Based off a 2012 New Yorker piece titled "Operation Delirium" by Raffi Khatchadorian, details the military career of Col James S. Ketchum. He didn't distinguish himself on the battlefield. A psychiatrist by training, Ketchum fought the Soviets in a Cold War race to test psychochemicals that temporarily incapacitated the minds of soldiers in the field. The fear was that one side could gain advantage by frying the brains of the enemy, which could be rendered docile and harmless by nerve gases.