Smell as a Weapon, and Odor as Entertainment

The use of smell as a weapon, or a deterrent, was explored in a fanciful way in myprevious post on nuclear threats. While poking around the literature, I found a fascinating unclassified document from the Army Research Laboratory,Olfaction Warfare: Odor as Sword and Shield (PDF). The authors provide a sweeping overview of odor, from chemical tactics in the natural world to the use of scents in the beauty and entertainment industries. The primary military application discussed by Schmeisser et al. (2013) is the use of odor in stealth operations. These are designed to deceive the enemy by masking current location or projecting smells to a false location. Although the document does not propose putrid odor as an offensive weapon, the authors discuss the history of such efforts.Stink BombsStink bombs are “devices designed to create an unpleasant smell forcing people to leave an area or protecting off-limits areas against being entered.”One unsavory application during WWII was used to make German officers smell like rotten meat, but unfortunately, “this substance was so volatile that it could not be confined to specific targets and contaminated everything in the area.”Another unsuccessful project from 1966 tried to develop  “culturally specific stink bombs, which would affect Vietnamese guerillas, leaving the U.S. troops unaffected. The project was abandoned due to technical barriers.”But a more contemporary program reached the pinnacle of olfactory deterrence:In 2...
Source: The Neurocritic - Category: Neuroscience Authors: Source Type: blogs