Armies and police around the world are eagerly awaiting delivery of new "non-lethal" weapons from the United States and Sweden.
For more than 40 years, scientists in the two nations have secretly developed weapons that can control humans without killing them. Many already perfected will save lives as U.N. and NATO troops take on more peacekeeping operations and police make better use of new technology.The new arsenal includes devices that stop engines from afar, capture hostage takers, push cars off roads, take down attackers, control crowds and prisoners and incapacitate field troops and small populations - without fatalities.
"Open" prisons will have unattended invisible fences that sicken anyone approaching or fry prisoners' organs if they try to escape. Police worldwide today, in self-defense, routinely blast away at anyone confronting them with a gun, knife or club. But by the year 2000, officers will simply fire a harmless net gun instead of shooting. One type fires a chemical charge that turns into a sticky net when it contacts air; others carry actual nets. Both cover and entangle human targets, bringing them to the ground, tied, pinned and helpless - but alive and unhurt.
In the United States the FBI has ordered Myotron "Widow Makers" - a powerful new type of stun gun that knocks down men, tigers and elephants for several crucial minutes (time to get away or call for help) without harm. Crime-ridden Russia recently ordered 100,000 Myotrons for its police forces.
William Gunby, CEO of the designers of the Myotron, says: "It's a horrible, powerful weapon and not to be toyed with - but it doesn't kill.
"Humans on whom it has been tested say it feels like millions of tiny needles racing through their body. Brain signals are scrambled, and all voluntary muscles are incapacitated." The heart, an involuntary muscle, is not affected.
"We designed the Myotron primarily to help women, but Arizona State police and bailiffs with the New York Supreme Court have purchased them," says Gunby. "They are legal to the public by U.S. federal law, and we are selling them around the world."
What if the $200 Myotron falls into the hands of holdup men or rapists? Better to be knocked unconscious, say police sources, than be knifed or shot. If everyone had a Myotron, crime would still exist but with far fewer deaths.
Inside a group of red-brick buildings in Sweden, researchers are perfecting a weapon begun by Adolf Hitler back in 1942, which he hoped would win World War II.
The Vortex Cannon was designed to fire a smoke-ring-like charge of air spinning faster than the speed of sound. Inside the barrel of air is a shock wave, which cannot be stopped by anything built by man. Third Reich scientists designed the air gun to destroy B-17 bombers at the then ultimate altitude of 15,000 feet.
At the same time, similar vortex research began in Sweden, whose tiny air force wanted an air cannon placed on the back of their fighter planes to knock apart anyone on their tail. Hitler's fleeing scientists abandoned the Vortex at war's end, but the Swedes continued research.
Guy Obolensky, an American inventor, put together a Vortex Cannon in his Greenwich Village laboratory in New York in 1950. He says the ear-splitting air cannon snapped lumber like paper straws. When he stood in its path, "I felt like a huge rubber blanket had been dropped on me and almost lost control of my bowels."
Obolensky, who ran out of self-funding, tried to interest the U.S. government in his vortex prototype but was ignored. He didn't know that America had already begun a highly secret vortex program called Project Squid in 1940. The U.S. Army and Navy have top-secret vortex projects under way at Camp Pendleton in California but will not discuss them.
Now Swedish researchers have miniaturized and refined the Vortex so it can blow cars off a road; engulf, knock down and sicken rioters; or deliver gas at the speed of sound.
With a battalion of peacekeepers in the Middle East and Africa, Sweden is trying to humanely stop blockades of old people and children halting U.N. relief columns. That's why many of 1,000 scientists at the Swedish Defense Research Institute are working on non-lethal weapons projects.
Bengt Wigbrand, a director and soldier-scientist, says non-lethal weapons are essential for peace. "I was standing with Swedish scientist Kurt Larsson at a U.N.-blocked checkpoint in Lebanon manned by Finish troops when a military convoy drove up and demanded to go through.
"We watched in amazement as a huge bulldozer was called in, shoveled up the U.N. armored personnel carriers like toys and pushed them off the roadway.
"Angry and embarrassed, we returned to Sweden and began work on a new type of radar that shuts down computers in vehicles for up to 30 days from as much as 500 feet away. Soon, military and border checkpoints everywhere will have total control of passing vehicles," he says.
The engine-stopping radar has been largely perfected, and police forces worldwide are eagerly waiting to use it to stop fleeing vehicles.
Swedish scientists are also at work perfecting a new type of disabling non-lethal grenade to rid U.N. convoys of the fear of coming into range of a tank sitting on a hill.
"To disable the tank without killing anyone inside, our people are working on a non-lethal grenade filled with aerosol gas, glue and carbon molecules," Wigbrand said.
Many modern tanks use a brilliant Soviet designed defense system. A ring of grenades is attached to the tank's turret. A radar shield surrounds the tank. When a missile or cannon shell penetrates the radar ring, the grenades explode destroying the incoming projectile.
The new Swedish non-lethal shell covers the tank's guns, gunsights and viewing areas with a super-sticky mess. Carbon molecules short-circuit the tank's engine computers, turning it into a "dead fish" without killing anyone.
International treaties ban permanent blinding by lasers, but U.S. forces already have laser weapons that can temporarily or permanently blind enemy soldiers. They were tried out in Somalia in 1995 near Mogadishu airport by a U.S. Navy Seal team, but on-the-ground commanders decided it was more humane to shoot the enemy than blind him.
Acoustic weapons are being perfected that can vibrate the organs of humans, stunning them or causing instant disabling diarrhea. Others cause the tiny hair follicles within human or animal ears to vibrate, causing instant vertigo and taking away the ability to walk or run.
A beam that can disable flying aircraft or control or destroy computers that run anything from businesses to governments and can kidnap missiles in flight is being readied in Sweden.
U.S. elite forces already practice using the "slime" or foam gun, which emits a stream of super-sticky chemical so powerful it can instantly glue a man's back and hold him to a wall. Even Third World nations without the benefit of high technology are turning to non-lethal weapons: Police in Jakarta, Indonesia, recently introduced living cobra snakes, held by police officers, as a form of crowd control.
A leading advocate of non-lethal weaponry is Col. John Alexander, who is retired from the U.S. Army. Alexander headed Special Forces A "killing" teams in Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand. Known as the "father of non-lethal weapons" because of his spirited crusade to stop killing, Alexander has briefed military forces around the globe and even occupants of the White House on the new humane technology.
The highly decorated and four-times wounded veteran is preparing a book, "Future War: The Non-Lethal Factor," to be published in 1998 by St. Martin's Press. Says Alexander: "I grew weary of personally and violently killing men up close. It's something I can never forget.
"In today's world of increasing peacekeeping missions it's increasingly difficult for U.N. or NATO troops to identify the enemy and not hurt or kill innocents," Alexander continues.
"And police in all lands are under so much pressure and live in such fear that they've got to be stopped from killing unnecessarily.
"Non-lethal weapons are the path of the future. I'm dedicating the rest of my life to saving lives."