The subject of thought control missile was explored in the last episode of the 1977-78 season of the TV series 'Wonder Woman'.
Written by Dick Nelson and directed by Dick Moder, 'The Murderous Missile' first went on air in April 1978. The network then reran the episode in August of that year. In the episode, Diana Prince was sent to the military testing site, Red Mountain Army Missile Range to witness the launch of the missile Athena (also the name of the war goddess of ancient Greece).
The missile was controlled by the person wearing the control helmet which gathered information from the controller's brain waves then translated the information to the missile which direction to travel through a radio transmitter. Thirty miles from Red Mountain was the small town called Burrogone where impostors were posing as real residents in order to steal Athena. They would do so by jamming communication in and out of Burrogone. The payoff - $1 million cash sale for Athena. However scientist Dr Wonderly had other plan - to build more control helmets in order to hold the whole country to ransom as there was no defense against thought control missile.
In 2015, 'The Guardian' informed readers, "Neuroscientists believe it will soon be possible for humans to control robotic avatars using the power of thought alone, or even to send thoughts or intentions from one person’s mind directly into another – a terrifying prospect for fans of cult sci-fi films such as 'Scanners', where society is controlled by an elite force with mind control and telepathic powers.
"Some even think that people will one day connect their brains together, via the internet, to form an enormous collective super-brain ... Internationally, neuroscientists have gone a step further, sending information from one brain into another to create a brain-to-brain interface, or BBI. Researchers have even made one person move when another person wants them to, all by connecting their brains.
"At the cutting edge of this technology, things get a little weirder. In 2013 researchers from Harvard Medical School announced they had made a device that allowed a human volunteer to move a rat’s tail via thought alone. That same year, neuroscientists from the University of Washington sent brain signals via the internet from one individual wearing an electroencephalography (EEG) headset to another with a transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) device, remotely controlling the recipient’s hand movements.
"One person, watching a computer game, imagined moving their hand to shoot down an enemy missile. His thoughts stimulated another person’s finger to hit the trigger at the appropriate time ... Rumors that the US military is funding research in this area only add to concerns about frightening potential uses. Could people be forced to move or act against their will, or have their innermost thoughts and feelings extracted from their head? The answer, at the moment, is almost certainly no."
In 2012, Professor Thomas Baldwin told 'The Daily Mail', the US military was actively trying to develop weapons that could be controlled by the thought waves of a soldier thousands of miles away via a computer, "It is not just science fiction. If you really can make contact with thoughts and get devices controlled by them, then you can have funny kinds of warfare. I don’t think it is unrealistic if you have the unlimited funds of the Pentagon to project ourselves towards some kind of Star Wars future."
In what described as human-to-human 'mind control' (or thought control), Michael Millar of BBC News reported in 2013, one researcher at the University of Washington was playing a computer game with his mind while across campus, another researcher carried out the command through sending a signal via the internet. Andrea Stocco told the BBC, "The internet was a way to connect computers, and now it can be a way to connect brains. The next step is having a more equitable two-way conversation directly between the two brains."
Daniel Wilson wrote 'Robopocalypse' observed, "It has sparked a discussion of how brain-to-brain interfaces (or thought control) might impact society in the future. Although the experimental set-up is too narrow to have practical value, it certainly makes us think." Dr Ian Pearson added, "We are not in the realms of creating zombies. When we have full links into the brain directly and you can control someone like a robot then we might have problems. Whether it turns to slavery or state control - who knows; you could write any number of sci-fi books about that."
'Wired' magazine reported in 2011 scientists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) were able to control the movements of a mouse wearing a mind-control helmet designed by Ed Boyden. The control helmet operated 16 LEDs from wireless power, and could be controlled from a USB base station. In 2015, 'Fairfax Media' reported, "Companies like NeuroSky and Emotiv are selling EEG headsets that connect electrical signals from the brain to desktop and mobile apps. Understanding EEG's limitations, as well as the opportunities it offers to everyday consumers and people with disabilities, requires delving into the intricacies of the brain and why millions of research dollars are being spent to find out how it works.
"After all, the ultimate app is inside our heads, and all the wonders of science have yet to beat it. In one test, the world's fourth-fastest supercomputer at the Okinawa Institute of Technology Graduate University in Japan took 40 minutes to simulate a single second of human brain activity. The brain's amazing processing power is generated by about 100 billion nerve cells called neurons. That's roughly the same number of stars as there are in the Milky Way.
"EEG detects electrical pulses from masses of neurons firing in different parts of the brain. These pulses are not thoughts. They are patterns of brain activity, including alpha, beta and theta waves, that can indicate a person's mood and their levels of relaxation, anxiety or mental alertness.The accuracy of an EEG headset depends on the number of sensors it places on the scalp, how and where they are placed, and the sophistication of the algorithms used to interpret brain waves into digital information for a computer."
The missile was controlled by the person wearing the control helmet which gathered information from the controller's brain waves then translated the information to the missile which direction to travel through a radio transmitter. Thirty miles from Red Mountain was the small town called Burrogone where impostors were posing as real residents in order to steal Athena. They would do so by jamming communication in and out of Burrogone. The payoff - $1 million cash sale for Athena. However scientist Dr Wonderly had other plan - to build more control helmets in order to hold the whole country to ransom as there was no defense against thought control missile.
In 2015, 'The Guardian' informed readers, "Neuroscientists believe it will soon be possible for humans to control robotic avatars using the power of thought alone, or even to send thoughts or intentions from one person’s mind directly into another – a terrifying prospect for fans of cult sci-fi films such as 'Scanners', where society is controlled by an elite force with mind control and telepathic powers.
"Some even think that people will one day connect their brains together, via the internet, to form an enormous collective super-brain ... Internationally, neuroscientists have gone a step further, sending information from one brain into another to create a brain-to-brain interface, or BBI. Researchers have even made one person move when another person wants them to, all by connecting their brains.
"At the cutting edge of this technology, things get a little weirder. In 2013 researchers from Harvard Medical School announced they had made a device that allowed a human volunteer to move a rat’s tail via thought alone. That same year, neuroscientists from the University of Washington sent brain signals via the internet from one individual wearing an electroencephalography (EEG) headset to another with a transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) device, remotely controlling the recipient’s hand movements.
"One person, watching a computer game, imagined moving their hand to shoot down an enemy missile. His thoughts stimulated another person’s finger to hit the trigger at the appropriate time ... Rumors that the US military is funding research in this area only add to concerns about frightening potential uses. Could people be forced to move or act against their will, or have their innermost thoughts and feelings extracted from their head? The answer, at the moment, is almost certainly no."
In 2012, Professor Thomas Baldwin told 'The Daily Mail', the US military was actively trying to develop weapons that could be controlled by the thought waves of a soldier thousands of miles away via a computer, "It is not just science fiction. If you really can make contact with thoughts and get devices controlled by them, then you can have funny kinds of warfare. I don’t think it is unrealistic if you have the unlimited funds of the Pentagon to project ourselves towards some kind of Star Wars future."
In what described as human-to-human 'mind control' (or thought control), Michael Millar of BBC News reported in 2013, one researcher at the University of Washington was playing a computer game with his mind while across campus, another researcher carried out the command through sending a signal via the internet. Andrea Stocco told the BBC, "The internet was a way to connect computers, and now it can be a way to connect brains. The next step is having a more equitable two-way conversation directly between the two brains."
Daniel Wilson wrote 'Robopocalypse' observed, "It has sparked a discussion of how brain-to-brain interfaces (or thought control) might impact society in the future. Although the experimental set-up is too narrow to have practical value, it certainly makes us think." Dr Ian Pearson added, "We are not in the realms of creating zombies. When we have full links into the brain directly and you can control someone like a robot then we might have problems. Whether it turns to slavery or state control - who knows; you could write any number of sci-fi books about that."
'Wired' magazine reported in 2011 scientists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) were able to control the movements of a mouse wearing a mind-control helmet designed by Ed Boyden. The control helmet operated 16 LEDs from wireless power, and could be controlled from a USB base station. In 2015, 'Fairfax Media' reported, "Companies like NeuroSky and Emotiv are selling EEG headsets that connect electrical signals from the brain to desktop and mobile apps. Understanding EEG's limitations, as well as the opportunities it offers to everyday consumers and people with disabilities, requires delving into the intricacies of the brain and why millions of research dollars are being spent to find out how it works.
"After all, the ultimate app is inside our heads, and all the wonders of science have yet to beat it. In one test, the world's fourth-fastest supercomputer at the Okinawa Institute of Technology Graduate University in Japan took 40 minutes to simulate a single second of human brain activity. The brain's amazing processing power is generated by about 100 billion nerve cells called neurons. That's roughly the same number of stars as there are in the Milky Way.
"EEG detects electrical pulses from masses of neurons firing in different parts of the brain. These pulses are not thoughts. They are patterns of brain activity, including alpha, beta and theta waves, that can indicate a person's mood and their levels of relaxation, anxiety or mental alertness.The accuracy of an EEG headset depends on the number of sensors it places on the scalp, how and where they are placed, and the sophistication of the algorithms used to interpret brain waves into digital information for a computer."
