# What happens if you accidentally design a 'fictional' classified real-life weapons system? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 28, 2017, 8:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-if-you-accidentally-design-a-fictional-classified-real-life-weapons-system/790043 "2017-06-28T08:53:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2017, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-if-you-accidentally-design-a-fictional-classified-real-life-weapons-system/790043/61 "2017-07-01T02:58:43Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > I’m aware your dad was probably in school back in the Uncle Joe Stalin era, judging by the average age of posters on this board, but surely even Admiral Halsey’s Navy would have heard of the magical technological wonder of carbon paper and, I don’t know, handwritten notes and outlines. > > Plus, any sign that distinguishes the interesting from the uninteresting is a grave security breach in and of itself, and you don’t need to be Claude Shannon to understand the importance of not leaking even one bit of information about what you deem interesting. Also, why would they have to give the actual paper back at all? Why not just tell the person the grade? And why not ask for all the copies and notes and swear the writer to secrecy? The person is in the Academy; presumably they’re somewhat trustworthy. And if not, you can shoot them. Legally. It’s a great story but I also don’t believe a word of it. It belongs in the FOAF category of urban legends. ---
**Author:** ![cwthree](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9de0a6/32.png) [@cwthree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cwthree)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2017, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-if-you-accidentally-design-a-fictional-classified-real-life-weapons-system/790043/62 "2017-07-01T03:48:32Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > It’s a great story but I also don’t believe a word of it. It belongs in the FOAF category of urban legends. ) Well, he said this happened to him with one of his papers. I’m inclined to believe him because he told the story back when he was still quite sound mentally, and he’s never been big on repeating urban legends. ---
**Author:** ![Declan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecae2f/32.png) [@Declan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Declan)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2017, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-if-you-accidentally-design-a-fictional-classified-real-life-weapons-system/790043/63 "2017-07-01T04:19:13Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > Not in the OP’s range, but a demonstration of the range of imagination of earlier writers. No, Campbell did not invent SF, nor did Gernsback, nor did Wells. I think Mark Twain might have been the first to push a SF novel. ---
**Author:** ![E-DUB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/e-dub/32/403_2.png) [@E-DUB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-DUB)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2017, 5:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-if-you-accidentally-design-a-fictional-classified-real-life-weapons-system/790043/64 "2017-07-01T05:07:38Z")
Enola Straight wrote: "Suppose I come up with a way to crack codes by factoring large primes into/out of Public Keys, or tap into Quantum Entangled transmissions. I don’t actually break into classified files…I just publish my creation." A subplot of one of Robert J. Sawyer’s books had a guy who’d kill you if you even looked like you might do that. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 1, 2017, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-if-you-accidentally-design-a-fictional-classified-real-life-weapons-system/790043/65 "2017-07-01T15:29:34Z")
> [@Declan](#): > > I think Mark Twain might have been the first to push a SF novel. And what’s Jules Verne - chopped liver? There’s a huge literature on early science fiction with, of course, a huge variety of differences in what people will include in the term. The monumental _Science-Fiction: The Early Years_ by Everett F. Bleiler contains over 400 entries from before 1889 when _A Connecticut Yankee_ appeared. It’s astoundingly, amazingly (heh) complete for a pre-Internet work but using today’s newspaper databases I’ve found some stories he missed so the actual number is certainly higher than 500. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2017, 5:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-if-you-accidentally-design-a-fictional-classified-real-life-weapons-system/790043/66 "2017-07-02T05:00:17Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > And what’s Jules Verne - chopped liver? Please: _Pâté de foie gras_. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2017, 5:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-if-you-accidentally-design-a-fictional-classified-real-life-weapons-system/790043/67 "2017-07-02T05:40:20Z")
> [@Declan](#): > > I think Mark Twain might have been the first to push a SF novel. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is generally considered to be the first Science Fiction novel. There were novels written before then that contained elements of science fiction, with some dating all the way back at least to ancient Greece. Most of these stories are generally considered to be in the Fantasy genre rather than Science Fiction, however. Some of this is arguable, though. Johannes Kepler, the guy famous for Kepler’s Laws of Planetary Motion, also wrote a novel called Somnium, in which the protagonists conjure a daemon which takes them to the Moon. The story is a mixture of fiction about what creatures live on the Moon combined with some science like what the Earth would look like from the Moon. Some people consider this to be the first Science Fiction novel. Frankenstein just happens to be my favorite book though, so I’m a bit biased as to which definition of “first” I happen to agree with. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2017, 10:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-if-you-accidentally-design-a-fictional-classified-real-life-weapons-system/790043/68 "2017-07-02T10:42:26Z")
> [@dude\_robert](#): > > So, what would happen if a author, let’s say a sci-fi book author designed a fictional vehicular weapons system 100% from his original head, and published it in his book, when that weapons system was actually 99.9% the classified real life weapons system. Sounds like an idea for a story in some kind of fiction genre dealing with speculative science… maybe if you posted in the Cafe Society you’d get some hits. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2017, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-if-you-accidentally-design-a-fictional-classified-real-life-weapons-system/790043/69 "2017-07-02T15:25:17Z")
> [@engineer\_comp\_geek](#): > > Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is generally considered to be the first Science Fiction novel. Brian Aldiss championed this in _Billion Year Spree_ (1974) and there’s a school of historians who follow him. And of course there is a school that disagrees. I’m among the disagreers. Aldiss selected \*Frankenstein \*because he considered science fiction to come out of the gothic novel tradition. That had, e.g., a year earlier produced E. T. A. Hoffmann’s short story “The Sandman,” the first living automaton story, which has been as influential and imitated as _Frankenstein_. I’m not happy with this distinction because it slights the science too much. In both those stories the scientific aspect is a grace note, not essential to the psychology. Victor might as well use magic to make his monster, even if he does study natural philosophy. Olympia, the automaton, is a stand-in for the grotesque rather than technology. I admit I don’t have a favored first. I could go earlier or later than _Frankenstein_. Frankly (heh, again) a dime novel like [The Steam Man of the Prairies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Steam_Man_of_the_Prairies) prefigures modern science fiction much better than any literary effort. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2017, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-if-you-accidentally-design-a-fictional-classified-real-life-weapons-system/790043/70 "2017-07-02T23:14:26Z")
The story goes that Mary Shelley took up with her boyfriend, later husband, the renowned Poet Percey Bysshe Shelley. they spent a wet summer on the continent, so one challenge to pass the time was to write a ghost story. She wrote “Frahnkensteen” (or was it -Stein?). The irony is, a century later, _everyone_ knows Frankenstein, maybe 1 in 20 could name a work by her husband. (I recognize only Ozymandius) ---
**Author:** ![GiantRat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@GiantRat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GiantRat)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2017, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-if-you-accidentally-design-a-fictional-classified-real-life-weapons-system/790043/71 "2017-07-03T16:10:55Z")
> [@joema](#): > > While you don’t need a “license to be a professional cryptologist”, cryptographic consulting services still require an export license, and encryption registration with the U.S. Bureau of Information and Security is required for the export of mass market encryption commodities, software and components with encryption exceeding 64 bits. Other items require a one-time review by or notification to BIS prior to export to most countries: [Crypto Wars - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_Wars) I believe you’re referring to the Bureau of Industry and Security; just a nit-pick. Carry on. ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2017, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-if-you-accidentally-design-a-fictional-classified-real-life-weapons-system/790043/72 "2017-07-03T23:19:07Z")
I doubt that very little would happen to you at least anything that was visable in public. Ideas for weapons systems are dime a dozen. If the idea is simple enough that an author could develop it, then its probably simple enough that enemy agents could easily think of it on their own. What the powers that be really want to keep secret is 1. That such a weapons system is actually possible to create in reality. 2. That effort is being expended to develop such a system. 3. The technical details about how such a system would work that go beyond what a hobbyist author might be able to guess. Doing anything against the author will likely tip their hand as far as parts 1 and 2, so its far better to just leave it out there among the thousands of other fictional weapons systems rather than draw attention to it. There may be some effort to covertly check the author out to see if he could somehow have been leaked information, and if so find the leaker, but nothing that the author would be aware of. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-if-you-accidentally-design-a-fictional-classified-real-life-weapons-system/790043.md?page=3)