Russian military technologists are reportedly developing a ‘zombie gun’ – that is, a weapon that could theoretically render an individual pliable, or even drive them insane by directly attacking the brain.

These alarming new weapons were apparently a scarcely covered election pledge from cuddly new old Russian president Vladimir Putin (pictured above with a not-zombie gun). Putin, who was elected to the presidency in March and will assume office on May 7, 2012, says such a weapon could be used “for achieving political and strategic goals.” Hmm.

Russian defence minister Anatoly Serdyukov expanded on this:

“The development of weaponry based on new physics principles – direct-energy weapons, geophysical weapons, wave-energy weapons, genetic weapons, psychotronic weapons, and so on – is part of the state arms procurement programme for 2011-2020.”

Such weapons may be able to short-circuit the executive function capacity of the brain. At that point, a fellow human being would then become putty, or possibly revert to a primal state.

And that’s not all. For years, weapons scientists (who fall alongside bankers and raw, untreated sewage on my Things I Respect list), have also proposed weapons that can attack the central nervous system or cook internal organs.

Such weapons could easily be designed to be fatal. Extremely high doses of microwaves would be capable of stopping someone’s heart from beating, or disintegrating their eyeballs, for example. Ain’t war lovely?

Mind you, they may not always be restricted to military purposes: already in Russia, weapons with lower doses of microwaves have been used for crowd control.