[Overtaxed]

< tinfoil >

[banjo joe]

Q: are they expecting riots here?

Q: will military intervention be required?

Q: are these merely contingency plans?

[harpseal]

Instead of something like valium to calm people down I for one favor using .5obmg rounds to calm the rioters. After one or two hits from the business end of an M2 very few people will continue to engage in rioting. Further, the cost of the .50BMG rounds is far less than some chemical agent. I fail to understand the desire for a non-leathal means of stopping rioters.

[boris]

John W. Campbell foresaw all of this--and promoted it as humane--in an editorial in Analog Science Fiction in the 1970s. Sorry, I cannot cite the exact issue.

He basically argued that agents that make all combatants (on the military field) or rioters "just sit down" would be humane. He proposed stuff like tranquilizers or agents that lower the blood pressure to the point where the combatant(s) can't stand up but must lie prone or sit.

--Boris

[RonF]

Just take all the marijuana that's uselessly confiscated from drug dealers in the WOSD, put it in burners, and blow the smoke through the crowd. Set up a live rock band, get them playing, and pretty soon you'll have a street party. Hell, I'll start a riot every weekend.

[Chemist_Geek]

"It's a rotten idea to drug rioters," said Edward Hammond of the Sunshine Project, a chemical and biological weapons watchdog group that is the program's chief critic. "Beyond being a horrible idea, it's illegal."

Oh please. We'll just have to shoot them then. You'll complain and whine just as much about that, won't you Mr. Hammond? Sheesh, some people...

There was talk of an audio frequency projector which broadcast over loudspeakers facing the crowd. There are specific frequencies which the projector sends, and when humans are exposed to those frequencies, they suffer from nearly instantaneous projectile vomiting and diarrhea. It's rather difficult to continue to riot under such circumstances.

Of course, we couldn't deploy that device either, without having Mr. Hammond whining about public hygiene and the destruction of the rioters' dignity...

[steve-b]

So, basically, the Pentagon is experimenting with illegal drugs?

[lavaroise]

Why don't they simply make the demonstrations illegal, end of story.

[avenir]

Why not aerosolize Ecstasy and turn the riot into a ravin' lovefest?

"We need pacifiers and Evian here, STAT! Get me Sasha from Ibiza to lay down a groove for this shizzow. Work with me people!"

[Lion's Cub]

Not a good idea. But I can almost guarantee we'll develop it anyway (if we haven't already), because somebody else is bound to. So we have to come up with antedotes and ways to disperse them, too.

[Hacksaw]

In a news dispatch, the Libertarian Party would agree to endorse the plan if the authorities would agree to use a cannabis based extract.