Richard G. Epstein

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PENTAGON'S LATEST WEAPON
IS NO LAUGHING MATTER

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New Bomb Developed

at Secret Site in

Nevada Desert

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Special to the Sentinel-Observer

From the Area 47 Reporting Pool

by

Arial Sentry

The United States military, yielding to enormous public pressure, has finally decided to allow the public to know what is really going on in the notorious "Area 47" in the Nevada desert. This reporter, along with twenty others that were selected from major news organizations around the nation, were given a tour of the Area 47 research facility. Many areas of the facility were strictly off-limits, but the military brass that conducted the tour assured us that we were getting a glimpse not only into the focus of research at Area 47, but also into the major thrust of US military strategy in the coming decades. This report was reviewed by the military, according to the prearranged conventions that we in the press reluctantly agreed to.

The Area 47 research facility is mind-boggling in its complexity. When one reporter asked why the facility was called "Area 47". General Wilson, the general who served as our tour guide said, "Because all of the good numbers were taken." He said this with a completely straight face, but everyone, including the General, broke out laughing, and this set the tone for much of our tour.

Since the turn of the century, America has relied almost entirely upon high tech solutions to military problems. Our military is unrivaled in the world and is credited with establishing the Pax Americana that maintains the economic system that has the Global Landscape as its fundamental infrastructure.

America is prepared to meet any conceivable military threat, although there are no great military threats at present. The greatest threat to national security remains the rogue terrorist, who might have access to dangerous chemicals and weapons of mass destruction. The main purpose of the US military at this time is to protect and to perpetuate the Pax Americana, which has yielded great benefits for all of mankind.

The US military depends more and more upon robotic forces, on land, in the air, and at sea. The robotic arsenal ships are the backbone of American power. Armed with thousands of highly intelligent missiles, these arsenal ships are completely automated, having no crew whatsoever. The appearance of one of these monstrous vessels off the coast of a country that might be thinking of brewing trouble is often enough to give the leaders of that country pause.

The intelligent missiles that give these arsenal ships their firepower are perfectly accurate and have been so for a long time. The accuracy of these weapons has nearly rendered nuclear weapons obsolete. The emphasis is on pinpointing the application of firepower to critical command centers, rather than leveling entire cities. In 2015, during the last major crisis involving a terrorist threat, then President Klammer ordered a strike against the leader of a major drug cartel, Carlos Huriega, who was responsible for the bombing of a US Coast Guard station near Mobile, Alabama. When the President asked the Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staffs, who was General Mark Turner at that time, whether an intelligent missile could be targeted to strike Huriega personally, General Turner gave his now famous reply: "Striking Huriega is no problem, Madam President. You just need to tell us whether you want us to go for his left nostril or his right nostril." Huriega was eventually killed by an intelligent missile that successfully sought him out in the jungles of Columbia, but feisty President Klammer did not ask the General to aim for one of the terrorist's nostrils.

"Area 47 is devoted to the art of defeating the enemy without killing, a strategy that was born in the military think tanks in the late 1990s," General Wilson explained. "The big breakthrough came in 2014 when we discovered what the public has come to know as Short Duration - Very High Frequency Electromagnetic Pulses, the pulses behind the VibeMeter. Our scientists found those pulses right here, in Area 47, four years before Professor Nichols did, at Johns Hopkins. Of course, we didn't go blabbing to the whole world about it. We realized that we were onto something that had tremendous implications for fighting the kind of war we want to fight - a war without casualties."

General Wilson and his staff took us to a big observation room that overlooked an indoor recreation area. The recreation area was filled with soldiers from various services. Some were playing cards or electronic games of various kinds. Others were just relaxing and watching television. The observation room had a huge window that overlooked the recreation area. That window was a one-way mirror that allowed us to see the soldiers, even though they could not see us. In front of the window was a large control panel that looked like an old-fashioned mixer for making recordings. This control panel had dozens of sliding levers. Each lever moved up and down along a track and had a paper label glued to the console above it with words written in bold colors using grease pens.

The levers said things like "pull left earlobe", "pull right earlobe", "scratch left knee", "blink right eye", and even "grab crotch". There were dozens of these levers, each with its own unique label.

The General asked one of the reporters to come forward, and he asked the reporter to move the lever that said "pull left earlobe". All of the levers were in the down position and the General asked the reporter to move that particular lever to the up position.

What happened next was truly amazing. As the reporter moved the lever, each and every soldier in the recreation room pulled his or her left earlobe. They did this periodically, in a completely synchronized manner, until the reporter moved the lever back to the down position. There were at least forty soldiers in the recreation area, and each one pulled his or her left earlobe as if they had been choreographed.

The General then asked the reporter to move the lever that said, "scratch left knee", and lo and behold, all of the soldiers scratched their left knees, repeatedly, and in perfect sync, until the lever was back in the down position.

The General then assured us that we were not hurting the soldiers, that they were totally unconscious of what they were doing, and that they were totally unaware that they were all doing the exact same thing at the exact same time.

"We are manipulating their brains, using a special kind of vibration or resonance, that our scientists discovered, something that goes far beyond what the public now understands. These pulses are not the short duration pulses that are behind the VibeMeter, these are a completely independent phenomenon that our scientists, here at Area 47, working with your tax dollars, discovered. These new pulses are subtle tones, almost like musical notes, that we can use to suggest to the brain that it initiate certain actions. These subtle tones are inaudible, they are biological, but not quite electromagnetic, and they constitute the doorway to controlling human behavior. They represent a new kind of natural phenomenon previously not suspected. These subtle tones affect the brain in much the same way as conventional hypnosis."

The General then asked another reporter to step forward. He asked that reporter to move the lever that was labeled "whistle while you work". Immediately, everyone in the recreation room started to whistle the "whistle while you work" melody from the twentieth century animated feature, "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs". General Wilson cheerfully reminded us where the melody came from, because most of us couldn't remember.

General Wilson then asked me to come forward and he asked me to move the levers in a random pattern as I saw fit. I went to the console and started to move the levers. I felt as if I were playing some kind of human orchestra. I had the soldiers pulling their earlobes, whistling tunes, clapping hands, standing and sitting, bending and jumping, tweaking their noses, stomping their feet, giving loud yelps, and yes, grabbing their crotches. The machine would not allow me to ask the soldiers to do anything that was physically impossible, like grabbing both earlobes as they tweak their noses. The General explained that contradictory commands tend to cancel out, although not always.

The reporters were awestruck. The government had found a technology that allowed them to control human behavior down to the level of physical movements and sounds.

General Wilson then asked another reporter to push a lever that he had previously warned us not to touch. This lever said, "Laugh". The reporter pushed the lever and the entire recreation room was soon filled with gales of uncontrolled laughter. Some soldiers were literally doubling over. Some were having difficulty catching their breaths. Some of the soldiers laughed so hard that tears started to run down their faces. It was as if they were all sharing the same, incredibly funny, joke.

The reporter moved the lever back to the down position and the laughter stopped, as if on cue. The soldiers resumed their earlier behaviors, apparently oblivious to the hysterical laughter that had possessed them only a moment earlier.

"Gentlemen, we are now ready to unveil our latest weapon, the laugh bomb, perhaps the most significant development in weapons technology since the atomic bomb. Please follow me."

The General took us to a theater with a big television screen. He explained that the laugh bomb had been kept a complete secret since its creation nearly four years earlier. It was now time for the public to know what it was getting for its tax money.

"The laugh bomb was created right here, at Area 47. We consider this the key weapon in an arsenal of weapons that we are developing to eliminate death and injury from the battlefield of the future." The General told a lieutenant who was standing behind him to start the video for us. The General narrated the video as it played.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he began, "you are watching a group of marines who are training in a war games exercise that took place in the desert not far from here. There are two opposing forces: the blues, wearing the blue arm bands, and the reds, wearing the red arm bands, as you might expect. The reds have the laugh bomb, but the blues do not. Not only that, the blues are not aware of the existence of such a weapon. The blues are armed with the latest and the best in conventional weapons, including many smart weapons, and stun weapons, but they do not have laugh weapons.

"In the engagement that you are now watching, the reds have just sent an artillery shell, armed with a laugh bomb, into an area held by the blues. When the shell explodes, right at this point, it is hardly perceptible, but you can see that the blues are already in stitches. They have no idea what hit them. The laugh bomb pulse is powerful enough to keep them in stitches for several hours. Now, you can see that the reds are entering the territory that was formally controlled by the blues and the reds are confiscating their weapons, as the blues lie by helplessly, completely hysterical and oblivious to their being in a theater of war.

"Ladies and gentlemen, this next scene shows the laugh rifle, which sends a laser-guided laugh pulse to a target, reducing the target to a useless pile of laughing mush. We are thinking of making this weapon available to local law enforcement and a handgun version of the laugh rifle is currently under development.

"In this next segment you will see the test of a more powerful laugh bomb that was used against an artificial city that we built in a remote part of Area 47. This artificial city was inhabited by 10,000 troops. They knew that they were being used in a test of a new kind of weapon, but they did not know that it was the laugh bomb. They appear somewhat nervous as you can see. The countdown clock at the bottom left of the screen shows how many seconds to the detonation of the laugh bomb, which reduces all human beings within a twenty mile radius of detonation to a state of complete helplessness.

"There it goes. The detonation itself is hardly noticeable, except for the almost immediate impact on the troops. This laugh bomb will keep this city completely immobilized for two to three hours. If need be, we can send in additional laugh bombs until the city is completely under our control. That concludes our video."

Reporters, not usually a group to be at a loss for words, sat in silence. Finally, one reporter asked whether it is possible for terrorists to get their hands on such a weapon. Could a terrorist, for example, reduce Washington or New York to a raving lunatic asylum?

General Wilson assured us that this technology was so advanced that no terrorist could possibly develop this weapon. "Only the United States has the laugh bomb and you can be sure that our arsenal is kept under the tightest security."

Another reporter asked whether this technology, especially the technology for controlling human behavior, could be abused. The General replied that one reason why the United States was now making this technology public was in order to establish international controls before the deployment of this technology becomes more widespread.

"With scientists like Professor Nichols beginning to sniff around in this area, we felt it was inevitable that they would come upon these biological tones and that a technology for the manipulation of human behavior was a definite possibility. This technology could certainly be abused."

General Wilson assured that this new technology was still pretty primitive. "We can cause the human subjects to exhibit spasmodic impulses, like pulling an ear lobe, but we know of no way to control human beings using this technology except in this crude way. We cannot get human subjects to do things that they would find morally objectionable.

"Causing an enemy army, or a band of drug dealers, or the inhabitants in the capital of a hostile nation, to fall helpless in spasms of laughter, is certainly a technology that has tremendous military applications."

Another reporter asked if there is any kind of defense for the laugh bomb and the General said that he could not answer that because of considerations of national security.

As our bus left Area 47, the reporters in the reporting pool sat in stunned silence, looking out at the desert.

"I sure wish they would tell us about these things in advance," a veteran reporter from the New York Times finally moaned. "What if this God-awful technology ever falls into the wrong hands."

"What makes you think it's in the right hands now?", the bus driver shouted, as we pulled onto the interstate heading for Las Vegas.

A reporter from the Houston Chronicle had the final say, before the bus lapsed into a depressed and prolonged silence. She said, "Well, it's like anything with technology. Something can always go wrong, but there's a point where you just can't think about about it."