In H. G. Wells's 1933 book, The Shape of Things to Come legions of airmen drop incapacitating "peace gas" on warring factions to rescue the world from strife-induced medieval barbarism. After pacifying every region of the globe they establish a socialist utopia in which war has no place and disputes are (for awhile) resolved peacefully. Nonlethal weapons make violence obsolete.

As usual, H.G. Wells seemed to have an inside-track on specifics of "things to come". ~ Jackie Jura

Go to ORWELL ON H.G. WELLS

Non-lethal weapons hurt (sick, repugnant and illegal). Wired News, Oct 28, 2002
Joint-Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate (JNLWD), established by Congress in 1997 under Marine Corps command, is obsessed with developing a high-tech arsenal that contravenes USA and international law. "Forcing drugs on large crowds of civilians is sick, repugnant and illegal". Non-lethals include: calmatives, better known as psychotropic, cental nervous system depressants or, more simply, downers inlude such substances as fentanyls (an ultra-potent, heroin-like synthetic) and rohypnol, aka "roofies," the so-called date-rape drug -- as crowd-control machanisms; sedative Precedes, which increases a patient's sensitivity to electroshock, as an instrument of torture; active-denial weapons (ADWs), which fire wide-angle 95 gigahertz electromagnetic waves that heat water molecules in the outer skin and cause debilitating pain (ADWs target innocent bystanders as well as enemies); genetically engineered anti-material agents (GAMAs), man-made micro-organisms that eat things like concrete, metal, asphalt, paint and plastic; veiling-glare lasers, wide-angle laser beams in violet to ultraviolet spectrum will blind enemies by making their eyes fluoresce, that is, glow. [http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,55337-2,00.html]

Gas is crowd-control weapon (used by gov't on civilians). New Scientiest, Oct 28, 2002
The mystery gas used to end the hostage crisis at a Moscow theatre could be a secret crowd-control weapon. Such gases are known to be in development by governments who want "non-lethal" ways of dealing with civilians during conflicts. Such agents should have been destroyed under the Chemical Weapons Convention. But the CWC contains what campaigners call a loophole, which allows gases for "law enforcement". Secrecy about the identity of the gas suggests it may well be a compound of military origin, rather than a medical anasthetic. Affected hostages are not being allowed to leave the hospital and relatives cannot visit them, possibly to prevent blood samples being taken that would reveal the identity of the gas. [http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992974]

Russians gassed the hostages (experimented with new chemical). London Independent, Oct 27, 2002 & Russia used Knockout Gas (USA declines to criticize). Fox News, Oct 27, 2002. Go to 14.Scientific Experimentation