I never thought of this, but it's a real danger: the Homeopathic Bomb.
Homeopathic bombs are comprised of 99.9% water but contain the merest trace element of explosive. The solution is then repeatedly diluted so as to leave only the memory of the explosive in the water molecules. According to the laws of homeopathy, the more that the water is diluted, the more powerful the bomb becomes.
All I need is a minuscule quantity of octanitrocubane and a couple of liters of bottled water, and *POW*, I'll have the deadliest water balloon in the universe. Those people who were afraid the LHC was going to destroy the planet when it was switched on had better watch out, because I will tap the POWER of HOMEOPATHY!
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Oh, no. I think we have another reason to be afraid--very afraid--of homeopathy/ Apparently New Agers have developed a homeopathic bomb:
The world has been placed on a heightened security alert following reports that New Age terrorists have harnessed the power of homeopathy for evil. 'Homeopathic…
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I've been meaning to write something about homeopathy at some point, because it's just so wretchedly stupid. But until now, I haven't sat down to actually do it, because it can seem rather like beating a dead horse: it's just so over-the-top goofy, and the goofiness of it is so well documented…
Jeanette Winterson offers her "defence" in the Guardian, and I can't wait for Ben Goldacre to rip into it.
She starts with this classic argument from anecdote:
Picture this. I am staying in a remote cottage in Cornwall without a car. I have a temperature of 102, spots on my throat, delirium, and…
PZ set us up the bomb. All our base are belong to him.
Unbelievers will be exploded!
Probably what they were planning all along.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
@1: You have won the internet.
I knew the stress of this frenetic blog would eventually get to Professor Myers. Methinks the trophy wife needs to step in... quickly.
Well, my first thought, when I first saw this story on Respectful Insolence, was that explosive is the last thing they want.
Was gonna comment on that regarding the premise, but Jack A. S. Stevens beat me to it (quite pithily, too!), so I'll copy his comment instead:
A homo bomb?
The Republifags are right, we're all screwed.
(Just kidding, gay peoples. ;-)
Using "like cures like" shouldn't a homeopathic nuclear bomb be a miniscule amount of lead diluted in water?
Wait... that means we've got to stop removing lead from our drinking water or we'll end up turning a city into a giant homeopathic nuclear bomb!
PS everyone should know that the ultimate non-nuclear explosive is duodecaplylatomate.
So I noticed that my car was almost out of gas and thought...what the hell. Filled the tank up the rest of the way with water and carefully shook the bumper. This should be great.
After like 32 more tanks I should be getting 1000's of miles per gallon. I'm gonna be soo rich.
So, if I got ahold of a single molecule of U238, I could hold the world for ransom by threatening to drop it into the Pacific Ocean?
I need to practice my maniacal laughter.
And the biggest danger to the planet will come from exposing the ‘walking suggestible’ to this Weapon of Mass Dilution.
I think I know where the highest concentrations of these types of people can be found - in buildings with pointy bell towers or with adjacent minarets. Somehow we are going to have to stop these New Age terrorists before they can make the religious believe the planet has been destroyed.
…or maybe we shouldn't.
A lot of guys ignore the laugh. And that's about standards.
... quasi-related: I think I've just decided, as of this thread, that I really do, after all, need something for my wardrobe from the Retropolis Transit Authority's 'Ask Me About My Death Ray' line of fine products.
Conflict of interest statement: I have received no stipend nor remuneration of any description from the Retropolis Transit Authority for this endorsement. I just happen to rilly, rilly want people to ask me about my death ray.
(/And c'mon, who doesn't?)
kantalope, any homeopath will tell that homeopathy doesn't work like that. The remedy must be specially tailored to the individual car.
@ AJ Milne
On this thread, dare I say it's a water pistol?
A HOMOEOPATHIC water pistol?
Zounds!!!!
One could do:
A: A lot of damage with one of those.
B: A lot of good (depending on what's not in the water).
C: Do nothing (preferred option).
D: Just wet somebody (preferred option if target is the Poop).
Deluded Creodont,
Only if you threatened to "cure" radioactivity thereby. (cf. Hahnemann's "law of similars").
Sheesh, that's the same mistake the author of this little joke made.
You're gonna diss something, try getting that something right.
Laughing out loud* at 'depending on what's not in the water'...
Things that are not in the water fired by my death ray/water gun:
-- an airborne mutant of a/an** hemorrhagic fever virus
-- an actually logically measurable quantity of Polonium-210
-- the faint, distant memory of some 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin that is long, long gone from our homeopathic lab o' horrors, but still wishes you and it were here.
... fear me.
(*/I have recently developed this odd allergy to textspeak shortcuts. Please do not respond with smilies. I may not survive.)
(**/The variants with and without the implied aitch sound in 'hemorrhagic' do and do not infect persons with and without various regional transatlantic dialects, natch. We evil geniuses and aspiring geniuses and evil sorta possibly noticeably bright types try to be thorough.)
The seminal mind of nuclear homeopathic physics was, you will undoubtedly recall, Dr. Charlene Werner.
Her lecture is the gift that keeps on giving. If only it would stop.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0c5yClip4o
Help me here.
Since like cures like, PZ has it wrong that his highly diluted octanitrocubane would be a powerful bomb. Rather, it would be the antidote to a real octanitrocubane bomb. Just pour PZ's mixture of almost pure water on the real bomb and no boom. Is that right?
So, then, does that mean if one took a super inert substance, like lead and diluted it down to almost nothing, then it would be a really powerful bomb? What if one took perfectly pure water? Would that be the ultimate bomb or killing solution?
Is that why people drown?
And with that, it's off to bed for me.
Argh another awesome JTHM reference, my head explod. How are you so awesome.
I think you've all got it wrong. The hyper-diluted explosive will actually clean up after explosions. Just three drops on the rubble left behind will restore any building, city or even planet to its former splendor!
How about we take some nothing, and dilute and shake, 30 or so times then threaten to open it and release the nothing...as in "Never Ending Story"
(well... it's as good a citation as on the average woo paper)
But on reflection it wouldn't work, I didn't pay the woomeister $200 and agree to return for follow up woo.
And, I'll get my unicorn.
This sounds like a Pentagon research project. :-)
(You may laugh, but I've read The Men Who Stare at Goats. Sometimes governments are stranger than fiction.)
Hmm... So, if regular concentrations of halon interrupt combustion, a homeopathic dilution of halon of say, 20c should be sufficient to level a city block!
I like this. . . it's almost better than sharks with lasers. . .
/DrEvil
Stop here. Stop right here!
Just mentioning that substance makes you a Mad Scientist®. =8-)
Up us!!! Up whom? Up us! Compare "on us"!
:-D
Oh that reminds me, I have to go and watch it sometime, thanks Walton !
I like the little animated head-explody thingy at the bottom of the post...
OMG, dilute it enough and you could end up with something more powerful than antimatter. Homeland Security, get on this right away!
@Robert MacDonald, #18
wow.. I didn't last two minutes into that. obviously, in her mind, if something that has mass is small, then it has hardly any mass. or something.
Adults take 1 pill, children under 12 take 2.
Hey... does that work with gasoline as well?
I better go throw water in my tank and see if my car goes faster!
Possibly related to this? 'Gay bomb' scoops Ig Nobel awards.
Worthy of The Onion, that linked article is. Hilarious stuff.
According to homeopathy water has memory, so how can there be any such thing as pure water? You could end up initiating all manner of interacting reactions PZ.
Careful, PZ, you could end up spending five years in Gitmo before the feds figure out this is sarcastic. They're a lot bigger on paranoia than they are on science these days.
Isn't the problem with things like the LHC? It makes tiny amounts of interesting stuff, diluted by huge amounts of boring stuff, but the problem is it's stirred—not shaken—by giant magnets. That's why it's not going to blow up the world in 2012. Silly physicists. Everyone knows you need to careful succussion—shaking, not stirring—no matter how big your magnets are!
David Marjanović #26
Ah HA! David is not aware of all internet conventions.
A Japanese arcade game called Zero Wing had a poorly translated introduction. "All your base are belong to us" and "Somebody set us up the bomb" have become internet memes because of Zero Wing.
The introduction has even been set to music:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qE6emvdmg-M
No, no, no, you don't use it as a bomb. You drink it. It cure your explosive diarrhea. Sheesh.
Um, no, sorry PZ, homeopathy doesn't work like that. You forgot the Law of Similars. This dilution you propose would actually defend against bombs.
No no, if you wanted to make a homeopathic bomb, you would need to take, I dunno, a clipping from a flak jacket or something, and dilute THAT down below Avogadro's Limit. Law of Similars.
DUH.
Someone has set us up the bomb!
Urg. I see 'Tis has already been here (and won today's internets).
Well, hopefully my dilution of this phase has made it a more efficacious defense against such memes.
If Homeopathy were indeed correct, then environmental engineers would have a VERY difficult problem. After removing most of the pollutants, the water would just get more and more toxic!
Which explains why, a thousand years ago, when there were less pollutants in the air and water† people lived shorter and nastier lives: The air and water was more toxic and dangerous!
† On average. Certain locations, like smoky dwellings with poor sanitation, would make a modern industrialist proud.
Hideous - the more that this bomb is diluted and cut like cheap dope, the MORE powerful the BOOM will be (unlike cheap dope.)
Imagine applying this with alcohol - if you want to pass that breathalyzer, you better drink that grain alcohol STRAIGHT, son!
Don't silly. If you're gonna disolve it in water, you'll have to stop at heptenitrocubane or some such. The octonitrocudane must have a variety of tetrahedral symmetry, so it can't be polar.
I like the straight intro better, because everything about the translation and speech is just so wrong. There is one of the alternate versions which is pretty weird as well.
You have no chance to survive make your time.
I like the extended meme-version best, I suppose.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qItugh-fFgg
Um... sorry, but 'tis you who is mistaken about this particular meme. The correct phrase is "Somebody set UP US the bomb", which is what David alluded to. A useful mnemonic for remembering this is "Bomb the US, up-set somebody".
FAIL
-Watoosh
No, no, no. Like Cures Like, remember. So succussed explosives in solution would cure the results of explosion.
I think I'm going into the homeopathic construction business.
@fordiman #48:
Or do succussed explosives cure the condition of being unexploded? Hmmmm?
Oh Shit! The CIA has found out that Al-Qaeda ordered plutonium nitricum 30C! With that they can succuss up enough bombs to obliterate the entire planet! A 100C concentration will make Little Boy look like a firecracker. We are doomed!
P.S. I know this to be true because my dog told me telepathically that the CIA beamed the information into his his brain. They didn't beam it directly into my brain because I NEVER take off my tin-foil hat. Luckily that only blocks the CIA and not my dog's brain waves.
You build me a house and I pay you with a bucket of water?
...... OH MY!......
It just occurred to me that every substance in the world has come into contact with water at some time in the 14 beeeellllyuuuuuun years that our planet has been here.
DON'T ANYONE MOVE!!!! AND DON'T FLUSH !!!!!
If homeopathy is right (sheesh) then it'll all blow up now...... or yesterday ...... or the day before........
A homeopathic bomb would be a physical impossibility, because of the Alternative Medicine Law of Energy: Positive Energy allows Nature to work; Negative Energy prevents Nature from working.
People who are open to alternative methods and other ways of knowing are the kind of people who send out positive energy vibrations. This is why homeopathy works when they do it; it's a positive force. Negative people -- such as skeptics, atheists, Western scientists, and bullies -- are closed-minded, narrow, and mean. Their energy therefore is negative, and blocks the higher vibrations necessary for alternative medicines like homeopathy to function properly, as Nature intends.
So, in other words, if you believe that homeopathy works, then you're not the kind of person who would -- or could -- make a destructive force which harms people and the environment. Natural energy needs harmony to flow correctly. Homeopathy can only be used by the good, for good.
Come on. This is just basic physics, folks.
I knew I shouldn't have hired a budget consultant for my World Domination Plan.
Googlemess #47
I'm sorry, you're wrong (as usual) and I'm right (as usual). But hey, don't worry about it. You're so often wrong it comes as second nature to you. :P
Now my car won't start.
Per tdanielmidgley I tossed some oats into the tank because it is a mustang. The car shaking made my arms hurt so I'm going to take a nap and let the car rest a bit since it might be flooded.
I can't wait for this to work...
"I'll have the deadliest water balloon in the universe."
And this guy knows it.
Dear Doctor girl, I am larger than a bowling ball. Should I be smaller perforce so would you and so would bowling balls. We live in this universe, not the one you have imagined. In this universe humans are just about average sized on a scale of smallest to largest. BFD,
I don't know how you manage to conflate the nature and history of the universe with your worship of ancient mythology. And believe me, I've tried.
It is casual maunderings such as yours that imperils the innocent and baffles the rest of us.
While you are pretending to instruct us about just how the universe works do you think you could spare a moment to consider the nature of error? Might help.
The bomb will not work, for I will protect My people.
Oh no - this isn't how it works, because otherwise... well, think of all that super-diluted poo we're always drinking. No, the Homeopath's specific intention when undertaking the process is what makes this work - it's just like Quantum! And Schrodinger's Cat (aren't Scientists cruel?)
That and rolling up their left trouser leg, spinning round three times, and singing the Bing bong song...
I just remembered (mostly back in first year...hey I wasn't the only one made that mistake)pouring some reagents (possibly mutagenic) down the lab sinks in chem and biochem that I shouldn't have. Those chemicals would have gotten more and more potent as they went through the waste systems.
Now I'm thinking that I made a lot of people get cancer and die. :(
No wait...I cured them.
Yep I probably cured their cancers. Yay me:)
I've devised the most lethalist bomb, more lethaler than PZed's!
As we all know, water has a memory. What most people don't know is that it often has an Imagination as well. What I do is set the water next to an explosive homeopathic solution. Due to water's poor eyesight but excellent transpacial sensory reception, it will imagine it once contained the explosive material in the other solution. Thus, via the process of homeopathic imagination, it will have something which is far more diluted than memory and be infinitely more powerful!
BWAHAHAHA!