DARPA Wants to Engineer "Kill Proof" Soldiers with Hardwired Animal Characteristics

The gang at DARPA — you know, the ones working on invisible, shoot-through, self-healing armor — want to create kill-proof soldiers that have characteristics of animals that can survive in extreme conditions. They're researching things like allowing soldiers to redirect oxygen demand throughout their bodies to allow them to stay underwater for hours. Dammit, DARPA, didn't you see the Bourne movies? This isn't going to end well for you.

The project has two goals: the first is to allow soldiers to survive in extreme conditions, such as high altitude, blazing heat, freezing cold, and underwater, by taking on the traits of the animals that live in said environments. The second is to make soldiers "kill proof" my making them immune to deadly chemicals and radiation. Apparently there are a bunch of organisms that are resistant to those horrible things that'll kill you or I off in a matter of minutes, and DARPA wants to get those characteristics into our soldiers.

It all sounds totally wacky and unrealistic to me, but I'm just a blogger and not an overpaid government scientist, so what do I know? If they do manage to figure this stuff out, they'd just better make sure none of these super animal soldiers loses their memory, falls in love, loses said love, is framed by a Russian, and uses violence to remember who they are and how they got into such a wacky predicament. Unless they film it, of course, 'cause that shit is badass. [Danger Room]