Original link: http://www.defensetech.org/archives/002152.html

## Air Force Plan: Hack Your Nervous System

    This is the first of a two-part series on plasma and electromagnetic
    weapons by David Hambling, author of Weapons Grade: How Modern
    Warfare Gave Birth to Our High-Tech World.

    The brain has always been a battlefield.  New weapons might be able
    to hack directly into your nervous system.

    "Controlled Effects" (see image, right) is one of the Air Force's
    ambitious long-term challenges. It starts with better and more
    accurate bombs, but moves on to discuss devices that "make selected
    adversaries think or act according to our needs... By studying and
    modeling the human brain and nervous system, the ability to mentally
    influence or confuse personnel is also possible."

    The first stage is technology to "remotely create physical sensations."
    They give the example of the Active Denial System "people zapper"
    which uses a high-frequency radiation similar to microwaves as a non-
    lethal means of crowd control.

    Other weapons can affect the nervous system directly. The Pulsed
    Energy Projectile fires a short intense pulse of laser energy. This
    vaporizes the outer layer of the target, creating a rapidly-
    expanding expanding ball of plasma. At different power levels, those
    expanding plasmas could deliver a harmless warning, stun the target,
    or disable them - all with pinpoint laser precision from a mile away.

    Early reports on the effects of PEPs mentioned temporary paralysis,
    then thought to be related to ultrasonic shockwaves. It later became
    apparent that the electromagnetic pulse caused by the expanding
    plasma was triggering nerve cells.

    Details of this emerged in a heavily-censored document released to
    Ed Hammond of the Sunshine Project under the Freedom if Information
    Act. Called "Sensory consequence of electromagnetic pulsed emitted
    by laser induced plasmas," it described research on activating the
    nerve cells responsible for sensing unpleasant stimuli: heat,
    damage, pressure, cold. By selectively stimulating a particular
    nociceptor, a finely tuned PEP might sensations of say, being
    burned, frozen or dipped in acid -- all without doing the slightest
    actual harm.

    The skin is the easiest target for such stimulation. But, in
    principle, any sensory nerves could be triggered. The Controlled
    Effects document suggests "it may be possible to create synthetic
    images to confuse an individual' s visual sense or, in a similar
    manner, confuse his senses of sound, taste, touch, or smell."

    In other words, it may be possible to use electromagnetic means
    to create overwhelming 'sound' or 'light', or indeed 'intolerable
    smell' which would exist only in the brain of the person perceiving
    them.

    There is another side as well. The "sensory consequences" document
    also notes that the nervous system which controls muscles could be
    influenced to cause what they call "Taser-like motor effects." The
    stun gun's ability to shock the muscles into malfunction is
    relatively crude; we might now be looking at are much more targeted
    effects.

    Tomorrow: Moscow moves in. Remote-controlled heart attacks, anyone?

    -- David Hambling