Most of us think of traditions as warm and fuzzy customs that were passed down through the years to remind us of a simpler time as well as the love of our friends and family. Then there are the insanely brutal traditions that may have started out with good intentions but now make us wonder why anyone would engage in such barbaric rituals in the 21st century.

10 Mingi

Just as Lord Voldemort is known as “He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named” in the Harry Potter book series, mingi is the tradition that must not be named among the Kara, Hamar, and Banna tribes in the Omo Valley of Ethiopia. There are about 225,000 of these tribe members isolated in primitive villages, practicing their ancient ritual in secret.

Mingi means that a child is cursed and must be killed to protect the tribe. (Although we’ll use male pronouns, this tradition applies to both male and female children.) A child is mingi if his top teeth come in before his bottom teeth, if he breaks a tooth or injures his genitals, if he is born to unwed parents, or if his parents do not have the ceremonial blessing of the village elders to have children. Adults who don’t cooperate with these traditions are also designated as mingi and banished from the tribe.

If a child is mingi, the tribal elders will snatch that child from his parents and drown him in the river, leave him to starve or be eaten by animals, or push him off a cliff to his death. The elders may also suffocate the child by filling his mouth with soil.

These Omo Valley tribes believe that a mingi child will bring evil spirits to their village, resulting in drought, famine, and sickness for the tribe. Although no one knows the exact number, as many as 200 to 300 mingi children may be killed annually.

Even among the members of the tribe, mingi is a taboo subject. Children under 15 are never told about the ritual killing. It certainly isn’t something to be discussed with outsiders. Yet Lale Labuko, a young man from the Omo Valley who was the first of his tribe to be educated at a boarding school 105 kilometers (65 mi) away, found the courage to tell an adult outsider. Together, they’ve spearheaded efforts to save mingi children. In some cases, the government has imprisoned mingi executioners. The tradition is still practiced today—just more discreetly.

9 Pig Slaughter Festival

Each year in the small village of Nem Thuong in northern Vietnam, hundreds of people watch the ritual slaughter of two well-fed pigs to bring the village residents luck for the coming year. Always occurring on the sixth day of the first month of the lunar calendar, the Pig Slaughter Festival is held to honor Doan Thuong, a local protector deity.

According to legend, Doan Thuong was a general in the Ly Dynasty who drove invading forces off the villagers’ land. He fed his starving troops with slaughtered pigs, which is supposedly how the festival started. The pigs’ blood represents good luck in the forms of a good harvest, reproductive ability, monetary success, and good health.

As music is played, the villagers parade the live pigs around the village. Participants in the ritual lay the animals on their backs, pull their legs away from their bellies with ropes, and use swords to hack the squealing pigs in half in front of the crowd. The villagers rush to smear banknotes with the pigs’ blood so that they can place the notes on altars in their houses for good luck.

Animal rights activists have tried to convince the government to stop the festival. Although Vietnamese officials have pressured the village elders to be less publicly cruel to animals, the government has refused to ban the festival. Officials seem to be less concerned about animal cruelty and more apprehensive about the world’s opinion of their local festivals now that pictures can be disseminated over the Internet so quickly.

8 La Esperanza Rain Ceremony

Nobody likes a drought, especially farmers, so many cultures have rituals designed to bring rain. Even today, some Native Americans perform rain dances. In Takhatpur, India, the villagers conduct elaborate frog marriages to call upon their rain gods to end a drought. The frogs dress for the occasion and even kiss after they exchange vows.

But the village women of La Esperanza in Guerrero, Mexico, prefer a different approach. Each May, as the male farmers get their fields ready for planting, the women prepare a large feast of cultural foods like chicken, turkey, mole, boiled eggs, rice, and tortillas. They bring the food to a ceremonial site to share with others from the village. It’s a traditional day of offerings to their deities to ensure that the village has enough rain for the crops.

After they recite their prayers and offer food and flowers to their gods, they form a large circle and wait for people from neighboring villages to arrive. The children ready their cell phones to take pictures and videos of the festivities. And then the fun begins.

Inside the cheering human circle, the able-bodied women—young and old—find opponents from neighboring villages and beat each other to a pulp with their bare hands. Sometimes, men and children fight, too. This is a day-long blood fest for the female warriors. The goal is to make as much red liquid stream down their faces as possible. There are no winners or losers. No issues of revenge. At the end, they hug each other.

As a sacrifice to the gods, the spilled blood is collected in buckets and later ploughed into the fields where the crops are grown. The fights continue unabated until dark, when the proud and bloodied women walk home, happy that their sacrifice will help to feed the village for the next year.

7 Coconut Head Smash

In Tamil Nadu in southern India, thousands of devotees go to the Mahalakshmi temple to engage in a tradition in which they ask their gods for success and good health or offer thanks for wishes already granted. As a crowd gathers to watch, a priest smashes the head of each believer, who is seated on the ground, with a large coconut. A devotee must be at least 18 years old to participate.

The ritual takes place on the second Tuesday of the Tamil month of Aadi every year. It’s believed that the tradition started in the 19th century when the British tried to build a railroad through the village. The residents protested, so the British sarcastically offered to reroute the transportation line if the locals would break large stones with their heads. When the villagers complied, the railroad was built elsewhere.

The stones were soon replaced by coconuts as the preferred instrument to break over the devotees’ heads, but this tradition still comes with considerable risk depending on the coconut’s size and the force with which the head is whacked.

According to neurosurgery professor Anil Kumar Peethambaran in an interview with National Geographic, “What happens is . . . there is a certain amount of tolerance for the skull beyond which it will cause damage to the skull. So, if the coconut is big and if the coconut breaks, that means that a part of the energy is dissipated and the damage done is less and if the coconut doesn’t break, more damage is done to the skull.”

Dozens of people are treated for serious head injuries every year. Ironically, this good health tradition may be deadly.

6 People Trampled By Cows For Luck

A lot of cultures have rituals designed to bring them good luck. But in villages around the Ujjain area of India, the annual tradition of male residents getting trampled by their cows on Ekadashi, the day after the Hindu festival of lights known as “Diwali,” is probably one of the strangest. Stranger still, they’ve been doing this for centuries.

Cows are sacred to the Hindus in India, which may explain why the villagers claim that no one has ever been hurt in such a seemingly dangerous tradition. Before the ritual trampling, the cows are decorated with henna patterns and brightly colored baubles. As others crowd around to watch, the men lie with garlands in the street while their herds of cows literally run over them. In this way, the trampled men believe that their prayers will be answered by the Hindu gods and that they will receive good luck in the coming year.

5 Easter Rocket War

Just off the coast of Turkey, the villagers of Vrontados on the Greek island of Chios celebrate Greek Orthodox Easter a little differently than most believers in the faith. As the Sun sets on Easter Saturday, they like to pelt each other with tens of thousands of homemade bottle rockets in a traditional rocket war known as “Rouketopolemos.” The two sides in this mock war are the followers of the town’s two Orthodox churches, Agios Markos and Panagia Erithiani, who continue their battle into the wee hours of Easter morning.

Although the goal is to hit the opposing church’s bell while services are being held inside, there’s never really a winner. There can be a lot of property damage despite the protective wire mesh that covers the churches and surrounding houses. There have also been serious injuries and even deaths from the rockets.

Technically, it’s illegal to make rockets in Vrontados. The annual celebration is a big tourist attraction, so the local police usually pretend not to notice the deafening and illuminating illegal activities that have been going on around them for at least 125 years.

The origins of this battle are unclear, but there are two competing stories that the locals like to tell. In one version, cannons on local ships that were first used to battle pirates were eventually fired each Easter as part of the holiday’s celebration. When Ottoman invaders took the cannons in the late 1800s, the villagers began firing rockets on Easter instead.

A second version of the story is that the villagers wanted to celebrate the Easter services that the Turks had prohibited. The Greeks faked a war between their churches to keep the frightened Turks away while they celebrated Easter mass.

Some residents don’t like this rocket war. “We live as hostages to this tradition,” said one unnamed villager to the BBC in a 2004 interview. “We can’t breathe when it takes place, we have to be on standby in case a fire breaks out because if you are not careful you can even lose your house.”

4 Santhara

To outsiders, santhara (or sallekhana) is often confused with suicide or euthanasia. To the followers of Jainism, an ancient religion in India that focuses on spiritual discipline through a simple life that eschews physical pleasure, santhara is a religious right to worship as they choose. Every year, as many as 500 believers in Jainism starve themselves to death to liberate their souls from the cycle of death and rebirth through reincarnation. Instead, they believe this is the way to attain nirvana, the ultimate state of bliss.

Unlike Christians, who consider the body a temple of the soul, Jains see their bodies as prisons of their souls. Santhara can be a cause for celebration and pride for those left behind because the person who made the starvation oath took control of their own path to salvation.

Jains don’t see santhara as suicide, which they view as a violent act against the body, because santhara is nonviolent. It is physically painful but supposedly punctuated by moments of euphoria as the soul is transformed. Throughout the process, people near the starving person continually touch and hold that person. When it is time for the person to die, they are raised to a sitting position because divine beings in the Jain religion are never seen sleeping. They always appear in a sitting position or a half-sitting position.

Those practicing the ritual are seen by other Jain followers as living saints. Other Jains may travel from across the country to witness, endure, and be blessed by the sacrifice of the person who has taken this oath. As the person dies, the witnesses chant the names of divine beings.

Both monks and laypeople, the healthy and the dying, take the starvation oath. More women than men do it. The practice has been controversial for years among the general public. On August 10, 2015, the Rajasthan High Court in India declared santhara to be illegal. However, that ruling is being challenged in the Supreme Court as of late August 2015.

3 Costa Rica Bullfighting

Unlike bullfighting in Mexico and Spain, which usually ends with the death of the bull, Costa Rican bullfighting is a more humane tradition that elevates the status of the bull to that of a celebrity. No one can hurt the bull, although he’s free to hurt or kill anyone he chooses without reprisal. The rules may have less to do with love for the animal than with practicality. Thousands of farming families depend on cows for their livelihoods, so they don’t want their bulls killed. Even so, some animal rights activists believe that the animals are mistreated.

When a bull enters the ring in Costa Rica, an announcer introduces him by name and gives his weight and information about his background, including his father’s bullfighting history. Then the improvisados, or rodeo clowns, face him down. Most improvisados are untrained young men who either stay close to the fence for a quick getaway or foolishly taunt the bull to amuse the crowd. They try to be as daring and entertaining as possible to win cash prizes from the festival’s organizers and sponsors.

The trouble is that when these bulls get fired up, it’s almost impossible to outrun them. If you can’t get over the fence quickly enough, your best hope is that the bull becomes distracted by someone else because you’re not permitted to fight the bull. You can only run away from him, and he’s darn fast.

As shown in the video above, there are a lot of rear-end collisions, with the bull tossing the men into aerial somersaults before sometimes trampling their bodies when they land on the ground. There’s no time limit on how long you can stay in the ring with the bull. But more time is not your friend. Hundreds of improvisados are injured each year.

No one’s sure how this tradition began, but bullfighting festivals are held throughout the country each year. It’s almost a rite of passage for young Costa Rican men to enter the bullfighting ring after they turn 18. “It’s just the Tico thing to do,” said Jon Carlos Cattano, 28, to the Tico Times. “It’s important to do it at least one time in your life.”

2 Gotmar Mela

Each year for at least a century, the residents of Pandhurna and Sawargaon, two villages in India divided by the Jam River, have pelted each other with stones for one day in a festival known as Gotmar Mela. Before each battle begins, a tree trunk with a flag tied on top is stuck in the middle of the riverbed. The team that retrieves the flag first is the winner.

However, climbing the tree to grab that flag while villagers throw big rocks may be the last thing a participant ever does. Injuries number in the hundreds every year, and there have been at least 17 deaths. Government officials have tried to persuade the villagers to use rubber balls instead of stones—to no avail. An outright ban didn’t work, either, and was lifted after pressure from the villagers.

There are conflicting stories about how the festival began. In one version, a Pandhurna boy fell in love with a Sawargaon girl, but their parents forbade their marriage. The young lovers decided to elope. As the boy carried his lover across the river to Pandhurna, the Sawargaon villagers began throwing stones at him. The Pandhurna residents returned the favor from their side of the river. Eventually, everyone agreed to let the kids get married, and they throw stones at each other once a year to mark the occasion.

Another version of the legend says that the king of Pandhurna abducted the beautiful daughter of Sawargaon’s ruler about 300 years ago. When the villagers of Sawargaon realized what had happened, they began pelting stones at the Pandhurna king, who had escaped to the other side of the river by then. To protect their king, Pandhurna villagers fired stones at Sawargaon. The king made it safely to his palace, and now the grooms from each village supposedly throw stones during the annual festival to win brides from the other village.

1 Yanshui Beehive Rocket Festival

“Insane” is almost too mild a word to describe the annual Beehive Rocket Festival held in the Yanshui District of Tainan, Taiwan. The Beehive Rocket Festival is part of the Lantern Festival that celebrates the Chinese New Year. But in some ways, it’s a uniquely dangerous celebration. During the Easter Rocket War in Greece that we talked about earlier, bottle rockets are launched toward church bells. They’re not meant to hit people directly.

However, with the Yanshui Beehive Rocket Festival, bottle rockets are arranged in large beehive structures, and people willingly move toward the exploding fireworks, deliberately trying to get hit as many times as possible. The more times you’re hit, the luckier you’ll be in the coming year. The often tightly packed crowds seem to bounce up and down with the rocket blasts, which at their peak can sound like the buzzing of bees in a hive.

Most participants suit up in protective gear, including fire-resistant clothing and helmets with face masks. Some young men rely on faith to protect them, wearing only a loincloth and a towel to shield their eyes from the intense heat and flying debris. Despite the cavalier attitude of the crowd, people do get hurt and sometimes require treatment at a hospital.

The festival began as a response to a cholera epidemic that raged in the city about 200 years ago. To ward off the evil spirits that were believed to be causing the illness, residents lit a massive firework display to win the favor and protection of their god. The epidemic subsided, and the rocket festival became an annual event for good luck.

Industrialists are honest about one benefit of war: it tends to drive innovation. But so does peace. The following ten inventions were all to that end, or at least to minimizing carnage. 

It’s not their fault they tended to make things much worse.

10. The United Nations

Formed as the League of Nations after WWI, the UN was meant to end war. It formally began in 1945, just months after the end of WWII. By 1947, however, amid the East-West Conflict, it was clear it wasn’t up to the job. The “peace-loving major powers” of a supposedly united planet were now too busy arguing over who got what from the spoils of WWII. Constructive committee meetings were impossible and the UN’s growth, including that of its all-important Security Council, was stunted from the very beginning.

Nowadays, things are no better. Clearly. In fact, they’re arguably worse as corruption has become institutionalized. For one thing, Security Council members misuse foreign aid as a way to buy votes. Poor, nonpermanent member states receive as much as $45 million extra from the United States alone in important years. But this isn’t the only reason why most resolutions are unanimously passed. Another is that, where support is doubtful, invasions aren’t put to a vote. This was the case with the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

But it’s not just corruption that cripples the UN’s alleged intentions. It’s also impotence. There are generally no consequences whatsoever for violating Security Council resolutions.

9. International language

War is all God’s fault according to the Bible. Seeing us all working together on the Tower of Babel, he was appalled and came down to step in. “Look,” he said, “they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.” Henceforth (according to Christians and Jews, but not, interestingly, Muslims), humanity was at odds with each other. What if we could undo God’s mischief and restore some basic common ground? An international language may help to bring us together. After all, language is more than just a manner of speaking – it also guides our worldview. 

Esperanto is one of the more prominent attempts at a “language of international peace”. Devised by the villainous-sounding Doktoro Esperanto (aka Ludwig Lazarus Zamenhof) in 1887, it draws primarily on the Latin-based (i.e. Romance) languages of Europe – complete with a 28-letter Latin alphabet. As a result, it’s easy for many Westerners to learn. With its simple, intuitive grammar and cultural flexibility, it’s also straightforward for others to learn. And, as an added bonus, studying Esperanto before other languages helps to accelerate the process.

By 1915, following an uptake in the Russian Empire, then Europe, North and South America, China, and Japan, the Iranian delegate to the League of Nations proposed that Esperanto be adopted by the body. Everyone agreed too… except for France, whose snooty delegate single-handedly voted against. After that, Esperanto speakers (or Esperantists) drew persecution from the Nazis, Spanish fascists, and the Soviet Union – all of whom correctly saw the language as a threat to their nationalism. In Hitler’s case, it didn’t help that Esperanto’s inventor was Jewish; the paranoid Fuhrer imagined it must be part of a conspiracy.

8. Satellites

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky was not called the “father of astronautics” for nothing. Not only is he credited with calculating escape velocity, he also invented multi-stage rockets to get there, as well as steerable rocket engines, airlocks, satellites, space stations, and closed-cycle biological systems to sustain human space colonies. 

Without leaving the planet himself, Tsiolkovsky even anticipated the ‘overview effect’ whereby astronauts looking down on our lonely blue marble are struck by its beauty, fragility, and its absence of borders. This, he believed, would eliminate war. Immediately. Writing in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, he thought 2017 would see the first human space flight as well as world peace. Life aboard satellites would, he thought, would be utopian: unlimited solar energy; artificial temperature regulation (so no need for clothing, beds, or quilts); no heavy labour thanks to zero gravity; no resource disparity (so no social classes), and so on.

What he didn’t foresee (apart from the decades-earlier first human space flight) was the utility of satellites for war. While they still haven’t been used as weapons per se – thanks to the increasingly precarious Outer Space Treaty – they’re routinely used for reconnaissance. And it’s really just a matter of time before they’re mounted with lasers and worse.

Speaking of which…

7. Laser weapons

Laser weapons weren’t meant to end war, but they were meant to make it less deadly by significantly cutting down on the human and environmental costs. Unlike conventional weapons, lasers are precisely accurate and minimize collateral damage. Traveling at the speed of light, they’re also capable of stopping incoming missiles no matter how fast they’re traveling – and lasers themselves can’t be intercepted.

However, they’re also much cheaper. Whereas defensive missiles cost $1-10 million each, lasers are $1-10 per shot. Hence they’re rapidly becoming widespread – in addition to conventional weapons. And, worryingly, they can reliably do something that other weapons cannot: blind soldiers. This was the reason they were originally banned by international treaty.

6. Teleforce

In a lengthy piece for Liberty magazine in February 1935 — “A Machine to End War” — Nikola Tesla said he once thought, “like other inventors,” that “war could be stopped by making it more destructive.” But he realized he was wrong. Also a eugenicist, he believed it would take more than a century to “breed out” man’s “combative instinct.” Instead, his solution was to level the battlefield and give each nation equal and insuperable defence. He called it the Teleforce.

Although it would take a lot of power, he said, it would form a protective field — destroying any approaching hostilities, “men or machines,” within a radius of 200 miles. He described it as “a wall of power … against any effective aggression,” and theorized that if no country could successfully attack another war would simply fizzle out. Although he was tight-lipped about how this invention worked, he said that it wasn’t by “death rays.” Instead, the Teleforce projected particles with “trillions of times more energy than is possible with rays of any kind.” He also imagined it would greatly improve television, removing all limits to the “intensity of illumination, the size of the picture, or distance of projection.

Despite the reverence netizens have for him nowadays, Tesla was often mistaken. He believed, for example, that by 2035 the Secretary of Hygiene or Physical Culture would be more important in Washington than the Secretary of War. And while he’s yet to be proven wrong, with 12 years to go it’s looking unlikely. Even if his Teleforce was actually built, it’s obvious how it would have been abused — to kill immigrants, for example (which, to be honest, Tesla probably would have supported, hoping as he did for global eugenics by 2100 to sterilize “the criminal and the insane.”)

5. Gay bomb

Surprisingly, the Pentagon had a plan to make the least deadly, most peace-loving bomb in the world. As recently as 1994, under Bill Clinton, the Department of Defense thought about deploying aphrodisiacs on the battlefield to make enemy troops drop their weapons, then their pants, and start banging. According to declassified documents, the sudden and widespread homosexual behavior would cause a “distasteful but completely non-lethal” drop in enemy morale. 

If this relatively benign weapon seems out of character for the US, remember that its enemies were the fairly orthodox Muslims whose oil they wanted. So, with its “gay bomb,” the sadism was very much there; it was just psycho-spiritual instead of physical.

Still, had they actually followed through with the Sunshine Project, war might have been different today. Another plan was to release the smells of farts or bad breath among enemy troops. But this “Who? Me?” bomb as it was called had been considered since 1945. And it wouldn’t be suitable for many invasions, as, according to the researchers, “people in many areas of the world do not find faecal odor offensive, since they smell it on a regular basis.”

4. Drones

Telechirics (from the Greek words for ‘distance’, tele, and ‘hand’, kheir) are remote technologies allowing manipulation from a distance while providing a safety buffer between operators and dangerous jobs. Applications include space and ocean exploration, exposure to nuclear radiation, firefighting, mining, and war. Writing in New Scientist in 1964, engineer John W. Clark, apparently pre-empting Avatar, described consciousness being “transferred to an invulnerable mechanical body.”

Although that’s not so much a way to end war, it does represent a way to minimize its cost in human life. Unfortunately, however, it’s not that simple in practice. Because of the economic disparity in most international conflicts, drones are only used by one side, and therefore not against drones but people. The result is a less dignified, more shameful, but much easier way to wage war — exclusively available to wealthy invaders. In fact, ever since their first deployment in Afghanistan just after 9/11, drone attacks have become so routine they’re hardly even reported on any more.

3. Nuclear weapons

In the past it was thought that bigger, more destructive weapons would ultimately discourage warfare. Clearly they were wrong. But it didn’t stop them building what remains the most destructive to date. The Nazis came up with the plan, but the US liked it so much they brought the scientists to work in America. A little while later, President Truman became the first (and hopefully last) to drop it on civilians.

Of course, the flaw in the nukes-for-peace idea was putting them in the hands of the least peaceful people on the planet. The bloodthirsty Truman hopped straight from nuking Japan to waging war against communists. The rest is history. Nuclear warheads proliferated in Russia to balance the threat of the US, and neither side has ever stopped since – which in turn has forced other states to follow.

Has this led to a more peaceful world? Well, no. It’s true there hasn’t been a World War III yet, but the nuclear powers themselves continue to invade other countries.

2. Submarines

Narcis Monturiol, the Spanish inventor of the modern submarine, thought it would put an end to war. A feminist, communist, and utopian revolutionary, he was hiding from authorities at the time — holed up in a village on the coast. There, he was enchanted by the coral people dove for, which were sold as decorations for the home. He thought of the divers as being on a quest for the magical “new continent” beneath the waves — and was therefore deeply troubled when one of his new heroes drowned. 

So he got to work inventing something to make their lives easier. With the help of a master shipwright, as well as a designer, his submarine resembled a wine barrel (which happened to be his father’s trade) with its double olive wood and copper hulls tapered at the ends. 23 feet long, the pedal-powered craft was also equipped with “appendages for gathering coral.” He called it Ictíneo, a word he made up from the Greek for ‘fish’ (icthyus) and ‘boat’ (neus).

Dives up to 60 feet deep lasting several hours were successful and Monturiol was awed by the experience, writing: “The silence that accompanies the dive…; the gradual absence of sunlight; the great mass of water, which sight pierces with difficulty; the pallor that light gives to the faces; the lessening movement in the Ictíneo; the fish that pass before the portholes—all this contributes to the excitement of the imaginative faculties.”

He wasn’t even put off when a freighter crashed into the sub while it was docked in Barcelona, destroying it. Immediately, he set to work on Ictíneo II — which was larger and powered by steam engine. Unfortunately, in his pursuit of investment (which he needed just to feed himself, let alone build more submarines), the pacifist Monturiol courted the interest of military powers and even offered to install cannons on the subs. But nobody was interested — at least until the Nazis.

1. Manned aircraft

The first manned flight was not by the Wright brothers but a “Brazilian homosexual dandy” called Alberto Santos Dumont (who was, incidentally, also the first to fly a balloon around the Eiffel Tower in a set time and to wear a Cartier watch). Whereas the Wright brothers’ secretive “flight” was just catapulted gliding, Dumont’s 220-meter journey was verified by a panel of judges.

Already despondent after the Wright brothers stole his glory, Dumont was further pushed into despair by the military use of manned flight. He’d imagined the prospect of aircraft dropping bombs would discourage nations from fighting. But he was wrong.

In 1932, wracked with guilt after seeing them in action, he returned to his hotel room in Brazil and, having told the elevator man he’d “made a big mistake”, unceremoniously hanged himself. And that was long before the nuking of Japan.

For centuries, man has proved he’s a vicious and lethal war animal. As a result, millions of people (the vast majority of whom were innocent) have lost their lives in war. But something else sickening about human warfare and its aftermath: The length to which man is prepared to go to neutralize the perceived “enemy.”

We’ll sample some of the most outrageous schemes man has conceived in efforts to ward off the enemy, real or imagined. Can you guess the highlights? Well, consider this: The use of deadly chemicals, “innocently-flying” balloon bombs, and a generous spray of putrid “fecal juice bombs!”

Fortunately, some of these horrifying schemes failed miserably, but nonetheless, here are 10 inventions meant for the military they never used.

Related: 10 Futuristic Sci-Fi Military Technologies That Already Exist

10 The Military Grade Stink Bomb

Can you even imagine it? The French military, in 1943, dared to create what they dubbed “a military-grade stink bomb.” So, it tasked Private Ernest Crocker to complete “the foul-smelling task.” Crocker was a chemist who had earlier worked on a project to develop poisonous gases that the military would use.

The big idea? To produce a stink bomb for use by the French Resistance, the latter would embarrass the German forces by spraying them with the smell bomb. Hopefully, this would undermine their morale as well. So, for months, Crocker and his team tested many putrid scents; they eventually decided to use a formula that produced a cocktail of unpleasant smells. These included urine, vomit, excrement, rotten eggs, rancid butter, and foot odor. It all came in one mighty spray that they nicknamed “Who, Me?”

Once ready, the designers deployed 600 units of the spray, ready for use. But oops! Things didn’t work as planned; the war ended suddenly before the military could unleash the new invention on an enemy; what a miss!

9 The Goliath Tracked Mine

Does Goliath remind you of the ancient legendary hero? Perhaps. One day in 1940, the German Wehrmacht came across a “weird,” remote-controlled prototype vehicle down the River Seine by chance. They learned that Adolphe Kegresse, a French vehicle designer, had invented this strange-looking vehicle. In time, Adolphe’s prototype fired up the German imagination, inspiring them to produce their home-grown remote-controlled vehicle.

German engineers designed the vehicle to serve as an anti-tank weapon. This marked the birth of the fancied “Goliath Tracked Mine.” The 30.5-centimeter tall, 122-centimeter-long (1-foot-tall, 4-foot-long) military vehicle could carry approximately 60 kilograms (132 pounds) of high explosives. Several officers could steer the vehicle remotely, drive it beneath enemy tanks, and detonate bombs.

But the Goliath came with its fair share of issues. First, the remote control feature worked via a cable measuring 650 meters (2,132 feet) long; the designers fitted the cable between the driver and the vehicle. Before long, the opposing soldiers learned that they could quickly neutralize the Goliath by cutting this cable. And that wasn’t all; moving at a “paltry” 9.6 kph (6mph), the Goliath was painfully slow. To make matters worse, it easily got stuck in the ground and enjoyed little protection with its thin armor cover.

Predictably, the Germans tried to use the Goliath in battle with little success. They attempted to deploy the inefficient behemoth during the Warsaw Uprising and on the Normandy beaches. Finally, hugely disappointed and frustrated, the Germans abandoned this failed project in a huff.

8 Fu-Go Balloon Bombs

Just before World War II ended, the Japanese military conceived a nefarious but—admittedly—ingenious plan to attack the U.S. with bombs. The Japanese came up with the idea in 1944. And what was this “ingenious deal”? Well, Japan would drop several steam bombs over the Pacific Ocean; the jet stream-driven bombs would target the U.S.

Without delay, Japan’s senior military strategists began planning how to launch their deadly paper balloons, carrying explosives, over the enemy. They planned how to float these silently across the Pacific, ensuring fear and panic spread throughout the U.S. The Japanese finally launched the first “deadly” balloon on November 3, 1944. Evidently, between then and 1945, the Japanese dropped about 1,000 “Fu-Go” balloon bombs across North America.

Interestingly, despite these multiple launches, only a single balloon caused the loss of human life. On May 5, 1945, a bomb killed a woman and five children in the woods neighboring Bly, Oregon. The freak accident happened when the children played with the explosive-carrying paper balloon, setting off the bomb.

The Japanese were forced to re-think the whole idea due to the largely uncontrolled nature of balloon bombs. Another factor was the general uncertainty of atmospheric conditions. In the end, the Japanese military found that the experimental weapon was neither successful nor viable.

7 The Panjandrum

In 1943, the British military sought to develop a weapon that could break through the Atlantic Wall’s defenses (the Nazis’ extensive coastal fortifications system). The army charged the Directorate of Miscellaneous Weapons Development with the urgent task.

Soon, the DMWD came up with what they called the Panjandrum, a colossal contraption designed with two wheels connected by a robust drum-like axle. The designers fitted the Panjandrum with rockets on the wheels to propel the machine forward.

How would it work? When packed with explosives, the engineers expected the Panjandrum to shoot toward the enemy defenses, smash into them and explode; hopefully, this would create a sizable breach that could allow a tank to pass through.

As you might guess, things quickly went haywire. The 70 slow-burning cordite rockets suddenly dislodged during the test, flying off in all directions with the dogs barking and the generals fleeing for dear life! Meanwhile, the Panjandrum wildly charged around the beach, completely uncontrollable Who’d dare repeat this scary experiment in a real battle?

6 Rotor Cars

As World War II raged on, the British army conceived the Hafner Rotabuggy idea. The gadget was essentially a flying jeep with a sublime name, a rotor, and tail fins.

In the end, the military never got to deploy the weird machine in war. Why? Primarily due to one factor: The widely-used plane-powered gliders proved to be much more practical to deliver ground vehicles to remote areas.

Interestingly, the military later revived the flying-cars concept; it attempted to manufacture folding wings Humvees with collapsible motors. More recently, other engineers have come up with the idea of a drone wing that can drop off cargo and wheeled vehicles.

The rotor car’s dream stubbornly lives on.

5 The Bob Semple Tank

The Bob Semple holds the unenviable tag of being perhaps “the worst military tank man ever built.” As it turned out, with the Bob Semple, the designers were trying to manage a bad situation by doing “something and everything” to salvage matters.

So, the story starts in the days of World War II. New Zealand was increasingly getting worried about the possibility of Japan carrying out a full-scale invasion. In such a situation, the prospects seemed dire for New Zealand. Most likely, New Zealand would be left on its own, cut off from the realms of Allied assistance.

But there’s more; since the country wasn’t in a position to produce any armored military vehicles, the prospects of the formidable Japanese war machine horrifically outgunning New Zealand were real and sickening. In response, Bob Semple, New Zealand’s Works Minister, devised a “clever plan;” the military would design a locally made tank to counter the situation. They would create the tank using a conventional six-ton bulldozer’s chassis.

Gleefully and without delay, Bob Semple kick-started the assembly process of 81 D8 Caterpillar tractors. The designers encased these in sheets of corrugated iron. Evidently, Bob Semple and his men weren’t prepared for the unlikely “war chest” that would be the end result.

It soon became clear to the overzealous official and his men that the new machine would not live up to its billing; the tank would be unable to protect the eight-person crew inside. So, as a remedy, the designers attached six 7.62 mm Bren guns to the vehicle’s front, rear, and sides.

The result? A horror of horrors! Out came an awkward mobile pillbox that embarrassingly moved at just 22.5 kph (14 mph). Yes, you guessed right—the military never used this unsung war machine, aptly christened the Bob Semple Tank, in combat. Instead, the contraption earned a dubious distinction as “the worst military tank” man ever made!

4 Flying Platforms

Next comes the VZ-1 Pawnee, a one-person flying platform with two rotors housed in a duct; the latter kept the platform afloat. Engineers designed the machine to allow a single officer to fire from the air. But here comes the problem: The vehicle didn’t have a tail rotor or fixed wings. Thus, the situation forced a pilot who wanted to duck to the left or right to shift his body weight. This was obviously quite awkward.

Unsurprisingly, although the VZ-1 Pawnee did relatively well during tests, the military mandarins never really deployed it in battle. Tthey considered it too small, slow, and delicate for actual combat. Thus ended the Flying Platforms project.

3 Rocket-Bullets

Undoubtedly, MB Associates takes credit for developing the Gyrojet or first Rocket Bullets. They developed the Rocket Bullets way back in the 1960s. The Gyrojet was a family of experimental guns that worked in a new way. Instead of firing bullets, the Gyrojet fired tiny rockets; and it did so in near silence.

But the big gun—that many credit with a cameo in You Only Live Twice, the successful James Bond movie—ran into countless problems.

First, the rocket bullets gathered speed only after leaving the barrel- this means a soldier would find it useless when firing at close range. Also, the gun wasn’t accurate and jammed many times. For these reasons, the engineers abandoned the Rocket Bullets project after it wouldn’t impact the battlegrounds meaningfully.

2 The Stealth Helicopter

At the outset, U.S. military engineers expected the RAH-66 Comanche to be the veritable 21st-century armed scout helicopter. Unfortunately, the disastrous program merely gobbled up a staggering $6.9 billion crater in the U.S. Defense budget. In the end, there was little to show for the big bucks spent.

What killed the ambitious stealth helicopter Comanche program? Many point to three “culprits”:

• The emergence of drones
• The fall of the Soviet Union
• The sloppy engineering craft linked to the project

Thus, the defense mandarins wiped out the RAH-66 Comanche program in one fell swoop.

Yes, the Comanche program stealthily disappeared, never to return, or so it seems.

1 Bat Bombs

The Bat Bombs experiment was yet another failed experiment that resulted in a substantial financial loss. Soon after the Pearl Harbor attack by the Japanese, Lytle S. Adams, a Pennsylvania dentist, approached the White House—specifically First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt—with what seemed to be a brilliant hit-back plan: Attack with bat bombs!

The big idea was to drop a bomb consisting of over 1,000 compartments—with hibernating bats—that the engineers would attach to a timed incendiary device. Subsequently, a bomber would drop the “deadly” bomb over Japan; they’d do so at dawn, releasing the errand bats mid-flight.

What would then follow? Simple: The bats would swiftly disperse into the roofs and attics scattered over a 32–64 kilometer (20–40 mile) radius. Then the timed incendiary devices would ignite as all hell broke loose; a mighty conflagration would subsequently engulf multiple Japanese cities dispatching them to destruction.

Incredibly, despite the seemingly outlandish proposal, the U.S. National Research Defense Committee took up the matter. The military quickly captured thousands of free-tailed bats from Mexico and built tiny napalm incendiary devices that the bats would carry. The military conducted further tests and developed a complex release system. Further, the Marine Corps ran 30 rapid tests and demonstrations; this gobbled up a whopping $2 million.

The Defense Committee later halted the entire program, flushing millions of dollars down the drain on a weapon that never saw the light of day!