This is the Technical Difficulties, we're playing Citation Needed.
Joining me today, he reads books y'know, it's Chris Joel.
Nepo Slian.
Where the f*** did you get that from?
Everybody's favourite Gary Brannan, Gary Brannan.
♪ Trailer for sale or rent, underpants like a tent. ♪
And the bounciest man on the internet, Matt Gray.
Please let us know if you spot the secret shamanist message in this show.
" 'Eezer goode."
Oh! F*** that.
That is the most reluctant clap I have ever heard for an introduction.
Matt, they're going to sound like they're at gunpoint.
In front of me, I've got an article from Wikipedia and these folks can't see it.
Every fact they get right is a point and a ding
and there's a special prize for particularly good answers which is:
Oh, they're in tune tonight.
And today we are talking about a hail cannon.
Is it a cannon that shoots hail?
No.
Did this belong to Ming the Merciless?
"Klytus, I'm bored. What plaything can you offer me today?"
"A vibrator, or a cannon that shoots hail."
Are you using those for the same thing?
Because wow.
I was about to say, that's a very weird version of Flash Gordon
but there literally is a parody of… of Flash Gordon.
-That would be Flesh Gordon. -Yes.
Which went around at my school like hotcakes, let me tell you.
The hail cannon does not shoot hail.
Is it a "meteorological event"?
-Ooh! -Why did I say that like Michael Gambon?
"Izzita-meteorological-event?"
Is it something like cloud seeding?
Ooh.
So a hail cannon might be something you set off from a plane into the clouds
to make hail happen.
[TOGETHER] Why would you want that?
Now in stereo.
I'm giving… I'm giving biscuits there for two reasons.
First, stereo, and secondly, that is a very good question.
The hail cannon does not create hailstones, you wouldn't want that.
What would you want?
Does it stop hailstones? Does it slush them?
It is a shockwave generator claimed to disrupt the formation of hailstones.
Ooh! Ooh!
You look surprised by this, Chris.
-No. -Yes.
-No. -Either that or you've just sat on yourself.
"Ooh, me hailstones!"
Well, they've been shattered.
Was this first discovered when Brian Blessed climbed Mount Everest
in that a loud enough shockwave which shatter water?
"Stop that, I'm camping!"
Oh, it's just a big bang, so it is just a cannon that makes a big loud thing,
and then the big loud thing makes the hail go, "No, I'm not going to be hail anymore."
Apparently, yes.
What, 'I'm going back up'?
It just looks like a big cone with a box at the bottom of it.
What do they put in the box?
A man's part, then slam the lid shut.
Oh! Oh, that'll get a loud noise, that would.
That would get a very loud noise.
Acetylene and oxygen.
Hang on a minute, is this farting into clouds?
I've talked about this before.
-I still think it was a good... -Yes, but you meant you had your arse
against a plane window and were hoping for the best.
Yeah, but in the service of humanity.
It's basically a contained 'boomph' of an explosion,
And then all that force gets projected up into the sky.
-It's a airzooka. -Yeah.
I'm being hesitant about saying that's what it's doing.
Has no one ever actually done it?
Lots of people have done it.
These are installed in a lot of places.
Has no one measured their success?
-I mean… -"Never been cited in a peer reviewed journal."
Oh, just because it's never hailed after that's happened
doesn't mean it was going to hail to begin with.
Because you can't tell.
There has been a review,
which is why I didn't give you a point for 'Has no one done the research?'
They have done the research and the results were...?
Inconclusive.
No, pretty conclusive.
-Didn't work? -Yes.
People are firing massive amounts
of explosive gases in the air to create a massive boom,
for no f***ing reason at all.
-Yes. -I love our race.
There is another reason to doubt it.
What else happens near hailstorms
that would be a heck of a lot more powerful than one of these cannons?
Brian Blessed, skydiving.
-Planes? -Thunderbolts and lightning.
-Correct. -Because everything else on the show hasn't.
-Correct. [TOGETHER] -Very, very frightening.
F***!
At least that one was vaguely scripted.
Which does bring me to something called a cloud buster.
Oh, now, this was a song by Kate Bush.
Oh! Oh! Gary.
Thank you.
It was, this was the device that inspired the Kate Bush song, Cloudbusting.
'I'm running up that hill, I'm something, something, something else,'
but it's about the man runs up a hill and is he like a scientist who's arrested at the end?
I'm remembering the video more than the actual facts here.
You say scientist, the man's name was Wilhelm Reich.
He was Austrian and a psychoanalyst.
So not innately qualified to do weather.
No. No.
And the cloud buster wasn't like the hail cannon.
It had a very different intent.
To make it rain?
To make it rain by doing what?
Did they lob dogs named Buster up into the clouds?
Did they lob copies of the 1980s film about the Great Train Robbery, 'Buster', into the air?
-Do you want to be the third one on this, Chris... -No.
No, okay.
Okay. No.
It was a series of parallel hollow metal tubes at the end.
Tubular bells?
Flexible hoses and then those are placed in water.
Is he shooting water into a cloud to make it rain?
No, I've just described the entire thing, you've got…
-It's just a thing sat there? -Some tubes, some hoses
and some water and it claims to manipulate something called orgone energy.
Oh!
It's bollocks.
Yes, it is.
O-R-G-O-N-E, it might be 'org-own' or 'org-on'.
It literally has a mark in Wikipedia here, it says
'Orgone: pronunciation?'
No one knows.
And then it says it is a pseudoscientific concept
and there are seven references after the word 'pseudoscientific'.
There's been some arguments here.
Officially bollocks.
What is orgone energy supposed to be?
It's the chi version but for weather.
Oh, it's a bit further than that.
Is it supposed to be the equivalent of whatever dark matter is?
Is it some kind of surrounding force that holds water in?
It's actually, it's not just to do with water.
Is it a life force, is it a binding life force?
Yes, it is essentially the Force from Star Wars.
It is an esoteric energy, a hypothetical universal life force.
And by putting a vibraphone into some water via some hoses, I can make the Force cry.
What you have done there, Gary, is just give the best…
the best summing up of the cloud buster that I think I've ever heard.
(Kate Bush, call me.)
This is moving back now to actually trying to make rain.
This is not orgone and the cloud buster, this is the US military.
And they created Operation Popeye, 1967 to 1972.
Any ideas where that might have been?
-Vietnam. -Yes, absolutely right.
Why might the US military during the Vietnam War, have wanted to make rain?
-Is this Napalm? -No. No, this is literal rain.
Is it to kind of drive them out of the jungle because it's so very wet,
-and horrible and they don't like it anymore? -No.
Is it to wash off all the Agent Orange that they've used to poison the entire country?
Ooh.
Is it to get Agent Orange into the rainfall
and then use that to drop it rather than the aeroplanes?
No, it's actually, it's more of a tactic about logistics.
Well, to make the roads muddy?
-Yes. -So they can't move things around.
Yes, soften the road surfaces, cause landslides, wash out river crossings.
And one other thing about the climate in Vietnam.
-Make it very humid and therefore… -It already is.
-It already is, isn't it? -What happens there,
-about certain times of the year? -Monsoon season.
Yes. The idea was to extend monsoon season, with the 54th Weather Reconnaissance Squadron.
Who had a slogan, and it was, it ended with the words 'Not war'.
-What were the first two? -Make rain.
'Make something, not war.'
-Water. -Wet?
Okay, you've got the rain, you've got the ground, you put them together.
Slippery.
-Make slippery, not war? -Yes.
Yes, sounds perfectly reasonable to me.
'Make mud, not war' was their slogan.
But weren't they making mud to make war?
-Yes. -No!
They conducted 50 experiments in the Laos Panhandle.
And the government of Laos, what did they think about this?
Did they not even notice because nothing happened?
You're close, but no.
Were they annoyed that they were flying about all that and then nothing happened?
-No. No, they weren't annoyed by it at all. -Did they like it because it watered their crops-
-No, they didn't like it either. -Did they notice?
They weren't actually even told about it.
-Cheeky. -The US government just decided to fly over
and seed some clouds with lead iodide and silver iodide.
Oh! Oh, they're bad.
-They are. -Purple rain?
Bloody Prince again.
Isn't iodine purple?
Yes.
I've never listened to the lyrics of Purple Rain before.
Neither have I and I'm rapidly thinking, are they about this now?
No, no, no, they're not. No.
Wait, I'm going to check that.
Because let me… let me tell you, if it turns out purple rain,
is actually about the US military's cloud seeding experiments in Laos,
I am giving you biscuits.
Prince explained the meaning of Purple Rain as follows,
"when there's blood in the sky, red and blue equals purple".
So unfortunately, no, it's not about the US military seeding with lead iodide.
But it could have been.
Yeah, sure.
Also I'm fairly sure lead iodide is not actually purple.
No, as soon as you change iodine into something else it would lose it's colour, wouldn't it?
Facts kill humour, kids.
But the question is, did it work?
Yes, 82% of the clouds produced rain within a brief period after having been seeded.
Wow, that's very wet.
So it did work,
but nowadays you're not allowed to do that, why not?
Some kind of treaty that says, 'Don't do that.'
Weather modification treaties because it could be used as an act of war?
Ooh, you are absolutely right, it is the Environmental Modification Convention.
Have a point.
Which was signed...
The Weather-a-bugger-about-y Treaty. and now we're going to a song, ♪ whoa... ♪
Yes, the Weather-a-bugger-about-y Treaty. that's really hard to say.
It's the Weather-a-bugger-about-y Treaty.
♪ The Weather-a-bugger-about-y Treaty ♪
Yes, it is a ban on weather modification techniques
and on the use of herbicides in warfare.
When might that have come into use?
End of Vietnam.
Yeah, in 1977, Agent Orange and everything was banned by that treaty.
Did they ban the modification of Kate Bush as well?
How would you modify Kate Bush?
-Get rid of hailing. -You're right, she can't be improved upon.
There is a link, at the bottom of Operation Popeye.
Does it say never get involved in a land war in Asia?
It says…
It says Project Storm Fury.
-F***! -Yeah.
I want it, I want a badge, I want a hat with it on, the whole thing, Project Storm Fury,
unless it killed a lot of people, in which case I am less interested.
What was the US government trying to do between '62 and '83
with planes filled with silver iodide?
-Anger the weather. -Un-anger the weather.
Yes.
Make friends with weather and then use it against them.
Why would the US government, not the military;
I nearly said US military, but it's the government,
why would they want to modify the weather on a large scale?
Get rid of the tornado belt.
Ooh, it's close, it's not quite tornados
but something else that's been hitting them more lately.
Oh, hurricanes.
Yes, tropical cyclones.
The idea was that they would fly an aircraft into a cyclone.
Was it a Hurricane?
Fly a Hurricane into a hurricane?
No.
(The Hurricane is a type of plane.)
Used in the olden days.
Yes. No, it was a Lockheed P-3.
-Is that… is that a dull plane? -Mmm.
I don't know if you were saying that was a dull fact or it's a dull plane.
-Both. -It's a dull plane being flown into a hurricane.
What, you think it's just a way to get rid of them?
Some US army general, "We need more B1 Bombers, they've got Swing Wings, God damn it.
"Fly the P-3s into a hurricane."
"Turn that recording of the meeting off, we've heard enough."
Yeah, the idea was that it would just fly in. Just fly in…!
Presumably with Slim Pickens on the top in his cowboy hat.
"Wahoo!"
And the answer is they probably didn't make it work, but they did…
Well, we still have lots of hurricanes.
Yeah, it probably wasn't actually going to affect anything,
but they did get a positive outcome out of it, what might that have been?
Less P-3s.
Fewer P-3 Orions, yeah.
They absolutely found it didn't work but that involves doing something, finding that out.
A massive amount of weather research.
Yes, that's absolutely right, out of this attempt to seed the clouds,
they found a huge amount of research that helped them forecast future hurricanes.
I was going to say this sounds very 50s, but the fact they were actually trying,
-it feels a bit later. -1962 to 1983, have the last point.
Yay!
And with that, congratulations, Matt, you win the show.
You win a vertical purple lead arse.
It's a plumb plum plumbum bum.
With that we say thank you to Chris Joel,
to Gary Brannan,
to Matt Gray.
I've been Tom Scott, we'll see you next time.