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2008-12-05 Home Front: WoT
"Truth serums" making a comeback?
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Posted by Mike 2008-12-05 09:03|| || Front Page|| [2 views ]  Top

#1 If it zonks you out that bad, wouldn't multiple sessions that look for consistent answers be fairly reliable?
I've only seen it in movies, so I don't know, but if its as powerful as some recent stories imply you wouldn't be able to tell anything but the truth consistently. Thinking would just be too hard.
Posted by bigjim-ky 2008-12-05 11:10||   2008-12-05 11:10|| Front Page Top

#2 How about a cocktail of sodium pentathal and waterboarding?
Posted by Nimble Spemble 2008-12-05 11:24||   2008-12-05 11:24|| Front Page Top

#3 I'm not sure if waterboarding while ones gag reflex is depressed would be such a good idea, unless you really wanted to drown the guy.
Posted by texhooey 2008-12-05 11:40||   2008-12-05 11:40|| Front Page Top

#4 Skip the fancy jazz.

Give me 1/2 hour and a potato peeler. When I'm done they will tell you everything.
Posted by flash91 2008-12-05 13:18||   2008-12-05 13:18|| Front Page Top

#5 This is just silly. Since WWII, psychoactive pharmacopoeia has advanced as much as has electronics. Using a truth serum in a modern, X-Files world, is just laughable.

My first two choices for drugs to get the truth, and fast, would be endorphine inhibitors, that neutralize the bodies ability to create its own pain killers. It is like experiencing heroin withdrawl, in that heroin also turns off the production of endorphines. They would feel every nerve ending in their body, all at once.

The other preferred drug has been mentioned as available for such uses, and causes intense and terrifying fear. Saying "boo!" to someone will make them soil themselves in terror. They will tell you what you want to know in exchange for your not scaring them any more.

The only reason I can countenance water boarding is because it is both very fast, and can be done in very primitive conditions. The US first did a version of this to Moro pirates during the Philippine Insurrection.
Posted by Anonymoose 2008-12-05 16:13||   2008-12-05 16:13|| Front Page Top

#6 Excellent analysis #5. We couldn't figure out how our .38 S&W M/P weren't dropping them. heh Regardless, pain/fear inducing torture works, pretty simple.
Posted by Last Breath Farm Resident 2008-12-05 18:10||   2008-12-05 18:10|| Front Page Top

#7 Depression can be induced nowadays, anxiety can be induced, euphoria can be induced... or at least one assumes so, given what can be fixed just with diet, exercise and odors (eg lemon for alertness, cinnamon for a feeling of homeyness). Not to mention learnings over the past half century about managing interpersonal interactions, and how to train dogs. (Hattip lotp!) The concept of truth serum encompasses so much more than old-fashioned barbiturates to those who think even a little on the subject.
Posted by trailing wife">trailing wife  2008-12-05 23:10||   2008-12-05 23:10|| Front Page Top

#8 "They will tell you what you want to know in exchange for your not scaring them any more"

Yeah, that's the problem. They'll tell you what you want to know, regardless of whether it's the truth or not.

Still not seen any evidence to suggest that torture works for anything other than what it was designed to do by the Spanish Inquisition: to produce confessions, not information.
Posted by Snakes Shaving1019 2008-12-05 23:33||   2008-12-05 23:33|| Front Page Top

23:53 Alaska Paul
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23:06 JosephMendiola
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