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DARPA Offers No Food for Thought
frank249 writes "Wired News has an article outlining the US Defense Advanced Research Projects agency's (DARPA) research into ways to keep soldiers fighting for up to 5 days without food. The DARPA project, called 'Metabolic Dominance' or 'peak soldier performance' is part of a wider, future-facing Pentagon research push to develop grunts who are pretty much immune to normal human demands. Perhaps they should call this the Universal Soldier project?"
Just tell them some really bad news, death in the family, girl friend dumped them, etc. When they are really depressed they won't want to eat for many days.
Ready commander?
;)
...wait a sec.... *looks around* A mob of zealots! Aaaiiii!
LOL, sorry I now have Starcraft marines running through my head. Stimpacks and all.
Nothing scarier than a mob of stimmed marines with range and strength enhancements.
Actually, I'm lying. A similar sized mob of zealots. *shivers*
*run away*
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
Insert obligatory "I'll be able to code for days straight!" joke.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
will they allow the soldiers to keep the ears they collect ?
Who is this Karma guy and why is he bad ??
But I'm sure the DARPA solution will be much more expensive.
Uh..I mean peed skills.
We need a DARPA-sponsored program to keep kernel developers active and efficient for 5 days without food. And without do_mremap bugs, too...
The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
"So Darpa, the U.S. military's far-out research arm, wants scientists to figure out if soldiers can operate at top levels -- without lunch breaks."
Sounds like my job requirements.
My old sig was REALLY stoopid.
Science offers us so many incredible possibilities to explore, things that can greatly enhance our everyday lives, and yet our tax dollars go to things like this.
I wish there were a militarily strategic reason to find a cure to cancer, stroke, or diabetes, because they'd all be cured by now just by the amount of money and focus thrown at them.
I also wish there were a law in the U.S. that for every dollar spent on the military, a dollar had to be spent on education.
I think someone has watched soilder to much, I understand that those boys were cool, but it was just a movie!!!! Now, go watch T2 and create robots to do our fighting. Let us eat and get fat.
**It runs through my veins like radioactive rubber pants! Do not deny my veins!**
LATEST NEWS: Dolph Lundgren and Van Damme have both said yes to become beta testers.
In other unrelated news, the Pentagon reports that the Aleutian islands will be renamed "Haven" to host a new project called "Sauron" ...
Only if we can rename the Missile Defense Agency to Skynet.
I do security
Offtopic like hell, but now I really want to play that game.
"SCV good to go, Sir!"
Huh?
What was that noise?
Just a box.
Any bets on how long before this becomes a competitor to Atkins and South Beach?
This ain't Ryouga Hibiki we're talking about. They don't become massively powerful when they get depressed.
/. discussion of super-soldiers.
Oi, I can't believe I'm talking about anime in a
I need to go get a life.
Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).
AFAIK the germans developed something like this in the last century, they called it the drug of heroes, or HEROIN. It didn't turn out to be awefully useful but still is a commercial success.
its called cocaine
The best part of the article for me was reading the following section: The agency has a couple of ideas on how this might be done: A cocktail of nutrients or so-called "nutraceuticals" could help build endurance, and then realizing that the ad to the right of the text was an ad for Absolut Vodka.
I predict military enrollment numbers will soar.
--
looking for automated code conversion services?
(COBOL, Fotran, PL/I, Assembler to COBOL,C, C++, C#, Java, etc.)
Check out Datatek, Inc.
is that considered food? if not, then i can survive without food for 5 day easily. :)
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
Um, experimental treatments to deny military personnel their basic needs would not be a good recruiting tool.
Instead, they should spend their research money building these.
THAT would make me want to join the army!
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
I hate the zealot rush. I've been getting back into Starcraft because it's the only game my buddy and I can play due to his school's retarded NAT firewall. The million man march or the battle cruiser domination fleet is the only proper response ;)
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.
Just send them survive 1 month in Africa, they'll learn how to survive without food.
I read the jokes about Universal Soldier, super soldiers etc etc...but once we start down that path, how far are we from genetically engineered soldiers?
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
New and Improved LAN Party nutrition supplement now allows you to not only skip time wasting sleep, but time-wasting eating as well!
No way can they make "nutraceuticals" a real friggin word.
That totaly ruins it. Now I'm gunna have to come up with something else to describe drugs taken to avoid having to eat/sleep/etc.
Err, I guess that's kinda what their usage of it means; but god that word is entirely too stupid sounding to be used seriously.
At least my version was always neutraceuticles...
Do I put my nutraceuticles in there?I can say with authority that we were already asked to do things that were beyond normal human demands.
:)
And I wouldn't exactly call MRE's 'food' anyways, although some of them weren't bad as long as you had hot sauce.
Desert Combat had me not eating, or doing anything for that matter, for a couple days straight...
Putting aside any military/war/ethics concerns, there are several interesting civilian benefits that jump out from the article:
* "But [burning fat] for extended periods can produce toxins and can dial down the amount of energy the brain receives. Darpa wants to see if there are ways to burn fats without the side effects."
There's a mega-million-dollar industry in burning off fat, mostly by ingesting snake oil products. Obvious spinoffs here.
* "Mitochondria supplies energy to the cells; the agency would like to see if the powerhouses could be temporarily increased."
Again, weight loss... but beyond that, aren't there metabolism-related illnesses that this would help cure?
* "Increased body heat can boost the production of certain proteins, and these can trigger apoptosis -- programmed cellular death. Darpa wants to find a way to control these proteins..."
Programmed cellular death is the two-edged sword of middle and old age. If it doesn't happen at all, you can get cancer. But if it happens faster than cellular reproduction, you get aging. Any research into this topic will help on both counts.
* "...anaerobic metabolism produces lactic acid -- which is why you feel your biceps burn after lifting dumbbells. Scientists wonder if production of the acid can be slowed or dissipated quicker."
This sort of advance would be snapped up by athletes, but you can also imagine the benefits for others who exert themselves regularly -- from firefighters to construction workers. And exercise is another way to lose weight... though it's laziness, not muscle pain, that keeps *me* from working on my spare tire.
* "And the agency is looking at nutraceuticals, natural products and traditional nutritional supplements to give the body what it requires when there's no food around."
Well, that sounds like the meal-in-a-pill that's been bounced around for a hundred years, from the World's Fair to Willy Wonka. I hear they still have problems with the blueberry dessert.
And speaking of dessert...
* "...$900,000 grant to examine the effects of echinacea and other plants. He believes extracts from the herb can be added to rations -- and that should give soldiers an extra oomph."
Be careful with those herbs... the military wants to eliminate the need for food, but some herbs are known to cause the opposite effect!
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Great, now our military goes to war with a sandwich strapped to their buttocks. Where is the dignity in that?
Harpo Tunnel Syndrome--my wrist feels funny.
These guys want to do anything they want without paying repercussions for their actions. Sorry, buds, the universe doesn't quite work that way (until we can figure out AI good enough for the jobs soldiers have to do, i.e. policework, peacemaking etc...) Very often these days, it's the airplanes with the bombs that are the ones who take out the major targets; troops are mainly just to control the ground.
I think it's really sick and sadistic what the gov't is doing to our fighting men and women. They are HUMANS, not machines. Doing this kind of crap to them will royally screw up their everyday lives..
I forsee a situation whereby future soldiers are fubar-ed by all of these shenanigans, much like 'Gulf War Syndrome', and they are turned into drooling wrecks. Lawyers, start your engines now... And while I'm here, imagine a Beowulf clust...
"This is your life, and it's ending one second at a time."
Amphetamine (speed) keeps students reading for 5 days without food and sleep, so it aught to keep soldiers fighting too, right? Or are they using this already and are making to many drug adicts and need a better way.
Ask me no questions, and I'll tell you no lies...
They might first want to start an educational program to make certain that every soldier is familiar with Murphy's Laws of Combat.
Seriously, if the US had more civil protection training, Iraq would be a safer place.
This isn't a rant against anyone in the US armed forces - they don't get to choose their training, and I'm certain no-one in the US forces would tell them their troops are so poorly trained in those areas.
Spending billions on finding ways to stop soldiers pooing and getting hungry isn't going to stop people suicide-bombing checkpoints next month. Decent training for the job at hand will, however.
You can't solve problems by throwing money at them.
(ps. posting AC as you can never tell how USans react when discussing their armed forces - no offense)
Woe is ye who lose your humanity.
Happy Trails!
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
Near the bottom of the article:
"In addition to the required original and 5 copies of the proposal, proposers are required to submit an electronic copy of the proposal on a ZIP disk."
click click click damn
"Proud to fight for my country!"
If you eat something with zero food value, is that the same as not eating at all?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I mean, everytime we've meddled with Mother Nature and the human condition in the past, we've always come out smelling of roses... LOL.
Will we ever learn? (It sure is cool from the Geek perspective though.)
Loading...
Private Mito, you pathetic doughnut-eating symbiant, what is your major malfunction! Drop and give me 100 krebs cycles!
A research project into developing priests who can function for long periods without sex.
Even more importantly, this could be useful in disaster relief situations, especially where the transportation infrastructure is damaged or there's still a dangerous condition that limits the number or type of vehicles that can get in to the affected area. A helicopter or a HMMWV or an armored vehicle could be used to carry emergency supplies to the victims of a disaster, or to beseiged civilians in a war zone.
So when are we going to start seeing Genome soldiers? I mean, that is until Snake kills them all.
Also, whose footprints are these?
- WrexSoul
\/.
vvv
1. "You eat when you find the weapons of mass distruction."
...
2. Give them half the rations they need, and then let them fight for it.
3. Food suppositories. Absorb nutrients rectally. Call them MRTSUYA - Meals Ready to Shove
4. A) Kill an enemy soldier, you eat. B) Kill a British soldier, no food until you accomplish A).
5. The soldiers get to vote on when they eat, but the votes are gathered electronically. Which is "secure", as we know.
${YEAR+1} is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop!
Hey, Viagra works for "my lil' general" pretty well, why not give the WHOLE body a shot of that shit.....
...to fight for our country. Where has it gone?
/. moderator know about stuff like this.
5 days without food sounds a lot like a mission without return, but what does the average
Am I missing something? I read the whole article and the part about lead poisoning made no sense.
Lasers Controlled Games!
So now I have to compete with people who can play Diablo for 5 days without even taking a bathroom break????
We should skip the chemical enhancments and actually train harder. I was in the Marine Corps for over 8 years and the average Marine is in better shape than the average solider/sailor/airman but there's the elite Force Recon/Recon Marines who are already light years better than your average Marine.
How about thinning down the non-combat support types in the military and focusing on training the hell out of what we have left? Longer enlistments, better pay, and you're out if you don't meet physical training standards. Plus skip all of the extra duty billets that take away from your fighting ability/training like recruiting and drill instructor duty
This guy is way out there
I think that even if we did come up with some sort of solution, the range of possible sideffects would be endless.
To quote the article, "What this seems to be asking for is fantastic in every sense of the word," said Marion Nestle, the former chair of NYU's department of nutrition, food studies and public health in an e-mail message. "Calories are calories, laws of thermodynamics still operate, and humans are still human.
Simply put, they are trying to push the body beyond its natural limitations for days on end. Even from an evolutionary point of view (the God factor thus put aside), these biochemical processes have evolved over millions of years to their current state. Now, its true that evolution is a mindless force and that we cannot argue that its end products are most efficient - but we should take into consideration why the efficiency of these processes is as it is.
"Mitochondria supplies energy to the cells; the agency would like to see if the powerhouses could be temporarily increased."
Again, the mitochondrion is a very sophisticated structure. I think it likely that even if we were to "overclock" the mitochondria, eventually the practice would catch up to us in a horrible way. The human body is programmed to run at a very narrow functional range. Taking it out of that range and pushing it beyond its extreme limitations is reckless considering how little knowledge we have about it.
The main problem I see are future side effects. Military scientists aren't of the patient breed - they aren't going to wait 15 or 20 years to see the effects of their little "stimpacks." Once they have what they want (with reasonable success rate) they aren't interested in any further research in the area. Only through civilian research can we safely approach such an issue - and the product has no civilian application.
I just don't think this is worth the risks.
... that an Army travels on it's stomach.
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
...a Jolt Cola party works for our team.
Although DARPA might rejigger people's appetites and metabolism to avoid the need for food, they can't avoid the the physical constraints of conservation of energy. Even if a soldier is just waiting in a fox hole, they need 2000 calories per day of energy. If the fighting is intense (the time when no eating is possible) then they might need more tha 5000 calories per day of energy.
This means a soldiers needs between 10,000 and 25,000 of energy reserves for a 5-day stint. This means that these soldiers wil need 3 to 7 pounds of excess body fat (more if the soldiers is expected to last several rounds of 5-day food deprivation). Without excess body fat, the body will start mateabolizing muscle tissue and that won't be very good for military readiness.
Maybe all those overweight American kids might make good soldiers after all.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
The Soylent Green Field Kit!
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
1 - I notice that by reading BoingBoing I keep seeing /. stuff two days early.
2 - This reminds me of Soviet military doctrine. They wanted to plug a motor rifle company into the line and supply it with ammo only for five days, then unplug it, plug another one in, move the first unit to the rear, burn their uniforms, issue them new weapons and give them five days of eating and sleeping before plugging them back in.
This DARPA thing sounds like that.
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
Wait, the US brought two wars to Germany?
Wow. I guess you can blame anything on the US if you try hard enough...
--RJ
hmm time release pasta pills, the ultimate hacker diet.
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
I think the suggestion that the "USians" brought war to Germany twice pushed you into flamebait territory. WWI was a huge mess on all sides, but the US only got involved near the end, and the Germans kinda asked for WWII.
In the United States, soldiers take Metabolic Dominance nutraceuticals that dampen their pain sensors, raise the metabolism while maintaining lowered temperatures, and kick Mitochondria into hyperdrive.
In the Soviet Union soldiers drink coffee.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
How do you shove the required calories back into our prototype "5-days-without-food GI"? I mean, one MRE is about 1200 Calories right? How many MREs can you eat at once, hungry or not (even with the Tabasco sauce)? So if you go for five days without food, you can't necessarily go another five; you have to have a break and intake a ballpark (5x3000=) 15000 Calories. Now how is your body going to uptake that much energy, metabolize that much protein, etc. in a short time period?
Having lived on MREs (v1.0) in the past while serving, I can see where this is actually a matter of enhancing troop welfare.
(I hear the v2.0 MREs are actually pretty good though.)
I for one welcome our new sleep deprived overlords.
Fake nuts for dogs - really!
Ydco co
I would think there's a big morale boost that comes with regular eating/resupply they'll have to get over. I thought a big part of the army was 3 squares a day and a steady paycheck...or is that prison?
What do you mean by "the wars the USians brought"?
B O R I N G
Soldier morale and ultimately, public morale. Iraq has taught us a lesson about what can happen to public image even if you do win a war swiftly and efficiently.
It's also about cutting costs - "cocktail" supplements are easier to pack than food. Special forces can parachute into hostile terrority and complete longer, more difficult missions without the expense and inconvenience of having to maintain a lifeline of supplies.
Your clever use of selective quotes masks the fact that the education total is for _every single state_! Also you are quoting figures for different years... While in 2003 the government spent $404 billion on 'national defense', it spent almost five times less--$82 billion--on education.
The only way I could even see this being possible is if we stole a little enginuity from plants. Humans are not able to turn fat directly into the sugar they need to survive (the reason why you can't just starve yourself thin), but plants can.
If someone collect a reasonable set of genes necessary to impliment this metabolic short cut, and then devise a method to insert these genes into the genome (probably of the mitochondria). then we could have soldiers who would rarely have to eat. You would just charge the grunts up with tons of pizza, donuts, and crisco before sending them out to battle. They may be a little fat and out of shape when the step on the battle field, but as they fight they will burn it all off by starving themselves.
I see this project as only taking about 50 years, maybe 100 if things don't go too smoothly.
A slightly more realistic goal may be to have soldiers wear beltpacks filled with a glucose solution and a needle inserted into a convenient vein. probably wouldn't last 5 days, and you'd have to worry about infection and carrying all the liquid weight, but it might be worth it to have an unholy army that could march relentlessly for days on end and then fight without tiring for extended periods of time once the got there.
Rice University Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology- "Engineering the freaks of tomorrow"
Get everyone to put a bullet in his own foot before fighting, then live off the (natural!) adrenalin for a while... or become Breatharians.
Yes, we understand. G.I. Joes are a dispensable material. There is no need to feed them up when they may die. It's a plain waste of food.
Also, it reminds me of medieval common practice to pay only living soldiers after the battle.
There you are, staring at me again.
You eat what ... or in this case who ... you kill.
Flamethrowers and incendiaries provide a wholsome pre-cooked meal for all.
World Wars I and II.
(well OK, war was already there in both cases)
Don't we deprive soldiers enough as it is? We've got members of our Armed Forces who have to go on welfare and use food stamps to feed their families. Instead of this kind of research, why don't we pay them more so that we don't have to figure out new and innovative ways to screw them?
I must say...that ranks up there with the NY Times article about the Olympic timekeepers:
"These are the souls that time men's tries"
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
DONOVAN - UNIVERSAL SOLDIER
He is five foot two,
anbd he's six feet four,
he fights with missiles and with spears,
he is all of thirty-one,
and he's only a seventeen,
's been a soldier for thousands years.
He's a Catolic, a Hindy,
an atheist, A Chein,
A Buddhist, a Baptist and a Jew,
and he knows, he shouldn't kill,
and he knows, he always will,
care for me, my friend, and I will care for you.
And he's fighting for Canada,
he's fighting for France,
he's fighting for the USA
and he's fighting for the Russains,
he's fihgting for Japan,
and he thinks we put an end to war this way.
And he's fighting for democrazy,
he's fighting for the Reds,
he says it's for the peace of all,
he's the one who must decide,
who's to live and who's to die,
and he never sees the writing on the wall.
And without him, how would Hitler
kill the people at Dachau,
without him Cesar would have stood alone,
he's the one, who gives his body
as a weapon of the war,
and without him always killing can't go on.
He's the universal soldier,
and he really is to blame,
his orders came from far away, no more,
they came from here and there,
and you and me ain't brothers,
can't you see,
this is not the way we put an end to war.
As frightening as this seems, there are possibilities that this research can
Benzedrine was James Bond's drug of choice, after a Martini of course. Don't think it made it from the books to the films, kill people left, right and centre, but don't mention drugs :)
r _e xplore.php3
http://www.mi6.co.uk/sections/literary/moonrake
Brocklesby Park Cricket Club
I'm sure a number of you will remember the friendly fire incident in Afghanistan about two years ago. An American pilot dropped a bomb on a live-fire Canadian training exercise. I'm not going to say anything about whether he should've been charged, but the fact is he and his co-pilot were on some kind of uppers. Apparently this is relatively common in the Air Force to keep pilots awake during long night missions. Whether this was a factor in the mistake, I don't know.
But it certainly raises questions. Soliders may be able to go 5 days without food and still operate, but there will always be side effects, subtle or obvious, to messing with human biology. I would NOT trust someone to drive a tank, or man a patriot missle battery, who hadn't eaten, and that applies even more if he's been on drugs for that purpose!
Keep it simple. Spend money on peace-keeper training and foreign-aid, not super-soldiers. As always, just because we can, doesn't mean we should.
I for one welcome our new DARPA overlords!
so will this allow halliburton to overcharge 15 times (3 meals * 5 days) per "fed" soldier?
ha!
send them on good training course the average british squadie spends 3+ days without food and sleep or chemical stimulants and elite forces like SAS & marines can do 5+ (althought they are often halucinating after a few days during the falklands with a long period of no sleep or food one SAS soldier said that all he could see was a mug of beer hovering in front him). I would be supprised if top American units like 101st etc don't train to this level already, they just need to extend it to the whole army and then they won't have to spend loads on pills a risk getting sued or chimically screwing there soldiers up
Saying Apple is better than MS is like saying Botulism is better than rabies.
So killing a British soldier would not change one's nutritive position at all. I don't like the sound of that -- especially because there is the possibility of one eating such dead soldiers, removing the need to accomplish point A.
Looks like it's back to the drawing board, captain.
Apparently the American pilot was on some sort of amphetamine when he bombed Canadian soldiers participating in training exercises in Afghanistan. He ended up killing 4 of them. But he could have sworn they were shooting at him, despite the fact he was told there would be Canadian soldiers in the area doing training exercises. Makes me think about how many friendly-fire or civilian-casualty incidents are caused by soldiers that have been forced to take these drugs.
I have a friend who once informed me that he thought the Starcraft marine sounded like he was saying "You want a piece of meat, boy?" instead of "piece of me, boy?" when popping out of the Barracks.
Now every time I go back to Starcraft and play humans I hear the marine and it sounds exactly like that.
I hate him.
My English teacher once told me that two positives don't make a negative. Two words for her: Yeah, right.
The scary thing is that this is absolutely true. Here is a the DARPA goal summary.
New Science for National Security: Defense Sciences Office Overview
Page 6 -
Brain Machine Interfaces - Beyond acting on thoughts to having thoughts act.
Enhanced Human Performance - Beyond frailties of life to super physiological performance.
Go zerg
I knew what wars he was talking about...
But to blame the US for them? Give me a break. Those wars STARTED in Europe. The British claim that we showed up late and took credit - now the original poster is insinuating that we started them. The US just can't do anything to please Europe, can it?
--RJ
pfft. This has been going on for years, nay, decades, if the food I had to try to eat while in the military is any indication. (Perhaps they were weaning us off solid food in prep for this!)
Der Soldat ist was er isst.
Create a biodegradeable/organic/photosynthetic uniform that converts sunlight to glucose and is fed to the soldiers through the skin. When the uniform is past it's useful life it can be discarded. Extended periods of darkness may be a problem though.
The wars of the future will be fought by tiny robots. It will be your job to build and maintain those robots - the Simpsons
5 days eh? The human body has this stuff it distributes about itself, called fat. It's an energy storage system the body has developed over, well, hundreds of thousands of years.
Or maybe they could phone up the guys in the SAS and ask them how they do it. How much does a phonecall cost?
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
There's lots more on "Foodless Fighters" at Defense Tech.
I've been getting 503s 1 in 2 tries over the last 2 days. Slashdot has been slashdotted.
"At the Army's Natick Soldier Systems Center, a prototype First Strike Ration (PDF) has been developed..."
mmm... Twinkies (Family Guy reference to Natick)....
They want soldiers to eat PDFs? Well, I guess the BMP rations were too fatty.
I noticed the following excerpt from DARPA's sleep deprivation article (http://www.darpa.mil/dso/thrust/biosci/cap.htm: shorten the duration of conflict I'm thinking that this eating deprivation may also shorten the need for battle. Rather than lasting 10 days, it would last 5. I think 5 days of excrutiating physical effort is better than 10 with risks of endangerement because of lunch breaks. I mean, the typical soldier won't have enough of these moments in his career to have a long lasting effect.
"How many of our enhanced biological units have been killed today?"
They need to realize that they are dealing with people, unique individuals, not resources. Programs like this scare me because it is just a short step to treating people as only a resource to improve upon.
Coca Leaves
[...]The amphetamines are a large group of synthetic drugs with marked cocaine-like effects but are longer-acting than cocaine. Examples are dextroamphetamine (Dexedrine), methamphetamine (Methedrine, Desoxyn), and amphetamine itself (Benzedrine). The amphetamines are widely used to stave off sleepiness among those who work (or play) long hours, and are popular as "diet drugs" and as antidepressants. [...]
I think this could raise efficacy to a whole new level- 24hour work days- 5 days on 5 days off.
now I dont have to rely on meth anymore
sounds great
While I'm against fundamentally altering the human biological structure to create some sort of super soldier, it's not that difficult to go without food for a few days. While I've never fasted for longer than three consecutive days, there's plenty of people who do.
Do any of you remember spirulina? In I think the mid 80s it was marketed as a food replacement, said to contain all the nutrients the body needed to survive in just a few tablets a day. I only heard about from the ultralight backpacking perspective, but for a while there were some backpackers who would go out into the woods for a week at a time with nothing more to eat than about eight spirulina pills per day. They claimed to have all sorts of energy on these expidition. This worked well untill the same backpackers just tried going out and fasting during their backpacking trips, and what do you know, they reported again having all sorts of energy.
The moral is that humans are capable of functioning at fairly normal levels for a few days without food already.
Mod my comments down. It'll be fun.
those drugs are only authorized in specific circumstances, and only to particular individuals.
For instance, pilots are authorized to take amphetamines for going "across the pond" (transatlantic flights), or for very long missions... they're not given routinely to anyone/everyone.
The worst of the negative effects that have been attributed to amphetamines are often dose and duration dependent. Paranoia, hallucinations, tremors, emotional instability... most of those come in people who have been using large doses, or for long periods of time. You can see these effects much earlier in someone with underlying mental illness (you wouldn't want to give these drugs to a bipolar or schizophrenic individual), but those people don't fly fighters.
I don't know what the final story will be on the pilots who bombed those canadian soldiers... but unless the pilot was an undiagnosed schizophrenic, I'd tend to doubt it was a drug-induced hallucination.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
oh brave new world, that has such people in it!
As a Brit, I would like to see the US Army forget drugs that help soldiers go five days with out food, about start teaching them the difference between friend and foe. Some of the earliest casualties in the "liberation" of Iraq died due to "friendly fire". Same applies for Afghanistan and the first Gulf war. And before someone defends these accidents with "it different in a combat situation" or "in war you don't have the luxury of time", I want to point out British soldiers (I have family in the army) are trained not to panic. "Fight or flight" instincts are conditioned into "ascertain level threat and react accordingly".
Seems like trying to somehow "juice" someone to keep them alert and undistracted by hunger during periods of inactivity is going to get similar results. Would you rely on checkpoint guards to be as ready for ambush as if they'd eaten their Halliburger? When someone's in combat, maybe, but over five days of varying activity?
(All joking about amphetamines aside, the military does use amphetamines for pilots already. They came up in that friendly fire case where the Canadians were killed in Afghanistan.)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
A security hole has been found which may cause the American army to resort to canibalism. While the British are too polite to complain about being shot at, this defect might be enough to cause them to listen to the French.
We've known about this issue for several months, and the person who pointed out the defect will have their home raided and be sued shortly. To rectify the problem, please replace the previous no. 4 with the following:
4. A) Kill an enemy soldier, you eat deluxe rations. B) Kill a British soldier, no food until you accomplish A).
Please restart your war in Syria or Iran to allow these changes to take effect.
${YEAR+1} is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop!
here's a link to prototypes of this, in headwear.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
Of course, you know they're playing Halo and just want their own Master Chief...
Do you really think things like the firebombing of Dresden were really neccessary, though? I don't.
The US govt. (and practically any other government "leaders") are obviously serious obstacles to human progress.
If you knew WW2 history, you would also know that american people really didn't want to get involved in WW2. They needed to be attacked first, so military planners sent the fleet to Pearl Harbor, where they knew an attack was most likely..
You didn't mention Russia either, they're the ones who 'won' the war in Germany. The US 'won' the war in the Pacific by nuking civilians.. how nice of them.
But I'm just an american.. what does my opinion matter, when everyone else is enslaved by the television.
I wish there were a militarily strategic reason to find a cure to cancer, stroke, or diabetes, because they'd all be cured by now just by the amount of money and focus thrown at them.
Read the requirements and think two steps ahead. The DARPA program is talking about ways to regulate cellular metabolism across the body in the face of strenuous physiological conditions(I'l believe it when I see it).
Diabetes is caused by the body's inability to regulate its own cellular metabolism and *causes* strenuous physiological conditions. Hell, theoretically if someone could figure out a means of controlling the body's rate of burning off sugar and get over the ketoacidosis affects (acidic blood pH = bad), diabetes mellitus could be induced to give a soldier 6x normal blood sugar and try to get alleviate the need for food for several days. Good luck in actually finding it though.
Cellular regulation mechanisms found in cancer would go off like a fire alarm in the face of this metabolic overdrive. Liver cells would certainly go into division if only to force out the resulting toxins. Cancer research will be necessary to ensure that soldiers exposed to these conditions do not turn into walking tumors. Also, controlled cellular division will be necessary for muscular function among other desired functions outlined in the report. Certainly some of this research will go towards learning how the various cancers work and help stop some of them.
Stroke research should directly benefit from these efforts because of the need to ensure that chemicals and blood pressures are not allowed to exceeed normal human tolerance. Arterial strength will be key to any increased metabolic system requiring higher blood pressure (whether from increased heartbeat or other causes) while clotting factors will by necessity be researched to promote healing and prevent brain damage.
Thus I think all of the points you bring up will benefit if only because they are means to the officially desired end. I think these areas will benefit much more because of the generous nature of military research, the only main concern I have is that the research would not be published for years if ever because of the military veil.
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
Anybody else read that as "Neuticals"?
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Godwin's Law here: The Germans pioneered the use of methamphetamine-fed soldiers in WW-II. Remember blitzkreig, anyone? Of course the chemical-boosted mental and physical stamina only lasts for a temporary short while, then the body and mind crash hard from the abuse, with dire consequences.
this is going to waste a person, they're not considering after affects
How about nuclear powered soldiers?
Seriously.
Implant a small nuclear thermoelectric unit (alternately, provide an inductive coupling for equipment-supplied electrical power for crews of plans and tanks and whatnot) and a chemical factory that extracts metabolic waste products from the blood. CO2 and whatever glucose is converted into then use the extra power to change it back into O2, glucose, and other useful substances.
What you get are soldiers that don't have to breath or eat nearly as much. You also get power for any on-board implanted electronics, perhaps a GPS and damage sensors distributed through the body injured soldiers can be located and evaluated remotely.
Diplomacy is the cheapest defense.
True it isn't as much 'fun' as making bigger bangs or faster flying chunks of metal but if you really want peace then make friends. That way you won't need to fight them.
Don't waste your time in your basement playing with gizmos or special potions that make soldiers last longer without food.
Interesting, eh?
No.
let the PHBs get ahold of this.
Technoli
Finally, Natick handed out grants to study how certain herbs might enhance endurance and mental alertness. Dave Gangemi, the director of Clemson University's Institute for Nutraceutical Research, received a three-year, $900,000 grant to examine the effects of echinacea and other plants. He believes extracts from the herb can be added to rations -- and that should give soldiers an extra oomph.
In other news, echinacea outlawed in the US: DEA agents storm natural food stores.
If other reasons we do lack, we swear no one will die when we attack
happens pretty quickly after a couple of days... the human body absolutely needs sleep.
The human body really requires sleep to function adequately, and you can only accumulate a sleep deficit for a relatively short period of time before serious performace degredation occurs... The military has found that you can operate on 3-4 hours of sleep in a 24 hour period... but only for a few days in a row (4-5 max), and no amount of training will cancel out the performance deficit that results. Believe me... the military has tried all kinds of things to get around this.
When you are running a serious sleep deficit, you get slow, stupid, confused easily, you can't remember things, you suck at complex tasks... some people even hallucinate.
If you want a good example, you should check out somebody who's crashing after being on a methamphetamine run for a couple of days... part of it is simple physical exhaustion and neurotransmitter depletion from the drug... but a big part of it is simple sleep deprivation; they take days to recover.
The same thing happens to troops in the field, or troops in training (ask anyone who's ever been through Ranger camp how much sleep they got, and how numbed and stupid your mind gets after a couple of days).
Most modern special operators are pretty bright folks, who's jobs require a working brain... just being tough isn't enough. They need multitasking ability, and that's one of the first things you lose when you're really tired.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
We could fly a jet into a building once a month
Perhaps they should call it "Orc".
"We can confirm that Debian does *not* ship the version with the trojan horse. Our version predates it." [CA-2002-28]
(dammit, I hit the wrong key)
We could fly a jet into a building once a monthInsightful my ass. Jet hijacking is over. 9-11 was a one-time-only deal that changed the rules of air travel.
Previously, the crew was supposed to allow the hijackers to take control, since they would merely want you to land the plane in Cuba or whatever. Now, everyone on the plane (crew AND passenger) is prepared to fight for their lives. Result: there have been several attempted hijackings since 9-11, with exactly zero successes.Obviously we're not paying Halliburton enough to feed them.
Any wonder recruiment and retainment are at all time lows? Troops over deployed by a President who has very little to back his descisions up with; budget cuts from the prior president still in full effect; and no we'll drug you to keep you going even longer.
When I was in came the logic that if we have everyone work 10 hours a day vs 8, 4 can do the work of 5. I'm not even going to point out the problems with that logic, but I will say it's led to a Navy that cannot be in two places at once - which might be nice with North Korea and Iraq going on.
Maybe they should figure out how to provide more than 60%-70% of what it really costs with Food andd Housing allowences; it's not like that grunt has a big fat paycheck that makes up for the difference. And he can be taken away from his family, sent to god know's where, and die in the course of duty all on a moments notice. All so I can worry about getting a paper cut and what's going to happen to Rachel on Friends and not fear some mad dictator coming to town.
If I had this I could grind my way to being a jedi in just a few days without sleep. When will this be publicly available?
I dream of a better world... one in which chickens can cross roads without their motives being questioned.
Like all technological advances in history, it will first be used to kill people, then used in the porno industry... 5 day long gang bangs... go USA!
Jon Bardin
Once again we are presented with irrefutable evidence that America is the Fourth Reich, and no one seems to cares. Fine, but it's going to end very badly for you, yanks. Oh yes it will.
I tell you what DARPA, have a look at pro cycling. Check out the numbers of people who just fall over dead that are (were) pro cyclists. In the last 13 months, 8 have died. 4 of them were less than 25 years old. These boys have gone through a far more tough selection process than grunts do. And yet, when you make unreasonable demands upon even their freakishly capable bodies, they stop working eventually. Whether DARPA actually cares about this is another question. But, humans are human. I think this shows, yet again, how little the upper echelons of the US admin actually care about soldiers.
"Thats right buddy, the large print giveth, and the small print taketh away."
"MD" - Metabolic Dominance, of course. If TCP/IP is any example, much of what DARPA comes up with trickles down to the civilian world eventually. Just imagine - a company where people work 5 days a week, NON STOP! I can't wait.
I've personally gone 11 days without eating and still been full of enough energy to bike long distances...
Simple solution...
take 1 Gallon of Purified water.
empty 20 oz.
add 10 oz Organic Dark Maple Syrup
add 10 oz Organic Fresh squeezed Lemon Juice
I've heard of people living on this solution with tons of energy for more than 40 days at a time.. you could probably go even longer. and it totally detoxes you..
and it's tasty!!
some people add cayenne to it for extra detoxing..
look it up: "The Master Cleanser"
it works!!
the trick is usually making sure you are gentle on your digestive system when you kick it back into operation.
whow... I stept on someones toes here?
;-]
Well: If it wasn't for urope you guys would still be running around with feathers in your hair.
My point was that in war you USians seem to not be analysing a lot... just whacking all that moves. (which might not be that bad as a tactic)
But let's take Vietnam... (oops... you guys tried to take Vietnam... after our french friends already showed you guys it could not be done.) Accidentaly, what did the us fight that war for?
Anyway: the vietcong, and the germans, and the germans and the koreans, and the afghans all had one thing in comon: they were outclassed in number and quality (not exactly the germans, they just had to little good stuff left.) AND they had hardly any food.
How did your oponants all survive this long?
and your point: US just can't do anything to please Europe, can it? well... let's say: stop trying to please us already!
Morc
--
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to observe it.
The drug is aptly named; it cures diarrhea (remember The Dirtiest Toilet in Scotland?), which is what made malaria so fatal.
In his history _Opium_, Martin Booth estimates that heroin has saved more lives than it has cost.
even better:
I would have sworn Bush and the CIA were involved in it.
and YES you brought them to Germany. But only after saving a lot of urope first.
Morc
Prior art.
Quack, quack.
already discovered caffeine?
Quack, quack.
I thought that MREs were meant to promote that
It came out during the investigation into why the USAF bombed a body of Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan. It turned out that one of the reasons the USAF's pilots disobeyed orders was that their judgement was impaired because they were high on "speed". These amphetamines were issued to enhance the pilots alertness on long missions.
The trouble was they were so alert they were trigger-happy.
to have a bunch of DARPA-developed super-hyped goons gone berserk, shooting everything & everyone in their path. Let's just sit back and watch the "friendly fire" spiral out of control. Yes, now your proud marines can drop even more bombs on their fellow soldiers and allies. It just goes to show that the current administration treats soldiers' lives as next to worthless
Maybe DARPA should first test their new automatons on the "Little Bush". (Better that he should die than a REAL soldier.)
Spending more money on education won't and hasn't helped. Getting rid of the dead wood overly thick management structure in the Ed system and swaping that out for more teachers and breaking up union influence against using other solutions would be a step in the right direction.
I mean seriously....well, okay, not seriously, but does eating one's own..er..by-product count? Not that I do mind you......
Huh?
A "compliance chip"?
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
"Hi I'd like to order the N.Y. Times." "She goes right for the Plagiarizing Section... while I like the biased opinons of Clintonista hacks..."
I think the problem with just doping up soldiers is that then they are unable to sleep.
Eating gets in the way of combat sure.. But when you don't sleep for even 2 days that gets in the way of even more when you start hallucinating.. at least that is what happens to me if i don't sleep enough..
try it.. just see what happens when you stay up past day three... doped up soldiers means more errors in the field.
There goes the US... Winging again...
Signed,
Europe
Unfortunately they arnt looking into ways to make grunts more intelligent - otherwise they would just quit.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
You need to read up on why the US dropped that bomb. The fact is that the Japanese would literally fight to the death - they'd never surrender. To end the war, the US would've had to invade the Japanese homeland, and causualities -- on BOTH sides -- would have been enormous.
The bomb probably saved far more lives than it took. Yes, it's sad. But sometimes that's how it goes.
We did stop trying to please you. You bitched about that, too. ;)
--RJ
I used to work for a university HIV research group, and one day my boss passed me a report from our military counterparts.
The US military considers HIV, and many other diseases, a threat to our national security due to the potential economic damage and political instability from high infection rates. They actually put quite a bit of resources into "neutralizing the enemy." Though their motivation may be different, the desired end result is the same.
I don't really care if the military, a university or even a greedy, profit-seeking company finds a cure. Just as long as somebody does.
(though I'd prefer the university...)
I wonder if instead of developing some kind of complex warrior robot, instead they would rather turn human soldiers into robots? They already have most of the programming done, and the most powerful computer on earth (brain). They're talking about interfaces between the brain and a binary computer, less downtime etc. If we can make them stronger, add armor and bigger guns...well...there ya go.
Eating well and getting some rest is probably the best way to recover from any activity.
Saying Apple is better than MS is like saying Botulism is better than rabies.
for catered meals shipped in from a neighboring country.
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
I'm not sure the military would be greatly interested in the drugs mentioned in the above linked article. Killing on a large scale is a bit different now than in Shaka's day.
Up until a few hundred years ago, war was mostly large groups of men pushing, shoving, chopping and trying to shish-kebab eachother. if you were rich you could also run their arses over with your horse. There are two major groups of reasons why these drugs could be seriously helpful.
Killing someone with hand tools has got to be a lot of hard work. An armored knight of any era was an awesome thing, yet he still had to kill one at a time, maybe two or three at time with luck. A modern tanker could reasonably expect to off four or five people at a time, more depending on a target, with no more effort than shooting one person. An archer is pretty much the same. One arrow might equal one dead person if they are up close and about ready to kill you. Otherwise it is just getting lucky (or unlucky if you get shot). A modern artillery guy has to be working pretty hard to hump all those shells around, I don't think it is the same thing. My point is that a drug that could give short bursts of strength would be good for an old school warrior, and not as good and maybe not worth the downside to a modern guy.
In war done by hand, might made right. In single combat or when things have opened up, and most other things being equal, the most vicious, fearless guy is gonna win. Look at the beserkers. Getting nekked and charging a bunch of guys with sharp sticks isn't my idea of a good time! Yet those guys were a threat. I think that they may have been liquored & drugged up, and that the nudity may have had some religious signifigance. Just the way we use the word "beserk" today is a testament to what one guy that is amped up and thinks he is invincible can do. I'm mostly guessing here, but a tanker or an machine gunner that strips and thinks he is gonna kill them all is just going to die faster. I'm not a vet, and history is kinda thin here, so help me out!
Basically, in old school war, getting hopped up and thinking your are invincible matter, modern war, maybe not so much.
In anybody's book, having the guy next to you puss out and run is bad, right? It opens up a hole that the enemy can go thru and then tear stuff up. That has not changed. The difference is in the old way the guy next to you was right next to you. In some cases you would have been touching and maybe your shield was covering the right half of his body. The effectiveness of your unit largely depended on how tight were and how much they moved as one body.
Look at King Leonidas & Friends vs. The Persians at Thermopylae, for an example. Three hundred were able to hold up tens of thousands because they got in a tight line and didn't puss out.
Ok, so the Spartans were barely literate killers that had done nothing but train for war and had to steal to get their food as kids. It's also important to notice how they were equipped.
A hoplite typically had shin guards, a big round shield & a helmet, sometimes some smaller pieces of armor here and there. The main weapons were a spear and a short sword.
Notice how all the armor is up front? To get an easy kill one one of these guys you are gonna have to stick him in they eye holes of his helmet, knock him over and then stab him, or sneak under a bunch of spears and start hacking away. Doing these things to a supurb athlete that doesn't want you to isn't going to be easy.
In contrast, a hoplite was almost completely bare in the back. Even a group of witless peasants could win if a group of hoplites turned or if they were flanked. When fighting as a group, facing forward and not stepping out of line were maybe the most important things. Almost any drug that gave a person the nerve to do this would be worth giving up a little dexterity & judgement.
I haven't heard a lot of evidence to indicate that the Greeks were big on hallucinogens and pain killers while i
Why do I have this? I don't smoke.
Look at me, busy as a bee, and i've got the cleanest house on the street, go meth, go meth!
DARPA would be more useful if they could find a way for some of the Army "leadership" to get better organizational skills. We don't need more total troop strength in the Army to meet taskings. Silly as it sounds the Army could add 30,000 to the fight by managing..... teeth, overall unit readiness and reorganization. Read this short op/ed by an Army combat vet. It is things like this and not some Buck Rogers solution that would be more useful: Nothing to Smile About ( SFTT.org )
i've heard they wanted to capitulate on the condition that the emperor stayed their ruler.
US wanted an unconditional surrender.
Of course, there were some nutballs, which wanted to fight forever. In some villages children and women were jumping to suicide seeing American soldiers coming.
IMHO, the second bomb was unnecessary. it was a political statement directed at Soviet Russia.
p.s. could someone from Nippon say something about that?
And I can definately atest to performance degredation due to the lack of sleep.
Having managed to get about 3.5 hours of sleep over 4 days I could have sworn that in the middle of the night a pine tree was actually a soldier wearing a top hat. And worst of it was, he was coming straight for me!!
Having not yet read the article, this could of course be a bit off topic...
But damn, that sounds like some great stuff. Think of all the applications:
- On a long backpacking trip and get stranded... well at least when your food runs out you can make it a few more days.
- Lost at sea? Buys you more time.
- Car stuck in snowdrift and waiting to be rescued. This could really help.
- I love animals. I try to eat at least one a day.
Adrafinil and Modafinil are newer alpha1-adrenergics that promote stimulation without some of the negative effects of methamphetamines.
Modafinil has a potency about 3x that of Adrafinil, it's currently a Schedule-IV substance in the United States. Adrafinil is unscheduled at the present time. Methamphetamine is Schedule-II, I believe.
Peace and love, y'all
Do you really think things like the firebombing of Dresden were really neccessary, though? I don't.
Killing 100,000 civilians in a single night, without warning, is a horrible, horrible, horrible thing. Make no mistake about that. But, through the lens of history, Dresden may have been the right thing.
Stalin was not a nice man, and killed more people than Hitler. He needed to be neutralized by the Allies every bit as much as Hitler did. We could have done that by marching on Moscow (which would have cost millions more lives). Instead, we demonstrated our ruthlessness and incredibal destructive power, at Dresden, at Nagasaki, and at Hiroshima.
We salvaged the parts of Europe we could after the war; had we been more ruthless at the time we may have saved more of Europe (and Asia) from that ruthless bastard.
Slashdot is jumping the shark. I'm just driving the boat.
What they need is some lembas.
Combine this with the recent "fly with thoughts" aircraft control crap and Macross Plus isn't that far off.
Okay, maybe the transforming robots will take a bit longer. But i'm sure we could just use a floating Barracks in the interim!
Just think: we could have floated Ft. Bragg over to Iraq, set her down just south of Baghdad and deployed all the troops we could ever need!
"And, apparently, if you believe in ridiculous false dichotomies"
So what's the real choice? Countries like France and Belgium, it can be argued, have a particular set of strategies and tactics based on their ability to deliver on a full range of diplomatic options.
You're the one setting up the false dichotomy; war versus not-war. There is no such thing in real life. War is simply a type of diplomacy. If you doubt that consider...
United States: Bend to our will!
Iraq: No!
United States: Then you cannot sell oil or buy things
Iraq: Our children are starving and dying!
United States: That can't be! Its only economic sanctions
So people die with not a bullet being fired.
If you die, does it matter if you die by a bullet or starvation or lack of medicine? No. Dead is dead.
So if I put in sanctions or tanks, the end result is the same. People die. Diplomacy and war are just different sides of the same coin. You present they as two completely separate things (war versus not-war) but that's not the real choice.
You seem very naive.
They used Amphetamine (commonly referred to as Benzedrine or "bennies") and also Methamphetamine.
Their Methamphetamine prodution method lives on to this very day, in illicit clandestine drug labs... so-called "Nazi Dope" labs... named after the production method the Germans used for meth manufacture.
Most of the labs that law enforcement agencies clean up, particularly in the midwest, are Nazi Dope labs, primarily due to the easy availability of one of that production method's reagents (anhydrous ammonia).
Just FYI.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Clearly US economic interests can't be asserted to satisfaction with their current army and Weapons Of Mass Destruction.
... apart from me, because I'm locked up for 10 years for taking some Ecstacy and proclaiming my love for life.
But it's easy to see why some people could find this a little disturbing, or even hypocritical. You see, from my point of view, I understand that Australia's drug prohibition laws are a direct result of pressure from the US government. When I go out to a rave to have a good night ( or 2 ), and take a very soft drug that gives me a little energy ( and God forbid, makes me happy ) my government reserves the right to arrest and gaol me for 'breaking the law'. But when the US military use drugs regularly to increase their 'effectiveness as killing machines', that's the best thing since sliced bread.
Of course creating drug-fucked killing machines that go on the rampage for 5 days straight has no affect on the families of said soldiers when they return home from the killing fields. In fact they promptly return to what is wildly recognised as normal behaviour for US citizens, and everyone lives happily ever after
Fuck the US.
> you can operate on 3-4 hours of sleep in a 24 hour period... but only for a few days in a row (4-5 max)
Yes and no. I know for a fact that that's not a hard limit for all tasks, since I've gone well beyond that.
While trying to get a research paper done for a conference deadline, I was sleeping every second night for about 6-7 hours. I kept this up for 10 days, and kept working quite efficiently all the way through. Add to this the fact that I was eating like shit (candy bars were a staple of my diet), and you get 3 hours sleep/day for 10 days on poor nutrition with only modest impairment of efficiency or mental capacity.
Of course, some areas of capability are hit harder than others. I recently had a 14-day stint of severe deadline crashing ('nother paper - don't let anyone tell you grad school is cushy!) where virtually every waking moment was working as hard as I could push myself. There was never any question about missing sleep - up until the last day I had to do work requiring cleverness and insight, so getting less than 7-8 hrs/night would have been counterproductive (and even so I looked like an extra from Night of the Living Dead by the end).
So you can function on 3 hrs/night for more than a week, but certain key abilities can be impaired. Quick judgements may be one of those, making it dangerous for soldiers to push themselves like that, even if they know they can.
(P.S. If you ever wanted to kick a candy-bar habit, try this ten-day thing. Can't stand the sight of them now.)
Lembas
In the early days after the accident, it was suspected that the cause of the pilot error was the use of "go pills", i.e. amphetamines, which are apparently are in common (and approved) use by pilots.
I have no idea whether the pilots were actually on such pills; the news started getting vague as courts martial started. I also have no comment on whether go pills might lead to greater safety (than if pilots were sleepy). My point in posting here is not to forward any theories, or to darken any reputations, or to disrespect anyone involved. My purpose is just to point out the incident, and the discussion of a connection to drugs, in case readers of /. haven't heard about this incident.
- Lowering soldiers' core body temperature might keep them from overheating.
sound like they are discussing the issues surrounding overclocked soldiers.Flamebait perhaps, but how about putting the solider in a situation worth fighting for? Today, if they sent me to Iraq I'd be pissed because there's no reason for me to be there. If I were this age, 50 years ago I'd, willinly, be one of the first on the beaches at Normandy. It was a cause worth fighting, and going five days without food for.
Does this mean that I won't be seeing any of that self-cooking food in stores any time soon! Damnit!
(\_/)
(O.o) This is Bunny. Add Bunny to your signature
(> <) to help him achieve world domination.
You wouldn't want them to keep you awake for 48 hours so you could do 4 8 hour sorties cause it wouldn't be the dex making you bomb your buddies, it'd be the lack of sleep.
Er, I suggest you actually read one of the atkins books, rather than spouting what other people say.
1. Atkins heavily endorses exercise. I believe he's the one who says in one of his books that if you are over 100 and/or confined to bed for non-weight medical reasons, you can call him and he'll write you a note saying you don't have to exercise, but that everyone else needs to exercise.
2. Atkins in no way says that his diet is for everybody. It works very well for most people who have been significantly overweight for a long time and have failed to get results from low-fat, low-protein high carb diets. Specifically it works very well for people who are prone to high insulin levels and a few other metabolic things.
3. There is no evidence that I know of that 'most Atkins-diet people complain of low energy levels' after the first 1-4 days. The first 1-4 days are crappy if you happen to have abnormally high insulin levels, because if you're not dumping sugar by the bucketful into your bloodstream, that insulin has nothing to do but knock your blood sugar ridiculously low. This goes away after a few days as insulin levels normalize and your energy levels go back to normal or higher than normal. If they don't, then you may not be a good candidate for the Atkins diet. People's metabolisms are different. Some people can eat huge amount of the crappiest food, remain healthy and never get fat. Some people can eat the healthiest diet in the world and still have issues.
3. Induction is certainly not a balanced diet or appropriate for long term use, but it's only supposed to be used for 2 weeks. After that, one slowly brings up one's carbs -- first to the level that allows sustainable weight loss, then slowly up to the level that allows one to maintain that weight loss, rather than gain it back. The last level varies from person to person, but is usually at least 60-100 grams of carbohydrate a day, sometimes more. This is sufficient to create a balanced diet, though it means that you can't eat the USDA suggest amount of 11(!!!!!) servings of bread a day. I've always felt that that was an insane amount anyway, but maybe that's just because I can't eat bread at all.
I suppose it's worth mentioning that I may have a skewed opinion of how easy it is to create balanced diet, because I've spent my adult life making a balanced diet out of a highly restricted list of foods, due to food allergy and celiac disease. Compared to this, just avoiding high carb foods is a cinch.
4. Atkins is not inherently high in fat or cholesterol. I'll grant it doesn't inherently limit these in the way that most diets do, but it is easy to set up a low fat low cholesterol atkins compliant diet, and Atkins does suggest that this is wise. That said, dietary fat and cholesterol intake do not necessarily correspond with blood levels. I've known plenty of vegans with high cholesterol, and my cholesterol went down when I moved off a vegan diet, even though my cholesterol intake went up. (Though I went off because of sudden onset of soy allergy, not because of the cholesterol).
Incidently, for some people, lack of fat is worse than too much fat (at least up to a point). The only thing that helped my eczema (and other health issues) more than getting the stuff I was allergic to out of my diet was getting off a low fat diet. Your body needs fat too. (IT's worth knowing that not all fat is created alike, as well)
Also, I used to jog 30 minutes a day, followed by weightlifting and stretching, which, combined with warmup and cool down meant that I was exercising for about 1 hour 20 minutes every day. I did this for six months. I didn't lose any weight at all (though I did see other health benefits). Combining it with a low fat/low calorie diet didn't help, either, no matter where I drew the calorie line or fat line (I tried fat levels from 10% to 30% and calorie levels from 1000 to 2000kCal/day). This may have something to do with the fact that in the great karmic game of life I drew the 'crazy mom' card and
Saw this on the BBC one day, googled it just now:n t/2947810.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/corresponde
Game, set match.
(http://www.worldlegacy.org/HungerQuiz.htm) How about we fix that first?
As anyone who has been in the U.S. Navy can attest to, practically speaking, sailors are already using anything they can get away with to maintain alertness. For some reason the Navy way is to have lots and lots of redundancy to account for fatigue induced errors, rather than reducing fatigue. As a result sailors can be required to stand 8 hours of watch, in which their job is completely redundant, on top of a 10 hour physically exhausting work day, every day for months on end. I personally found myself hallucinating that I was eating a hamburger in a crowd while standing watch one particular night. As a result most sailors drink coffee non-stop, have a stash of No-Doze packed away somewhere, are chain smokers, or use smokeless tobacco in order to stay awake. If there weren't nearly constant drug tests, I'm sure they'd use harder stuff.
Curiously the one exception to this seems to be pilots, who are required to get 8 hours of sleep in the 24-hours before they fly. I guess in the situation were redundancy isn't really possible, the Navy will concede that humans do need to sleep occasionally.
If it weren't for the fact that whatever DARPA comes up with never get away with being used unless it's wartime, I'd have more of a problem with it.
Mod parent up; after all sex is a major issue in war related psychological studies.
I suggest you google for it as it is so controversial a quote would get me labelled a troll. Just a hint for the lazy: the effects discussed are not immediately obvious.
Is Erick99 a troll in karma-whore mode? Inquiring minds want to know!!!