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One of the things that I find so fascinating about world war II is all the crazy and innovating ideas that both sides came up with to turn the tide of war.
I have blogged about some in the past, like the bat (literally) bomb and Project Pigeon.
Now, the thing I want to talk about came a bit later in the 50s and it remained a concept that never saw any real development.
And much like the two projects I linked above it involved the use of live animals, in this case.. chickens 馃槀馃悢馃悾
The concept was so crazy and ridiculous that many thought it was an April's fool joke when it was declassified on 1 April 2004.
Anyways, let's take it from the start.
The project name was Blue Peacock, renamed from Blue Bunny and originally Brown Bunny.
Tldr, it was a British tactical nuclear weapon project aiming to store a number of ten-kiloton nuclear land mines in Germany.
The purpose? Simple. Go boom in the case of a Soviet invasion from the east.
One of the major issues faced as that the electronics in the mine required heating to function during the winter cold. And one of proposed solutions was...chickens 馃槀馃槀馃槀
Yes. Chickens.
One proposal suggested that live chickens would be sealed inside the casing, with a supply of food and water. They would remain alive for approximately a week. Their body heat would apparently have been sufficient to keep the mine's components at a working temperature. source
I guess they hadn't heard of AC 馃檲馃檲馃檲馃檲