Us nerds have all heard the story about the episode of the Pokemon TV show that caused seizures in Japan, but guess who else heard the story? The US Military. In fact they liked the story so much they started right to work on their own seizure-inducing gun.
According to recently declassified documents, the gun would have shot electromagnetic pulses that would affect the photic nerves in the eye, inducing seizures in “100% of the population” from possibly hundreds of meters away. The Army never tested this gun on people (or so they say) but were pretty sure it would work because…
“The photic-induced seizure phenomenon was borne out demonstrably on December 16, 1997 on Japanese television when hundreds of viewers of a popular cartoon were treated, inadvertently, to photic seizure induction.”
Yup, that’s someone from US Army Intelligence talking about Pokemon in an official document.
Other wacky weapons in the planning stages back then included souped-up laser pointers soldiers could shine in opponent’s eyes, a gun that could induce a fever with radio waves and a “voice of god” weapon that would implant suggestions in an enemy’s mind. So yeah, apparently working for US Army Intelligence isn’t much different from designing a Ratchet & Clank game.
via Wired