Art restoration demands a blend of deep expertise and delicate touch; when done right, the public never notices the invisible labor. Yet the craft also hinges on chemistry, architecture, and countless niche skills, making every brushstroke a high‑stakes gamble.

10 Times Art Restoration Went Awry

10 Ecce Homo—Zaragoza, Spain

Most people have at least heard of the infamous “Monkey” picture, a botched attempt that turned a revered fresco into internet‑level infamy. The original work, titled Ecce Homo, depicted a dignified Jesus, but the ill‑fated makeover transformed it into something that looks more like a cartoonish monkey.

Before the amateur, Cecilia Giménez stepped in, the wall‑hung fresco painted by Elías García Martínez showed a graceful Christ. Decades of weather and neglect had faded the colors, prompting the local parish to consider professional conservation.

Giménez, with zero formal training, decided to take matters into her own hands. She slathered thick blobs of paint across the surface, creating a gloppy, uneven texture that now defines the piece. Her lack of technique turned a delicate repair into a visual disaster.

She had to abandon the project when she left town, and the local heritage group quickly exposed the shoddy work. The resulting scandal made her both infamous and an internet sensation, with memes spreading worldwide.

Ironically, the fiasco sparked a tourism boom; visitors flock to the small town just to glimpse the ruined fresco, turning the disaster into an unexpected economic lift.

9 The Virgin Mary And Baby Jesus—Sudbury, Canada

A beloved sculpture of the Virgin Mary cradling the infant Jesus was vandalized when the baby’s head was broken off, leaving a haunting, headless figure. Photographs of the original head survived, prompting a well‑meaning artist to attempt a replacement.

Heather Wise, an artist rather than a certified conservator, rushed to craft a new head. Despite having ample reference images, the resulting piece looked nothing like the historic original, appearing almost grotesque.

The replacement head was made of terracotta, a material that clashed with the stone statue, and its proportions were wildly off‑scale, giving the infant a cartoonish, unsettling appearance.

Public outcry quickly followed, and the story went viral. Thankfully, the original head was later recovered and returned, allowing the botched substitute to be removed and a proper restoration to proceed.

8 The Great Wall Of China

While many sections of the Great Wall have been lovingly preserved, a 2016 renovation project turned one of its most picturesque stretches into a concrete‑covered eyesore. The goal was to halt crumbling, but the execution erased centuries‑old stonework.

Instead of carefully restoring the original bricks, engineers poured a slab of concrete over a 780‑meter length, effectively flattening the historic silhouette into a modern sidewalk.

The result resembled a sleek, uniform walkway rather than an ancient fortification, stripping away the wall’s texture and cultural resonance. Critics labeled it a total destruction masquerading as preservation.

The botched effort sparked investigations, prompting authorities to tighten oversight on future restoration projects along the Wall.

7 The Beard Of Tutankhamen’s Death Mask

The iconic gold mask of Tutankhamun, discovered in 1925, remained pristine for decades—until 2014, when its delicate beard snapped off, demanding urgent conservation.

Rather than employing a specialist, museum staff hastily glued the heavy 5.5‑pound beard back onto the mask using a crude adhesive. The rushed job left deep scratches, gouges, and visible glue residues, further damaging the priceless artifact.

The botched repair drew criticism and legal action, with staff charged for negligence and violating professional standards. The mask’s condition worsened, prompting an international outcry.

Fortunately, a German team intervened in 2015, expertly reattaching the beard and restoring the mask’s dignity, erasing the earlier mishap.

6 The Castle Of Matrera, Spain

Restoring medieval fortresses is a delicate balancing act, but the 2010‑2015 project at the Castle of Matrera sparked fury among locals. Originally erected in the 9th century and rebuilt in the 13th, the ruins were weather‑worn and in dire need of attention.

Architect Carlos Quevedo Rojas led a five‑year effort aiming to “recover the volume, texture, and tonality” of the tower, hoping to echo its historic essence rather than impose a modern vision.

When the work concluded, many Spaniards felt the castle’s soul had been erased. Heritage organization Hispania Nostra condemned the outcome as “absolutely terrible,” arguing that the reconstruction, though technically sound, obliterated the monument’s authentic character.

The controversy highlighted a clash between architectural ambition and cultural preservation, reminding us that sometimes, keeping ruins untouched respects history better than flashy makeovers.

5 Saint George And The Dragon—Estella, Spain

The 16th‑century polychrome statue of Saint George battling a dragon, housed in the Church of St. Michael, suffered severe fading over centuries, prompting a 2018 restoration attempt.

A local artist was commissioned, but the resulting paint job turned the heroic knight into a rosy‑cheeked, almost cartoonish figure, reminiscent of a comic‑book hero rather than a solemn saint.

The botched colors forced conservators to “un‑restore” the piece, painstakingly stripping away the misguided layers before re‑applying authentic pigments. Over 1,000 hours later, the statue regained much of its original splendor.

The debacle cost roughly €33,000—more than triple the projected €10,000 budget—and even incurred a €6,000 fine from the archdiocese for the damage caused.

4 Santa Bárbara—Fortaleza De Santa Cruz, Brazil

The 19th‑century wooden statue of Santa Bárbara, perched inside the Santa Cruz da Barra Chapel, required conservation by the Museu Histórico do Exército in 2012 after its paint had faded.

Conservators spent six months painstakingly stripping away four historic paint layers, only to replace them with a garish palette that critics likened to a Barbie doll rather than a saint.

The new finish featured stark white skin, excessive eyeliner, and overly bright robes, clashing violently with the chapel’s solemn atmosphere.

Most observers agreed the intervention was unnecessary; a simple cleaning and touch‑up would have preserved the original aesthetic, making the extensive repainting a tragic loss of heritage.

3 St. Anthony Of Padua—Soledad, Colombia

The 17th‑century wooden statue of San Antonio de Padua, revered in a Soledad chapel, needed a fresh coat after its pigments faded, though the carving itself remained structurally sound.

An artist—not a certified conservator—was hired to revitalize the piece, but the result sparked outrage. The saint now appeared with glossy lip‑shine, bright eyeshadow, and a rosy blush, giving him an unmistakably effeminate, makeup‑laden look.

Parishioners lamented that their patron looked more like a runway model than a holy figure, describing the transformation as “effeminate” and “completely unrecognizable.”

The episode underscores the importance of respecting original intent and employing qualified experts when handling sacred artworks.

2 Ocakli Ada Castle, Sile, Turkey

Originally a Genoese watchtower erected two millennia ago, the Ocakli Ada Castle in Sile has endured Ottoman conquest and centuries of wear. A 2015 renovation aimed to modernize the site.

The overhaul replaced the ancient stone façade with sleek, shiny new construction, prompting many to liken the result to a cartoon version of SpongeBob SquarePants rather than a historic citadel.

Local authorities defended the project, citing neglect that dated back to the 19th century, while critics argued the renovation erased the castle’s authentic character.

The debate highlights the fine line between preservation and modernization, especially for structures with deep historical roots.

1 Buddhist Frescoes, Chaoyang, China

The 270‑year‑old Yunjie Temple in Chaoyang housed exquisite Qing‑dynasty frescoes, whose colors had faded dramatically over time, leaving only faint outlines of the original figures.

In 2013, a restorer chose to paint entirely new scenes over the remnants, employing a bright, cartoonish palette reminiscent of Disney animation rather than traditional Chinese brushwork.

The fresh images obliterated the historic paintings, provoking outrage. Officials responsible for the temple’s heritage were dismissed, yet the original frescoes were irrevocably lost.

This episode serves as a stark reminder that well‑meaning interventions can sometimes erase priceless cultural treasures beyond recovery.

Welcome to a whirlwind tour of 10 mind bogglingly extreme episodes of cosmic mayhem. From the birth pangs of the universe to the ferocious feasts of supermassive black holes, this list showcases the most jaw‑dropping displays of destruction that space has ever thrown at us.

10 Mind Bogglingly Highlights of Cosmic Chaos

10 A Quasar That Eats The Equivalent Of A Star Every Single Day

Picture a celestial furnace capable of devouring a sun‑sized star every single day. That’s not a sci‑fi fantasy – it’s the reality of the quasar known as J2157. This monster is the fastest‑growing black hole ever catalogued, packing a staggering 34 billion solar masses.

J2157 also holds the crown for brightness, outshining every other quasar we’ve observed while munching the mass of one star per day. Its appetite is truly otherworldly.

Located a mind‑boggling 12.5 billion light‑years away, this behemoth existed when the universe was barely a billion years old – a time when astronomers never anticipated such massive black holes could already exist.

To grasp its enormity, compare it with our own Milky Way’s central black hole, Sagittarius A*. J2157 outweighs Sagittarius A* by a factor of 8,000. Even if Sagittarius A* swallowed the equivalent of four million suns, it would still need to consume over 60 percent of the Milky Way’s stars to reach J2157’s mass.

9 A Planetary Collision Births A World Of Iron

Cosmic violence isn’t limited to stars; whole planets can smash together, forging new worlds from the wreckage. The system around Kepler‑107, 1,700 light‑years distant, harbors such a dramatic event.

By analyzing subtle shifts in the star’s light, astronomers detected the first clear sign of a planetary collision beyond our solar system. The result? Kepler‑107c – a world roughly 1.5 times Earth’s radius but composed of 70 percent iron by mass.

This iron‑rich planet boasts an extraordinary density of 12.6 grams per cubic centimetre, far surpassing Earth’s modest 5.5 g/cc. Its sibling, Kepler‑107b, is similar in size but far lighter, with a density of just 5.3 g/cc and an iron core representing only 30 percent of its mass.

The disparity points to a colossal impact that ripped away Kepler‑107c’s silicate mantle at speeds near 40 miles per second, leaving a scarred, metal‑rich core exposed to the void.

8 A Black Hole Is Ripped From Its Galaxy

Black holes typically sit snugly at the hearts of galaxies, anchoring their structures with unimaginable gravity. Yet, extraordinary forces can yank a black hole from its cosmic home, sending it careening through intergalactic space.

This is precisely what happened to XJ1417+52, a rogue black hole discovered by both the Chandra and XMM‑Newton X‑ray observatories. It shines with X‑ray brilliance ten times greater than any previously known wandering black hole.

Located 4.5 billion light‑years away, XJ1417+52 bears a mass equivalent to 100,000 suns. It once ruled its own galaxy, but a violent merger with a larger galaxy, GJ1417+52, stripped it from its stellar entourage, leaving it to roam alone.

The event set a new record: XJ1417+52 is both the most distant and the most X‑ray luminous rogue black hole ever identified.

7 Galaxies Tear Each Other Apart Around The Milky Way

Our Milky Way is surrounded by a swarm of satellite galaxies, the most notable being the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds. Hundreds of millions of years ago, these two dwarf galaxies collided head‑on.

The aftermath of that cosmic crash is still evident today. The southeastern “Wing” of the Small Magellanic Cloud is drifting away, its stars moving cohesively toward the Large Magellanic Cloud.

If the stars were moving perpendicular to that direction, it would suggest a near‑miss encounter, but their aligned motion confirms a direct, head‑on collision that ripped material from the Small Cloud.

This ongoing tug‑of‑war showcases how galactic interactions can dramatically reshape smaller companions of the Milky Way.

6 Gravity Dismantles Small Galaxies

The Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) is a faint, distant dwarf galaxy—visible to the naked eye at roughly 200,000 light‑years—but it’s losing the very material that fuels its existence.

Because the SMC lacks sufficient gravitational pull, it cannot retain its hydrogen gas, the essential fuel for star formation. For every star the SMC births, it expels roughly ten times that amount of gas into the surrounding void.

This relentless gas loss is a slow, undignified demise, unlike the spectacular, violent deaths of larger galaxies that are torn apart by more massive neighbors.

Nonetheless, the SMC may still earn a heroic finale: simulations suggest it will eventually be absorbed by the Milky Way before it completely dissipates, granting it a final, dramatic merger into our galaxy’s halo.

5 Solar Systems Throw Planets Thrown Toward Their Star

Mercury, our innermost planet, completes an orbit in 88 days, yet many discovered “super‑Earths” circle their stars in mere days. Recent research reveals a surprising mechanism that can hurl planets straight toward their stellar furnace.

Planetary formation is a chaotic ballet of magnetic forces, collisions, and gravity. Under particular conditions, these forces can lock multiple planets and the surrounding protoplanetary disk into a resonant dance, where they tug and pull on one another.

This resonance can act like a cosmic conveyor belt, gradually spiraling the planets inward. Over time, they migrate to scorching, barren zones too close to their host star to sustain stable, life‑supporting conditions.

The result is a fleet of worlds inexorably drawn into their suns, illustrating how subtle gravitational choreography can dictate planetary fates.

4 Clusters Of Galaxies Smash Into Each Other

Galaxy clusters, each containing thousands of galaxies, zip through the cosmos at millions of miles per hour. Occasionally, these massive structures collide and merge, creating even larger conglomerates.

Approximately 3 billion light‑years from Earth, astronomers have identified a spectacular four‑cluster merger in the making: Abell 1758. This system consists of two pairs of clusters that are currently interacting.

The northern pair already passed each other about 300 million years ago, mixing their heavy elements in a gravitational swirl that resembles a cosmic pinky‑swear, promising a future reunion.

Shockwaves generated by the encounter travel at 2‑3 million miles per hour, and gravity is pulling the two pairs together. Eventually, all four clusters will coalesce into a single, gargantuan structure—one of the most massive objects the universe may ever host.

3 Black Holes Gorge And Spew Like A Fountain

Black holes are often portrayed as serene, donut‑shaped entities swallowing everything that comes near. In reality, they act more like cosmic fountains, ejecting super‑hot matter back into space.

When a black hole is fed a massive influx of gas and dust, the material forms an accretion disk that spirals inward, heating to millions of degrees. This extreme temperature strips atoms into ions, which are then expelled outward.

Some of this expelled plasma escapes forever, while a portion is pulled back by the black hole’s gravity, creating a perpetual cycle reminiscent of water shooting up and down a fountain.

This dynamic process illustrates that even the most voracious cosmic eaters also act as prolific distributors of energetic matter throughout their host galaxies.

2 Millions Of Stars Explode Into Life As Galaxies Collide

When galaxies collide, the image that springs to mind is one of destruction—stars ripped apart, gas flung into the void. Yet these violent meetings also ignite spectacular bursts of star formation.

Even a mere 13 billion years after the Big Bang, the universe was already hosting chaotic mergers. Two early‑epoch galaxies, located about 13 billion light‑years away, slammed into a gaseous blob known as B14‑65666.

Although the combined mass of this bi‑galactic system is only about 10 percent that of the Milky Way, its star‑forming activity is a hundred times more vigorous than our own galaxy.

The collision compresses vast clouds of gas, triggering rapid stellar births—essentially smashing the raw material of the cosmos into new, shining stars.

1 Jupiter‑Like Planets Are Roasted To Death

NGTS‑10b holds the record for the closest‑orbiting hot Jupiter ever found. This gas giant is 20 percent larger and twice as massive as Jupiter, yet it circles its star in a blistering 18‑hour year.

Because the planet orbits so tightly—about 27 times closer to its star than Mercury is to the Sun—it endures scorching temperatures around 1,000 °C (1,800 °F). Its host star is cooler than our Sun by roughly 1,000 degrees and 30 percent less massive, which slightly tempers the heat.

NGTS‑10b is likely tidally locked, meaning one hemisphere forever faces the star while the opposite side remains in perpetual night, creating extreme temperature contrasts across its surface.

Astronomers predict that within a decade we may witness the planet’s final descent as it spirals inward, ultimately meeting a fiery demise inside its star’s scorching embrace.

Everyone knows what you mean when you refer to a weapon of mass destruction these days. We typically categorize them in one of three ways: either nuclear, chemical, or biological. Essentially is any weapon that can cause mass death and destruction fairly quickly. The term dates back to 1937 when it was apparently coined by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

At the time, he was referring to aerial bombardments in Spain that used what today we would think of as standard ordinance. Obviously those weapons evolve to become bigger and more destructive. And in the future, we can look forward to those weapons evolving to be even worse.

10. Antimatter Weapons

The term antimatter brings to mind some kind of Star Trek science fiction imagery. It barely sounds like a real thing. Unfortunately, it is real and the potential for antimatter to cause serious damage is ripe for the picking.

Antimatter is any material composed of what you would call antiparticles. The theory behind antimatter is that every particle in the universe has kind of a mirror image of itself. It is the same thing with an opposite charge. The example most often given is that an electron has a negative charge but a positron has a positive charge. They both have the same mass but they are opposites. This is significant to the world of weapons of mass destruction because when matter and antimatter meet they can no longer exist together so they destroy each other in a spectacular way.

Antimatter was considered theoretical for a long time until evidence of its existence was discovered. When cosmic rays hit the Earth’s atmosphere they produce antimatter. Thunderstorms also seem to produce positrons sometimes. And the Large Hadron Collider is able to produce matter and antimatter as well.

When matter and antimatter meet the result is not just destructive, it’s bafflingly destructive. Particle physicist Frank Close has been quoted as saying that if you destroy a kilogram of antimatter it produces about 10 billion times the amount of energy that you get from destroying a kilogram of dynamite. That works out to 1,000 times more energy than nuclear fission. So if you were able to harness enough antimatter you could probably destroy the entire planet with not a lot of effort.

9. Genetic Weapons 

Genetic weapons are what happens when you take biological weapons to the next, terrifying level. These are weapons that are targeted to specific genetics, which means that you could take a standard biological weapon (anthrax, for instance) and tailor it so that it would only infect people with certain genetic traits. That means if you wanted to only eliminate a certain ethnic group you would be able to do so.

The idea of genetic weapons was dismissed in the past as being something that was not feasible or realistic. Advances in genetic science has proven that to be incorrect. According to a report called Biotechnology, Weapons and Humanity II, our research into the development of vaccines and attempts to cure genetic conditions has enabled scientists to accurately map the human genome in a way that exposes certain genes that are specific to different ethnic groups. This information can then be exploited by rogue scientists to target those genes rather than use them to benefit mankind and cure diseases. The belief is that in the future, using this information, ethnic-specific biological weapons could be developed.

Other genetic weapons don’t have to use existing diseases; they can interfere with human RNA. By exploiting something called RNA interference, a genetic weapon could shut down important genes that are needed for you to live and function. This could be unleashed on an enemy population and have no effects on the attacking population. It wouldn’t be able to completely eliminate one side, but data suggests that as many as 20% of a population could be affected right away. And that certainly enough to cause some serious damage.

8. High-Powered Microwave

Star Trek made the word phaser part of everyday language. When you hear the word you know exactly what it means even though you’ve probably never seen such a thing before because what even is a phaser? Well, now PHASER is a real thing and the US military has it. It’s their name for a high-powered microwave weapon.  

Looking like a satellite dish fixed atop a shipping container, the PHASER is a cannon that emits radio frequency in a cone-shaped beam. Rather than using heat to destroy a target it can disrupt circuits with a burst of energy.

Currently this technology is being used defensively, the idea is that you would use the PHASER to destroy enemy drones. It takes one single microsecond for a shot from the PHASER to disable a drone’s electronics and destroy it. It’s also able to take out multiple drones with a single shot because of the shape of the beam it produces.

The PHASER is the first direct energy defense weapon that has ever been fielded. The Air Force spent just over 16 million dollars producing it in, and testing was set to be finished by the end of 2020. If the technology is able to prove itself in the field and it’s scalable then the future could see mobile PHASERS being used with regularity. Aircraft can fly over a population and with just a few bursts effectively destroy every piece of technology below, sending any city back to the Stone Age. 

7. Directed Energy

PHASER is not the only direct energy weapon that the military has in its arsenal these days. This umbrella term covers weapons including electro-magnetics, lasers, and microwave. Between 2017 and 2019 the US military doubled its spending on research into direct energy weapons. That went up to $1.1 billion. China and Russia are of course also investing heavily in these systems as well.

The benefits to using direct energy weapons over traditional munitions are fairly clear. To start with, they work at the speed of light. Unlike a traditional missile which could take some time to travel from source to target, a direct energy blast is going to hit a target almost immediately. As well they can be targeted far more precisely. You can use a laser to shoot somebody in the foot from space if you want to. The weapons are also scalable to take one small target or a much larger area as needed.

In May 2020, the US Navy released a video of USS Portland firing a high-energy class solid state laser at a drone, destroying it. The military is also developing what it calls the Indirect Fire Protection Capability High Energy Laser, which is said to be about 10 times more powerful than the one that the Navy uses. This kind of laser would be able to destroy incoming cruise missiles,  disable boats and helicopters, and blind enemy combatants. 

Because these weapons are powered by electricity they’re far more cost-effective in the long run than using bombs which can cost billions of dollars. It costs about $10 worth of energy to fire a laser. As long as you have electrical power, you always have ammunition. But it also means if you are on the attack with lasers, the enemy will never have that moment when you need to reload or you run out of ammunition.

6. Hypersonic Kinetic Energy

Back in 2004 the media called this weapon Rods from God. And for a long time nothing was heard about the hypersonic kinetic energy weapons system. However, it’s still in development and still poses an incredible destructive potential that rivals nuclear weapons.

Back in 1967, 107 countries signed the Outer Space Treaty. This treaty included a prohibition on using weapons of mass destruction from outer space. At the time, however, weapons of mass destruction were listed as nuclear, biological, and chemical. And a hypersonic kinetic energy weapon is none of those things.  In fact, these weapons are just tungsten rods. Twenty feet long and 1 foot in diameter. If these were to be launched from ,by the time they hit the earth they would bring with them the power of an intercontinental ballistic missile, laying waste to anything below.

Known as Project Thor, this was inspired by Lazy Dog bombs used during the Vietnam War. Those were pieces of steel that were two inches long and dropped from airplanes.  As they gained velocity they would hit the ground at about 500 miles per hour. No explosives needed and they could penetrate concrete nearly a foot deep.

Project Thor, or Rods from God, involves dropping tungsten rods the size of telephone poles from satellites in space. They can reach 10 times the speed of sound before they hit the ground. And when they hit the ground, they would go several hundred feet into it as well. That means if some target is hiding in a bunker they’re still not safe. Enough force would be released when the rods hit that it would rival a ground-penetrating nuclear weapon. And the added bonus  is that there is no fallout from the blast.

5. Geophysical Weapons 

The concept of geophysical weapons sounds a bit like the kind of stuff you might expect from a 1970s James Bond villain. These are the kind of weapons that are able to affect the climate and the environment, as well as the Earth itself in the form of seismic weapons.

It has long been believed that the US military has a facility located in Alaska known as HAARP which stands for the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program. Conspiracy theorists believe that this facility is researching high frequency radio waves and how they can affect the ionosphere in terms of being used as a geophysical weapon. 

Beyond Alaska, China has been making strides with technology that many feel could be used as geophysical weapons. They just recently  reported that they’ve had success controlling the local weather. So while it may sound a lot like fiction, it seems like China has at least had some success moving forward with these plans.

4. Cyber Weapons

In the modern world, mass destruction doesn’t have to take place in a way that can be described with explosions and rubble and big craters in the Earth. If you really want to cripple an enemy all you need to do is lay waste to their infrastructure. While destructive physical warfare with bombs and bullets will probably never go out of style, cyber warfare can cause more damage in a shorter period of time.

In theory, if you have the capability, launching a cyberattack can destroy an enemy from within. Communications systems, military systems, even a country’s power grid and financial infrastructure can all be either shut down or even erased. There’s just short of nothing in the modern world that is not run by computers and managed over a computer network. The ability to control an enemy’s weapon’s arsenals, to cripple their economy, to leave them literally in the dark can all be done from the other side of the world with a team of skilled cyber attack specialists.

3. Isomer Bombs

To understand what an isomer bomb might be you have to know a little bit about how nuclear works. Isomers are atomic nuclei that have the same mass and atomic number but different radioactive properties. If you were to design an isomer bomb, you would be able to rapidly change the state of these nuclear isomers. They call it triggering, because normally these nuclei decay very slowly but if you trigger them and If it works successfully you would be able to receive a massive burst of gamma and x-ray radiation.  So essentially it would be stable enough until you needed it to blow up on demand. The resulting burst of energy would be incredible.

At present, the idea of an isomer bomb, typically linked to the nuclear isomer of hafnium, is thought to be at least one hundred thousand times more energetic than a chemical reaction. One gram of hafnium contains the equivalent energy of 660 pounds of TNT. The energy produced is a transition of energy between nucleons so it’s actually a different kind of nuclear energy than either fission or fusion. It’s also entirely theoretical at the moment.

There’s something called the hafnium controversy that occurred in the ’90s, in which a team of researchers claim to have actually been able to cause an isomer reaction. No other scientists were able to duplicate the results however and many scientists consider it impossible.  That said, Russia has apparently been continuing research into the idea of an isomer bomb 

2. Psychotronic Weapons

If you have weapons that can destroy buildings, control the weather, destroy a country’s infrastructure, and scramble electronics, what else might be left?  The only thing you’re missing at this point is a weapon that can destroy your enemy from the inside. That’s where the field of psychotropic weapons comes in. These are weapons that are meant to affect the minds of soldiers in enemy combatants. Anything that’s meant to affect the consciousness and the brain of another person. Laid out like this it sounds utterly preposterous. What kind of weapon can control another person’s mind? Or make them see things that aren’t there? 

In 2018, research conducted into unexplained injuries suffered by American diplomats in Cuba concluded that there was a possibility the diplomats had been subjected to psychotronic weapons. It was believed that a microwave device was used and the resulting effect was brain injuries. When you’re subject to one of these attacks you can hear noises that sound natural but are actually coming from inside your own head. Even deaf people can hear when they’re being attacked with a microwave device. Sounds and words can be beamed directly into someone’s head. The effects can be painful and debilitating, even to the point of rendering a victim incapacitated. 

1. Brain Drones

Drones are fairly ubiquitous in warfare these days and have proven to be quite destructive. An unmanned aircraft flown from potentially the other side of the world capable of dropping bombs on any target is definitely something out of nightmares. The only thing that could make it worse is if that person on the other side of the world who is controlling it wasn’t actually there. And that’s what apparently DARPA has been working on for some time.

Autonomous drones powered by a neuromorphic chip are essentially artificial intelligence machines. This is all in the very early and rudimentary stages right now, and we’re not quite at the point of having Sentinels from the Matrix just yet. But the groundwork has been laid and the technology will continue to advance. The neuromorphic chips are hoped to be able to help these drones recognize their environment and respond accordingly. One extremely off-putting line from a 2014 article stated that there was hope that the chip would offer the potential ability for the drone to feel different levels of safety or affinity for different places. And while safety and an affinity for a place is good, it also implies that a drone might be able to feel the opposite at some point in time as well and potentially react defensively to that.

So while no one is promising the future of warfare is going to be emotional drones that know where they are and can react with fear to confrontation, it does seem like that is the road we’re heading down.