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"I operate by a code that makes me responsible for what I do, makes me definitely, directly, genuinely responsible. I am precisely the kind of person I made myself out to be."
- Harlan Ellison
 |
| Talking Bomb | ||
| A psychological warfare weapon that talks to the enemy. |
In his 1959 novel Starship Troopers, Robert Heinlein refers to talking bombs that speak an alien language (to creatures called "skinny's").
| This was a special bomb, one issued to each of us for this mission with instructions to use them if we found ways to make them effective. The squawking I heard as I threw it was the bomb shouting in skinny talk (free translation): "I'm a thirty second bomb! I'm a thirty second bomb! Twenty-nine! Twenty-eight! Twenty-seven!..." |
| Technovelgy from Starship Troopers,
by Robert Heinlein. Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons in 1959 Additional resources -
|
The closest thing to a talking grenade is the flashbang grenade, created for Britain's Special Air Service for use in anti-terrorist actions. Flashbangs emit a piercing 175 decibel sound along with an actinic flash that blinds victims for about five seconds. Flashbangs were developed in the mid-1970's.
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Additional
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More Ideas
and Technology from Starship Troopers
More Ideas
and Technology by Robert Heinlein
Tech news articles related to Starship Troopers
Tech news articles related to works by Robert Heinlein
Talking Bomb-related
news articles:
- Sonic Grenade Homebrew
| Sleeper Drones Lie in Wait |
| Worm Disrupts Physics Simulations Undetected For A Decade |
| Moscow Attacked By Hundreds Of Drones |
| China's Handheld Electromagnetic Gun |
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'What strange sensitivity! What an amazing development of science was manifested in every move and act and word of this Robot!'
'Forget the head atop it, the legs below, feet, arms, hands. It compels erasure.'
'That explains how it was so easy for me to remain motionless in midair or to perch on a flagpole in imitation of a giant bird, even in the windy city of Chicago.'
'The thirty-odd miles of The Factory’s circumference...'
'Wandering mines, you took them out on the edge of the desert, set them down and activated them.'
'Once in the very first weeks of the war, before everyone had been evacuated from the surface...'
'For a while your colonists will have to come up to the [orbital] Hospital...'
'...it raised its front end off the ground and waved its antennae at them, then raised one armoured claw as if to snip them out of the sky.'
