Original subtitles

[rousing music]

- What if I told you there was a missile

piloted by an army of trained pigeons?

- It occurs to him,

I could use their innate honing abilities

to direct the bomb.

- This will change the balance of World War II.

- Or you could take out the enemy with a real-life version

of Spider-Man's lasso.

- When the assailant starts to move,

that's when the hooks really dig in

and you really can't get out of it.

- How about capturing the bad guy

with the hottest pepper on earth?

- Coughing uncontrollably,

eyes swollen shut with irritation, begging for mercy.

- These are the weapons so unconventional, so strange,

they can only be Unbelievable.

[rousing music]

In warfare, we often employ a whole host

of unorthodox methods to come out on top,

turning icebergs into aircraft carriers,

hurling disease-ridden dead bodies at the enemy,

or in this case, putting something

that many see as a nuisance

in charge of destroying the opposition.

[tank guns booming]

- We're in the midst of World War II,

and all the missiles that we use are not guided.

They can't be directed to hit a specific target.

They can only be flown over an area and then dropped.

If we had a way to have that bomb

go precisely to that location, it could be a game changer.

- Noted Harvard psychologist and inventor, B.F. Skinner,

has an epiphany one day while out for a walk.

[wings flapping]

He happens to see a flock of pigeons and it occurs to him,

"I could use their natural

innate honing abilities

to direct the bomb."

- Skinner approaches the

National Research Defense Committee

with this plan, and he code names it Project Pigeon.

- [Dan] Using pigeons to hone in on the enemy

sounds crazy, but is it crazy enough to work?

The defense committee certainly thinks so.

- Skinner receives 25 grand,

or roughly half a million dollars today,

to figure out how to make a pigeon-guided bomb work.

But Skinner has a plan, and he thinks that

in order to create a pigeon-guided missile,

you need a pigeon-guiding cockpit.

So Skinner creates a little cone

that'll go on top of a glide bomb,

and in the cone will be a video screen.

- Skinner places a gold electrode on the pigeon's beak.

He then shows the pigeon video

of targets like buildings and battleships on the screen.

- Skinner's theory is this.

If you train a pigeon to peck at an image of a battleship

or a building and you reward them for it,

they'll continue pecking at it.

[light suspenseful music]

And after a while, they will no longer require the reward,

they'll just keep pecking.

- The images on the touch panel

are linked to the guidance mechanism of the missile,

so that when the pigeon pecks at one of those images,

it's gonna shift the missile one direction or another.

So the pigeon actually is guiding the missile

towards its particular target.

- [Dan] The system works almost perfectly,

except for a slight issue with focus.

- It can get distracted,

it might get something wrong,

it might send the bomb to the wrong target.

So Skinner comes up with the great idea,

"Let's add democracy to our pigeon bombs,"

and thus, Skinner uses three pigeons, three separate screens,

three separate beaks with three separate conduits on it.

If two out of three pigeons pick the ship,

the bomb's gonna steer in that direction.

Turns out that pigeon democracy works every single time.

- [Dan] All they have to do now

is stick a camera on the missile

and let those pigeon pilots fly, right?

Not so fast.

- The system Skinner creates works very well,

but the army thinks it would be a little bit embarrassing

to have pigeons guiding their missiles,

so they choose not to go with the pigeons.

But it's not a total loss.

The screens that the pigeons were pecking on

are the precursors to the screens

we use every day in our cell phones.

Interestingly enough, the pigeons are ahead of their time.

- When recruiting birds to win the war doesn't fly,

it's time for a new and just as outlandish plan,

one that is designed to flush out the enemy.

[suspenseful music]

- In World War II, Britain comes up with this idea

to attack Germany within.

We're gonna destroy their infrastructure.

So the idea that they come up with is destroying dams.

They will terrorize the population,

but they'll also take out hydroelectric power,

and it should have a negative impact

on their manufacturing capacity.

- An easy way to take out the dam

would be to shoot a torpedo at it,

but the Germans actually have torpedo nets,

so that's off the table.

- Dr. Barnes Wallace is an engineer

and he's got a plan to get something past the torpedo net

and below, which would ultimately cause them to fail.

- [Dan] To Dr. Wallace,

the answer is as easy as skipping stones.

- You bounce the bomb across the surface of the water,

it hits the dam, then drops down and explodes,

in just the right point to create maximum damage.

- But a key element is that the bombs must have backspin.

So backspin helps in several ways.

One, it helps with the skipping off of the water,

but also, when it finally hits the wall of the dam,

the backspin has the English effect

and it brings it down to the base of the dam,

so it settles there.

[water roaring]

- [Dan] With no idea on how to create the backspin,

Barnes Wallace does what many of us do when stumped at work,

he hits the golf course.

[club swatting ball]

- He realizes something about the golf ball

that may actually help with the bouncing bomb,

and that is, is that the golf ball has these dimples.

- Because a golf ball, the way the dimples work on it,

it actually helps create the backspin,

Barnes Wallace and his designers

actually incorporate this into their bouncing bomb,

even to the point where they're calling them the golf mines.

- [Dan] By July of 1942, it's test time.

Will Dr. Barnes Wallace's dimpled bomb

have what it takes to take out a dam?

- They find a place in Wales called Nant-y-Gro Dam,

and that's where they first test the bouncing bomb.

The RAF bomber takes off

with the bouncing bomb slung underneath,

but as part of the sling, there are belts

which are already spinning the bomb backwards.

- You have to spin it at exactly the right speed, 500 RPM,

you have to be exactly the right height over the water,

60 feet, and you have to be traveling

at exactly the right speed, 232 miles per hour.

This is a very narrow window that these teams have to hit.

- It skips across the river, hits the dam, sinks.

90 seconds later, the bomb works.

- [Dan] The confident Royal Air Force

readies a fleet of bombers,

eager to bounce havoc on the Germans.

Enter the Dambusters.

- Just after midnight on May 17th, 1943,

the Dambusters go into action,

and the raid is led by a 24-year-old wing commander

by the name of Guy Gibson.

133 men from Britain and her allies, flying in 19 bombers.

The plan calls for them to hit three dams

in Germany's Ruhr Valley, their industrial heartland.

[dark dramatic music] [bombs exploding]

- Gibson is the first to release his bomb.

It bounces three times on the surface of the water,

but then falls short.

One plane's bouncing bomb even bounces clean over the dam.

The first four planes miss.

The fifth plane coming in is Flight Lieutenant David Maltby.

He's approaching the reservoir.

Gibson circles back around

so that he takes the fire on his plane

so that Maltby can make it through,

and Maltby releases his bouncing bomb.

[water crashing]

[bomb exploding]

- And then suddenly, the bomb explodes,

concrete is crumbling,

a huge column of water goes into the sky.

Complete success.

- [Dan] By the end of their mission,

the Dambusters take out two of the three targets,

but they pay a high price.

- Out of 133 men, 53 are killed on this raid.

Three of them end up in the hands of the Germans.

But from a propaganda perspective,

this was a huge shot in the arm for the Allied cause,

and as a result, the Dambusters go down in history

as one of the most legendary squadrons

ever to take to the skies.

- I think we should all be grateful

that they never combined bouncing bombs

with pigeon-guided missiles.

That could have gotten ugly.

- Since the first recorded use of a firearm

in the year 1364, most guns work the same way,

point and shoot.

But in the early 1900s,

one man comes up with an unbelievable idea

on how to flip this notion on its head.

- Prior to World War I, an inventor, Albert Bacon Pratt,

decides that guns have a major problem.

[pistol firing]

You actually have to hold them in your hand,

point them, and pull the trigger.

[pistol firing]

- He thinks that he can take the firearm to the next level

by making it a hands-free device.

- So Pratt goes into his Vermont workshop

and tinkers away with what he thinks

will be the solution to modern warfare.

It's called the gun helmet.

- The design is a steel shell,

and integrated into the steel shell is the weapon,

and from the barrel, there's also a site that falls down,

so all the marksman has to do

is look at his enemy and boom, hands-free shooting.

- [Dan] This, of course,

begs the million dollar question,

how does one fire a handgun without their hands?

- The marksman has a rubber hose in his mouth,

and he blows into that hose

which is routed up above his face, into the helmet,

which ignites the bolt, depresses the trigger,

and now you have hands-free firing.

[gun helmet firing]

- His patent illustrates

that the helmet has another function.

On the top there was a spike,

and it's actually a cooking utensil.

The wearer can tenderize meat, stir stew,

maybe even butcher a bear.

- [Dan] Cooking stew notwithstanding,

there is one glaring flaw in Pratt's design

that is a real headache to move past.

- At this time in history, guns have serious recoil.

When they fire that gun,

that sucker's gonna kick his head back.

[gun firing]

The neck can snap, the skull can crack,

and even teeth can be broken.

- And thus, the gun helmet is a recipe for disaster.

- Shooting a gun from your head

might have you reaching for the aspirin,

but in the heat of World War I,

there's an even stranger way to fire a round.

[soldiers yelling]

- It's 1915 and Great Britain is in the middle

of a fierce battle with the Ottomans

on the peninsula of Gallipoli.

The Australian Armed Forces

have joined the Gallipoli campaign

to overtake the Ottoman Straits,

and eventually take the

capital city of Constantinople,

now Istanbul.

- But things are not going well.

As this fight continues,

the Ottomans have shored up their numbers.

They eventually have 315,000 boots on the ground,

whereas the British and their allies

have dropped down to 80,000.

They've lost more than 200,000 men

- [Dan] Heavily outgunned and severely outmanned,

one thing is for certain,

it's time for the Brits and their allies to retreat.

- There's one problem.

If you're gonna retreat,

you have to leave some soldiers on the front line

to mark your retreat and lay suppressive fire on the enemy.

The Brits estimate around 30,000 casualties.

- [Dan] Unwilling to take the risk,

they'll need a plan B, and fast.

- A lance corporal in the Australian Imperial Force

by the name of William Scurry actually has a brilliant idea,

a rifle that can fire without anybody pulling the trigger.

He calls it the self-firing drip rifle.

- By rigging a ration tin full of water,

and a small hole poked in the bottom,

and a ration tin empty with water,

the empty tin is attached to a trigger with a string.

As it fills with the drip from the full tin,

it increases pressure,

until finally, it discharges the firearm.

[water dripping]

[gun firing]

- To sell the deception and the illusion even more,

fake soldiers, a.k.a scarecrows,

are placed in firing positions around the drip rifles

to give the illusion of actual human soldiers

firing these weapons.

- [Dan] British commanders

like Scurry's drip rifle idea,

and agree to put it into action.

There's just one slight problem.

- Trenches in the First World War

are not a place where water is exactly plentiful.

- For this plan to work, they're gonna need water,

and the water they get

is generated by the soldiers themselves.

They use urine.

- [Dan] But will this strange ammunition

fend off the enemy?

- It's January 9th, 1916

and the evacuation orders have been issued.

Every soldier there now sets up their dummy,

pokes holes in their tins,

and quietly makes their way to the evacuation beach below.

Meanwhile, the drip rifles take effect

and fire, fire, fire, fire.

The Ottomans are none the wiser.

- 80,000 men are successfully evacuated

with zero casualties.

They anticipated 30,000 men would die.

This is a huge win, even if they are retreating.

- It is without a doubt the best-executed

part of the entire campaign,

and considered by many to be one of the most brilliant

large scale evacuations ever.

- Getting out of harm's way using a water gun

is pretty impressive, but it's not the only element

ever harnessed during a world war.

- [Announcer] These Allied bombers

have been pouring destruction

upon the vital centers of the Nazi war machine.

- So it's 1945, we're nearing the end of the war,

and Germany is on the ropes.

They're trying anything they can

to take out these planes that continuously bomb them.

- But Germany has very little left

in terms of ground air defense,

and therefore has very little cover from low-flying attacks.

- They're out of ideas,

so they start scrounging up anything they can,

and they decide they're gonna try to make a gigantic cannon

that sends a burst of air into the air

to then take out planes.

- [Dan] And so begins construction

of a strange weapon, called the wind cannon.

- It's a 35-foot long cast iron barrel

that's turned up on one end.

- The idea is they're gonna ignite

hydrogen and ammonia in this barrel

to essentially create a shell of air

and, they hope, poke a hole in an airplane.

- [Dan] That's right.

The plan is to huff and puff fighter planes out of the sky.

So, does this giant air blaster actually work?

[airplane buzzing]

- The Nazis decide they're gonna use this in battle.

So what do they do?

Take it right over to the railroad tracks

where they know all the planes are gonna fly over,

and they're flying over it as this cannon's going off,

but they're kind of just saying to themselves,

did you feel anything? I didn't feel anything?

Do you feel that? I don't know what that is.

What? You guys think we should bomb it?

Yeah, let's bomb it.

[plane buzzing]

- After realizing what little threat

this cannon of air poses,

Allied bombers destroy it in a matter of seconds,

and just like that, it's gone with the wind.

- With the end of World War II in sight,

things are beginning to get ugly.

All bets are off.

For the Japanese, this means trying to stay afloat

by any method necessary.

- After Pearl Harbor,

the Japanese essentially are ruling the entire Pacific,

but by 1944, the tide has turned

and the Allies are getting closer to Japan,

and as a result,

desperate times call for desperate measures.

Enter the kamikaze.

[anti-aircraft guns firing]

[airplane exploding]

- These planes have a pilot,

they're loaded with bombs and extra fuel,

and they're designed to slam right into American ships.

[explosion booming]

- So the Japanese navy is looking around

and they see these kamikaze planes and they think,

well, that's a good idea.

What if we had something like that?

- [Dan] Japanese navy lieutenants

Hiroshi Kuroki and Sekio Nishina

come up with a daring design, the Kaiten torpedo,

which roughly translates to the Heaven Shaker.

- The Japanese have long relied on torpedoes

as one of their main weapons for naval engagements,

but it's very difficult to get a torpedo

on time and on target.

What they develop is essentially a suicide submarine.

- They take their standard Type 93 torpedo,

and in the center, right behind the payload,

they add a cockpit for a pilot.

- It's got rudimentary controls, it's got a steering column.

It also has a button to detonate the warhead.

- The torpedo is 30 feet long,

but the real importance comes with its speed.

It can reach 60 miles an hour,

which is almost twice as fast

as any ship afloat at the time.

- [Dan] While it seems like a pretty straightforward

single-use vessel, it still needs to be tested.

- The first tests that are done are done without a payload,

but it's still dangerous to ram a target under the water.

[dramatic music]

During these trials, 15 men die,

[man screaming]

including one of the inventors, Hiroshi Kuroki,

who is killed in one of the tests.

[man yelling]

- So now with testing complete,

there's only one thing left to do,

and that's to put it into battle.

And who's gonna run that first mission?

None other than the other inventor,

Lieutenant Sekio Nishina.

- He wants to pay tribute to his best friend

who died during training,

and as such, he brings a box of his ashes

that are going to ride like a copilot with him into action.

- [Dan] On the morning of November 20th, 1944,

the Kaiten sets out on its first mission,

to ram the USS Mississinewa.

- Nishina drives it across the harbor

and slams into the side of the US oil ship.

[Nishina screaming]

[torpedo exploding]

The explosion blows a massive hole

into the starboard side of the Mississinewa.

It rolls over, and 63 sailors on board are killed.

- Although it appears that the Kaiten

is going to be a revolutionary weapon,

as a matter of fact, when they put them into operation,

there's very little success.

At the end of the day, 179 American sailors

lose their lives in Kaiten attacks,

but nearly 1,000 Japanese are lost

either on the Kaitens themselves,

or in the mother submarines that are sunk

on the way to deliver their cargo.

- If you think a human torpedo is strange,

you won't believe what other creative ideas

the Japanese had up their sleeve.

- A US Navy patrol boat spots something bizarre

floating in the water off of California.

It appears to be a type of balloon,

but they can't make heads or tails of it immediately.

Very soon, in the next few weeks,

more balloons start showing up

along the western coast of the United States and Canada.

- [Dan] While the source remains a mystery,

one thing links them,

Japanese writing and a rising sun symbol.

But what are they doing here?

- It's World War II.

[bomb exploding]

The United States and the Empire of Japan are at war,

and the Japanese military discover a weather phenomenon

that is not really well known in the United States.

There is a fast moving, high altitude jet stream

that sweeps across the Pacific Ocean,

from approximately Japan,

straight over the continental United States.

- The idea is to harness the power of these winds

by launching balloons carrying bombs.

- [Dan] They call it the Fu-Go balloon bomb,

[bomb exploding]

and its main objective is to scare the heck

out of US citizens.

- The Fu-Go balloon is a paper hydrogen-filled balloon

33 feet in diameter,

and from the bottom are barometric instruments,

sandbags to have it adjust its altitude,

and incendiary devices and anti-personnel weapons.

- By sending these Fu-Go balloons across the Pacific,

they're hoping that they're going to drop down

on very dry areas,

because they're going to create forest fires.

The idea being of course, that it would sow chaos and panic,

and divert resources needed for the war effort.

- [Dan] The first launch of a Fu-Go balloon

takes place in November of 1944.

Over the next few months, multiple sightings occur

from California to Washington state.

- Across the entire western seaboard of the United States,

the Fu-Go bombs

either discharge their payload over the water

or they blow up in remote places.

[bomb exploding]

So all we're finding is remnants of 'em

and sightings of 'em.

So the American government

is not really sure what's happening,

- [Dan] But that all changes one ill-fated day.

- Just two days before the Germans surrender in Europe,

a family of picnickers are in a place called Gearhart Mountain

near Bly, Oregon.

- One of the picnickers sees something curious.

Unfortunately for them it's a Fu-Go balloon bomb.

- The balloon bomb ignites.

All six are killed,

and now the authorities realize

they have a massive problem on their hands.

- [Dan] A domestic attack with casualties?

This will surely cause public panic.

That is, if it gets out.

- So the US government even goes further

and they issue a demand not to report

on any incidents of these weaponized balloons.

The government should have covered this up.

Any information that gets out in the press

that we are being targeted by balloon bombs

will tell the Japanese government,

your plan is working perfectly.

- [Dan] In total, it is estimated that 1,000

of the 9,000 Fu-Go balloons launched complete the journey,

including one not discovered until recently.

- In 2014, some forestry workers

stumble across a cylindrical object

that they find in the mud, and sure enough,

it is discovered that it is one of the balloons

- And there is no way to deal with them

except bring in C4 and blow it all up right there.

That weapon was still dangerous, even in 2014.

- Next time you're out in the woods

and you come across a strange metal object, be careful,

it could be an 80-year-old Fu-Go balloon bomb.

- Have you ever heard of the Great Panjandrum?

While it might sound like the name of a vaudeville magician,

it's actually one of the craziest

and most explosively ambitious weapons

in modern military history,

oh, and it almost killed a dog.

[tank gun firing]

[artillery fire]

- It's 1943 and World War II is at a stalemate.

The Germans have built a massive fortification

along the entire French coast, called the Atlantic Wall.

It's nigh un-impenetrable.

- So is a big conundrum for the Allies.

How do you get troops on the beach

and circumvent the

obstacle of the Atlantic Wall?

- [Dan] What they come up with

is something straight out of a Road Runner cartoon.

- The weapon is the brainchild

of British Wing Commander C.R. Finch-Noyes,

and he comes up with what he thinks

will be a war-winning weapon.

- Picture, if you will,

two 10-foot-tall steel wheels,

upon which are 70 slow burning cordite rockets.

In the middle, a canister

stuffed with 4,000 pounds of high explosive.

- [Dan] The idea,

get up close to the beach with the panjandrum,

spark up the rockets and let her rip.

- They wanted to send 12 panjandrums

up to the beach at Normandy to blow channels in the wall

so that the troops could just walk on through.

[explosion]

That's an insane idea

for this rocket- powered wheel of death.

- [Dan] In late 1943, Finch-Noyes decides it's time

to take the panjandrum out for a little test spin.

- Finch-Noyes invites the military's top brass

to witness this war machine in action.

- This being a test, they decide,

we're not gonna actually blow something up.

So it's payload,

rather than being 4,000 pounds of explosive,

is 4,000 pounds of inert sand.

This turns out to be a very wise decision.

- When the test begins, they light the rockets

and the panjandrum comes off the landing craft.

Everything looks good for the first 20 or 30 feet.

Then, it starts losing rockets and all hell breaks loose.

- An officer's dog starts chasing the panjandrum

down the beach like it's a chew toy,

then the panjandrum turns and starts going after the dog.

Rockets are firing irregularly,

the thing's flipping from side to side like a wagon wheel,

it's an unmitigated disaster,

and for that reason alone, the panjandrum

is not included in the plans for the D-Day invasion.

- We are happy to report

that no dogs were harmed in the making of the panjandrum.

While this rolling bomb quickly spins out of control,

the Allies have no choice but to dust themselves off,

get back out onto the field, and toss a Hail Mary.

[bat cracking ball] [crowd cheering]

- In the early 1940s, without question,

the most popular game in America

is our national pastime. baseball.

- Because baseball is such a big deal,

most draft-eligible men know how to pitch a fastball,

or at the very least, throw a pitch with some accuracy.

- [Dan] This gives top military brass an idea.

How do you weaponize a baseball?

- The Office of Strategic Service theorizes

that if an American can throw a baseball,

well then he should be able to throw

a grenade shaped like a baseball.

- The US military creates the BEANO T-13,

or the baseball grenade.

- The BEANO T-13 baseball grenade is five ounces

and nine and a half inches in circumference,

which is the exact size of a baseball.

It's even thrown with the same motion, with two fingers.

- [Dan] In March of 1944, testing begins

at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland,

but the baseball grenade

doesn't exactly have the best batting average.

- The BEANO has a nasty habit of prematurely detonating.

[grenade exploding]

And because of this, two soldiers are mortally wounded

and 44 injured in

the testing process.

- They improve the fuse and the US military

sends 10,000 baseball grenades to Europe.

- Unfortunately, despite the fuse change,

the BEANO still has a 10% failure rate,

and so, it's not a very effective weapon.

[grenade exploding]

By war's end, production of the grenade is ended,

and the remainder of the stock is destroyed.

[grenade exploding]

- [Dan] 20 years later, another American sport

gets a chance at changing the game of war.

- In the 1960s, baseball slides in popularity,

and by the 1970s, football by and far

becomes America's favorite spectator sport.

Because of this, the US Army decides to meld

the love of this cold weather game with the Cold War.

- [Dan] It's time to hit the gridiron

with the anti-tank Nerf football grenade.

- US Army weapons designers take a Nerf football

and hollow out the insides,

replacing the insides with anti-tank TNT

known as a Monroe charge.

- They make it 14 ounces,

the regulation weight of an NFL football.

So to any soldier, it's gonna feel

just like tossing the old pigskin around.

- [Dan] But it turns out

throwing a perfect spiral with a bomb

[explosion]

is near impossible.

- Footballs fly through the air

because there's an even distribution of weight

surrounding the hollow, or the foam inside the ball.

But in testing, the 14 ounces of explosives

makes the trajectory of the Nerf grenade unpredictable.

- [Dan] In the end, it's figured out

that the Nerf football grenade

is not going to score any touchdowns,

but it reinforces something special about Uncle Sam.

- Other countries will make a deadly weapon

and teach their soldiers how to use it,

but what makes America different is,

they look at our boys and say,

let's design something that they're good at doing.

[explosion]

- Who knows? Maybe someday there'll be a basketball bomb

to dunk on the bad guy,

or a golf ball you can putt into a bunker.

I'm just spitballing here.

- There are weapons that can take out tanks,

some that can wipe out entire civilizations.

Yet there are others so powerful

they'll leave your enemy begging for a glass of milk.

[propulsive electronic music]

- The ghost pepper is one of the most

potent peppers in existence.

On the Scoville meter of heat, it goes up to over a million.

The average jalapeno is just 10,000 heat units.

- [Dan] Despite its high heat rating,

the ghost pepper is often used to cook.

But what do you do when you run out of food recipes?

- 2010, an engineer named R.B. Srivastava

from the Indian Defense Research Organization

comes up with an idea of weaponizing the ghost pepper.

- It's known as the chili grenade.

It's a combination of the ground up ghost pepper seeds

and phosphorus.

When it ignites, the phosphorus will help create

a ghost pepper fog.

- When utilized, the ghost pepper grenade

chokes the enemies' respiratory system,

making them feel like they can't breathe.

This is a non-chemical chemical weapon.

- [Dan] One that has been deployed by the Indian Army

with great success.

- In July 2016, when a series of riots break out in India,

the army comes in.

It doesn't wanna use rubber bullets.

- So, the Indian government

deploys the ghost pepper grenade.

It incapacitates people,

and they're able to be taken into custody

with no casualties.

- [Dan] It's also come in handy

to turn up the heat on a group of hiding fugitives.

- In 2015, the grenade is also employed

to hunt down a terrorist by the name of Sajjad Ahmed.

The Indian authorities find out that Ahmed

and the rest of his team are holed up in a cave

just near the town of Rafiabad,

so they descend upon it and employ the chili grenade.

- When troops enter the cave in gas masks,

they find the terrorists coughing uncontrollably,

eyes swollen shut with irritation, begging for mercy.

The ghost pepper grenade has worked perfectly.

[rousing classical music]

- Not sold on catching the bad guy

with a million Scoville heat units,

try stopping them cold in their tracks

with Spider-Man's web.

- In 2017, the City of Birmingham Police Department

in Alabama is testing a new less-than-lethal means

of incapacitating someone.

[tense music]

- This strange little device inflicts little to no pain.

So no shock like you have with a taser,

no burning like you would have with pepper spray,

no blunt force like you would have with a baton.

[weapon bursting]

- [Dan] It's called the BolaWrap 100,

but it's also known colloquially as the Spider-Man lasso.

[pulsating electronic music]

- The Spider-Man lasso is essentially

an eight-foot-long Kevlar tether that has hooks on the ends,

that is fired from a device

that shoots it at 660 feet per second.

- The concept is based on a very old weapon

that's been used in the Americas for hundreds of years.

It was called a bola, and gauchos would use it

to snare an animal that they were pursuing,

with weighted lugs on either end of this rope,

they can bring it into a spin

and project it toward an animal.

It'll wrap around the animal, cause the animal to collapse,

and then they can capture the animal.

- [Dan] But this lasso takes its 1800s-era predecessor

to the extreme.

- So you cock this thing like a gun,

it's got a laser sight on it.

If you're running after somebody, you fire this at 'em,

catch their feet, catch their arms, whatever,

and then they essentially can't move.

When the assailant starts to move,

that's when the hooks really dig in

and you really can't get out of it.

- [Dan] As cool as it may look,

the most important thing to law enforcement

is how safe it is.

- Between 2010 and 2021 as many as 500 people

are killed by tasers used by law enforcement.

The Spider-Man lasso seems to provide

the perfect alternative.

You have a way of making somebody stop

if they're trying to run away.

- [Officer] Stop walking!

- You don't have to roll the dice

with their physical wellbeing.

You simply hit them with the Spider-Man lasso,

they drop to the ground, you take 'em into custody.

- No! No!

[Spider-Man lasso firing]

- Turns out you don't have to get bit

by a radioactive spider to catch a thief with your web.

- It's an idea that many believe

should never have taken off,

and fair warning, don't let your cat chase after it.

[suspenseful music]

- Outside of Tucson, Arizona, there's a 3,300-acre site

where there's over 4,000 aircraft

that all have a different story.

- [Dan] The strangest story of them all,

one about the most expensive aircraft ever built.

- During the 1980s, laser technology takes off.

- But no one's ever really figured out

how to capitalize on it.

But in 2007, the government decides it is time to go big

and figure out how to make a laser take flight.

- [Dan] And so begins what will become

a $5 billion weapon system,

the Boeing YAL-1 airborne laser.

- They take a standard Boeing 747 aircraft,

and in the nose cone, they mount a megawatt

chemical oxygen iodine laser.

- Simply put, it is a passenger-size airplane

that shoots a giant freaking laser out of the nose cone.

- [Dan] After years of ground testing the laser,

it's time to go airborne

and see if this bad boy can take out a missile.

- The YAL-1 laser targets the missiles, fires on them,

and actually destroys one of the two missiles.

But unfortunately, it's still not good enough

to be deployed in actual combat situations.

- [Dan] The Department of Defense weighs out

the pros and cons

of keeping the flying laser in the air.

Pros, shooting down missiles with lasers

is pretty darn cool.

Cons, well, there's just one, but it's a big one.

- Their big concern is, what's the effect on other aircraft?

Imagine you and your family

are on your flight to Disney World going across the country,

and then a laser beam cuts the plane in half.

That can't happen.

So that's why you'll see that 747

right there in the boneyard.

- While the YAL-1 airborne laser

was officially retired on February 12th, 2012,

it's not the last attempt at nailing precision in warfare.

[tense music]

- So you're a sniper, say in Afghanistan,

and you've got a target two miles away

that's moving quickly.

You have to calculate everything in your mind,

the wind velocity, the trajectory,

your altitude, their altitude.

There are so many different variables that come into play.

You have one shot and one shot only.

You take it and you miss.

Now what?

- [Dan] For years,

modifications have been made to sniper rifles

to make them more accurate,

but could there be a way to make them flawless?

[rifle firing]

- In the 2000s, DARPA,

which is the research and development arm

of the Department of Defense in the United States,

has created a new bullet,

a bullet that actually will guide itself to a target

and make adjustments along the way.

- [Dan] In 2014, after years of development,

DARPA's new EXACTO smart sniper bullet is born.

- EXACTO stands for Extreme Accuracy Tasked Ordinance,

and it's amazing.

It's a 50-caliber bullet that can self steer, correct,

and literally change directions in midair.

- [Dan] And just how do you get

a bullet traveling at 2,000 miles per hour

to go exactly where you want it to go without fail?

- The sniper paints a target with a laser

or some other means that the EXACTO round can see

with a photo diode or sensor at its tip

that acts as an electronic eye.

So as the round is flying down range,

it's looking at the target and adjusting its trajectory

to make sure, ultimately, it hits the target.

- DARPA runs some experiments on the EXACTO bullets.

So they place an experienced sniper

with a complete novice shooter,

and after multiple tests,

they both hit the targets the same.

- [Dan] Now even the worst snipers can succeed,

which kind of sounds like cheating.

But it hasn't made its way onto the battlefield just yet.

- Once the EXACTO bullet

is successfully utilized on the battlefield,

it's gonna be an absolute game changer.

You can take a relatively inexperienced shooter

and make them instantly lethal with this technology.

[upbeat suspenseful music]

- We've seen missiles controlled by pigeons,

bouncing bombs, and a human torpedo.

But while technology is constantly evolving,

it will be truly hard to match those weapons

that we already know to be Unbelievable.