In Kurt Vonnegut's 1963 novel Cat's Cradle - the US military wants their tanks to go through the mud faster so they want to use an ultra-high tech substance called ice-nine. It's capable of solidifying mud. But the US abuses the use of the substance. All the water on earth turns into ice-nine. The earth becomes an ice ball, there's a mass extinction event, and human beings go extinct.
Cat's Cradle is a satirical postmodern novel, with science fiction elements, by American writer Kurt Vonnegut. Vonnegut's fourth novel, it was first published in 1963, exploring and satirizing issues of science, technology, the purpose of religion, and the arms race, often through the use of black humor.
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Ice-nine [was] created for military use. [...] Ice-nine is an alternative structure of water that is solid at room temperature and acts as a seed crystal upon contact with ordinary liquid water, causing that liquid water to instantly transform into more ice-nine.
Was it though. Vonnegut claimed that it was based on something Langmuir suggested to Wells in the 30s and the novel was published in 63, three years before the whole polywater thing seems to have reached the anglo scientific community.
In Kurt Vonnegut's 1963 novel Cat's Cradle - the US military wants their tanks to go through the mud faster so they want to use an ultra-high tech substance called ice-nine. It's capable of solidifying mud. But the US abuses the use of the substance. All the water on earth turns into ice-nine. The earth becomes an ice ball, there's a mass extinction event, and human beings go extinct.
Ice-9 was based on the polywater hoax.
Was it though. Vonnegut claimed that it was based on something Langmuir suggested to Wells in the 30s and the novel was published in 63, three years before the whole polywater thing seems to have reached the anglo scientific community.