The Pokemon Plot: How One Cartoon Inspired the Army to Dream Up a Seizure Gun

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/09/seizure-fever-dazzler/





In 1998, a secret Army intelligence analysis suggested a new way to

take out enemies: blast them with electromagnetic energy until their

brains overload and they start to convulse. Amazingly, it was an idea

inspired by a Pokemon episode.



Application of "electromagnetic pulses" could force neurons to all

fire at once, causing a "disruption of voluntary muscle control,"

reads a description of a proposed seizure weapon, contained in a

declassified document from the Army's National Ground Intelligence

Center. "It is thought by using a method that would actually trigger

nerve synapses directly with an electrical field, essentially 100% of

individuals would be susceptible to seizure induction."



This wasn't the only method the Center suggested for taking down

combatants. Other exotic, less-lethal weapons included a handheld

laser gun for close-range "antiterrorist special operations roles"; a

"flood" of network traffic that could overload servers and "elicit a

panic in the civilian population"; and radio frequencies that could

manipulate someone's body temperature and "mimic a fever."



The military needed weapons like these because TV news had hamstrung

the military's traditional proclivities to kill its way to victory: It

now lived in a world where "You don't win unless CNN says you win,"

the report lamented. But while the Pentagon still laments the impact

of the 24/7 news cycle on the U.S. military, it hardly thinks

less-lethal weapons are a solution to it. In fact, the U.S. has kept

most of its electromagnetic arsenal off of the battlefield, in part

because the idea of invisible pain rays would sound so bad coming out

of an anchor's mouth.



Danger Room acquired this secret study on nonlethal technologies

thanks to a private citizen, who filed a Freedom of Information Act

request, and now wishes to remain anonymous. By coincidence, Sharon

Weinberger wrote a 2008 Danger Room report after independently

acquiring a piece of the document – an addendum that described using a

"Voice of God" weapon, powered by radio waves, to "implant" a

suggestion in someone else's mind. It wasn't even close to the

strangest suggestion made for exotic weaponry.





Perhaps the most disturbing item on the Army's nonlethal wish list: a

weapon that would disrupt the chemical pathways in the central nervous

system to induce a seizure. The idea appears to have come from an

episode of Pokemon.



The idea is that seizure would be induced by a specific electrical

stimulus triggered through the optic nerve. "The onset of synchony and

disruption of muscular control is said to be near instantaneous," the

1997 Army report reads. "Excitation is directly on the brain." And

"100% of the population" is supposed to be susceptible to the effects

— from distances of "up to hundreds of meters" — "[r]ecovery times are

expected to be consistent with, or more rapid than, that which is

observed in epileptic seizures."



That's not a lot of time — the Army's analysis noted that a grand-mal

seizure typically lasts between one and five minutes. But the analysis

speculated that the seizure weapons could be "tunable with regard to

type and degree of bodily influence" and affect "100% of the

population." Still, it had to concede, "No experimental evidence is

available for this concept."



The document cautioned that the effectiveness of incapacitating a

human nervous system with an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) "has not been

tested." But the analysis speculated that "50 to 100 kV/m free field

of very sharp pulses" would likely be "sufficient to trigger neurons

or make them more susceptible to firing." And a weapon that harnessed

an EMP-induced seizure could conceivably work from "hundreds of miles"

away. The idea might as well have been stamped "As Seen on TV."



"The photic-induced seizure phenomenon was borne out demonstrably on

December 16, 1997 on Japanese television when hundreds of viewers of a

popular cartoon were treated, inadvertently, to photic seizure

induction," the analysis noted. That cartoon was Pokemon, and the

incident received worldwide attention. About 700 viewers showed

symptoms of epilepsy — mostly vomiting — an occasional, if strange,

occurrence with TV shows and videogames due to rapid, flashing lights.



The Army's interest in the technology doesn't appear to have gone

anywhere. When Danger Room asked the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons

Directorate, the command overseeing the Pentagon's weapons that can't

kill you, if they had ever developed or explored developing an EMP

seizure ray, spokeswoman Kelley Hughes flatly replied, "No." But at a

minimum, it's bizarre that the U.S. military would entertain the idea

of neurological weaponry.



The seizure ray was just one of several futuristic nonlethal weapons

the National Ground Intelligence Center envisioned. Another favorite:

"handheld laser weapons" for blasting focused light against nearby

terrorists. These weren't supposed to be the sorts of lasers that can

burn through steel — after all, nearly 15 years after the Army intel

report, the Navy still doesn't have a laser cannon small enough to

mount on a ship. The "point and shoot" lasers were supposed to be

dazzlers, to disrupt sensors or even blind assailants from up to 50

meters away. Alas, the paper lamented, causing "permanent blindness"

was prohibited by binding international treaties, so development of

handheld dazzlers would likely be restricted. (As it would turn out,

"gross mismanagement" by U.S. military bureaucracy would be the larger

obstacle.)



Then came the cyberweapons. The Army intel report presciently

predicted using "information technology as a nonlethal weapon." It had

in mind "a campaign to disrupt a nation's infrastructure so that they

feel they are not ready for a formal conflict." No, the Army wasn't

thinking of any kind of proto-Stuxnet. It had in mind sending torrents

of traffic to "flood" foreign servers until "a panic in the civilian

population," now without internet access, "persuades the [adversary]

military not to execute a planned attack." Pay attention, Darpa and

U.S. Cyber Command. Alternatively, the military might disrupt an

enemy's ability to control its forces by flooding the internet with

tons of inaccurate information — "either through distribution of

disinformation or illegally altering web pages to spread

disinformation." It isn't clear if the report meant to restrict that

"illegal" activity to foreign web pages.



And then came the fever. The report speculated that blasts of radio

frequency waves could "mimic a fever" to the point of incapacitating

an enemy. ("No organs are damaged," it assured.) "Core temperatures of

approximately 41 degrees Celsius are considered to be adequate" — the

equivalent of a 105.8 degree fever, which is frighteningly close to

inducing a coma or brain damage.



The idea would involve a "highly sophisticated microwave assembly"

that could induce "carefully monitored uniform heating" in "15 to 30

minutes," depending on someone's weight and the wavelengths employed.

"The subjective sensations caused by this buildup of heat are far more

unpleasant than those accompanying fever," the report assured. Yet the

military would have to be careful not to cause any "permanent" organ

damage with such a weapon — which would take careful monitoring, as

the report noted that increasing someone's body temperature a single

degree Celsius beyond the envisioned 42 degrees would probably be

fatal.



As it turned out, the military would develop a microwave weapon — the

Active Denial System. That's a microwave gun that, as I learned

first-hand one fateful afternoon, makes victims feel like they've

stepped into a blast furnace. But its frequencies are too shallow to

penetrate the skin, and can't even pop a bag of popcorn. (It's been

tried.) Still, the idea of being heated with something like that for

15 minutes to a half hour is unbearable: I lasted maybe two seconds

before my reflexes forced me to jump out of the way of its beam. And

in 2010, the device was recalled from Afghanistan when commanders

realized it was a PR nightmare. It has one of the many downsides to

these weapons that the Army's 1998 that report didn't consider. Of

course, few things age worse than predictions for the future.