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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?"
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).
But I'm sure the DARPA solution will be much more expensive.
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.
LATEST NEWS: Dolph Lundgren and Van Damme have both said yes to become beta testers.
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.
--
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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 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.
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.
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.
The Germans pioneered in this research during World War II. They called it "benzedrine."
"Is this Winkhorst a nova criminal?" "No just a technical sergeant wanted for interrogation."
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)
I wonder if they also had a walkman with some heavy trance running...
!
Happy Trails!
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
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 now I have to compete with people who can play Diablo for 5 days without even taking a bathroom break????
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.
Acute lead poisioning = Getting shot.
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
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.
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
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.