Blame this.
Origamiphrine
This substance has been banned in warfare since the First Hague Conference of 1899, although admittedly that ban is in one of the classified clauses. And if you’re wondering what’s the point of banning something – and then not telling the world what you’re banning, it’s this: nobody wanted origamiphrine to get any more publicity than it already had. This stuff is nasty.
What does it do? Well, it’s the by-product of an also-banned magical process that’s half memetic infestation and half demonic possession; a human that has undergone the aforementioned process produces significant amounts of origamiphrine in his blood, largely because that’s the only way that said human can temporarily keep his body from being literally – yes, literally – folded up into a square. When injected into a normal person, origamiphrine gives him steadily increasing strength and toughness… for about four hours. And then he dies, from having his blood and organs turn rock-solid. It’s not a very nice way to die, either.
As you can imagine, when the Mad Scientist-Magician Plot that showcased this stuff was foiled (and the knowledge of it suppressed), the various governments involved decided to simply ban the stuff outright. Surprisingly – or not so surprisingly, considering how ruthless some of those 19th century governments were – it worked. The various totalitarian states that succeeded some of those governments never developed origamiphrine themselves, because they never even heard of it; the compartmentalization of this particular secret apparently worked, amazingly enough.
But compartmentalization eventually fails, huh?