Ultra-Violet Paint

Everyone knows about Ultra-Violet lights. They are those purple lights that make that strip of white underwear which is sneaking out over the edge of your shirt, which you didn't tuck in quite right this morning, glow like a fluorescent tube. Well it glows for a reason, in fact it glows for exactly the same reason a fluorescent tube glows: It's got this nifty (but very poisonous) chemical in it which absorbs ultra violet light and radiates white light. But it got there differently; that powder is inside the fluorescent tube because the manufacturer put it there. It's in your underwear, on the other hand, because it's in your washing powder, and when you wash your underwear, instead of washing the dirt out, the washing machine actually puts this stuff into the clothes. That's because, if your white clothes can be made to glow a little, they'll look cleaner than they really are. So, next time you wash your clothes, and you take them out of the machine, think of this: They're dirtier than they look! And you can't make them cleaner by washing them, because whenever you wash them, you get more of this poisonous glowing stuff embedded in the fabric.

What's more, next time you're under an ultraviolet light, you should smile and look in a mirror. Do your teeth glow? And if they do, do you know why? If you've ever asked, you were probably told it's because tooth enamel is fluorescent. But in fact it is not. The reason your teeth glow under ultraviolet light is the same as the reason your clothes glow: Your toothpaste has fluorescent powder in it! Just like the detergent manufacturers, the toothpaste manufacturers have found a way to fool you into believing your teeth are cleaner than they really are. In fact, every time you brush your teeth, they get dirtier, as more and more of the fluorescent powder is caked onto them.

But ultraviolet powder in detergent or even toothpaste is not what this article is about. The use in cleaning agents is actually pretty innocent compared with the nefarious uses some governments have found for this evil technology, and that is what we're concerned with here today.

In 1973 it was suggested by British scientists that if you cannot see ultra-violet light, then why not create a paint that only shows up under ultra-violet light (like the stuff in the washing powder), that way anything painted with this ultra-violet paint would be rendered invisible, and so on that day they set out to create this paint, and finally succeeded in 1974, (science worked fast in the old days) and the first invisibility paint was created.

UV Paint and The Military

F-111B painted with ultraviolet paint

In January 1975 the military declared it top secret, and the only 23,465,900 cans of ultra violet paint were stored in a warehouse in Leeds. At first they tried painting their fighter jets with this paint, this seemed a good idea until they lost 50 US designed MIG planes somewhere on an airstrip and couldn’t find them for 3 weeks.

In 1979 they tried to paint their ships with the UV paint, but again it was worthless, because though no-one could actually see the ships, the effects they were having on the water was obvious.

By 1987 they were running low on UV paint, they were down to 15 cans (people kept spilling UV paint over the cans and they were never found again).

In 1992 the military finally conceded that there was no way that they could use the UV paint for military purposes and they released it (or what was left of it: 2 cans and 12 UV painted breeze blocks) to the public.

A further list of failed Military applications

• Invisible Guns (Lost)
• Invisible Tanks (Crashed)
• Invisible Walls (The tanks crashed into them)
• Invisible Cars (Lost)
• Invisible Keys (Lost)
• Invisible Doors (Defeated the point of having doors in the first place)
• Invisible Parachutes (People couldn’t tell if they were wearing one or not, causing several deaths)
• Invisible Computers (Lost)
• Invisible Sunglasses (Didn’t block the sunlight - pointless)
• Invisible Soldiers (The eyes still showed, so they went around with closed eyes and kept walking into things. The teeth also showed, which was okay until a sergeant in a squad dubbed "the Cheshire Cats" made a joke about the French. The entire squad grinned and were gunned down by David Schwimmer.)
• Invisible Chairs (This actually worked, because it became a very good version of musical chairs, (you never knew if you had a chair or not until you fell on your ass.)
• Invisible Missiles (They could never tell if they had been stolen, or if they were still there)
• Invisible Lifts (Couldn’t tell if they were at your floor or if you were about to fall 16 floors to your certain death)
• Invisible Bullets (Ok until 300 soldiers were killed because they were issued with empty guns)
• Invisible Files (To hide top secret documents, guess what….. they couldn’t read them)

Commercial and Industrial Uses of UV Paint

A female who's actually wearing UV painted clothing

Wonderful new designs sprang up in London (they had refused to allow UV paint to be used abroad). Office blocks were made with invisible floors, Skyscrapers painted the bottom floors with UV paint, making it look as if it were simply hanging in the air, and Sherie Blair could go out in public without anyone wincing. These were glorious times; even windows were painted with UV paint, so that they would look as if they weren’t even there.

The clothing industry decided once and for all to destroy the porn industry by finally introducing INVISIBLE CLOTHING!!! Suddenly all attractive women at the beach were wearing UV treated bikinis much to the delight of men of all ages, and the best part about it, is that it breached NO LAWS!! (Since they were still wearing clothes that covered all parts of their body, you just couldn't see them.)

In the Lake District, to preserve wonderful views, they made the roads and houses invisible, so that the view remained the same. But dark clouds were brewing, evil things were coming, and UV paint was about to get lethal.

The UV Wars

Gangs suddenly got a hold on some UV paint and painted all manner of weapons with it, so they could even carry them in their hands and no one would know. Vandals painted roadblocks and bridges with UV paint, so that when cars started going the next morning, they were crashing into invisible barriers and avoiding all the bridges (thinking they were gone) then it got bad. France, having managed to perfect the paint (the French being experts at anything camp, like interior decorating, i.e. paint) came to Britain in invisible tanks, with invisible soldiers holding invisible guns, and all the other things that the British military gave up on, and SERIOUSLY WHOOPED OUR ASSES!!!

Britain had never been as bad, French police roamed every street (invisible, so no one could avoid the French law) people were forced to eat croissants and own poodles with ridiculous hair styles, and drive hybrid cars and even……. Wear sock suspenders on pain of death.

Soon however people began to rise up against them (from the moment they took over in fact) and used the already invisible Sherie Blair to strike back at the French. Naturally the entire French army (being camper than a camper van) ran away from this new threat, and we once again wore normal socks, ate human food, and breathed unscented air.

The eventual fate of the UV paint project

Now UV paint is all but gone, and the only use is by inconsiderate vandals who spray paint your car with it so you can’t find it in the morning, and the great invisible buildings were torn down, and as the word settled down again, the millennium happened, and some stupid bugger spilled the last of the UV paint over all of the Millennium Dome profits, making it seem that it was a failure, oh well…… oh well, at least we still have infra-red paint.

Infra-Red Paint

This paint was made, so that instead of making something invisible, it would just become really hot. So at first the military tried it out, yes, they failed a lot, but eventually managed to make winter survival suits, heated toilet seats and portable barbecues. Later it expanded into commerce and made a HUGE range of products, such as central heating, in cars, a substitute for radiators and an ingenious way to overheat you engine when you don’t want to go to work, so at least one ridiculous idea survived.

So if this is all true, why haven't I heard of it?

You have heard of it. You actually knew everything in this article before you read it. You just don't remember.

In September 1998, terrorists claimed to have stolen Big Ben and refused to return it unless the British Government paid 3 million pounds in ransom. Panic ensued and ran rampant. An emergency session of Parliament was called (the one in England, not the one in Canada) and sat through the night and into the next day. They had already approved the payment, and runners had been dispatched to fetch the funds from the treasury, when workers attempting to cover the crater left behind when the tower was removed collided with an invisible wall. For, as you no doubt already guessed (or remembered), Big Ben hadn't been stolen at all, but had merely been painted over.

This crisis convinced the Crown that ultraviolet paint was too dangerous to leave in the hands of an unreliable public. And so the British military was sent to round up all remaining cans of the stuff, and then the coverup began. The concept was removed from the history books, old newspapers were rewritten (and all library copies replaced), computer disk drives were erased en masse, and as a last touch, the network of so-called "cell phone towers" the government had been building was activated to assure that no one would remember what had happened. And they were almost successful. Unless you were wise enough to be wearing a tinfoil hat on October 17, 1999, you very probably recall absolutely nothing of the events described in this article.