Journalist Test Drives The Pain Ray Gun 818
Fantastic Lad writes to tell us that journalist Michael Hanlon recently got the opportunity to experience the Army's new not-so-secret weapon, dubbed "Silent Guardian". The Silent Guardian is essentially (even though the creators prefer you not refer to it as such) a ray gun, emitting a focused beam of radiation similar to your microwave tuned to a specific frequency to stimulate human nerve endings. "It can throw a wave of agony nearly half a mile. Because the beam penetrates skin only to a depth of 1/64th of an inch, it cannot, says Raytheon, cause visible, permanent injury. But anyone in the beam's path will feel, over their entire body, the agonizing sensation I've just felt on my fingertip. The prospect doesn't bear thinking about. "
John Titor Predicted it (Score:5, Interesting)
1/64th inch of skin (Score:5, Interesting)
Fact follows fiction (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:A new tool for the torture we don't do... (Score:3, Interesting)
Ok, but is it eye safe? (Score:5, Interesting)
-dh
Can this be reflected ? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:U.S. Government social skills: (Score:3, Interesting)
So, when a crowd of people are smashing your store front and burning your car - a form of "relating" to you of which you would presumably disapprove - which is better: sending in people with choking tear gas, or clubs, or other techniques that essentialy guarantee injury for people across the board, or using a tool that more or less instantly puts a stop to the violence? Do you NOT want violent people to be stopped, using a mimimum of violence? Or are you of the camp that would rather just let someone BE violent, despite lecturing other people about how bad it is? If your point is that using violence to stop someone else's violence is a bad thing, then you should be FOR a tool that avoids the need for escalating violence.
Re:Chilling... (Score:4, Interesting)
Pleasure Ray? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Chilling... (Score:5, Interesting)
What always ticks me off is police always associate nervousness or evasiveness with guilt. After hundreds of publicized police beatings and shootings, they don't realize people are nervous because of police reputation, not because they're guilty of something.
I avoid the police whenever I can. I don't trust them and I don't like them. They would paint me a criminal for that, but I consider it self preservation. There are many like me who are targeted by police for harassment and abuse.
Re:Chilling... (Score:5, Interesting)
Have you ever been in agony? Okay, now imagine that feeling connected to an on/off switch that someone else's hand is on. That someone doesn't have your best interests at heart (rather, another set of interests, ranging from maintaining order to getting their rocks off). That someone can legally detain you and hold you immobile, take you into their custody, whose orders under most circumstances you are required to obey, and whose word in a court of law is more readily believed than yours. Guess what, when there are no marks, its their word against yours...and theirs always wins.
Are you getting the picture yet?
Read about the Stanford Prison experiment in case you still maintained rosy notions of the human nature of those given authority.
Source (Score:5, Interesting)
Here is the video on YouTube [youtube.com], which is as close to a primary source as you can get. Basically the guy got asked to leave when he couldn't produce a student ID, and started arguing (maybe, allegedly) with the cops, who repeatedly tasered him. The tasering was less for not having the ID than it was for being 'uppity,' at least IMO. That's how they tend to get used; you shoot your mouth off? That's a taserin'. Don't do what you're told? That's a taserin'. Look at a cop the wrong way? Well, you get the idea.
Re:Chilling... (Score:5, Interesting)
your attitude would likely change. Pain teaches very very quickly. It is likely you will
not simply stand there and let it happen again if you have been exposed to it's effects
already.
If I walked up and hit you with a Taser on a daily basis for a few days, would you simply
stand there and let me do it again knowing what was about to happen ? Doubtful. After one
or two applications, it would be likely we would be fighting the moment you saw the device
from that point on.
You may find yourself doing whatever it took to keep it from happening again. If that meant
resorting to deadly force and / or using a firearm, so be it.
Torture Applications (Score:5, Interesting)
But this is not true. Torture relies just as much on fear of death or permanent injury as it does on pain. I do not believe a pain-only device would make an effective torture device. Read a book like Bravo-Two-Zero, for an idea of what the torture was like practiced by Iraqis against coalition POW's in the first Iraq war; and more importantly, what the men who are able to resist it are like. They said they tested it on "hardened marines," and they couldn't withstand it more than a couple seconds. I'd like to see how Delta or SAS guys would do against it.
they will round you up... (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm much more concerned with some one using this device on me durring an "interrogation"
how long could you take the feeling of being ON FIRE, befor you admited that you had in-fact taken the Lindburg baby and shot JFK.
worst of all, they aren't going to take you to the medic when they finnish. You're not hurt. Quit your crying and go back to your cell.
Cops can beat me, turn the dogs on me, gas, choke and burn me. These things all end up with me in front of a nurse who can witness them.
or dead....
Forget the cornea -- retina==NERVE! (Score:5, Interesting)
True.. But if this is radio/microwave based the cornea is probably NOT going to absorb much....
I would expect much of the waves would directly heat the retina of the eye (if aimed toward it).
Which would seem to cause one of two possibilities:
1) Your retina gets cooked, you go permanently blind instantly (upon a direct pulse to the eye).
2) I'm guessing the retina has no pain receptors.... Overstimuling the retina might cause (painless) damage and probably very strange visual sensations. This can't be good....
Losing a few nerves on arm/leg skin is one thing... Eye/brain damage is a bit different and probably difficult to prove. (No, your eyesight was never as good as you claim (20/20), we the raygun didn't damage it).
I've only had 3-4 physicals, and I've never seen an optomitrist (bad spelling, eye doctor). Since my eyesight was better than the minimum for 20/20 it would be difficult for me to pr ove any degradation. Plus I don't have the health records anymore or know who the doctors were (its been a while). I suspect many people are like me in this regard.
And what about people who have metal implants as a result of surgery? (e.g. from broken bone, etc)...
If they really want to convince us that this thing is safe, they should do the following:
1) Sedate the CEO and CFO of Raytheon, and possibly pain-blocking drugs.
2) Fire the full-size raygun at them for 5 minutes continously.
3) See what happens to them over the next few years/months.
Re:focus (Score:3, Interesting)
Or take product competition. How little discomfort would it take to condition people not to by your competitor's brand? Even a tiny amount of pain, experienced by every customer who walks through a competitor's front door, could shift sales patterns pretty strongly your way over years of repetition.
Sweep the crowd at a candidate's rally, on low intensity, and see if some people don't leave early, questioners sound surlier, the candidate's speech sound flat or unappealing, and soon, local support seemingly evaporates. The national press reports candidate X doesn't seem to have enthusiastic support, and his party ends up going with another candidate.
The Grassy Knoll and Litmus Paper (Score:4, Interesting)
A tazer has to be held by the user in contact with the victim. The victim at least gets to see the person coming and witness them. This evil device leaves no evidence and can be operated at a great distance in full anonymity.
1/ What about severe misue of the device for assassination, by any number of conscienceless vermin across society:
1.1/ Target a plane's cockpit on takeoff. Dead. No evidence. Post mortem: Accident.
1.2/ Target a mountain climber hiking (unroped) up a steep mountainside. Dead. No evidence. Post mortem: Accident.
1.3/ Target a skydiver/BASE jumper after jumping and before opening their chute. Dead. No evidence. Post mortem: Accident.
1.4/ Targetting the driver of Xxxx Xx's Mercedes as it travels into a French tunnel at high speed. Massive accident, perhaps death, certain personal trauma. No evidence. Post mortem: Accident.
1.5/ Target Lewis Hamilton's Maclaren at the end of Spa's main straight, just before the braking zone. (precedent: Steffi Graf, Monica Seles, Gunter Parche) Massive accident, perhaps death, certain loss of race points. No evidence. Post mortem: Accident.
1.6/ Target that noisy motorcyclist who keeps riding up and down the road outside your retirement home. Massive accident, perhaps death, certain personal trauma. No evidence. Post mortem: Accident.
No evidence. No sound. Sniper-like secrecy. Uncontrollable pain. Certain or highly probable death.
2/ How can its premise of evidenceless be defeated? A vulnerable person may be unable to wear a full "tinfoil suit" (mountain climber), but perhaps they can carry a frequency recording device that can be manufactured and distrubuted cheaply that amounts to a piece of litmus-like paper that changes colour if subjected to this evil device's frequency at a threshold intensity, so that the person's body will at least carry a fragment of evidence that the magic frequeny was applied to the person, causing the pain (and death if so). Patentable? Hope not. I just put it into the public domain to try to block that usually bad outcome.
ANonCow
Re:That explains it. (Score:2, Interesting)
Now, let's compare that to this new weapon, which I shall call the pain ray whether they like to call it that or not. The pain ray certainly hurts, very much. Does it deliver more pain and discomfort in a few seconds of exposure than a good dose of CS gas? Well, I don't know and I wouldn't especially care to find out, but one thing that we can probably count on is that it's brand of discomfort is probably a lot more memorable than CS gas. The world is full of people who've been tear-gassed more than once, but it's hard to imagine someone stepping in the way of the pain ray more than once.
So, on the one hand, we have CS gas; painful, unpleasant, 20 minute effects, with a small risk of serious injury or death. On the other hand, we have the pain ray. Very effective when on, but the effects vanish as soon as you switch it off, and it can't cause death, serious injury, or even minor injury (the claim that it can burn someone alive is either pure ignorance or a straight out lie, I don't know which; the pain ray doesn't causes burns, it causes the feeling of burning pain by stimulating nerve endings, not by actually causing damage). The pain ray might be the better choice for riot control.
I don't believe objections to it as a device are particularly well taken, but objections to peripheral danger from things such as stampedes should be considered. Have you ever seen a crowd of people get tear-gassed? A stampede is the typical reaction. People get injured, I'm sure they sometimes get knocked out. I'd be surprised if they didn't occasionally get trampled to death. This one's a wash.
Used on American citizens to prevent riots? Maybe, if it ever gets issued to police (the army being prevented from enforcing civil law). The lesson there is "Don't riot." I personally doubt it will ever be used in the United States because somebody would sue over it.
Designed for that reason? Nope. It was designed for use as a military weapon, especially in situations where you might otherwise have to use deadly force, which brings us down to the ultimate question: would you rather people get hit with a device that causes intense but temporary pain that vanishes when you switch it off, or would you rather they get hit with a device that causes intense but long-lasting, with common side effects of permanent disability or death (that is, a bullet). I think I'd go with the pain ray. It's less damaging than CS gas, less likely to have to be used on a given person more than once (would *you* mess with somebody who had one of those? I wouldn't), and far more likely than CS gas to get instant compliance.
Sure, it's unpleasant. All weapons are unpleasant, it goes with the territory. However, it's no worse than CS gas and better than bullets.
One concern I think we both share is its potential for use as a torture device. As unsettling as that may be, the facts on the ground are that there are already plenty of torture methods that cause tremendous physical and/or mental suffering, and some of them, like the pain ray, leave no permanent damage or evidence, meaning you a person can claim torture but can present no proof. Looks like a wash again.
Re:Blimey! (Score:2, Interesting)
Option A or Option B. . . Hmm. Let me think. . . (Score:4, Interesting)
C. "Don't run a country in such a way as to create the cause for giant protests."
If there are mass protests, then it means the elected (sic) government is doing something wrong and the appearance of masses of people on the Whitehouse lawn should inspire them not to control and disperse the people with force, but to stop raping them through corrupt law.
Yes, I like that idea a whole lot better than getting to choose which version of molestation I would prefer to be subjected to when I show up to haul my not-so-democratically elected official to prison for started wars and taking bribes and generally being a psychotic clown.
Oh. . , but I should be practical. We don't live in an ideal world. I HAVE to choose, because that's just how it is. The 'facts on the ground' as you say, (along with the genocidal Zionist psychotics who first coined the term), are such that riots exist and must be dealt with, and that we simply must be controlled by weapons of mass dispersal. It's the American way.
Bullllllshit. That's such bullshit, and I reject it outright! The monsters may attack us, but I absolutely refuse to give them my mind as well. --To believe that they are somehow right to fire poison and pain rays into crowds of people. They are not! They are wrong!
Michael Moore's "Sicko" is a good example of the discrepancy between reality and perceived reality. It was easily the best piece of work he's produced, and I would recommend it to anybody. It's hard to realize just how fascist and evil the U.S. Government really is until you get an outside perspective. 9-11 rescue workers injured in their efforts to help out on the day and utterly ignored by the U.S. system were given free medical care in Cuba ferchrisake. It brought them all to tears as their illusions of the outside world were shattered. --And France appears to be an excellent example of a government being effectively bullied by the people, the way it ought to be. French universal health care, long holidays, labor laws which make the U.S. by comparison look like Red Russia, and yet, amazingly, the country remains one of the richest in the EU. America is deeply, deeply messed up, and her inhabitants are for the most part not even aware of the fact for having been so lied to, so beaten, so controlled, so poisoned and so undereducated. When I see Bush on a news piece walking through a crowd, it's plain that he's looking at the people the way one might look at chickens in a factory farm; pathetic and stupid and not even aware of how badly they've been screwed. How can he respect the people for being so blind and so totally bled by him and his kind?
So, No thank-you. I won't choose between CS gas and Pain Guns. Neither should exist.
The day the gene for psychopathy is discovered, all who carry it need to be visibly branded and put away in a big, enclosed city and we should throw huge bags of money and guns over the walls for them to back-stab each other to control. They'll take care of the problem they represent all on their own.
-FL
Re:Much more versatile than bullets... (Score:2, Interesting)