Pentagon Explores 'Human Fear' Chemicals
Published on Saturday, January 19, 2008.
American military researchers are working to uncover and harness the most terrifying chemical imaginable: that most primal odor, the scent of fear.
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.
Some in the military research complex have been down this road before. Remember the so-called "Gay Bomb," that would make enemy combatants irresistibly attracted to one another? Speaking of which, all those web sites advertising pheromones to make you irresistible to the opposite sex haven’t actually got many decent studies to back them up, a topic I explored in last month's Fortean Times magazine.
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