In the newest issue of Maxim there’s a write-up in Circus Maximus about this little device.
In a nutshell it’s a non-lethal crowd control weapon. Without going into the tech jargon, it basically shoots microwaves at the clamoring hordes that penetrate 1/64[sup]th[/sup] of an inch into the skin to superheat the water in the cells causing an intense burning sensation.
Remember those guys in High School that took all their science knowledge into shop class? The ones that could build a self-sustaining beer bong out of dryer lint and a rubber band? They have truly found their calling.
Sounds like fun. I first read about that, I think, in a Popular Science article a few years back. The military does seem to get all the cool new toys, but waddya expect? Human innovation was always best applied towards killing (or in this case, merely torturing) each other.
Weren’t they at one time also working on something which would cause uncontrollable diarrhea in its victims?
I’m sure there were some threads on the gay sex bomb that the military was working on. That would have been interesting. “Sir! The enemy is forming a man train!”
Havin’ a Dad who’s worked since the sixties, developing infrared missile sighting systems, in the Industrial Military sector, and hearing all the travails, ala Reagan era Star wars, I have no joy in those toys.
The science does us great good, but what a load of craptation to get there!
That was my first thought. The article says “the probability of thermal eye injury is low and the probability of long-term health effects such as cancer is extremely low.” So chance of eye injury is low but not extremely low…?
:dubious:
Nah, when this thing hits your face you’re probably going to close your eyes immediately.
Ah, yes, the mythical “brown note.” A tone so low and played so loud it would vibrate the shit right out of your ass. Mythbusters did a great experiment on this one. They were unable to make Adam crap his pants with about 10,000 watts of subwoofers and a range of frequencies.
Well, if ya don’t like the Painbringer, we can always go back to bullets. Sure, the new beam system can be used for torture, but then so can any other device. Technology has got nothing to do with it. The Abu Ghraib incident was rather low tech, wasn’t it? Besides, we already have an entire catalog of medieval torture devices that can do the job quite well.
In the end, I’d rather see more less-than-lethal weapons than lethal ones.
…Unless their less-than-lethal status leads people to use them indiscriminately as mass enslaving devices.
Just goes to show it’s not the technology that’s messed up, it’s the people I say we nuke the entire world and end human suffering once and for all.
A $30 consumer microwave, a hammer, some wirecutters and a power plug is all you need to make a torture device. Just smash the window of the microwave and point it at the target. The military doesn’t need several million dollars to do this.
The entire point is that this is something that has been tuned to be as HARMLESS as possible while still having the desired effect.
I gotta say, I don’t get where you’re coming from. It’s not like the military frequently captures bad guys, wants to torture them, racks their brain as to how to torture them, and reluctantly gives up after not coming up with a way to inflict pain.
And sure, it would be nice if the non-lethal weapon for crowd control was 100% guaranteed to be non-lethal. But if you were an Iraqi mom whose sun was getting caught up in a mob and was going to be facing US troops, would you rather they had one of these or just good old machine guns?
However, you do bring up a good point that generally gets missed. I notice the same thing with the current Taser controversy in Chicago:
Does using this device save the lives of US soldiers?
Does using this device save the lives of [whoever] who would have otherwise been killed and/or injured?
Is the device used maliciously, or is it used only when absolutely necessary?
If the answers are: yes, yes and only when absolutely necessary. Then I don’t think there’s a problem. If the answers are: no, no, they use it all the time when they get bored. Then there’s a problem.
Don’t get me wrong, it would suck to have your eyeballs explode and I wouldn’t want that to happen to anyone, but it seems there has to be a tradeoff of safety to injury.
Although I can’t figure out why safer-than-shooting-people automatically gets set up as some sort of Orwellian mind-control device.
That depends on if you want your son to become a martyr or not.
A related question: if this thing only affect skin, couldn’t you just put on a long sleeve shirt and pants, a ski mask, goggles and gloves and be safe?
I say we nuke the entire world and end human suffering once and for all.