“In laboratory experiments, a normal cat displays the normal hunter instinct toward a mouse,” a narrator explains in a droning monotone. Donned in a stereotypical white lab coat, the scientist locks the feline in a box and sprays it with lysergic acid diethylamide.
A hallucinogenic drug better known as LSD.
“After 45 seconds, the effects of the psychochemical become apparent,” the narrator adds, as the animal hisses and jumps in terror at two mice.
This isn’t the beginning of some cheap horror movie. It’s the opening scene from a five-minute U.S. Army film entitled Mental Incapacitators — Psychochemicals.
In May 2016, the U.S. National Library of Medicine in Maryland posted a copy of the footage online as part of a larger collection. Though the Army’s Chemical Corps produced the shorts in 1959, the U.S. Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery donated this particular copy to the medical archive. At least one different version of the full compilation of the clips, with a visibly different film quality, already existed on YouTube.
The clip provides an almost painfully clinical look at the ground combat branch’s attempts to turn LSD and other chemical compounds into useful weapons. These days, the Army would probably prefer people forgot about these programs altogether.
While poisons and dangerous chemicals have played roles in battle since ancient times, chemical weapons became emblematic of modern warfare during World War I. But after seeing the devastating and highly visible after effects, the victors banded together to try and regulate deadly gasses and diseases on the battlefield.
In 1925, more than three dozen countries agreed to the Geneva Protocol banning the use of deadly gasses and bacteria in future wars. However, not all the signatories put the deal into practice immediately or without significant reservations. In the interwar period, countries such as Italy, Japan and Spain sporadically deployed chemical weapons, often in conflicts far removed from widespread scrutiny or criticism of any kind.
The United States signed the treaty in 1925, but American legislators didn’t put it into force for another 50 years. Even then, the U.S. military initially reserved the right to use chemical and biological weaponry against anyone who broke the deal.
So, throughout World War II and into the Cold War, the Pentagon went right ahead developing all sorts of new compounds and diseases and plans to use them in combat. The Pentagon put the Chemical Corps in charge of cooking up new agents.