Did Black Mirror: Men Against Fire come true?
Partly. Black Mirror: Men Against Fire (2016) has a P(n) of 49% on Nearfi's P(n) Board, our estimate of the chance its future arrives within 20 years. Of its 4 tracked predictions, 1 have arrived and 1 are arriving. Its central premise, 'A neural implant rewrites in real time how soldiers perceive a group of people, so that humans look and sound like inhuman vermin', is still far off. The next prediction is estimated to arrive around 2030.
The episode's headset half has arrived in prototype: armies have bought thousands of augmented-reality displays for soldiers, though the programme has stumbled. Its implant half, which quietly rewrites what a soldier sees and then edits what he remembers, has no credible path inside fifty years. The idea underneath it, that soldiers must be trained past their reluctance to kill, is old, and it rests on a statistic historians dispute.
Read the review · 7.0/10 →
How this P(n) was calculated
P(n) is the chance that this work's future arrives within 20 years, by 2046. For each prediction we turn our estimate into a probability: arrived is 100%, diverged is 0%, and otherwise the low end of our 80% range counts as a 10% chance, the median year 50% and the high end 90%. Each prediction is weighted 1–5 by how pivotal it is to the story, and P(n) is the weighted average. P50 does the same by 2076. P(n), explained.
| Claim | Prediction · why this weight | Weight | Status · estimate | By 2046 | By 2076 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MAF-1 | Infantry wear head-mounted displays that overlay navigation and target data on their view of the battlefield. Supporting: the data feed is the channel the implant uses, but the plot turns on what it hides, not what it shows. |
3 | ARRIVING 2030 (2027–2040) | 96% | 100% |
| MAF-2 | A neural implant rewrites in real time how soldiers perceive a group of people, so that humans look and sound like inhuman vermin. Core premise: MASS is the episode's central device; without it there are no roaches and no twist. |
5 | FAR 2085 (2060–2150) | 6% | 36% |
| MAF-3 | Armed forces deliberately condition soldiers to overcome their reluctance to kill. Major: the whole episode dramatises this goal, and the implant is only its most extreme method. |
4 | ARRIVED arrived 1950 | 100% | 100% |
| MAF-4 | A soldier's memory of a specific act of killing can be selectively erased or reset, as a condition of continued service. Supporting: the reset is Stripe's final choice and drives the ending, but it comes after the central premise. |
3 | FAR 2080 (2055–2140) | 7% | 44% |
| P(n) = P20 = Σ(weight × chance by 2046) ÷ Σ weight = 7.4 ÷ 15 = 49% | |||||
| P50 = 10.1 ÷ 15 = 67% | |||||
Already here today (arrived 1, arriving ½, weighted): 37%.
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MAF-1
Infantry wear head-mounted displays that overlay navigation and target data on their view of the battlefield.
Weight 3/5 · Supporting: the data feed is the channel the implant uses, but the plot turns on what it hides, not what it shows.
The US Army bought about 10,000 IVAS headsets, built on Microsoft's HoloLens, with navigation and target acquisition linked to weapon-sight cameras. It then dropped the line: a July 2026 GAO report says none will be fielded, after soldiers reported headaches, eyestrain and nausea. The follow-on, SBMC, is an 18-month prototyping effort with Anduril and Rivet. Scaled deliveries are talked of for 2027, so a working fielded system is close but not here. 123
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MAF-2
A neural implant rewrites in real time how soldiers perceive a group of people, so that humans look and sound like inhuman vermin.
Weight 5/5 · Core premise: MASS is the episode's central device; without it there are no roaches and no twist.
Retinal implants now restore some reading vision, and military neurotechnology programmes have sought two-way brain-machine links, but both work at the scale of a few channels or a patch of retina. Nothing can read what a person sees and rewrite it live, across sight and sound, for a whole squad. A headset could alter a face on screen sooner and without surgery, so the implant may never be the route taken. The range assumes it is. 456
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MAF-3
Armed forces deliberately condition soldiers to overcome their reluctance to kill.
Weight 4/5 · Major: the whole episode dramatises this goal, and the implant is only its most extreme method.
After S.L.A. Marshall's 1947 book Men Against Fire claimed that most riflemen never fired at the enemy, the US Army replaced bullseye targets with man-shaped ones and added rapid-fire drills. The premise is disputed: Roger Spiller's 1988 article challenged Marshall's data, and later writers call his figures unreliable. The training change is documented, and the real firing-rate rise attributed to it is argued over. The date is approximate: Marshall's ideas were taken up in the early 1950s. 789
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MAF-4
A soldier's memory of a specific act of killing can be selectively erased or reset, as a condition of continued service.
Weight 3/5 · Supporting: the reset is Stripe's final choice and drives the ending, but it comes after the central premise.
Researchers have tagged and reactivated a memory in mice and planted a false fear. In humans, the nearest treatment is propranolol given before a recall session, which in a trial of 60 people with PTSD reduced symptoms but dampens a memory's emotional charge rather than deleting it. The authors call for replication. Nothing removes a chosen episode while leaving the rest of a life intact. Whether anyone would allow it as a term of employment is a separate question. 101112
- FOR Army's Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS)/Soldier Borne Mission Command (SBMC). Congressional Research Service, 2026-07-20. Describes IVAS as a heads-up display linked to weapon sights, with about 10,000 units bought in 2022 and 2023.
- FOR Army awards more than $350M in contracts for Soldier Borne Mission Command system prototypes. DefenseScoop, 2025-09-08. The Army funds Anduril ($159m) and Rivet ($195m) to prototype soldier-worn AR headsets; first scaled delivery is slated for 2027.
- AGAINST US Army Won't Field Nearly 10,000 IVAS Goggles After $1.8B Investment: GAO. The Defense Post, 2026-07-10. The Army will not field the headsets it bought; the programme's problems show how hard soldier-worn displays are.
- CONTEXT Next-Generation Nonsurgical Neurotechnology (N3). DARPA, 2019. A completed programme aimed at a noninvasive read-write interface with 16 channels for service members, applied to drone control and multitasking.
- FOR Science Corp.'s PRIMA BCI Implant Restores Functional Central Vision, NEJM reports. Science Corporation, 2025-10-20. A trial of 38 patients shows an implant can write usable images to the visual system, but only in a small central patch of retina.
- AGAINST Army's Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS)/Soldier Borne Mission Command (SBMC). Congressional Research Service, 2026-07-20. Notes the real risks of soldier displays, including misidentification that could cause fratricide or civilian casualties; the near-term threat is a corrupted display, not an implant.
- FOR S. L. A. Marshall. Wikipedia, 2026-11-06. Says Marshall's suggestions were widely adopted, with man-shaped targets replacing bullseyes, and that small-group doctrine helped raise firing rates in Korea and Vietnam.
- AGAINST Long Dead Hand: S.L.A. Marshall Misleads Historians. HistoryNet (Robert L. Bateman), 2018-11-15. Argues Marshall's ratio-of-fire figure was invented and that his notes record no question about who had fired, citing Spiller's findings.
- CONTEXT On Killing. Wikipedia, 2026-11-06. Summarises Dave Grossman's argument that training and desensitisation raised firing rates, and the criticism of its reliance on Marshall.
- CONTEXT Mice "incepted" with false memories provide insight into neural phenomena. RIKEN, 2013-07-26. Light was used to reactivate a tagged memory and attach a false fear to it in mice.
- FOR Propranolol may help PTSD patients. Psychiatric News Alert, 2018-01. Reports Brunet and colleagues' trial of 60 adults, with propranolol before trauma recall and lower symptom scores at six months, and a call for replication.
- AGAINST Effects of Propranolol, a β-noradrenergic Antagonist, on Memory Consolidation and Reconsolidation in Mice. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 2016. Suggests the drug alters a memory's emotional valence, not its contextual content, so it dampens rather than deletes.
Ledger updated 6 Nov 2026. All works on the P(n) Board · Method