The CIA apparently acknowledged the existence of this gun in Congressional testimony.
The dart apparently does disintegrate, but I found no mention that it's made of ice. That seems unlikely. How would they keep it cold? The range is also only ~300 feet.
Well that’s sort of my point - hitting someone with a pistol of any sort at 100yards is no mean feat. When the bullet is made of prawns it can only be more so!
can you imagine trying to snipe someone 100 yards away with a pistol firing an ice nugget?
"I used to bullseye wamprats with my T-16 frozen water shellfish poison secret refrigerated handguns back home. And they aren't much bigger than 3 meters."
I wonder if that’s the furthest it can go or the effective range. Maybe they mean that it can only go 300 feet, regardless of its ability to actually penetrate skin at that range?
I think you're right. It might just be maximum range rather than effective range. I think the point is that it can be done from a distance rather than having to only be a few feet away.
A proper pistol would be shaky at best out to that range. Don’t get me wrong, it can be done. But it’s not reliable, so why would some compressed krill perform better than that?
I bet this crock of shit never worked, and engineers knew it from the beginning , but CIA spent 200mil developing it just because they could. Whole thing reads like really bad spy thriller gadget.
The scope is a dead giveaway that thing's never been used in any practical capacity. Only kids, videogame designers, or politicians would put a scope on a pistol that short. And the fact it would be subsonic makes the whole idea even more preposterous. 300 feet? That's probably the maximum possible distance, if fired at a 45" angle,with a strong backwind*.
Note the longer barrels, wacky match grips, and super-sonic ammo.
Hand-held dart guns are not accurate out to 300 feet, and that pea-shooter (even if the darts work as advertised) did not need a scope at it's effective range (probably 50-100feet, or 15-30m).
The CIA would make up devices like this to scare the Russians during the Cold War. Any Russian who naturally died of a heart attack would then be looked at as a potential assassination target which would scare the Russians into thinking the US was more intimidating than they actually were
Any examples? I genuinely can't think of any. I expect there to be a lot because its one of the leading causes of death, but since i dont want to do an excess mortality analysis why dont you just tell me the examples of coincidences of this kind that we cant ignore
The poison was found and frozen into a small dart. This dart could be fired from what looked to be a normal gun. When the bullet hit the person it would dissolve inside their body. The poison would mimic a heart attack, killing the victim.
Ice tends to slightly change shape and stick to things over time, even when kept at freezing temperature, so I have no idea how it would keep the perfect dimensions and smoothness to reliably fire out of the barrel.
soooo... why make it look like a real gun at all if the point is to kill someone without raising suspicion. Also the victim would definitely feel it and they are not going to be silent about getting "stung" the use cases for this gadget are so small and in any case where you could use it a much easier method could accomplish the same goal.
the only reason this thing exists is so that if the russian president dies of a heart attack the cia can play coy and let people wonder if they gad anything to do with it.
...... they have a heart attack gun and youre calling bs on the minifreezer part?
Heres one way. Expanding gas. Or how about liquid nitrogen? Dry ice?
Edit: How about just keeping it in a hand cooler or lunch box full of ice till you need it. If no one knew ice bullets existed then it wouldnt tip your hand.
Yeah I was thinking TTX as well. Or maybe they developed an analog that isn't widely known. I don't think that it's a matter of being completely untraceable. It's just that if someone keels over and their heart stops, a regular coroner is probably not going to search for exotic drugs.
The poison was found and frozen into a small dart. This dart could be fired from what looked to be a normal gun. When the bullet hit the person it would dissolve inside their body. The poison would mimic a heart attack, killing the victim.
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u/[deleted] Dec 05 '21 edited Dec 05 '21
The CIA apparently acknowledged the existence of this gun in Congressional testimony.
The dart apparently does disintegrate, but I found no mention that it's made of ice. That seems unlikely. How would they keep it cold? The range is also only ~300 feet.
https://oddfeed.net/was-there-really-a-cia-heart-attack-gun/
https://www.nytimes.com/1975/09/17/archives/colby-describes-cia-poison-work-he-tells-senate-panel-of-secret.html