Since the development of human civilization, most of them are still helpless in the face of climate disasters such as earthquakes and tsunamis, and human beings are still like powerless ants in the face of the forces of nature.
However, the development of science and technology has also inflated people's ambitions, and some scientists have even suggested that if these natural phenomena are used a little and applied to the battlefield, wouldn't that be a terrorist weapon that can cause devastating blows?
This is the so-called "meteorological weapon". So, is it really possible for such a weapon to be realized, and can it really be as powerful as imagined?
What is a meteorological weapon?
The so-called meteorological weapons refer to the artificial intervention of nature through modern science and technology, so that nature presents meteorological weather that is conducive to achieving military objectives, so that the war environment changes in favor of oneself but not in favor of the other side, so as to achieve the purpose of interfering with operations and destroying and destroying enemy targets.
Since ancient times, there are many examples of using weather to win wars and change the course of history.
In the Battle of Qishan, Jiang Ziya took advantage of the strong cold wave to freeze Qishan and frostbitten the Shang army, and won without a fight;
In modern times, there are more ways to intervene in the weather. For example, we are most familiar with artificial rainfall technology. What is the principle of artificial rainfall? The water on the ground is heated and evaporated, and the water vapor rises into the atmosphere and condenses into a clump of clouds.
When the suspended freezing point in the cloud encounters impurity particles, it forms Xiaoice crystals, and the water vapor condenses on the surface of the Xiaoice crystals, turning into snowflakes. When snowflakes fall, if the temperature in the air is higher than freezing, they melt into water droplets, and rain is formed.
Artificial rainfall is to artificially supplement certain catalysts into the clouds to make the clouds achieve the conditions required for rainfall. The catalyst is generally silver iodide, dry ice, urea, etc.
The principle of meteorological weapons is actually the same as artificial rainfall.
The Earth's atmosphere contains many substances such as water vapor, water droplets, ice crystals, and other suspended solids, and the content of these substances fluctuates, which makes the atmosphere in an unstable state. Meteorological weapons are to use the law of change in unstable states, and use catalysts to intervene to catalyze, so as to promote the energy conversion of unstable states and cause meteorological changes.
At present, mankind has mastered more than 20 kinds of technologies that can affect the weather, among which the main ones that can be used as weapons are flash floods, lightning channeling, and guiding typhoons. Among them, guiding the typhoon is to use chemical reagents such as silver iodide to intervene in the typhoon's walking path and lead the typhoon to strategic target areas, such as the enemy's ports and important military bases, to inflict a blow on the enemy.
Internationally, the United States, Germany, and the former Soviet Union have made the most outstanding achievements in the research and development of meteorological weapons. Germany used weather weapons during World War II. In order to cover military facilities and industrial bases, the German military used foggers to create a thick fog in the sky to prevent British and French fighters from approaching and discovering strategic targets.
During the Vietnam War, the United States also used large amounts of silver iodide to catalyze large-scale artificial rainfall, which led to an extended rainy season and flooding in parts of Vietnam, thus cutting off the rear supply lines of the North Vietnamese army. According to statistics, the economic losses caused by this artificial rain are far greater than the losses caused by aircraft bombing during the war.
During the Cold War with the United States, in order to compensate for the weakness of nuclear weapons, the Soviet Union developed a meteorological weapon codenamed "Project Mercury", which used the shock wave generated by a nuclear explosion to trigger a tsunami and volcanic eruption.
The United Nations bans meteorological weapons
Although meteorological weapons are not as directly lethal as nuclear weapons, they are no less of a concern than nuclear weapons. Meteorological weapons artificially intervene in nature and change the laws of nature, and many scientists are also worried about whether it will trigger a "butterfly effect" that will cause uncontrollable consequences.
In 1978, the United Nations banned all environmental and climate tests. In 2010, the United Nations further adopted an international convention explicitly prohibiting the use of meteorological weapons by warring parties. However, the competition between countries for the "right to control the weather" has never stopped.
It has been learned that since the 80s of the last century, the United States has been collecting meteorological information from as many as 1,000 airports around the world, and has been regularly reorganizing it, and has never stopped researching meteorological weapons. These include the Argos Project, which can be used to create earthquakes, the Skyfire Project, which can create lightning, and the Gale Project, which can be used to change the direction of hurricanes.
In 1994, the experimental base of the high-frequency active aurora research project in the United States landed on the Alaska Peninsula, and in 2003, it began to be officially used to carry out various experiments.
If the project is successfully tested, it will be able to provide an efficient and convenient communication system for US submarines or a communication system for destroying the enemy. In addition to this, it is possible to monitor and reconnoiter the situation of the enemy's underground nuclear tests, track cruise missiles.
How terrifying is the power of meteorological weapons? Why are countries scrambling to develop them? Is it true that the legend that a country can be destroyed in 60 minutes?
During his presidency of the United States, Eisenhower stressed the importance of meteorological weapons for future wars, pointing out: "Mastering meteorological weapons is more important than mastering atomic bombs." The power of weather weapons can also be glimpsed in his words.
According to the existing theoretical research, compared with conventional weapons, meteorological weapons have the characteristics of strong concealment, huge power, low cost, and high economy. Meteorological weapons do this by influencing the weather, and the current human knowledge is not yet able to accurately recognize the difference between natural weather changes and human-intervened weather changes. Therefore, if you use weather weapons on the battlefield, you will often catch the opponent off guard.
The enormous power is an important reason why meteorological weapons have attracted the attention of all countries. According to meteorologists, a severe thunderstorm can release as much energy as a megaton nuclear bomb explodes, and a moderately strong typhoon can carry 2.5 billion tons of water to thousands of kilometers in a short period of time. Once these weapons are used on the battlefield, they release even greater energy than nuclear weapons.
More importantly, meteorological weapons can not only change the combat environment and achieve victory, but also exert influence on the weapons and equipment themselves. The high-tech weapons and equipment used in modern warfare are more precise and precise, and at the same time, the requirements for the environment are also quite high, and there are high requirements for temperature, humidity, air purity, and so on. Once the environment is changed, if the weapons and equipment cannot be adapted, it is like a pile of scrap metal.
In the Battle of Moscow, the German army was not prepared to deal with the extremely cold weather in Moscow in winter, and lacked antifreeze and lubricating oil, resulting in the tank not being able to drive in low temperature weather, the bolt could not be opened, and the helicopter could not be lifted into the air, and finally the Soviet Red Army won the battle.
Of course, although theoretical research has shown that meteorological weapons are extremely powerful, human research is still very limited, and they have not been used on a large scale on the battlefield.
Therefore, these theories have not yet been tested in practice. In addition, the international community is still worried about meteorological weapons, and peaceful development is still the main theme of the world today.