This Is How the World Could Have Ended
This story first appeared on Jan. 14, 2014. This is a plan for the end of the world, dated 1970. The arrows are armies and the red vertical symbols are nuclear bombs, all part of a part of Cold War contingency plan crafted by the Soviet Union and its... Read more
Manual for Mayhem: How One Man Tried to Teach Everyday People to Make Anti-Tank Missiles
This story originally appeared on Jan. 17, 2014. One day in high school, I was out with classmates when my friend Danny abruptly reached into his pocket and threw something high into the air. He immediately ducked behind a car and, sensing danger, the rest of us ran behind... Read more
I Watched China’s ‘Top Gun’ So You Don’t Have To
This story originally appeared on Oct. 30, 2013. The Chinese government wants to take you into the danger zone. In 2011 Beijing released Sky Fighters, China’s answer to Top Gun. Like Top Gun, it’s about fighter pilots waging aerial war for their country. But that’s where the comparison ends. Made... Read more
Rumors of Secret Warplanes Preceded SR-72 Reveal
Lockheed Martin’s 2013 announcement of a proposed SR-72 reconnaissance and strike drone comes against a backdrop of decades of rumor about a replacement for America’s high-speed SR-71 spy plane. The SR-72 reportedly appeared for the first time in plain view in July 2017. Since the early 1990s, there have... Read more
The Battlecarrier Was Part Battleship, Part Aircraft Carrier
This story originally appeared on Dec. 6, 2013. In the early 1980s, four Iowa-class fast battleships originally built during World War II—Iowa, Missouri, New Jersey and Wisconsin—were taken out of mothballs and returned to active duty. Nearly 900 feet long and displacing close to 60,000 tons, the battlewagons could... Read more
Puede que Corea del Norte tenga más armas nucleares de las que pensábamos
Este artículo fue publicado por primera vez el 27 de febrero de 2015. Corea del Norte tiene hasta cuatro veces más armas nucleares de las se estimó anteriormente, y está trabajando duro para llegar a conseguir colocar armas nucleares en cabezas de misiles, según un influyente sitio web que... Read more
The Lovely Little Town That Would Have Been Absolutely Screwed by World War III
This story first appeared on Sept. 27, 2013. For 40 years, during the height of the Cold War, the future battleground of World War III was a little known place. Just east of the West German town of Fulda, near the Inter-German Border, it was one of the most... Read more
North Korea Might Have Far More Nukes Than We Thought
This story originally appeared on Feb. 27, 2015. North Korea has up to four times as many nukes than previous estimates, and is working to master placing nuclear warheads on missiles, according to an influential Website tracking North Korea’s nuclear developments. This new assessment of Kim Jong Un’s nuclear... Read more
America’s Best Stealth Weapons
Stealth, or the idea of reducing the ability of the enemy to detect a weapon, has been around since the first caveman sewed a pocket into his clothing and hid a rock in it. Thousands of years later, with the ability to detect objects on the ground, in the... Read more
Russia Rolls Out a New Infantry Fighting Vehicle — Its First Since the Cold War Parade rehearsal shows the Kremlin’s new armored designs by KYLE MIZOKAMI Two videos uploaded to the Internet purportedly reveal Russia’s first truly new infantry fighting vehicles in decades and a new self-propelled howitzer. One of the videos even shows... Read more