[extropy-chat] Funniest chemical weapon around

[J. Andrew Rogers]

> I have no idea if this report is true, anyway it really take a genius to
> think this stuff up:


Both the US and the Soviet Union developed discipline and unit coherence destroying 
chemical weapons of several types many, many decades ago.  These range from 
hallucinogens to simple stupifiers and judgment impairers to behavior altering chemicals 
(like the ones mentioned in the article).  Because they generally do not kill the affected 
people, they have been used by both the Soviets and the US in limited quantities over the 
years since the 1960s.  They are supposed to be quite effective at destroying unit social 
cohesion by fostering paranoia, disorganization, and counter-productive behaviors, 
effectively incapacitating the affected units.

While some of these chemical weapons are not terribly subtle i.e. the affected people will 
know something isn't right, others are relatively transparent to the affected people and 
generate situations that in hindsight probably would appear inexplicable to them.  The 
primary function of these weapons is to destroy the social fabric of military units, rendering 
them inoperable and in some case irreparable without actually killing the members of the 
unit.  Military units are very much human social organisms.

j. andrew rogers