The Smell of War

In war, bombs explode, trucks burn, and sewage sloshes through the street. Veterans can´t forget the odors, and newly deployed soldiers are often so overwhelmed by the olfactory assault that it distracts them from the tasks at hand. To prepare troops, the Army and Marines use simulations that expose soldiers to noxious odors-melting plastic, rotting flesh-before deployment to Iraq, where the smells may be encountered for real. Smell is also being used to teach trainees to recognize specific dangers. The odor of burning wires in a flight simulator, for example, tells you that you have an electrical problem and had better land; the smell of cigarette smoke in a VR scouting scenario is a warning that an empty building might be occupied by the enemy.

For the scents themselves, the military turns to the multibillion-dollar flavor and fragrance industry, the companies that make Chanel smell sexy, Big Macs savory and Joy lemon-fresh. Although you won´t find it mentioned in their glossy annual reports, some of these scent houses also know how to synthesize battle-appropriate aromas, and Morie procured samples from several companies for DarkCon. Curious about the art and science of scent manufacturing, I arranged a visit to one of her primary suppliers before going to the ICT. I even had a mission from Morie: to secure new odors for the culvert and forest in DarkCon.

The warehouse headquarters of Intercontinental Fragrances are located in the sprawling outskirts of Houston. Just inside the front door, a visitor´s nose is bombarded by an aroma best described as burntcoffeewatermeloncottoncandyspice. Marna Arlien, a marketing representative, apologizes when she comes up to the reception area. â€By the time you leave tonight, your clothes, your shoes, everything will smell like this place.â€

Arlien leads me to the scent library, a large room lined with giant blue flat-file cabinets. She pulls a drawer open to reveal hundreds of little brown bottles, grabs one, and opens it. After dipping a thin cardboard strip into the liquid, she passes it to me. I hold the strip to my nose and inhale. Pretty good for the
forest, but perhaps too fruity. The next strip is better. I make it through five more before my head begins to spin. â€Don´t worry, they´re all safe,†Arlien says. â€I´ve had three kids while I was working here, and none of them have eight eyeballs, 10 arms or anything.â€

Finding realistic smells is difficult, Morie had warned me. She was right. There are a few hits-three options for the forest and an excellent â€Wet Dirt†for the culvert-but many more misses. One reason for this is commercial, Arlien explains. The scent industry, for obvious economic reasons, is oriented toward making things smell good, not bad or even true to life. Another reason, however, is scientific. Creating realistic smells is complicated because smell itself is complicated, exceedingly so.

The human nose can perceive at least 10,000 distinct odors, and possibly 100,000 or more. We can smell odorants in the air at a level of a few parts per billion. The Nobel Prize for figuring out exactly how we hear was awarded in 1961; for vision, in 1967. But the Nobel Prize committee, calling smell â€the most enigmatic of our senses,â€
didn´t wave the checkered flag for smell until 2004-to Linda Buck, a professor at the University of Washington, and Richard Axel of Columbia University.