/archive/ 272 files
The Camel Corps
The Army’s camels in Texas
The Dynamite Rainmakers
Dynamite blasts to make rain
Reindeer for Alaska
Siberian reindeer and Sámi herders
The Poison Squad
Clerks who ate borax for science
The American Hippo Bill
Hippos for Louisiana’s waterways
Secret Writing
World War I invisible ink
The Einstein File
The FBI’s file on Albert Einstein
The Tuskegee Study
40 years of untreated syphilis
The Akron Disaster
Congress on a flying carrier’s crash
Kudzu, Not a Pest
The USDA’s case for planting kudzu
The Antarctic Snow Cruiser
A 55-foot polar bus with a plane on top
The Bat Bomb
Bats carrying tiny firebombs
The Battle of Los Angeles
Anti-aircraft fire over a blacked-out L.A.
Project Fantasia
An OSS plan to haunt Japan with fox spirits
The Hitler Profile
An OSS psychological profile of Hitler
The Los Alamos Primer
How to build an atomic bomb
The Tesla File
The FBI’s file on Nikola Tesla
Simple Sabotage Field Manual
How to sabotage with meetings
The Spruce Goose
The wooden flying boat that flew once
The Starvation Unit
Objectors starved to plan famine relief
The EDVAC Report
Von Neumann’s computer blueprint
The FBI Hitler File
Tips that Hitler had fled to Argentina
The Ghost Army
An Army unit of inflatable tanks
The Smyth Report
The public history of the atomic bomb
Ignition of the Atmosphere
Could the bomb ignite the sky?
Operation Crossroads
Atomic bombs against a target fleet
Project Diana
The Army bounces radar off the Moon
The Flying Flapjack
The Navy’s round fighter plane
The Guatemala Experiments
People deliberately infected with syphilis
The World-Circling Spaceship
RAND’s satellite, 11 years before Sputnik
The Yehudi Lights
Lamps that hid bombers in the sky
Operation Highjump
The Navy’s 4,700-man Antarctic expedition
The Maury Island Incident
Saucer debris, a fatal crash, an FBI probe
Pigeon-Guided Missiles
Missiles steered by pigeons
Project Sign
The Air Force’s first UFO study
The Hottel Memo
The FBI’s most viewed UFO memo
Project Twinkle
The Air Force hunts green fireballs
Project Cirrus
Dry ice dropped into a hurricane
The Area Rule
The Coke-bottle shape that cut drag
Operation Doorstep
Mannequin families near an A-bomb
Project Sunshine
Collecting human bones to track fallout
The Robertson Panel
The CIA’s plan to debunk UFOs
Operation Big Itch
Fleas dropped from bomblets at Dugway
Operation Whitecoat
Objectors volunteered for germ tests
Sonic Wind
A flight surgeon rode the rocket sled
The Pogo
A fighter that landed on its tail
A Million Random Digits
A book of a million random digits
Hitler in Colombia
A CIA tip that Hitler was alive
John Nash’s Letters to the NSA
John Nash’s cipher proposal
Operation Cue
A mannequin town beside an A-bomb
Project Blue Book
12,618 UFO reports, by the numbers
The Edgewood Volunteers
Soldiers dosed with nerve agents and BZ
Beer at Ground Zero
Beer and soda beside atomic blasts
Project Genetrix
Camera balloons sent across the USSR
SAC’s 1959 Target List
SAC’s 1959 nuclear targets
The Hiller Flying Platform
A fan platform steered by leaning
Gambler’s Ruin
Tom Lehrer’s math paper for the NSA
The Gaither Report
Fallout shelters for every American
The Pascal-B Manhole Cover
A steel cap blown off a nuclear shaft
Avrocar
A real flying saucer that barely flew
Man in Space Soonest
The Air Force’s first astronaut plan
The CIA’s Doctor Zhivago
The CIA’s Russian edition of a banned novel
The Inflatable Airplane
Goodyear’s inflatable airplane
The X-13 Vertijet
A jet that parked hanging by its nose
A Study of Lunar Research Flights
A plan to nuke the Moon
Missile Mail
A cruise missile full of letters
Project Excelsior
A parachute jump from 102,800 feet
Project Horizon
An Army base on the Moon by 1966
Project Chariot
A harbor dug with nuclear blasts
The Brookings Report
Should NASA hide alien life?
The Flying Jeeps
The Army’s search for a flying jeep
The GE Walking Truck
A four-legged truck driven by limbs
The Mark I Perceptron Manual
A Navy machine that learned shapes
The Military Lunar Base
An Air Force spy base on the Moon
A Voice in the Wilderness
The letter behind Apollo’s route
LUNEX
A 21-person military Moon base
Project Mohole
Drilling toward Earth’s mantle
Project Pluto
A nuclear ramjet cruise missile
The Atomic Pigs
Pigs exposed to atomic tests
The Bell Rocket Belt
A rocket belt for soldiers
The Overland Train
A 572-foot road-free cargo train
Augmenting Human Intellect
The agenda behind the mouse
EMPIRE
Crewed Mars flybys before Apollo
Operation Northwoods
Staged attacks to justify war on Cuba
Project Skyfire
Seeding thunderstorms to stop forest fires
Starfish Prime
Artificial auroras from a nuclear test
The AR-15 Field Test
The field test behind the M16
The Effects of Nuclear Weapons
Blast, heat, and fallout explained
The Gamma Field
Crops grown in rings around cobalt-60
The SL-1 Accident
The Army reactor that killed its crew
Dyna-Soar
An Air Force spaceplane, the X-20
Paresev
A NASA glider behind the hang glider
Project Carryall
An interstate cut by nuclear blasts
Sea Dragon
A 500-foot rocket launched from the sea
Sketchpad
The first interactive drawing program
The Intergalactic Computer Network
An early outline of the internet
The Mercury Chimpanzees
Chimps who flew before astronauts
The NB-36H Nuclear Bomber
A bomber that flew with a live reactor
On Distributed Communications
A network built to survive nuclear war
Project Gnome
A walk-in cavern made by a nuke
Project Ithacus
A rocket to fly 1,200 Marines anywhere
Project Orion
A spaceship pushed by nuclear bombs
Project West Ford
Copper needles in orbit for radio
The “Louie Louie” File
The FBI decodes “Louie Louie”
The Davy Crockett
A nuclear gun for the front line
The Delphi Forecast
RAND’s experts forecast the next 50 years
The Marsh Screw Amphibian
A vehicle that drove on giant screws
The RAND Tablet
Handwriting into a computer in 1963
Aquiline
A CIA spy drone disguised as a bird
Camp Century and Project Iceworm
A nuclear base under Greenland’s ice
Project Camelot
An Army study of how to predict revolts
Sealab I
Eleven days at 193 feet down
SNAP-10A
The only U.S. reactor sent into orbit
The Carbon Dioxide Appendix
An early climate warning to a president
The Flying Bedstead
A jet frame for Moon landing practice
The Mouse Trials
The mouse wins a user test
Project Pandora
Did microwaves change behavior?
The ALPAC Report
The report that doubted machine translation
The Rock-Site Concept
Navy bases inside the seafloor
Acoustic Kitty
Cats wired by the CIA to eavesdrop
Manned Venus Flyby
A year-long crewed flyby of Venus
Nuclear Weapons in Vietnam
Should the U.S. nuke Vietnam?
Operation Popeye
Seeding clouds to flood a supply trail
Project HARP
Naval guns firing at the upper sky
Project Ketch
A nuclear gas cavern under Pennsylvania
Sealab II
Seafloor living, mail by porpoise
The Dolphin House
A woman and a dolphin in a flooded house
The Echo Flight Shutdown
Ten nuclear missiles drop off alert at once
The Kidnaping of the Lunik
The CIA borrows a Soviet spacecraft
Boeing’s Nuclear Mars Ship
A nuclear Mars ship from six Saturn Vs
Igloo White
Sensors listening on the Ho Chi Minh Trail
Project Gasbuggy
Fracking with a nuclear bomb
The Berlin Tunnel
A CIA tunnel to tap Soviet cables
The Nuclear Canal
A second Panama Canal, dug by nukes
The Subway Germ Test
A germ test in the New York subway
Timation I
The clock satellite behind GPS
UFO Hypothesis and Survival Questions
Preparing to survive real UFOs
Apollo 10’s Stray Turd
A floating turd on Apollo 10
Goldsboro Revisited
One switch from an H-bomb blast
In Event of Moon Disaster
Nixon’s speech if Apollo 11 failed
Key to the Extraterrestrial Messages
Codebreaking practice with alien messages
One-Man Lunar Flying Vehicle
A rocket platform for Moon hops
The Nuclear Light Bulb
A uranium plasma rocket in a bulb
Lunar Escape Systems
A bare rocket frame for lunar escape
Moon Dust vs. Earth Life
Testing moon dust on live animals
Project Stormfury
Seeding a hurricane to weaken it
Sanguine’s Test Animals
Animals in a giant antenna’s field
The Wandering Soul Tapes
Ghost recordings played at enemy troops
Astronaut Light Flashes
Cosmic rays seen with eyes shut
Hardiman
An exoskeleton for 25× strength
Project Cyclops
1,000 dishes listening for aliens
The Nuclear Subterrene
A reactor that melts tunnels in rock
The Simulated Prison
Students cast as guards and prisoners
The Stealth Equations
The Soviet math behind stealth
Controlled Offensive Behavior
Soviet mind-control research
Project Deep Ops
Whales trained to recover torpedoes
Surveyor 3, Returned
Bacteria in a camera back from the Moon
Tektite II
Aquanauts living on the seafloor
TEMPEST
Cipher machines leaking their secrets
Nuclear Waste into Space
Launching nuclear waste into space
The Apollo 17 Pocket Mice
Mice with brain sensors around the Moon
The Family Jewels
The CIA’s own list of its misdeeds
Universe 25
A mouse utopia that died out
Uri Geller at SRI
Uri Geller tested in a shielded room
Avian Delivery System
Training ravens for delivery missions
Biocybernetic Control
An early brain-computer interface
PACER
Steam power from repeated H-bombs
Skylab’s Spiders
Spiders spinning webs in orbit
The Arecibo Message
A radio picture beamed at M13
The Cattle Mutilation File
The FBI and the cattle mutilations
The Insectothopter
A CIA robot dragonfly to carry a bug
The Multics Penetration Test
A compiler trap door, found early
The Plutonium Heart
A plutonium-powered artificial heart
Alleged Assassination Plots
U.S. plots against foreign leaders
Dematerialization and Antigravity
An Army theory of antigravity
Space Settlements
Spinning colonies for 10,000 people
On the Habitability of Mars
NASA’s first terraforming study
The FBI Bigfoot File
The FBI tests Bigfoot hair
An Interstellar Precursor
A probe 1,000 AU from the Sun
Project MKULTRA
The CIA’s mind-control drug program
The Army’s Open-Air Germ Tests
Open-air germ tests on U.S. cities
The Flying-Wing Freighter
A cargo plane with freight in its wing
The Voyager Golden Record
A record of Earth sent to the stars
Solar Power Satellites as Weapons
Solar power satellites as weapons
Spy Pigeons
Pigeons with cameras over Soviet shipyards
The Satellite Power System
Solar power beamed down from orbit
The Voynich Manuscript
The NSA studies the Voynich manuscript
Nuclear War Survival Skills
A DIY guide to surviving nuclear war
The First Earth Battalion
An Army plan for “warrior monks”
Advanced Automation for Space Missions
A self-copying factory on the Moon
Faster-than-Light Particles
Faster-than-light particles
The Aspen Movie Map
Driving through Aspen on videodisc
The Stanford Cart
A self-driving cart, one meter at a time
A History of the ARPANET
The ARPANET’s first official history
Broken Arrows
The Pentagon’s list of nuclear accidents
Project Sea Hunt
Pigeons searching the sea from a pod
The Halt Memo
The Air Force’s Rendlesham Forest memo
Operation Argus
Nuclear blasts to make radiation belts
The Cash-Landrum Inquiry
The Army looks for 23 mystery helicopters
Strategic Computing
DARPA’s battlefield AI plan
Tennis for Two
A 1958 tennis game on an oscilloscope
The Gateway Process
Meditating beyond time and space
Shakey the Robot
A robot that planned its own moves
The Atomic Priesthood
A priesthood to guard nuclear waste
Antimatter Rockets
Antimatter as rocket fuel
Project Azorian
Lifting a sunken Soviet submarine
The Nuclear Winter Study
The Pentagon-funded nuclear winter study
The Scissor-Wing Jet
A jet with a pivoting wing
Enhancing Human Performance
The Army weighs “new age” techniques
Project Longshot
A fusion probe to Alpha Centauri
The X-Ray Laser Audit
Was the X-ray laser oversold?
Brilliant Pebbles
Swarms of missile-ramming satellites
The 90-Day Study
A Moon base, then astronauts on Mars
The Cold Fusion Panel
The panel that doubted cold fusion
The Morris Worm
Auditors on the first internet worm
BEAR
A particle beam fired in space
Plasma Cloaking
A plasma cloak against radar
The Electric Propulsion Study
Antigravity and free-energy claims
NERVA
Nuclear rockets fired in Nevada
The U-2 and OXCART Programs
The CIA’s secret spy plane history
Not a Place of Honor
Warnings meant to last 10,000 years
The “Gay Bomb” Proposal
A chemical weapon to spark attraction
The Clipper Chip
A crypto chip with keys held for police
Wingship Investigation
Giant craft skimming the sea
CORONA
Spy satellite film caught in midair
Drugged Spider Webs
Spider webs on drugs
Human Radiation Experiments
Thirty years of radiation experiments
SIMNET
DARPA’s networked battle simulators
Skyhook and Operation Coldfeet
Snatching men off an ice station
Stargate
Government-funded remote viewing
Alternate Futures for 2025
Six possible worlds for 2025
Owning the Weather in 2025
Weather control as a weapon
Planetary Defense
A military mission to stop asteroids
Roswell: Case Closed
The Roswell aliens were crash dummies
Breakthrough Propulsion Physics
NASA’s warp drive program
HAARP
The military’s ionosphere heater in Alaska
The Gravity Shield Test
Testing a gravity shield
A Review of Criticality Accidents
Every accidental chain reaction
SIGSALY
A 55-ton encrypted phone line
Space Elevators
A cable from the ground to orbit
Venona
Soviet spy cables broken by reused pads
Space Weapons, Earth Wars
Tungsten rods dropped from orbit
LifeLog
DARPA’s plan to record a whole life
Total Information Awareness
DARPA’s mass data-mining program
Teleportation Physics Study
An Air Force survey of teleportation
The DARPA Grand Challenge
A robot car race nobody finished
The Lifter Tests
Testing high-voltage “lifters”
Cyborg Insects
Remote-controlled beetles and moths
BigDog
DARPA’s four-legged robot pack mule
Plum Island
Should foot-and-mouth leave its island?
After the Bomb
The first days after a nuclear attack
The AAWSAP Papers
DIA studies of wormholes and antigravity
Climate Engineering
Geoengineering, judged not ready
Counter-Zombie Dominance
A military plan for a zombie attack
Warp Field Mechanics 101
The energy cost of a warp drive
An Underwater Ice Station Zebra
Spy film fished from 16,400 feet down
Project GUNMAN
Soviet bugs in embassy typewriters
HAVOC
Airship cities in Venus’s clouds
The Manned Orbiting Laboratory
An Air Force spy space station
Titan Submarine
A submarine for Titan’s seas
A Roadmap to the Stars
Laser-pushed probes to the stars
The EmDrive Test
Thrust from a sealed copper cavity
The TALOS Suit
The “Iron Man” suit
Hibernating to Mars
Hibernating crews on the way to Mars
The Great Seal Bug
A Soviet bug inside a carved Great Seal
The Havana Sounds
The Havana attacks were crickets
The Mach Effect Drive
A propellant-free drive to Proxima b
The Navy’s “UFO Patent”
A Navy patent to cancel a craft’s inertia
The Solar Gravity Lens
Using the Sun as a telescope lens
The 2021 UAP Assessment
144 military UFO sightings, one solved
Lunar Crater Radio Telescope
A telescope in a far-side crater
Mycotecture Off Planet
Habitats grown from fungus