1981 COLLATED PROCUREMENT ORDERS BY THE DOD IN REGARDS TO TOP SECRET PROJECT: HELL'S HEART

Third Law Hub » 1981 COLLATED PROCUREMENT ORDERS BY THE DOD IN REGARDS TO TOP SECRET PROJECT: HELL'S HEART

The PENTAGRAM asks Prometheus to steal some nuclear fire.

Most of the key work on Project HELL'S HEART was developed by Prometheus Labs. Due to the Pentagram's policy of compartmentalization, no one in Prometheus Labs was ever able to put together the entire horrific picture. Only in the Pentagram's own laboratories was the project fully assembled. However, due to the compartmentalization of information, several key flaws were introduced into the system because of emergent interactions between the disparate systems that were never meant to work together. The effects of these flaws culminated in the Dutch Harbor incident, an AMIDA class threat to the veil.

Simon Pietrykau,
Site 64, Department of Analytics

PROCUREMENT ORDER FOR A CYBERNETIC CONTROL SYSTEM FOR CETACEANS

PROBLEM

Submersible reconnaissance is a major issue facing the US military. Mundane research and development has focused on making submarines less visible to sonar and reducing active scanning mechanisms that could betray the vehicle's location. However, it could be more beneficial to take advantage of a blind-spot in our adversaries' reconnaissance, by infiltrating via already present aquatic fauna. Such a system can use much more active sonar than a submarine without being noticed as unusual.

SPECIFICATIONS

The device must be installable into a cetacean without a brain.

Key targets include: minke whales, common dolphins, white-beaked dolphins, striped dolphins, belugas, and sperm whales.

The receiver must be able to communicate with a transmitter stored at naval headquarters primarily by using ELF¹ waves or skywave propagation.

The device must be able to control the movement of the cetacean and relay the cetacean's sense of sight and natural sonar to the base station.

The device must not change the sonar profile of the cetacean or produce noticeable emissions.

Absent orders, the cetacean must act like a normal cetacean.

If possible, the cetacean should be able to defend itself against a technological opponent without compromising the profile.

PROPOSED SOLUTION

A transistorized computational unit will act as the command and control unit for the system. Injecting this unit with cetacean soul fragments will allow for the default behavior of the cetacean to be natural. This control unit will be interfaced with the cetacean's nervous system to both control the organism and receive sensory information.

The control unit will be interfaced with a memory unit which is thaumaturgically entangled with another memory unit so that changes in one lead to changes in the other. This will allow for instantaneous communication between naval headquarters and the system. A secondary radio system will be used in case of thaumaturgic jamming.

Protection can be achieved via titanium plating connected to the organism's skeletal system. Secondary self-defense mechanisms involve torpedoes, though those will need frequent maintenance. A low-power infrared biological laser produced by NCD Procurement (the Laserbore) will be used as an anti-torpedo targeting system. Finally, the mass of the cetacean will act as a useful ramming weapon.

POTENTIAL ISSUES

As these systems lack direct human oversight, there is always the risk of foreign interference or a communication breakdown, which would make the assets unreliable in the interim.

Radioactive fallout is a major concern in any 'hot war' scenario. However, due to the efficiency of water as a radiation shield, fallout is not considered a threat to cetacean operations.

The required maintenance for the torpedoes goes against the goal of the project. Though this is not a required feature, they could be dropped.

ESTIMATED COSTS

$50 million for development of the cybernetic system.

$20 million for integration of the cybernetic system.

$30 million for development of titanium armor integration.

$5 million Integration of torpedoes and laserbore.

$20 million profit is proposed.

Unit costs are to be determined when the system is developed. The current estimated cost is $10 million per unit.

PROCUREMENT ORDER FOR BIOLOGICAL ISOTOPIC ENRICHMENT

PROBLEM

The current largest obstacle to the production of nuclear systems is the enrichment of uranium. Due to the need for expensive centrifuging, the cost of enriched uranium is almost entirely due to isotopic separation. As such, low-cost approaches to isotopic fractionation are being sought after.

This will allow for cheaper nuclear devices for use in both defense applications and for many civilian applications of atomic power, such as energy generation, canal digging, or rocketry.

REQUIREMENTS

The system must be capable of separating uranium, lithium, and hydrogen into their isotopic components.

The system must be biological in nature and only require normal biological feedstocks.

The system must not require esoteric or anomalous constriction systems to produce.

PROPOSED SOLUTION

Enzymes, due to the kinetic isotope effect², are naturally capable of isotopic enrichment. The problem is that this effect is purely kinetic and not thermodynamic (meaning that only the speed of the reaction changes, not the final proportions if allowed to go to equilibrium). As such, the system must be kept in constant disequilibrium.

Thus, to engage in isotopic separation, a chain of isolated cells is planned with each cell providing a very small change in isotopic concentration. This will allow isotopic enrichment by having a slight preference in the isotope of interest flowing one direction over the other direction.

Our proposed mechanism for kinetic enrichment of metals is the addition and removal of the isotope from cryptands³. This would be followed by the selective transportation of cryptands over cell barriers.

Deuterium enrichment will be performed by hydride transfers to and from tertiary hydrocarbons.

POTENTIAL ISSUES

No one has ever attempted to design an enzyme to isolate isotopes, as such there is no way to know the effectiveness of isotopic fracturing at high atomic numbers.

Custom enzymes are known to have complications and unforeseen hurdles in production and engineering, leading to a strong possibility of cost overruns.

Any known system for metallic isotopic fractionation will require specialized enzyme cofactors which add in even more room for failure.

The system must be asymmetric with regard to which direction the isotopes flow. Developing asymmetry in biological organisms has traditionally posed significant difficulty.

ESTIMATED COSTS

$200 million for an estimated 20 enzymes at $10 million per enzyme.

$5 million for various pieces of genetic engineering equipment.

$2 million for an Amrita brand bioprinter.

$4 million for an Amrita smart incubation system (ASIS).

$50 million of profit is proposed.

PROCUREMENT ORDER FOR A BIOLOGICAL TELLER-ULAM DEVICE

PROBLEM

Current doctrine dictates that tactical nuclear weapons will be required to defend Europe from Soviet invasion. Due to the prohibitive cost of maintaining nuclear warheads, it is prohibitively expensive to set up nuclear landmines in all strategic locations.

As such, we are proposing a self-maintaining biological system for the atomic defense of mainland Europe. The proposed use case here is for underground nuclear devices to be used as area denial weapons along with secondary use in Project PLOWSHARE. Due to the likely high mass required, these weapons can only be used in a defensive role.

REQUIREMENTS

The system must be a purely biological system that can construct an atomic explosive from aqueous U-235/U-238 and other dissolved components.

The system must also be able to trigger a secondary thermonuclear fusion explosive.

The system must possess a biological trigger to detonate.

The system must fail safely in dangerous environments to prevent accidental detonations.

The system must follow the Paraweapon Cessation Treaties of 1963.

PROPOSED SOLUTION

The biological system will construct a porous uranium oxide core via standard bone deposition procedures. The cells involved will be called "Uranoblasts" (for forming uranium carboxides) and "Uranoclasts" (for solubilizing uranium carboxides to maintain subcriticality). A separate chamber full of heavy water (acting as a neutron moderator) mixed with lithium-6 salts will be maintained.

For detonation, the heavy water will be injected into the chamber containing the subcritical uranium mass. This will prime the core, pushing it into being delayed critical while avoiding prompt criticality⁴. A rapid and precise muscle contraction will induce cavitation at the core, leading to the core becoming supercritical and inducing a nuclear explosion. The large concentration of lithium-6 and deuterium in the chamber will act as a nuclear booster and thermonuclear secondary explosive as per the standard Teller-Ulam method.

POTENTIAL ISSUES

If the Uranoclasts fail to operate then uranium will build up until the sphere hits criticality inducing a nuclear meltdown. This process will avoid a detonation however it will kill the biological host.

Due the the large number of failsafes, there are several ways that this system can fail to detonate.

On the other hand, because of the prompt criticality component of the detonation sequence, damage to the heavy water sac could lead to heavy water flooding the chamber. Should this occur, the core will undergo a nuclear meltdown, causing significant fallout.

To prevent this, it is vital that any use of this device be kept solely for civilian use as per Project PLOWSHARE. If it is necessary to use this system in a conflict zone it is imperative that the system be properly protected, preferably by a bunker.

Uranium is naturally toxic as a heavy metal, though there are biological organisms that use it as a chemical fuel source meaning that it is possible to engineer an immunity.

ESTIMATED COSTS

$300 million for Cellular engineering.

$50 million for Structural re-engineering.

$100 million for Enriched uranium.

$70 million Profit is proposed.

Throughout this operation, the Pentagram has taken great lengths to ensure the occlusion of their ultimate goals with this project. The individual pieces were passed out into separate departments within Prometheus, communications were carefully crafted to avoid suspicion, and the final piece of the puzzle was never revealed — a recovered Atlantean artifact, codename Columbia. The biomantical artifact is that missing piece that allows them to birth cetaceans whose bodies can handle the modifications. These creatures could swim into harbors undetected disguised as normal whales and detonate themselves in a massive thermonuclear blast. Expected targets were Leningrad, Sevastopol, Odesa, Novosibirsk, Vladivostok, Gdańsk, Szczecin, Świnoujście, Riga, and Murmansk among other ports in Germany, Romania, and other Warsaw Pact nations.

Problems emerged later. First and foremost, the control unit was exposed to more radiation than theorized. As these creatures had their metabolism replaced with a small nuclear reactor, the control unit received far more radiation than the system was designed for. The control system failure has been determined as the most likely cause of the Dutch Harbor attack.

The other key flaw was the sterilization of the assets or lack thereof. Many of the modifications were biological and more importantly, heritable. As such, there is a new nuclear power on our Earth, and it isn't human.

Fortunately, there is a key flaw in the biochemistry of the construction of the core which should allow for the widespread neutralization of these whales. For more information see Project CATALYTIC CHERNOBYL.

Simon Pietrykau,
Site 64, Department of Analytics

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