[ExI] This would almost qualify as hilarious ... if only it weren't true

[J. Andrew Rogers]

On Jun 11, 2007, at 11:55 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote:

> On Mon, Jun 11, 2007 at 08:41:06PM -0700, J. Andrew Rogers wrote:
>
>> A lot of non-lethal chemical weapons research dating back to at least
>> the 1960s is based on mechanisms of temporary radical behavior
>
> In theory it's a good idea, but in practice dosing each individual
> person more or less within therapeutic bandwidth (the span between
> first effects and toxicity) is not possible. You either get no
> effect or lots of dead bodies.
>
> This is the reason why this approach was not pursued.


Yup.  You need a substance that both has a very high LD50 and  
effectiveness across a broad range of dosing.  Most everything they  
tried in decades past was simply too primitive to work as well as it  
did in more controlled environments.  I won't suggest that it was  
highly effective in the field as a practical matter, only that the  
theory reduced to practice very effectively.

That said, as technology improves this will become a very effective  
type of capability.  Military research suffers from extreme optimism  
despite inadequate initial technology, but usually produces a result  
decades later that far exceeds the original concept once the dynamics  
of it are understood.  It is not at all beyond the realm of  
possibility that they could develop some clever ways to regulate the  
dose well enough to give it some reliable utility in a battlefield  
environment, using technologies that were beyond the horizon in the  
1960s.


Behavior modifying weaponry will be here eventually.  They are  
nothing if not tenacious.

Cheers,

J. Andrew Rogers