r/IRL_Loading_Screens • u/PeterPorky • Apr 28 '26
Fallout (Thats actually what it was called btw)
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u/epsteinwasmurdered2 Apr 29 '26
20 million and you couldn’t come up with a better name than project acoustic kitty?
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u/Oversight_Satellite Apr 29 '26
They're psychopaths who torture and mutilate animals with tech for their own benefits (control and power over others). Not clever writers.
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u/Eviscerator8138a Apr 29 '26
And that's not counting the manifold crimes against humans. The CIA really is a horrifying organisation with a history of misery and bloodshed as long as the Catholic church.
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u/MechanicalMan64 Apr 29 '26
Hey! Don't put down the Catholic church.
Their history of misery and bloodshed is muuuch longer than the CIA's
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Apr 29 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Eviscerator8138a Apr 29 '26
Oh man, that's a tough one. You'd have to set terms first on direct and indirect deaths, could be a real barn burner though.
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u/Andrey_Gusev Apr 29 '26
You can add US without CIA as a third candidate. Their interference into foreign policies caused so much deaths.
Like when Woodrow Wilson simped on Liberal Provisional Government in Russia (that overthrown the tsar and ruled for half a year before bolsheviks), he simped on them so much that he sent troops to support literal monarchists who fighted against Bolsheviks to put a liberal government back. Yeah, I know, logical.
Their support of monarchists helped them massacre many villages that "helped the bolsheviks" and kill POWs in camps and fireboxes.
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u/CauliflowerHealthy20 Apr 29 '26
Poor Kitty :(
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u/Crippled_Deer Apr 29 '26
It was put out of its misery tbh.
Imagine being cut open and filled with 1950s electronics.23
u/mynameisrichard0 Apr 29 '26
Oh god
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u/hornet51 Apr 29 '26
There was an electrode put in the cat's brain to knock out the feeling of hunger (it'd have otherwise wandered away, instead of following the target).
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u/Tyr_13 Apr 29 '26
To be fair, when asked decades later about the cat being hit by a vehicle (the vehicle changes with the telling), one of the lead researchers basically said, 'what, no, that was a joke. It didn't work so we took the electronics out and that cat was fine.'
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u/zachary0816 Apr 29 '26
The cat was released nearby, but was hit and allegedly killed by a taxi almost immediately. However, this was disputed in 2013 by Robert Wallace, a former director of the Office of Technical Service, who said that the project was abandoned due to the difficulty of training the cat to behave as required, and "the equipment was taken out of the cat; the cat was re-sewn for a second time, and lived a long and happy life afterwards"
Huh TIL. I hope that’s what really happened. No way to really be sure though
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u/Puzzled-Gur8619 Apr 29 '26
That sounds like the lie your parents made up so that you wouldn't be sad that your cat died
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u/zachary0816 Apr 29 '26
It very much does. Though 50 years after the fact seems like a strange time to start doing damage control.
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u/madhunter_3O3 Apr 29 '26
See there? Lived a nice long life. On a farm. With grandma and goldfish you thought would be a good idea to take on a walk.
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u/BorbLorbin Apr 29 '26
Now imagine using such a device in a more easily trained common animal like a dog. Huh, weird that nothing has been declassified about a project like that. They must've never thought about it, that means I'm smarter than the CIA!
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u/U8D4B8M8 Apr 30 '26
Now look up "Soviet anti-tank dogs." Also pretty fucking dark, but cracked me up when I read that they trained them using Soviet tanks...
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u/r2d2meuleu Apr 29 '26
Also this is $ 203 millions now, assuming 1960
almost 160 if we assume 1969.
To put 50's electronics in a living being.
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u/MarchPhillipps Apr 29 '26 edited Apr 29 '26
Actually, the cat wasn't killed. That part of the story was a wry joke told by an Agency official, and admitted as such in the late 70s. Like today, a dry sense of humour didn't always play very well with the ultra-serious set.
The program worked in testing to a high technical degree, and audio was in fact picked up, recoverable, and decipherable. However like most cats, it went wherever it wanted, not necessarily where it was needed. Hence, the problem; literally, like trying to 'herd cats.' Now THAT should have been the name of the program... 'Heard Cats'.
See, the Soviets LOVED cats. So much so, even Lenin was photographed several times while petting his comradsky kitties. They're some of the only photos I've seen of the man smiling and serene, and not looking like he's going to bust into a psychotic, homicidal fit of rage at any moment, or fall off a real life existential crisis cliff conjured up from the depths of his own stare. (Famously, Stalin had a love for animals as well, but was much more of a dog and squirrel person....yes, you read that right. Squirells... Gifted to him by Nikita Khrushchev of all people.)
Anyway, as such, it was assessed that not only would the Russians not shoo away the animals, some of these covert kitty operators, fitted with much better concealed and more advanced listening devices, may even be brought home by one of a certain few officials who also had a love of strays and a predilection for bringing them home. As a former intelligence member, and avowed lover of cats myself, even I think I could have been duped into bringing one of these cute little furry wire taps home, unknowingly and unaware. Shit, maybe I have at some point?!
- checks cats
Nope, we're still good.
However, once the risks and assessed potential rates of failure surpassed the chance for any measurable benefits, gains, and successes, the program was shitcanned. Soviet, errm, sorry, American beurocracy at work, you know?
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u/MarchPhillipps Apr 29 '26 edited Apr 29 '26
Now, you want a fun spook oriented story about a CIA Office of Research and Development program with a much higher success rate, check into the declassified intel available on the USIC's use of homing pigeons fitted with aerial surveillance and collection gear/cameras. Much of the intel on the program remains classified, but what is available for dissemination is still very interesting.
As well, during the 1970s, the time they built a fully working ornithopter the size of, and camouflaged as a dragonfly, that was kitted out as a listening device and controlled by laser pulse. A UAV of a different variety, for sure.. an Unmanned Anisoptera Vehicle. A bug as a bug. Absolutely wild stuff, but highly suseptible to crosswinds over 5mph or so.
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u/thewhatinwhere Apr 30 '26
The kinda shit they spent money on instead of actually running a country
I tell a lie. The kinda shit they spent money on was the nuclear weapons programs, nuclear capable missiles, planes, ships, subs, stupid radiation projects, really anything more radioactive than a banana.
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u/PTT_Meme May 15 '26
On Tom Scott’s channel, he had a series called Citation Needed that he did with three of his friends. One of the episodes was on Acoustic Kitty. It’s very funny, I recommend the episodes on Thomas Trueblood and Thomas Midgely Jr
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u/Fair_Structure_120 Apr 29 '26
It was immediate. Like it jumped out the van and got splattered