Military researchers are researching ways to develop a weapon that will identify and harness the scent of fear.

The military has backed a study on the “Identification and Isolation of Human Alarm Pheromones,” which “focused on the Preliminary Identification of Steroids of Interest in Human Fear Sweat.” The so-called “skydiving protocol” was the researchers’ method of choice.

Pheromones are chemicals released by animals as signals to their own kind: for sex, for territorial marking, and more. They’re often detected in the olfactory membranes. But there’s more to pheromones than attraction. Many animals have an alarm pheromone which is used to signal danger; aphids, for example, use it to cause their fellow lice to flee.

Yay!  The military thinks of us as the equivalent of lice.  The military is probably going down the same road as their previous gay bomb.  They should probably stick with more effective means of fear weapons, such as spreading rumors and false information to make their enemies afraid.

If they manage to get this to work, it could backfire.  Those who suffer from PTSD could flip out and and go berserk.  It could even trigger normal people to go ape shit instead of just fleeing, like they want.  People who are in an intense state of fear do some very crazy and unpredictable things.  Do you really want to mess with people who might snap over something that they can’t control in a situation they didn’t even create?