Cult of Dan Brown: Improvised Munitions

Not any real weapons of that sort, no, since they don't exist. Contrary to Brown's claim at the beginning of the book that "all technologies described in this book exist", his interpretation of "improvised munitions" has taken the concept a bit further than current science and technology allows. The same applies to most of the other technologies he describes in the book, including the "microbot" and "hologram gun". He basically did what any science-fiction author does--he looked at technologies that are currently at the drawing-board stage and extrapolated forward 10-15 years to imagine what these things might be like if/when they mature.

There are a number of practical problems with the improvised munitions weapons as Brown describes them:

(1) Forging the ammunition itself would require a source of energy, either to heat sand or cool snow into ice. A battery could power a heating/refrigerating unit, sure, but then the battery becomes the weak link in the supply chain and the weapon becomes useless when the battery dies, defeating the purpose of "infinite ammo". In the case of turning sand to glass, you'd need a heating element capable of reaching about 1500 degrees Celsius, which would require an impractically large power source (to say nothing of the insulation on the weapon's grips to protect the holder from nasty burns, and from melting other parts of the weapon). The other problem with in-weapon forging of ammunition is that it would be painfully slow--the time between shots would be on the order of minutes, not seconds, so for all intents and purposes it would be a one-shot weapon.

(2) Firing the newly-forged ammunition would in most cases destroy the projectile. In the case of an ice bullet, the heat of friction as the bullet traveled down the barrel would melt it (the Discovery Channel program Mythbusters debunked this one quite a while ago). Any part of the ice bullet that doesn't melt in the barrel would shatter upon impact, even against unprotected skin, because the sharpness of the point will have been dulled, and ice is quite fragile. Glass bullets are a bit more practical as ammunition, but the forging problem all but rules them out.

In the "real" world, "improvised munitions" refers to things like Molotov cocktails, recipes for making gunpowder out of commonly-available ingredients, using construction supplies like nails in creative ways, and so on. The U.S. Department of Defense TM 31-210 Improvised Munitions Handbook is a training manual for guerilla warfare, for instance, but it makes no references to any weapons that forge their own ammunition.

Simply put, Brown's concept of "improvised munitions" represents something that the militaries of the world would probably like to have--unlimited ammo in the field is a long-held dream of war-planners everywhere--but technological obstacles and scientific realities make them impractical at this point. Check back in 10-15 years, though!

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