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The Pentagon's shiny new ray gun
Posts
Man, everything is better with a "zappy-ray gun"!:lol:
"This is where I say something profound and you bow, so lets just skip to your part."
The article doesn't say, but it does note that the weapon has been tested more than 11,000 times over ten years, and out of all those tests they've had a grand total of six cases of targets developing rashes or blisters, with two more who got second-degree burns. Sounds pretty good to me.
Rubber bullets can easily kill you if you're hit in the head, and are probably one of the worst non-lethal deterrants available.
Nuclear reactors weren't dropped because of potential abuses. They were dropped because of stuff like Three Mile Island and because people thought that if a reactor went into meltdown that it'd be like the Hiroshima bomb. Also, nuclear power is making a comeback in the US. Technology has advanced to the point where waste is being limited and there are a lot of regulated failsafes so that Three Mile and Chernobyl-type incidents can be minimized. It's also helping that there is a whole new generation of voters and politicians out who are more concerned with the long term damage of fossil fuels than of reactors. In Europe and Asia, reactors never really stopped coming up.
You should join the British army.
We're next gen:
I mean, an invisible field of pain is one thing, but an invisible beam that leaves only ashes in its wake...
We're at 20% with 104 reactors. I don't know where you're getting your numbers from. Regardless, yes, we should definitely be adding more reactors.
"Oh, it doesn't hurt if you move out of the beam. What's that? You can't move? I guess you'd better tell us what you know, then."
Yeah, should be just fine.
They can strap you to a chair and peel away your skin with a knife, too. Much cheaper. What's your point?
Illinois has 49% of its electricity generated by 6 nuclear plants (with a 7th in Zion being dismantled basically now), 49% by coal, and 2% by 'other' and I'm pretty sure Com-Ed/Exelon owns all the nukes. I highly doubt Ameren would have any down south since that's coal country to begin with, and largely a low population density.
Also, the Chicago Tribune, Economist, Wikipedia, and just from living here. Where are you getting yours?
The fact that the weapon could potentially be misused is irrelevant. What ought to be considered is whether it would lend itself to misuse to a much greater degree than other weapons. Since this thing is big and mounted on a humvee, it's not exactly convenient for illicit interrogations.
Especially not compared with a bucket and some saran wrap.
The Wiki article is a pretty decent read on it, too. Though I think the first time I saw the weapon was on that god-awful TV show "Future Weapons". Ignore the host, but this clip shows how it works, and how it affects people. It doesn't appear all that "painful" per se, it just seems to give the brain enough pain signals to kick in the "get the hell out of here" response.
Yes obviously, like anything else in the world, it's totally up for abuse. But it looks like it's a much better solution to certain problems than anything else that exists these days.
A directed energy weapon definitely has advantages over conventional techniques. Not to say it is without disadvantages, which would include prohibitive cost and power use right now.
But again, leaving only the scorched remains of targets instead of a bunch of depleted uranium can't be a bad thing.
Oh, you're talking about Illinois. I thought you were talking about The United States.
"Put your hand in the box".
"What's in the box?"
I almost made a "Fear is the mindkiller" joke at the start of the thread. Anyway, someone earlier linked a desktop version of the device, which I think has multitude of potential uses for the office.
This seems like a good problem to have.
However, it is hard to put the skin back on.
Plus cutting off someones skin leaves evidence.
Whoa. I don't think it was the most brutal. The historical record suggests that no one even argued about torture 400 years ago. But you're right. Things look a bit messy right now.
I'd say that's actually a fairly legitimate question.
I think the point is that you're unlikely to be saying, "Well, I'm being tortured. But at least they don't have a harmless pain ray!"
That's certainly one aspect, because if I had to be tortured and could choose the method, something that's pure pain with theoretically no physical detriment would be my easy choice. As well, we already have plenty of torture techniques that are difficult to impossible to prove (seriously, prove you were waterboarded), and worrying about proving torture only matters anyway when the people we're torturing are allowed to state their case, which is certainly not what's happening now.
Fuck yeah, 13th Century.
Can't say if you don't try.
Time to unleash these things on Guantanamo, and see how the reports are.
42 seconds in, is the guy controlling a unmanned aircraft with an Xbox 360 controller?
Oh, and now a magic pain ray.
Man, I recall in my lifetime thinking that worrying about American use of torture was ridiculous and would never happen.
Sigh.
I'm really much more worried about the possibility for some jackass to make one out of Radio Shack parts. As long as they keep using words like "superconducting", I'm not too concerned.
Really? People actually thought that?
Chilling.