What Money Can Buy

(3 of 3)

Both catalogues brim with ads for mundane materiel like air conditioners and fork lifts. But it is the devices to cause or cope with death that startle, especially when their descriptions escape the morass of jargon and euphemism. There, between technical specifications, the ghastly suddenly rears up: the "squash head" tank shell, which "on impact on the outer wall of an armored vehicle causes a large scab of metal to fly off the inside surface with great velocity"; the airborne gadget that lays down "a pattern of evenly distributed bomblets"; body bags meant for "the transport of [fallout] contaminated casualties to cleansing areas."

— By Kurt Andersen