Tesla's Death Ray

The scene opens with 10,000 supersonic jets crossing an ocean, carrying a million paratroopers toward their target. A white light flashes near the lead planes—so bright it blinds the soldiers inside. The beam penetrates titanium hulls at the atomic level. Radiation melts glowing red circles in the sky where chairs and bodies used to be. The soldiers' DNA unspools. They don't have time to scream. Ten thousand planes explode into flaming orange smoke. For the target city, it's a crisis averted. They call it the death ray.

This weapon never existed—officially. But the story of what happened to Nikola Tesla's most dangerous ideas begins the day after he died.

The Room at the New Yorker Hotel

On January 8, 1943, Tesla's nephew Sava Kosanovich followed a housekeeper to room 3327 of the New Yorker Hotel, where the inventor had lived his final years. Books, papers, and boxes were strewn everywhere. Kosanovich was there to organize his uncle's work. Then he noticed something odd: some papers had been tampered with. A notebook was missing. Tesla's Edison Medal, the most prestigious scientific award he ever received, was gone. Someone had already been there.

Kosanovich suspected the U.S. government. They'd never liked his uncle, he thought, but now that Tesla was dead, they wanted his genius for themselves.

The Man Behind the Myth