Science Experiments That Could’ve Ended The World
By Kirsty
2 years ago
1. The Kola Superdeep Borehole
Image Source / Interesting EngineeringWhat started as a simple 'I'm going to drill a hole into the earth' turned into 'but what if we let demons out who destroy the world'. Back in the 70s/80s, the Soviet Union managed to drill 40,230 feet into the earth's crust but they had to stop because of the extreme heat. Luckily, they didn't create the seismic disaster (or Hellspawn) they'd expected and everything was safe.
2. The Trinity Test
Image Source / Wikipedia
The first ever nuclear device was set off back in 1945 by the Americans, as part of the Manhattan Project. Power equivalent to about 21,000 tons of TNT was released when the bomb exploded, which means it was very very lucky that the world wasn't ending after that.
3. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC)
Image Source / CERN
Located in Geneva in Switzerland is the famous particle accelerator called the Large Hadron Collider. It was built by CERN, and originally when it was first created there was a little bit of worry that it might create a massive black hole that would consume the world. Luckily, there was nothing to worry about...
4. Starfish Prime
Image Source / Wikipedia
A nuclear bomb was detonated in 1962 by the United States during the Cold War. The force of it was approximated at a hundred times of the Hiroshima bomb - which meant that nobody knew the effects the power of the bomb would have on the earth's magnetosphere. Although it wasn't the end of the world, the bomb did cause a radiation belt for five years, as well as satellites being damaged.
5. The Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI)
Image Source / NatureAs the name rightly suggests, the SETI was to find life outside of Planet Earth. The worry when this began was that nobody knew the outcome of trying to contact aliens - such as, you know, aliens from other planets deciding to destroy the earth. For that reason a lot of people think it's better to leave other planet-life well alone.6. New Zealand's Tsunami Bomb
Image Source / The TelegraphBack in 1944/1945, New Zealand experimented with bombs in order to create artificial tsunamis. Why? Well, for the terrifying reason that if you had the power to create tsunamis, you could decide to wipe out people, buildings and anything else whenever you felt like it. Luckily, the experiments failed.7. Operation Cirrus
Image Source / The Black VaultThe aim with Operation Cirrus was to try and divert the direction of hurricanes using dry ice. The US attempted to do this by putting 180 pounds of dry ice into a hurricane moving through the Atlantic Ocean. Unfortunately for them, the hurricane changed direction and then hit a town in Georgia, causing damage and even death. After this, experiments which would change the weather and be used as a battle weapon were banned.8. Project Mercury And Project Volcano
Image Source / Amusing PlanetThe Russian military's Project Mercury and Project Volcano saw them setting off nuclear weapons underground. The aim was to disturb electromagnetic fields and tectonic plates, and therefore use this as a weapon. The experiments went on until they were eventually banned.9. Genetically Engineered Superbugs
Image Source / Medical News TodayWhen a scientist in the 1970s created a specific bacteria that would be able to digest petroleum, it resulted in oil-digesting superbugs. The aim was to use the bacteria to clean up oil spills. The main fear, however, was that instead of just oil, these superbugs would go rogue and decide to consume anything in their path, eventually leading to them becoming the dominant bacteria on earth. Fortunately, this hasn't happened (yet?).10. Casually Creating A Black Hole
Image Source / Atlas ObscuraIf there's anything that's going to risk ending the world as we know it, a black hole will do it. The panic was that the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider would do just that upon its creation in New York. The good news was that the researchers studied black holes, but couldn't actually make them.11. The US Experimenting With A Weaponised Form Of Dangerous Fungus
Image Source / WikipediaThe fungus Magnaporthe grisea has the potential to contaminate a huge crop area in only one night. The US decided to experiment with this fungus during the Cold War to make it into a weaponised version which could be sprayed, or bombed. It's not known whether this was intentionally used - but if it was to be, it would spread disease over two of the world's most important crops and cause famine across the globe.12. Using The Actual Plague As A Weapon
Image Source / Discover MagazineI mean, if you were going to have a weapon, it's as good as any seeing as the Plague was responsible for the deaths of around 60% of Europe's population. The Soviet All-Union Institute of Ultra-Pure Biological Preparations actually then managed to weaponise it and the research went public.13. Project MKUltra
Image Source / London Review of BooksMKUltra was the CIA's disturbing attempt to master mind control on humans. Their experiments lasted over ten years, during which unknowing subjects were given drugs and subject to torture, including sleep deprivation and abuse. If they'd succeeded in mind control, it goes without saying the world could have been under their control.14. The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment
Image Source / WikipediaThis study back in 1932 to 1972 was a government-funded one, where 399 African American people were denied treatment for their syphilis in order for the health service to then study the effects of syphilis if left untreated. Inevitability, people died without treatment, and others suffered complications.15. Guatamalan STD Study
Image Source / BuzzFeed NewsAnother example of a dangerous experiment causing harm for no good reason. The U.S. government decided - because 'science' - that they would intentionally give an estimated 1500 Guatemalan people an STD. People given these diseases included military people, orphans and prisoners.16. Unit 731
Image Source / All That's InterestingUnit 731 refers to the secret R&D unit that was responsible for performing horrible experiments during the Second World War. This Japanese unit used around 250,000 people to force medical experiments on them, including cutting people open without anaesthesia, removing organs and amputating limbs.17. The Aversion Project
Image Source / COVEWhat was the medical reaction to being homosexual? Medical torture, of course. Because homosexuality during this time was thought to be a mental illness rather than something natural, the military tried to "cure" gay people within the military in South Africa by making them undergo things such as chemical castration and electric shock therapy.18. The Nazi Concentration Camp Experiments
Image Source / www.history.comPrisoners in concentration camps were subjected to horrific medical experiments by the Nazis. Their atrocities know no bounds, but these experiments included poisoning people, using mustard gas and infecting people with malaria. The evil behind this was Josef Mengele.19. Particle-Accelerator Experiments Could End The World
Image Source / CERNOne of Britain's astronomers has also said that particle-accelerator experiments going forward have the potential to "destroy the Earth". The astronomer, Sir Martin Rees, explains how these types of experiments could cause a tiny black hole that would eat away at our planet from the inside - or, release matter that could shrink the Earth. Which is worse?20. Quantum Zeno Effect
Image Source / Live ScienceFor many years, clever scientist people have been trying to find something called 'dark matter' (anti-gravity matter). The Quantum Zeno effect states that a moving particle won't decay if it's watched continually, and a scientist then claimed that watching dark energy could create a black hole - which could then destroy not just the planet, but the universe.21. Recreating The Big Bang
Image Source / New ScientistThe solution to the fact that scientists weren't around for the original Big Bang is to apparently create another. This hasn't, of course, happened yet, but scientists with their curious minds and all believe they can recreate a Big Big by whacking some protons together. And if this was to happen, we're talking world destruction on a pretty huge scale.22. Strange Matter
Image Source / MediumThere are a lot of weird and wonderful things in the universe, and 'strange matter' is just one of them. This is based on equations rather than something to actually observe, and that's because it's a hypothetical thing. It's supposed to be one of the 'building blocks' of out world, and there's a theory that it could convert every atom into more strange matter - and if this was to happen, well... we'd probably all die.23. Time Travel
Image Source / NBC NewsIf time travel was ever actually to be perfected, it would most probably mean an end to this world. To change something that happens in the past or change the course of the future could easily lead to catastrophic disaster. I mean, it'd be the universe's way of saying 'ah h*ll no' when we attempt to mess with the natural order of things.24. Nanotechnology
Image Source / Medical Device NetworkWith the study of nanotechnology, clever people are working out how to make things smaller. This includes tiny little robots that could, you know, be microscopic enough that they could actually go into the bloodstream and tend to health threats. Unfortunately, the mind behind this amazing technology has also said it could be a recipe for disaster. If these nanobots were to become advanced, they could simply choose to wipe us out.25. Infected Mosquitoes
Image Source / 16 of the Worst Experiments the Government PerformedDuring the Cold War, the US Military was testing biological warfare - and that was bad news for Georgia, Savannah and Avon Park in Florida. The military was infecting mosquitoes and people became infected with things like yellow fever, typhoid and breathing problems. The military would document the progress of the 'subjects', and there were quite a few deaths as a result.And Now For A Few Evil Experiments...
26. The Milgram Experiment
Image Source / All That's InterestingA man named Milgram decided to conduct a study in the 60s where he wanted to understand Nazi war criminals a little better by suggesting that they were following orders and not actually 'evil'. His study included test subjects who would get an electric shock if giving a wrong answer. The test revealed that the participants would continue to give an electric shock to the other person, even after being told to stop - suggesting that we're all a little 'sadistic' inside, at least according to Milgram...27. The Soviet Union Experiments on Humans
Image Source / History Workshop -The Soviet Union's experiments started in the early 1920s when they decided to give a number of people poisoned food and drink in order to try and perfect the ideal poison. They wanted to find a poison which wouldn't be detected during a post mortem. People died for their experiments.28. When They Inflicted Stuttering In Children On Purpose
Image Source / CBS NewsSpeech pathologists back in the 1930s decided they wanted to prove that stuttering was a 'learned behaviour'. They put fear into children by telling them that they would stutter in the future, and that they had to be sure they wouldn't stutter before speaking. Rather than make children stutter, however, all this experiment did was make the children anxious and withdrawn.29. Slaves Had Surgical Experiments Conducted On Them
Image Source / microform.digitalJ. Marion Sims, known as the 'father of modern gynecology', apparently experimented on slave women using surgery. The women would have endured horrible suffering, and he even performed the surgeries without anesthesia. There has been a lot of controversy over the ability for these slaves to consent to these surgeries.30. The Burke And Hare Murders
Image Source / The Ministry Of HistoryWilliam Hare and William Burke were responsible for murdering people in a boarding house and then selling their bodies to an anatomist 'for science'. With body snatching (of people already dead) a common thing, the anatomist didn't really question the delivery of bodies - or how fresh they were.31. Stanford Prison
Image Source / WearemoviegeeksThe Stanford Prison Experiment was intended to discover how the role of prisoner versus guard effected prison guard and prisoner affected people psychologically. They took a few people from a university and put them in a hostile prison environment where they had to roleplay. Within days the roles had taken over and there was terrible mistreatment being inflicted by the participants.32. American Gynaecology
Image Source / The Daily TelegraphThere was a study conducted by American James Marion Sims who wanted to study reproductive health in black woman. He subjected the woman, to the most horrendous abuse and mistreatment, including performing multiple surgeries on the women with no anaesthesia.33. Peter Neubauer separating twins and triplets
Image Source / The Daily TelegraphPsychologist Peter Neubauer wanted to research twins and triplets. He conducted a totally unethical study in which he took twins/ triplets as babies and separated them from birth to watch them grow up without one another. In one case, they found one another 20 years down the line without ever having known they had a sibling. One of the participants committed suicide.34. Henrietta Lacks
Image Source / microbeanonlineHenrietta Lacks was a poor black woman from Southern America who contributed to majorly influential and groundbreakingly scientific discoveries. She helped provide the genetic material to helps studies numerous diseases and was never paid for her contributions, she ended up dying poor.35. Laud Humphreys Tearoom Study
Image Source / goodreadsHomosexuality used to be illegal, then came the 1960s when a sexual revolution was starting. Laud Humphrey's wanted to research homosexual men's sexual activities and the stigma around it. He conducted the tearoom study where he would watch public bathrooms and spy on men having intimate relations. He found that half of the men were heterosexual. However, his research was completely unethical.36. Digestion experiment
Image Source / infovanaticusDoctor Beaumont has made massive contributions to medicine and had even saved hundreds of lives. When his patient Alexis St. Martin was shot in the stomach it left him with a fissure that would never heal. Beaumont used this hole in his stomach as an opportunity to experiment and would push food inside it and leave it in for a while before pulling it out again, to find that the stomach process was a chemical reaction.37. Project Artichoke
Image Source / blogspotProject Artichoke refers to the study conducted by the U.S Central Intelligence Agency during the Cold War, where they used drugging and brainwashing methods on people to investigate 'special investigation methods' aka torturing. It was a horrendous experiment with a terrible motive.38. The case of David Reimer
Image Source / allthatsinterstingIn the case of David Reimer, he was just a baby when Dr. John Money an American psychologist with the consent of his parents decided to use him for an experiment. He was for a male; however, he had his genitals cauterised at birth and had then been given hormones by the doctor as a part of an experiment to see whether gender was in fact a social construction. Reimer was forced to act feminine despite secretly identifying as a male. He ended up committing suicide.39. Subjecting pregnant women to radioactive substances
Image Source / alienufosightingsNashville's Vanderbilt University carried out a study which was founded by the U.S Public Health service. The tricked the women, telling them they would be given health drinks to help their pregnancy. In fact, they were giving the pregnant women to radioactive iron. Seven of the children died of cancer, as well as some of the women amongst other illnesses.40. Mustard gas in the U.S military
Image Source / PinterestThe U.S military inflicted mustard gas on its own troops to test the effect of mustard gas. Many people have died in wars from mustard gas, the effects and pain are horrendous. Most of the participants that were chosen for the experiment were black men.What To Read Next
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