major parades, so beloved by the military of all countries. Moreover, the technologies used in these processes are achievements of more than half a century ago. Too pretentious mankind's habits of "natural weapons" were too tough for him. And who knows, perhaps humanity will move to total globalization earlier than it will be able to master the forces that allow it to control nature.