These are frighteningly good ideas.
"15 January 2005
From New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.
THE Pentagon considered developing a host of non-lethal chemical weapons
that would disrupt discipline and morale among enemy troops, newly
declassified documents reveal.
Most bizarre among the plans was one for the development of an "aphrodisiac"
chemical weapon that would make enemy soldiers sexually irresistible to each
other. Provoking widespread homosexual behaviour among troops would cause a
"distasteful but completely non-lethal" blow to morale, the proposal says.
Other ideas included chemical weapons that attract swarms of enraged wasps
or angry rats to troop positions, making them uninhabitable. Another was to
develop a chemical that caused "severe and lasting halitosis", making it
easy to identify guerrillas trying to blend in with civilians. There was
also the idea of making troops' skin unbearably sensitive to sunlight.
The proposals, from the US Air Force Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio, date
from 1994. The lab sought Pentagon funding for research into what it called
"harassing, annoying and 'bad guy'-identifying chemicals". The plans have
been posted online by the Sunshine Project, an organisation that exposes
research into chemical and biological weapons.
Spokesman Edward Hammond says it was not known if the proposed $7.5 million,
six-year research plan was ever pursued."
