Pentagon Investigates 'Stench Warfare'

By Patrick Goodenough
CNSNews.com London Bureau Chief
July 05, 2001

London (CNSNews.com) - The Pentagon is developing the ultimate "stink bomb" - a harmless weapon aimed at clearing hostile mobs or driving away enemy troops with a stench so foul it will provoke not just repugnance but fear.

At a time world leaders and international bodies face regular and increasingly violent protests associated with anti-globalization demonstrations, "stench warfare" could form an important part of the U.S. military's non-lethal weapons program.

According to a report in the British publication New Scientist, researchers have found a strong link between bad smells and fear, with offensive odors having an effect on tissue inside the brain.

In a warfare or riot situations, most effective would be a smell that not only drives people to want to get away from the stench, but also to escape from perceived bodily harm.

"It would give us an offensive capability against large and unruly groups of people, if they are unwilling to move or are openly hostile," a Pentagon spokesman was quoted as saying. "And it would minimize the risk to our people and to the antagonists."

Having discovered that smells prompt differing reactions among people from different ethnic groups, experts are now experimenting to find a smell which will trigger a reaction that transcends cultural differences.

Pam Dalton of the Model Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia has tested various bad smells on volunteers including Hispanics, whites, African-Americans and a group of South African township dwellers, in an attempt to find a universal formula that works.

Volunteers were asked questions about how each smell made them feel, and whether they thought it was harmful. Their bodies' physiological reaction to each smell was also monitored.

Dalton, a cognitive psychologist, found two odors that appeared to offend irrespective of culture and ethnicity, the magazine reported.

The first smell, called U.S. Government Standard Bathroom Malodor, is a smell created to test the effectiveness of deodorizing cleaning products.

"It's very pungent," said Dalton. "More precisely, it smells like s***, but much, much stronger. It fills your head. It gets to you in ways that are unimaginable."

So awful was the smell some volunteers began to scream and curse within seconds of exposure. Although it was harmless, everyone expressed the view that it would damage their health.

The second stench was a sulphur-based one approximating the smell of rotting carcasses or food.

It is an update of a smell experimented with during World War II, when the U.S. Office of Strategic Services created a noxious fluid affectionately known as "Who Me?"

The idea was for French resistance partisans to humiliate German officers by making them smell foul. The plan failed, however, as the smell ended up contaminating everything in the area, not just the target.

New Scientist said a mixture of these two smells, fecal and rotting, may be most effective.

"A combination of two of the world's worst smells should affect everyone - even those who might be 'smell-blind' to one of its components - and should create something so far removed from anyone's experience that the fear factor kicks in."

A smell doesn't have to be damaging to our health for us to believe strongly that it is.

On a summer day in 1999, a scare at the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington DC saw cafeteria staff rushed to hospital as police, a hazardous material team and medics investigated a foul smell some suspected may be a terrorist gas attack.

In the end, the magazine reported, it was discovered that a bag of rotting onions, its odor wafting through the air ducts, was responsible.

If people had been able to identify the smell, they wouldn't have panicked, Dalton said. "But when people don't recognize a smell they assume it's a hazard."