Brown Note? Murder Sphere? 120,000 Bullet Rounds? Which Weapon Is Real?

Posted by Matt on December 3rd, 2009

Below are descriptions of three powerful weapons. Two of them are merely the fictional creations of popular artists; one is a deadly hunk of artillery that has actually been reported. Can you Find the Fiend?

a) Capable of killing, though generally used as a light, but humiliating, foe deterrent, this weapon causes its target to involuntarily void their bowels.

b) This spherical projectile is equipped with sharp prongs and a retractable, bone-puncturing protrusion that helps accelerate blood lose.

c) Silent and recoilless, this deadly firearm can supposedly unload 120,000 rounds per minute.

Answer after the cut.

The correct answer is c.

Invented by Charles St. George, the DREAD weapon is a state-of-the-art infantry gun designed to fire .350 and .50 caliber rounds without all the pesky banging, flashing, jamming and kicking of its less efficient ancestors. Billed as a centrifuge gun, the DREAD foregoes powder-propelled bullets in favor of spherical ammunition that is spun out of the barrel at speeds up to 8,000 feet per second. While fans of Newtonian physics remain skeptical of George’s promise of zero recoil and a 0% chance of ammo jams (in a beautiful example of commercial tautism, St. George has explained that the gun’s complete inability to jam spurs from its inherently jam-proof design), on-the-go gun nuts with minimal time and hundreds of thousands of high-priority targets continue to drool over YouTube demo footage of the DREAD in action. And before you ask, of course it can be mounted to a helicopter.

Statement a. describes the bowel disruptor toted by fictional gonzo journalist Spider Jerusalem in Warren Ellis’ comic “Transmetropolitan.” While the U.S. government has worked to perfect a non-lethal weapon that induces feelings akin to motion sickness, Jerusalem’s colon cleaner boasts settings ranging from “Diarrhea” to “Rectal Prolapse,” and can even be dialed up to “Fatal Intestinal Maelstrom.” The gun’s functionality is based on the hypothetical “brown note” – a hyper low frequency tone theoretically capable of overriding human bowel control via resonance.

Statement b. describes the sentinel sphere from Don Coscarelli’s Saturn award-winning 1977 horror film “Phantasm.” The flying silver orb, an agent of the mysterious, grave-robbing Tall Man, propels itself through the air and latches onto the target’s head using two sharp metal prongs. Then, a drill-like cylinder emerges from the ball and punctures the skull, and the victim’s blood is pumped out through an opening in the back of the sphere. It’s cooler than a knife, less efficient than a gun and twice as limber as the fat, growly Village security bubble.

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