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?"

Comments

HEROIN

[MancunianMaskMan]

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.

Re:HEROIN

[glesga_kiss]

Actually, you aren't too far from the truth. Amphetamines (speed) was used extensively in WW2 by both sides. Does almost everything this article is looking for; keeps you awake, surpresses appetite, gives you a boost. It's a part of standard rations, along with nicotine delivery systems (cigarettes).

It's still in use today, many of the "blue on blue" incidents in the recent conquests were blamed on drugged-out aviators.

Quote:

In the LAST Gulf war more than half of all American pilots used amphetamines to keep them going on long missions. And they did the same in the latest war in Iraq. What's more, the US Air Force says the drug they use - Dexedrine - isn't harmful. They need it, they stay, to stay awake and alert.

You laugh but the scary thing is...

[whittrash]

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

Not too amaizing

[ahoehn]

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.