more from that linked article.
Other, stranger effects also have been explored, such as using electromagnetic waves to put human targets to sleep or to heat them up, on the microwave-oven principle. Scientists are also trying to make a sonic cannon that throws a shock wave with enough force to knock down a man.
While this and similar weapons may seem far-fetched, scientists say they are natural successors to projects already underway - beams that disable the electronic systems of aircraft, computers, or missiles, for instance.
"Once you are into these antimateriel weapons, it is a short jump to antipersonnel weapons," says Louis Slesin, editor of the trade journal Microwave News.
That's because the human body is essentially an electrochemical system, and devices that disrupt the electrical impulses of the nervous system can affect behavior and body functions.
Jeez Louise!
not that this is anything new. How long has spontaneous human combustion been a thing? it was reported earlier, but the Victorian era is when it really started happening.
Spontaneous human combustion from Wiki
Ok I refuse to believe that if you are a fat old alcoholic woman you just might spontaneously combust. Sheeesh!
Overview
"Spontaneous human combustion" refers to the
death from a fire originating without an apparent external source of ignition; the fire is believed to start within the body of the victim. This idea and the term 'spontaneous human combustion' were both first proposed in 1746 by Paul Rolli in an article published in the
Philosophical Transactions.
[1] Writing in
The British Medical Journal in 1938,
coroner Gavin Thurston describes the phenomenon as having "attracted the attention not only of the medical profession but of the laity" as early as 1834 (more than one hundred years prior to Thurston's article).
[2] In his 1995 book
Ablaze!, Larry E. Arnold wrote that there had been about 200 cited reports of spontaneous human combustion worldwide over a period of around 300 years.
[3]
Characteristics
The topic received coverage in the
British Medical Journal in 1938. An article by L. A. Parry cited an 1823-published book
Medical Jurisprudence,
[4]which stated that commonalities among recorded cases of spontaneous human combustion included the following characteristics:
"[...]the recorded cases have these things in common:
- the victims are chronic alcoholics;
- they are usually elderly females;
- the body has not burned spontaneously, but some lighted substance has come into contact with it;
- the hands and feet usually fall off;
- the fire has caused very little damage to combustible things in contact with the body;
- the combustion of the body has left a residue of greasy and fetid ashes, very offensive in odour."[5]
Alcoholism is a common theme in early SHC literary references, in part because some
Victorian era physicians and writers believed spontaneous human combustion was the result of
alcoholism.
[6]
