Earlier this week, The Onion News Network posted a video entitled “Obama Axes Pentagon Plan To Build Billion Dollar Tank In Shape Of A Dragon”, a funny, ridiculous take on military overspending, complete with lavish computer projections of a dragon breathing fire on the battlefield and a general defending the military’s need for the dragon, and so on. Funny, absurd, definitely worth watching, but obviously exaggerated. Or is it?

Today, this actual headline appeared on Foxnews.com:

Upcoming Military Robot Could Feed on Dead Bodies



You don’t say? When you say “feed on dead bodies,” you mean…

A Maryland company under contract to the Pentagon is working on a steam-powered robot that would fuel itself by gobbling up whatever organic material it can find — grass, wood, old furniture, even dead bodies.

Robotic Technology Inc.’s Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot — that’s right, “EATR” — “can find, ingest, and extract energy from biomass in the environment…

You mean literally eat dead bodies and power itself on corpse-flesh, ok, gotcha. I’m not exactly Religious McGee when it comes to the handling of dead bodies — if people want to cremate ‘em or not have a ceremony or whatever, I could care less — but there’s this old-fashioned part of me that finds the concept of a giant robot that powers itself on the flesh of dead bodies somewhat… what’s the word… creepy as a motherf***er?

Gonna have to try harder next time, Onion News Network — that Dragon-tank is clearly only a matter of time.