The Gay Bomb: The U.S. Military’s Plot To Make Enemy Soldiers Fall In Love With Each Other
Wikimedia Commons/Edited in CanvaThe gay bomb was intended to turn enemy soldiers gay, with the assumption that they would neglect the ongoing battle.
Would soldiers stop fighting in wars if they all suddenly became gay and fell in love with each other? It sounds ridiculous, but this hypothetical concept was once considered — far too seriously — by the U.S. military in 1994.
Dubbed the “gay bomb,” the idea was to create a theoretical chemical weapon that would not kill enemy troops, but would distract them long enough for them to neglect their wartime duties. For some reason, the only thing the U.S. Department of Defense could think of was sex — but how would they get enemy soldiers to have enough sex to distract them?
The solution was simple: Make a bomb that would turn the enemy soldiers gay, and lace it with enough aphrodisiacs so that they would become so attractive to each other that they wouldn’t be able to control themselves.
This is not a joke. In a three-page proposal for this plan — which would have cost an estimated $7.5 million — researchers at the Wright Laboratory in Ohio wrote that the gas in this bomb would contain a chemical “that would cause enemy soldiers to become gay, and to have their units break down because all their soldiers became irresistibly attractive to one another.”
There were, of course, no real studies to back this idea up. After all, there is no proven chemical that would be able to change a person’s sexual orientation. And even if there were, there would be no guarantee that everyone exposed to it would immediately start having sex afterward.
Most likely, the idea was inherently rooted in early 1990s homophobia and, thankfully, it never made it past the initial planning stage.
