Contagious Fear: Mass Sociogenic Smell Weapon

Fear really can be contagious. And while the human fear/alarm pheromone may have something to do with it, we may also be hard-wired to react to certain smells - which may have implications for a new style of nonlethal weapon.

There was a dramatic demonstration of the effect in Carancas, Peru last year on September 15th, a story I reported for Flipside magazine. A fireball hurtled out of the sky and blasted out a crater thirteen meters across. According to witnesses, the crater filled with boiling liquid and noxious gas poured out.

Up to six hundred people were said to be affected, including seven police officers who had to be taken to hospital. An official said that fumes from the crater caused "nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, headaches and stomach pain."

There were many theories about what had happened, ranging from a failed missile test with toxic fuel leakage to a crashed spy satellite or volcanic activity. However, US meteorite hunter Michael Farmer soon arrived on the scene and confirmed that the crater had been caused by a meteorite. The noxious gas was the result of the impact.

"The smell was caused by triolite, an iron sulphide, which when burned, smells like firecrackers," says Farmer. "Imagine a stone of about ten tons, and how smelly that would be. When it landed in the water, the heat of the impact and friction of the stone slamming into the ground, would have converted the surface triolite when mixed with water, into sulphur dioxide."

*"It smelled bad," he added, "strong enough to sicken people. Pretty soon everybody is terrified and gets sick." *

The combination of smell and fear is frequently the trigger for outbreaks of mass illness. A report on mass sociogenic illnessrecords several such cases:

*- On 8 July 1972 in Hazelrigg, England, stench from a pigsty may have triggered an outbreak of stomach pain, nausea, faintness and headache at a schoolchildren's gala; *

*- A 1994 episode of breathing problems among 23 students in a female dormitory at an Arab school in the United Arab Emirates was triggered by a ‘toxic fire’ that turned out to be the harmless smell of incense; *

*- An outbreak of breathing problems in male military recruits at their California army barracks in 1988 happened when the air was laden with a heavy odour from brush fires and mistaken for toxic fumes. A chance event combined to worsen the situation. Some recruits were
‘resuscitated’ in the early confusion because medics had wrongly assessed their conditions to have been more serious. These factors created more anxiety and further breathing problems. *

In each case these outbreaks of sociogenic illness – or "mass hysteria" to use the old-fashioned term still favored by some media –
happened when a group of people interpreted an innocuous smell as something harmful. Now, the US Army has been researching 'malordorants'
for some years, as described in the 2001 New Scientist article Stench Warfare:

The US Army wants a stink to drive away enemy troops or hostile crowds and to enforce no-go zones around sensitive military installations. It could also help peacekeeping forces keep warring factions apart by creating stench-filled exclusion zones. Police forces would have plenty of uses for a stink bomb, too. It would be ideal for ending a siege without firing a shot, or for dispersing rioters or even marking the ringleaders so they can't escape into the crowd.

The interesting thing about the various chemical mixtures is that although they are not harmful, they get a very strong reaction. US
Government Standard Bathroom Malodor (originally formulated to test the deodorant power of cleaning products) sounds truly intolerable:

*The smell is so awful that some volunteers began to scream and curse after just a few seconds' exposure. Even though the smell is quite harmless, almost everyone thought it would damage their health. *

It's easy to see how using this type of malodorant as a nonlethal weapon could produce a mass hysteria reaction. A crowd that believes that they're being attacked with frightening and unknown chemical weapons is apt to panic. Outbreaks of breathing difficulties and collapsing of the sort described above are entirely possible.

On the one hand, this is a bonus for the malodorant weapon, making it far more effective even though it has no actual medical effect. On the other hand, it's a big problem. How can you persuade people that it's harmless when everyone is toppling over and going into spasm? And where does liability lie when the weapon itself is innocuous but crowds scare themselves sick? I can see the legal actions from this one keeping some law firms going for years.