Wang-Ka, I have to admire that post of yours, if nothing else but the fact that it offers a chance for both a Duck Dodgers joke AND an Incredible Hulk joke.
A masterpiece!
The thought HAD occurred to me… but I was assuming the OP was serious…
I’m having trouble following this. Anyone got a link to an inexplicably hilarious thread?
Since a lot of biological and neurological activity is little electric pulse, some sort of (1920s type) radio beam ought to work, but you would need some honking serious power to zap the naturally well-protected human body.
Something sonic at a resonant frequency?
Do bacteria ever have pacemakers?
You could possibly use infrasound…
It all sounds a bit hypothetical, but apparently you can use ultra low frequencies to cause human flesh to resonate. It the volume of the sound is high enough, the flesh will pull itself apart.
Not exactly a clean death, but should confuse the hell out of the coroner.
Maybe I will stop working on the death ray. My wife will be happy. She’s hated this death ray business from day one.
William Poundstone, in his book Big Secrets, mentions 380 MHz as the “resonance frequency of the human body,” and says some people (kooks?) think it’s connected to a Russian over-the-horizon radar system, often referred to as the “Russian Woodpecker” by amateur radio folks from the odd buzzsaw-like noise that eminates from Russia on some frequencies.
I’ve also seen death ray experiments by the CIA, or documents supposedly proving their existence on websites purporting to show all of the nasty government experiments of the cold war.
Anyone have any idea what I’m referring to?
And I’ve wanted one ever since!
However, the ultimate weapon to own would be the Wunderland “Peacemaker”.
Too bad its’ platform has to be in space. sigh
A nitpick about the whole Neutron bomb thing.
A Neutron bomb doesn’t kill people and leave buildings standing.It’s a common perception but it’s not true.A Neutron bomb is just an atomic warhead thats been designed to produce an extremely heavy neutron flux. Neutrons are very heavy (for atomic particles)which makes them very penetrating and will deliver a rapidly lethal radiation dose to a subject.The flux is out of proportion for a normal warhead that size, but you still get all the normal blast and fireball effects.Just slightly less than their would be for a normal design using the same amount of fissile material.
So what’s it for?
Well a N-bomb is a Armoured formation killer.It was designed to take out Soviet tank divisions as they rolled through the Fulda gap circa. 1983. A tank is hard to kill , even with a atomic warhead. Unless it’s very close or a large warhead is used.And as they said at the time towns in west germany are only 3 kilotonnes apart. A N-bomb was supposed to be able to kill the crews with a lethal dose at a range that the normal blast effects wouldn’t be able to, and without having to throw around large warheads with all the collateral damage that would cause.
A neutron bomb wouldn’t just “kill” you. A neutron bomb (assuming you didn’t get killed by the blast) will just give you a huge dose of radiation. You’d die from radiation burns. The cause would be readily apparant to any coroner who was familiar with the affects of radiation.
And I have to agree with the concept that there could be no such thing as a “death” ray that just killed you and did nothing else. Life isn’t a mysterious magical entity, it is a chemical, material process. Anything that disrupts that process can kill you. But it can’t kill you unless it somehow disrupts the process. There has to be some mechanism that causes death. The mechanism that causes death has to leave some evidence behind, even if the evidence is very subtle. Otherwise, you’d still be alive.
Zounds! sounds like the opening of a Doc Savage adventure!