Mankind's desire to stop the little murderous bastards has reached the point of desperation, and our schemes for fighting them have strayed into Mad Scientist Bond Supervillain territory. We're not exaggerating here. Mankind's plans for conquering the world of mosquitoes includes...

No, it's the lowly mosquito, and it's not even close. Thanks to their ability to spread diseases like malaria they take out a mind-boggling two million people a year .

What is the deadliest animal in the world? Lions? Sharks? Bears? Bees? Snakes? Rats? It was bears, wasn't it? Is it bears?

5 Death Rays

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You have to start here. Giant lasers have been essential to at least three different Bond villain schemes, so scientists know that if humanity is to be the ultimate nemesis to the mosquito, we need a goddamned death ray. The development of mosquito-destroying lasers was thus an inevitability.

And just in case you think we're stretching the definition of "death ray" here, let's jump right to video of actual mosquitoes being actually set on fire in mid-air:

The scientists who developed the mosquito-killing laser were also on the team who created Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, the centerpiece of which would have been satellite-mounted lasers designed to blow nuclear missiles out of the sky before they could land on American cities. That plan was scrapped years ago, but if you take that tracking and kill-beam technology and shrink it down, you wind up with a hell of a mosquito net.

Via Wikimedia Commons

Though it would be pretty damn cool to just do it from space.

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The targeting system is even able to tell harmless male mosquitoes apart from the disease-carrying females (from the sound of their wing beats). Or you can set the laser to, as one researcher put it, "just slay them all."

The lasers could some day be set up to form a barrier around a house or village, like huge, highly-advanced bug zapping force fields. They could even be attached to automated drone aircraft. Hell, for that matter, why automate it? Hook the drone cameras up to XBox Live and let players dispatch mosquitoes for Achievement points. Why not? The project is, after all, funded by Bill Gates as part of his ongoing crusade against the mosquito menace. That's right, we even have an evil billionaire on our side. You mosquitoes thought we weren't serious about this supervillain shit?