Monday
Jun042007
Poison War (1981)
Monday, June 4, 2007 at 11:12PM 
Don't you hate it when countries use pterodactyls in war?
The 1981 book Future War and Weapons (World of Tomorrow) by Neil Ardley describes future wars being waged with drugs which would produce vivid hallucinations in opposing soldiers. Below is the entire two-page spread.
See also:
Robot Rebellion (1982)
Space Colony Pirates (1981)
Gigantic Robots to Fight Our Battles (Fresno Bee, 1934)
Reader Comments (8)
Don't you hate it when countries use pterodactyls in war?
Pffft. They'd be no match for http://airminded.org/2007/05/25/the-movie-that-time-forgot/" REL="nofollow">Zeppelins ...
Stanislaw Lem wrote about using aerosol hallucinogenic drugs against revolutionaries in his absurdist 1971 novel, The Futurological Congress.
Don Quixoje's gigants...
That's not futuristic--that's BZ, a gas that the Army developed in the early 60s.
As far as is known, it was never used in combat. Possibly because it occurred to someone that the best way to defeat heavily armed troops wasn't to turn them into heavily armed madmen.
I, for one, welcome our haullucinogenic pterodactyl overlords.
One of t he coolest comics in the early 60s was KONA, MONARCH OF MONSTER ISLE. Kona didn't just come from a lost prehistoric island of dinosaurs, he came from one with a cave full of mutant dinosaurs and hallucinogenic gas as well. Why Dr. Krym, the book's recurring villain, found out about this, he bottled the gas and stole some dino eggs to go on a world wide freak out crime wave via dinosaur.
Y'know...
That's a VERY good attempt to re-paint a pic appropriated (with changes) from Jim Burns' and Harry Harrison's graphic novel, Planet Story.
Although, in that novel, the pteradactyls are being ridden by alien lizard soldiers, and are actually shooting wads of (I kid you not) sticky grey-and-white pteradactyl poo at the valiant soldiers- which also explains the funny hunched-over posture of the pteradactyls, and why these soldiers have looks of disgust rather than terror on their faces...
IIRC, the actual phrase used by the noble hero, Private Parrts (yes, the humor was of that ilk) was, "They're divecrapping us!"
Planet Story was obviously influenced by Heavy Metal/Metal Hurlant magazine.
If these soldiers are on earth, why are they wearing space helmets? And looking at the guy at top right, with hand raised, how come so many of these futurists did not foresee miniaturization? He looks as if he's lugging around a "Portapak," a large 3/4-inch video recorder that you used with a camera in the early 1980s. Still, I think it would be even funnier if the soldiers saw Godzilla and Ghidorah instead.