There was once an oral surgeon named Lytle S. Adams. He lived a long time ago, when America was fighting a war against Japan. Japan had attacked a military base in Hawaii, and—the day that happened—Adams was on vacation at Carlsbad Caverns. That’s a system of caves in New Mexico, where thousands and thousands of bats live. Adams was very impressed with the bats, and he came up with an idea: a swarm of weaponized bats, with miniature incendiary bombs strapped to their bodies—bats that would be dropped over Japanese cities to streak through the air, scatter far and wide, and then explode, sparking thousands of little fires all over the place, burning down buildings and frightening everyone.
Adams was friendly with Eleanor Roosevelt, the president’s wife, and he used his connections to send a brief to the president; the president gave it to a military commander with a note that said, ‘This man is not a nut.’ And so, by 1943, there was a top secret bat-bomb project up a