Project SCAR was remarkable in its benevolence: in spite of national, linguistic, and cultural barriers, everyone was working together for the greater good of humanity.
Or so it seemed. Almost all of the scientists of Project SCAR really did have the best of intentions, but this was not true of the governments backing the project. Specifically, all governments involved in the project instructed their militaries to closely monitor the scientists' progress and search for military applications of SCAR technology.
The US military, with its enormous budget, saw the most progress. Several of their scientists suggested that SCAR technology could be used to create humanoid giants – otherwise known as titans – to dominate the battlefield. They reasoned that creating huge human body parts shouldn't be fundamentally different than creating normally sized parts. Thus, producing a full titan seemed like a fairly natural extension of the work of Project SCAR.
For the most part, the scientists were correct: synthesizing large body parts was possible using the same methodology with more energy. Working in parallel with Project SCAR, US military scientists grew gargantuan arms, legs, bones, lungs, hearts, and other organs in their labs. But there was one organ that was not at all straightforward to faithfully replicate, gargantuan or not: the brain. The incredible complexity of the human brain continued to stump both Project SCAR and the US military. They succeeded in creating functional brain tissue, and in time, they managed to create a functional human brain. But the lab-grown brain was deficient and clearly inferior to the average human brain; tests performed on the brain indicated that it possessed animalistic, sub-human intelligence. While the military had the means to create a combat titan at any time, it would not be worthwhile – or, for that matter, wise – to do so if they could not control it.
While the US military was working on better replicating the human brain, the first titan came into being – but not as a result of any of their experiments. The titan genesis occurred when a thunderstorm hit part of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. A lone hiker named Adam Everett was struck by lightning. At that moment, an enormous, humanoid body materialized out of thin air around Everett. He had become the first titan, and at 110 meters tall, he was quite imposing. The titan expressed an inexplicable desire to eat humans – there weren't many other people around at the time, but those in the vicinity were quickly devoured. While the other life forms in the area were frightened, they were left alone.
The military was deployed as soon as they received word of the disturbance. Fortunately, the titan was not stable on its feet, and it could only travel by slowly crawling. On the other hand, it quickly became apparent that the titan had auto-healing abilities, so the commanders decided it would be necessary to destroy the titan utterly. Initially, this seemed like a fool's errand – soldiers manning attack helicopters observed that their combined attacks weren't outpacing the titan's auto-healing. However, after a lucky strike to the titan's neck, the healing stopped and the titan's body began dissipating.
The titan's dissipation made it impossible to bring parts of it back to the lab for analysis, but it did make the following cover-up operation easier. The titan had eaten most witnesses, and the military reasoned that the few remaining witnesses wouldn't be believed. Due to the thunderstorm, people in nearby cities were unable to see or hear the commotion. With no titan remains to remove and few enough witnesses as to not be a concern, no official explanation for the incident would be necessary.
While the titan body disappeared in full on its own, part of Everett's body remained. One soldier found the remains of Everett's body and brought them back to the nearest military lab. With some difficulty, the military managed to extract a fingerprint from the remains and identify them as the late Adam Everett. A post-mortem analysis of his body indicated that he had SCAR blood; apparently he'd received the SCAR serum. They also discovered that his body contained cancerous cells. This surprised the military scientists – police had been sent to interview people close to Everett, and all reported that Everett was in perfect health.
The scientists produced the following hypothesis to explain the Everett incident: Everett had a previously unknown strain of cancer that remained dormant until activated by a large surge of energy; in Everett's case, this came in the form of a lightning strike. At this time, the cancerous cells started dividing rapidly. Stem cells produced for SCAR purposes mimicked cells near them, the activated cancer cells included. The result was the production of a large number of cancerous stem cells, which, like the "parent" cancer cells, began dividing rapidly. The excess of stem cells produced on Everett's lightning burns resulted in an excess of new, healthy skin cells – some healed the burns, and the others jutted out awkwardly from Everett's body. Via the SCAR process, a new body then grew from the skin protrusion, as if to regenerate an entire missing body. The titan produced in Everett's case was so large because the lightning strike supplied a huge amount of energy, hence many stem cells were produced. The titan sought out humans to eat to increase its supply of healthy human stem cells – the titan had been created primarily from cancerous stem cells, so its component cells were constantly dying. The strike to the titan's neck cut off communication between its brain and the rest of its body. This meant that it couldn't replenish its supply of reactant for the vitamin D reactions. Thus, it could produce no more MU gas, and its stem cell production ceased. In the absence of new stem cell production, the titan's cancerous cells withered away.
The scientists' hypothesis was right on the money, and experiments performed using Everett's activated cancer cells seemed to confirm that this was a plausible explanation. Among the scientists, the prevailing reaction was panic. Their experiments suggested that anyone with both SCAR blood and cancer could become a carnivorous titan if exposed to a sufficient amount of energy. Those with known health conditions had been advised not to receive the SCAR serum; however, Everett had seemed fine, and there was no guarantee that everyone had followed expert advice. It was possible that a titan could appear anywhere in the US at any given time.
The military decided to stay quiet about the titan incident while they researched further. It was crucial to eventually find a solution to this problem, but announcing it immediately would just cause needless panic. The probability of a titan randomly appearing among civilians was low, since the amount of energy needed for that was huge. Indeed, there seemed to be few plausible causes for spontaneous titan genesis. Other than starting new research, the only thing the military scientists did in response to the Everett incident was tell doctors to forbid patients with cancer from receiving the SCAR injection.