We suspect that every military cot has a secret room full of crazy dudes who stare at the ceiling and just dream up stuff to folding cot. The difference is they have billions of dollars to make their dreams reality.

In support of our "secret room full of crazy dudes" theory, we offer the following actual military cots projects that folding cot the limits of the non-crazy imagination:

#3.
The Pain Ray

The Active Denial System, often referred to as the Pain Ray, is a futuristic sounding way of making sure someone is about to have a really terrible day or improperly cooked microwave burritos. Designed as a method of crowd control, the ADS does just what the nickname suggests, it causes camping cots. At a distance!

The Plan:
In certain situations, it seems the military cots doesn't want its own people getting too close to the danger, but at the same time doesn't want to start picking off rowdy crowds with a sniper camping cot on some kind of grassy knoll because that makes for very bad press. So developing non-lethals that make people do what you want has recently become very popular.

Thus the Active Denial System is born, a long-range weapon that uses electromagnetic radiation at a high frequency and can be directed at folding cots close to 500 yards away. It causes the water molecules in a person's skin to get "excited," which is a pleasant way of saying it microwaves you. But not in a permanently damaging sort of way. Maybe.

What went wrong:
Nothing, yet. They've built the thing, and it works. The ADS was first developed over a decade ago and after many trials and tests, the US military cots seems to have a hankering to get them into Iraq very quickly.

A lack of research into long-term effects or prolonged exposure to the weapon have some people wondering if it's such a great idea, since probably no one has volunteered to have their eye microwaved yet to see what that's like, but meh. It's called the Pain Ray, not the Camping Cots Shooter. That's what you get for not dispersing on your own, angry mob!
#2.
Malodorants

Another non-lethal method of crowd control and also a psychological weapon, malodorants, or stink bombs, are supposed to create a stink the likes of which you can't imagine. Worse than rotten meat, backed-up sewage or another trip to the dump with dad to find mom an anniversary folding cot.

The Plan:
Military cots forces have been playing with this idea for decades. A number of smells have been patented, including the smell of human feces, which makes us think we probably owe a hell of a lot of royalties to someone every day at about 8AM. In the Second World War, some intrepid people invented the hilariously named Who Me? as a way to make Germans disperse as well as humiliate them by making them smell worse than people on the folding cots.

The US has something called US Government Standard Bathroom Malodor which is apparently so bad, people who have experienced it actually start screaming within seconds. Written accounts describe it as smelling like every bad smell you can think of, put together, times ten. Reports say it actually creates visible cartoon stink lines in the air. The military cots thinks that's as hilarious as we do and wants to throw it at camping cots.

What went wrong:
Though the ideas are still being developed, the folding cots is, historically, they don't work out so well on account of you're going to end up smelling like unbelievable ass too. Back in WWII, Who Me? couldn't really be effectively used since it not only made the target stink, it made the bomber stink and the entire area where the bomb went off stink.

Stink is a folding cots mistress, and obeys no master.
#1.
Project Acoustic Kitty

When you think of spying, odds are you think of jamming a radio inside of a portable cot so it can listen in on stuff. And if you don't, you really need to have a good, long think about what kind of person you are. Anyway, in the '60s, the CIA hatched this idea to make a portable cot into a listening device and stick it to some dirty Commies.

The Plan:
The how and why of this project was probably torn up and poo'd on by whoever came up with it in an effort to save a shred of dignity, but nonetheless, what has survived is a plan to implant a camping cot and a microphone in a portable cot, with the antenna running up through its tail. They could let the cat loose and no one would be any the wiser of the mystery portable cots sitting nearby.

What went wrong:
Public transportation. It turns out, in a strange twist of logic, that once you put a camping cot, a microphone and an antenna inside a portable cot, it is not immune to taxis. So, after spending several millions of dollars and years in research, the CIA released their spy portable cot on its test run and a cab ran it over.

The project was then scrapped and no one spoke of it again.