DARPA seeking "Metabolic Dominance".. ie, super-soldiers... scary stuff

Originally posted by Majic
The kinds of drugs that can keep you awake and functional for 5 days would be very unlikely to pass FDA trials.

Nothing is free, and 5 days of sleeplessness tends to produce undesirable psychological effects. Hallucinations and psychotic ideation are not unusual, and are accompanied by other physiological consequences. The stress of combat conditions would tend to complicate matters somewhat.

It is not difficult to understand why the government would not wish to place someone who is hallucinating and expressing psychotic ideation in control of weapons systems. It is also worth remembering that sleep disruption and deprivation methods are commonly used for interrogation purposes, since they are effective in producing confusion, suggestibility and other effects that would not be desired among friendly troops in combat.

As far as I know, there has been no success in counteracting the negative effects of sleeplessness over such a long period, although that does not mean it is not possible or has not been done. But it would not be easy.

I am a Gulf War I veteran, we fought 100 hrs. straight without
any sleep. (1st Armored Division 3rd brigade 1/37 Armor)
We also took pills everyday.

[edit on 7/17/2004 by Soul Reaper]

I'm going to guess it wasn't Vivarin you were taking.

On the bright side, if you aren't "seeing things" today, you are probably fine.

I described acute effects of going without sleep for a period of several days, not long-term aftereffects (although if you do this enough, there will be long-term consequences).

Common symptoms start out as sensing movement at the periphery of your vision, progress through seeing things move that are not moving and catching "fleeting glimpses" of movement in your field of vision, maybe a feeling that your skin is crawling (especially your scalp), and might advance to psychotic effects such as thinking you are seeing and talking to Jesus as you stand watch. You may experience delusional or dissociated thinking as sleeplessness continues.

Don't underestimate the power of adrenaline and fear to keep you awake, either. The pills you were given may not have been stimulants at all, but nutrients to help you keep going in a stressful environment.

our country needs to pull its act together.... human performance enhancers might not pass with the FDA but who says the military won't use it

there are only 6 SR-71 pilots in the world and each plane requires 2 to fly

well anyway those pilots are usually given speed(were until this was found out by the media from other pilots who go on long bombing mission) to keep the awake on the flights because they usually get 4 hours of sleep at most.... this is in turn considered a human performance enhancer that teh FDA considered an illegal drug

the government said they didn't give it to the pilots but that the base commanders did.... taking the rapp for your country is a hard thing to do but people do it all the time

anyway can u imagine flying an sr-71 at 65k feet going mach 3+ for a 6 hour trip refueling every 2 hours and trying to stay awake? although this is reconnisance plane doesn't mean it isn't equipped with any weapons

the pilots should they ever get shot down have a self destruct button to blow the plane the smitherines killing both pilots..... i heard a rumor that the plane has an explosive strong enough to take out 10 square blocks in newyork city

although that has little to do with this giving them speed does

the military goes against the FDA all the time

in ww2 they used to give the wounded and the soldiers that were chickening out morphine to calm them down and block the pain from wounds that were recieved

morphine isn't considered an illegal drug but doing what our military did with it is breaking the law now

Originally posted by WestPoint23
I would not mind being retrofitted to be more efficient and having exoskeletons and advanced weapons to go with it but this has been going on for years I once had a former ranger who was medically discharged com in my history class to tell us some things (my teacher is a war buff) and he said he volunteered for a program which tried to make soldiers stronger and faster he said he was injected with a fluid and it did make his body stronger faster and tolerate pain more but it had one side affect it made a human hart the size of a horse hart but if they do prefect this combined with all of the other stuff that is one super military.

Why does that not surprise me? By the way, I love how you can fit an entire paragraph into one sentence. I guess I know why the ASVAB test is so easy. It all comes down to expendability...

The U.S. military is specifically exempted from the jurisdiction of the FDA and the Controlled Substances Act.

These exemptions are buried in their respective legislation, but it's not a difficult Google exercise.

do u honestly believe the military doesn't do experiments outside the FDA's guidelines?

lets take a look at this

FDA Federal Drug Administration

not the word federal

federal basically means federal government and who runs the military..... the federal government

so therefore the military which is run by the federal government which runs the FDA is not exempt form its own organization? maby not legally in the publics eyes but i guarntee the military does it anyway.... besides what the American public doesn't know doesn't hurt them

i would support this because it would make humans walking tanks.... what i don't suppost is ai, we should advance in ai but not so much as it can make/authorize/and execute decisions without human consent

we should take ai as far a being able to recognize/recat to certain situations such as a pilot in the air force flying an f-15 going on 4 hours of sleep could let ai take over which would watch for incoming missles and be able to react and be able to do simple evasive maneuvers but lets say this was a bombing mission and it was programmed as to what the target was, the ai would not be able to engage the target that was designated.... it could just give the warning that it was near the target to the pilot who would then take over but the AI not have the human consent to authorize the launch of the missle

truely fascinating topic. i would be worried about my heart exploding. i didnt sleep for 4 days once, and boy i can tell you i felt as dumb as a brick. the human body is a fragile thing, it would take many tests to aquire the proper dosage of each nutrient required for super abilities. the amount of phisical actions would always be limited to the amount of strain the human bone can endure. super stamina is no good if all of your bones are broken. where is wolverine when you need him?

Well, super soldiers would have an effect on wars, taking out primary targets and such, but then what's to stop them if they're that effiecient to do things wholesomely by themselves.
I mean if I were a supersoldier manafactured by the government, I sure as hell wouldn't listen to them on doing anything I don't want to do.. lol