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Journalist Test Drives The Pain Ray Gun
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. "
In a world where the Taser is no longer considered a self defense weapon, but rather an enforcement/compliance tool, I am frightened to think what will happen when this technology makes its way out of the military sector. Every tough guy cop with a chip on his shoulder will have the power to cause limitless pain, and could justify it by saying "it causes no injury, and it prevents potential harm to innocents".
There is something wrong when the general population begins to fear the police, and I think that is starting to happen in the United States.
Any amount for violence, little for making relationships.
The least sophisticated way of relating to other people is through violence.
I wonder if this will be the next iteration of the Taser problem, specifically, the fact that it leaves no marks and is designed not to permanently injure ends up lowering the threshold for using it.
With a gun, a trained operator understands that the person he's shooting at will probably die, so everything better be absolutely correct before employing it or he's going to jail.
With a Tazer, the trained operator will use it more casually than a gun because the price of being wrong is so much lower.
With the pain ray, it's even lower. Our current legal environment suggests that this will end up being used to break up unpopular demonstrations or groupings even more casually than tear gas, specifically because the physical evidence and chance of permanent injury is so much lower.
What effect will this have on the democratic process? Used in conjunction with modern artifacts like "designated free speech zones", this could be crippling. There's no way to prevent an advance, our duty as citizens is to be aware of the dangers and be ready to speak out against them if they transpire.
No, the table-top demonstration model is the one that's intended for use in the field. For values of "field" ranging towards "dark basements in former Soviet bloc countries, to whom we've paid good money for plausible deniability".
Unless the "production" model is composed of an array of those table-top demonstration models (and to give Raytheon the benefit of the doubt, it might be), there are very few military applications to even try to scale the device down to "trade-show booth" form factor.
Either way, I'm glad I'm long Raytheon. From WW2-era radar stations, to the microwave oven, to new and emerging markets including crowd control and individual torture, manipulation of RF energy has been a consistent profit generator.
These would be a great accessory for a John Kerry speech.
Corrupt lobby to pass law declaring it illegal to wear metallic micro-wave reflecting clothes in
Common, they already made it illegal to wear a gaz-mask during manifestations in some countries. What do you expect ?
{Insert your favorite "if-you-have-nothing-to-hide-you-have-no-reason-to-wear-one" excuse hehe}
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
"Because it is, in essence, a simple machine, it is easy to see similar devices being pressed into service in places with extremely dubious reputations."
The ones that already use Kalashnikovs for crowd control? I'll take the ray over stopping a round, thx.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
It seems to me that they were created in one.
Yeah, but the "agonizer" device was used in the savage universe of Mirror, Mirror.
Of course it doesn't add up. Tasers (cattle prods for humans) also don't kill according to their makers, and DU rounds are safe. Rubber bullets also are don't take out the eyes of Palestinian children. If people start wearing clothing that keeps it from working, they will just turn up the volume. Anyone who develops cataracts as a result will be scorned and dismissed as lunatics, or just will be blamed for having put themselves in a position where the police had to use it on them. The term non-lethal is just a marketing term for 'martyr-less abuse of power'.
it says "it cannot, says Raytheon, cause visible, permanent injury."
That seems an awfully calculated thing to say... so that means they have found it to cause INVISIBLE permanent injury then?
Or the long term health effects. It may cause pain now, but increase your chance for cancer, much like sunburn.
Well, I wouldn't go so far as to say that the sole reason for development was as stated above. The US used teargas in Viet Nam, and non-lethal weapons such as rubber bullets were used by the British in Northern Ireland, and I think by the Israelis against Palestinians. But there may be a problem with this sort of weapon. According to http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/4/3/214326.shtml The US was unable to use teargas due to a chemical weapons treaty. It wouldn't surprise me if some treaty some where disallowed this thing on the battlefield, but not at home...
--- Often in error; never in doubt!
The thing is, this wave in tuned to a frequency targeting nerve endings - so it might well not be nearly powerful enough to boil anything, much less your eye.
That said I was thinking that anything that sent this much pain coursing through you might well lead to more harmful effects than a tazer. That much pain would have to be quite a shock to your body which would probably trigger a lot of reactions as a result.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You are missing the point. For such regimes, this device would not be so attractive for crowd control as it would be for torture. Let's see...cheap and easy to reproduce, causes agony, doesn't leave marks. Perfect for extracting confessions and discrediting dissidents!
Come to think of it, considering how trigger-happy some cops around here seem to be with tasers, I'd hate to see what they would do with a device like this if they ever got someone they didn't like (accused rapist, molester, cop killer, smart-mouthed teenager) in the lock-up.
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
No you wouldn't.
If these become commonplace the problem will snowball. Pain begets one of two things:
1) Compliance
2) Ultra-Violence
As a result, when hit with one of these things folks are either going to crawl up into
a ball and hope it goes away, or come out guns blazing to destroy the device causing the
pain to begin with. ( and likely the wielder with it )
If I were to attend a demonstration where it is known the police would likely use such
a device on the crowd I would either:
1) Re-consider my attendance
or
2) Setup similar devices to aim at the police or resort to current tech ( read that firearms )
You cannot use what would be considered an electronic torture device on me and expect me
to be ok with it. The operators of such a device would be the FIRST targets I went after.
Since it's unlikely the citizens would have similar tech in their hands for use, firearms will
put a stop to it just as quickly.
And jokes aside, the risks are higher than just getting hurt a little.
1. 1/64th of an inch seems sufficient to cause serious and possibly permanent eye damage. This is an area-wide weapon, it is not selective about its targets or which body part it is targeting.
2. Exposure to extreme levels of pain (especially suddenly) can also lead to a seizure or heart attack. If the pain is extremely strong, it may incapacitate the target (ever hurt yourself so badly you can't do ANYTHING except perhaps scream?), meaning the people can't escape the target zone, exposing themselves to even more pain.
3. If the authorities decide to use the weapon against a crowd, it is natural to presume some have a higher pain tolerance then others, and if the weapons is used until all or the majority of the crowd is quelled, the weaker-tolerance people will be exposed to unnecessary (and with potential serious consequences) levels and duration of pain.
4. I'm not even going to the legal definitions of physical torture in and by itself...
I'm not saying it shouldn't be used under any circumstances whatsoever, but it seems that it should be classified as deadly or almost deadly force ("deadly" in most jurisdictions includes "capable of producing grievous bodily harm).
Even the story the other day about the use of a Taser (which is also an almost-deadly-force weapon, with documented fatalities) being used where the suspect posed absolutely no danger and could have been subdued without it). This device can lead to the same consequences of a Taser, but instead of being used on one person, it affects hundreds, with no way to observe the effects on each single person and adjust the device power accordingly.
Are there cases where use of this device is legitimate? Maybe, for example if you are rushed by an angry mob and you legitimately feel your life to be in danger if you don't take immediate action. But given our record for indiscriminate and excessive use of next-to-lethal force (rubber bullets, Tasers, etc.) against peaceful demonstrations, non-violent action, cases where safer alternatives are available, and with "just for kicks" being a legitimate reason, I certainly wouldn't bet on this device to be safe in the hands of those who use it. This device is NOT a valid substitute for a water cannon or tear gas, and if in a given situation you are not justified to use live firearms, you also shouldn't be justified to use something like this.
If (or, sadly speaking, when) it will be classified as a "safe, non-lethal" weapon (just as the Taser already has been) well, we will be one mile higher up Shit Creek.
Well non-deadly weapons like this were created to reduce the number of people the cops end up having to shoot. Of course in practice, they shoot the same amount of people and widen the use of force. So yeah... you're right. Let's see what happens at the next WTO sized protest.
You know, the funny thing is, even the most hardened dictatorships only used "kalashnikovs for crowd control" when things really got out of hand. I know of at least one Eastern European revolution where the oppressive communist government first tried to hose them with water and whatnot, and we're talking revolt against the government there.
Compare it to the neverending stream of Taser stories from the USA. People got tasered occasionally as torture (people which had _already_ been restrained) or because a cop got a chip on his shoulder, for reasons as ridiculous as:
- asking too many questions at a political rally (see the recent story)
- being at a library without their library card (guy got tasered _repeatedly_ after he had already accepted to leave)
- diabetic guy in a medical emergency calls 911 for an ambulance, cops show up first and taser him in his bed (apparently one guy sick enough to be stuck in bed was considered dangerous enough to the cops to warrant use of the taser)
Etc, etc, etc.
Dearie, get this: even China, and even the fucking NKVD under Stalin, wouldn't have used a gun in _those_ situation. Yes, China did shoot some of the people demonstrating in Tiananmen square against the government, but not even in their darkest hour would they consider shooting a sick guy for calling an ambulance.
Effectively the idea that a taser is "non-lethal" has lowered the bar to ludicriously low extremes. It's not replacing the use of guns, as if you were to do something that warrants shooting at you, they'll _still_ shoot at you. (E.g., if you pulled a gun at a cop, I do believe they won't draw the tasers.) It just created a whole new possibility to inflict pain (again, sometimes repeatedly) on someone for minor misdemeanors or just for disliking him or just for fun. It's not replacing guns, it's _in_ _addition_ to guns, for stuff where you previously wouldn't even _think_ of drawing a gun.
Sadder still: for stuff where even China or the USSR wouldn't have even dreamed of using a gun on someone.
So the question isn't whether you'd rather get the ray or a round. For any stuff that would previously warrant getting a round, you'll still get a round. Only now you'll get the ray for everything else. Whop-de-do, big improvement there.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Can you see the inside of a microwave oven?
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain. THE PAIN!!
Ask me about repetitive DNA
It's gonna be coming in handy...
This weapon is designed to work not against invading armies, but against angry citizens. Through most of recent history, governments have been wary of angering their own populations for fear of triggering citizen revolutions. A government cannot effectively use lethal weapons on its own population in any widespread way, because those citizens make the state function. Thus, there are some things that governments simply will not do, because of the risk of a popular uprising.
With weapons like this pain gun, the balance of power is tipped sharply in favor of governments. Governments will be able to use weapons like this against their own people, without creating rebel martyrs. The immediate effects of this gun on an individual are horrible, but temporary. No disfiguring injuries to point to as proof of the government's inhumanity. Just a fleeting moment of pain, that will continue to exist only in a person's memory. These pain guns are a far more effective tool of subjugation than machine guns.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
But if you really think he's only "slightly" off, you're delusional. And if he's more than slightly off, then there's no point in trying to compare what's happening to any of his predictions. Because they have nothing to do with our reality, and don't and won't predict our future. What you're saying here is only a small step from the folks at the Weekly World News who pick their favorite translation of Nostradamus and come up with some metaphor that it stands for, use that to make a prediction about next week, then when that's wrong the week after use a different interpretation to claim that it really did predict whatever happened that week.
What am I talking about? It's not a step away. That's what you're doing.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
But the really funny part is that that would also be the mark of a clever but fake time traveler. Because it's much easier for someone to be right about events in the near future, since things tend to change slowly and incrementally. Sure, most people will be wrong, but occasionally someone's guess will be right. But as they keep guessing further and further out, their guesses are more and more likely to be wrong.
If you don't believe me, look at any number of predictions about the direction of computers. There's always someone who guesses correctly what they will look like a year or two from now (though also a lot of wrong guesses), but a decade?? Someone in 1990 may have predicted that in the next few years email would become popular, but how many people were predicting that blogging would be ubiquitous by 2005? (Aside from the dude who predicted it in 1837 - he wins.)
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
Previously with crowd control you had to be there, looking at the crowd if not interacting with it. If a few grandmas were in the crowd- by choice or by accident- you knew it. If the "bad" crowd walked by families with small children having a picnic in the park, you'd know that you're about to tear-gas or water-cannon mothers with babies.
At a half mile away, police in Brooklyn (on one side of the East River) could do crowd control for the edge of Manhattan. One guy on the top of the Empire State Building could stampede a crowd on the avenues below. From that distance people look like- and could be thought of as- ants.
Does it have a self-destruct mode for if the device gets stolen? Do they think that bad guys won't ever get their hands on them to stampede crowds as a terrorist act? With two of these devices at a stadium, or any other location with edges and drop-offs, two terrorists could make people jump over balconies to get away from the unbearable pain.
Repressive governments will also find it a handy tool for proving that a dissident was shot for violently resisting arrest. They'll even be able to video it: "See, we ordered him to lie down with his hands over his head- you can hear us saying it over and over. But instead he chose to run towards the guards. They had no choice but to shoot." or "See, we told them to sit down, and instead they jumped off of the ship into the ocean."
While you are at it, please check what happens to exposed corneas in your eyes (or at least the topmost 1/64th of it).
With any luck, it'll coaggulate and turn opaque, so the police won't need to use blindfolds on the protesters.
With even more luck, it'll stay that way forever...
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
because no one in america has an illigal firearm.
So Skulldilocks threw acid on the schoolchildrens' faces, cause somebody from the bible told her to do it!
Seriously. This thing scares me more than nuclear weapons. At least with a nuke, you would be turned to your constituent atoms quicker than your nerves could react. With this "pain ray" Corporations and governments could exert complete control over their populations. Dipshit "America firsters" will try to get this set up on the borders to keep out all the "brown people"
Then there is the little matter that these are most likely considerably easier to create than nukes. Something a well financed terrorist could conceivably come up with in a couple of years and you have the perfect terror weapon. They wouldn't need to do it to people in Times Square. They could just camp out a half a mile from the runway of any major airport and cook the pilots when the planes are taking off. Presto! Instant coordinated air distasters at every major airport in the U.S simultaneously.
The humunculi who think up and fund these things should just be loaded into a space ship blasted into the fucking sun.
> But we taser people too often, so we're worse. Seriously, fuck you.
Grand parent never claimed US was "worse" than USSR. That is pure invention on your part, because you lack the mental capabilities to read what he actually wrote. As long as you compensate for your long for your low intelligence by inventing stuff, you will never become smarter.
He claimed that in the US people are tasered for situations where more oppressive governments would not use a gun. You then counter by a Wikipedía quote, listing abuses done by USSR in situation where US police or guards would not use a taser. You don't use tasers to assassinate people, or to "subversion of foreign governments", once again demonstrating how access to Wikipedia is in no way a replacement for having a brain.
You are quite correct. As you say, the Taser has been found to be "seldom lethal"... often called "less lethal" weaponry. Those who call it "non-lethal" are either lying or uninformed. For example, just recently there was a casualty in my own city. (Yes, in the U.S.)
Because of its status as "less lethal", the Taser is supposed to be used by law enforcement as "an alternative to lethal force". In other words, as a way of stopping a person when the only other alternative is to shoot them with a gun. And it performs that function quite well. The Taser very seldom (but occasionally) results in permanent damage or death.
PROBLEM #1 is exactly that perception of non-lethality. To some, non-lethal or "less lethal" means safe or even sane. However, I would be willing to bet a large amount that if you compared the number of people in history who have been beaten with nightsticks, to the number of people who have been Tasered, you would find a higher lethality rate for the Taser. I am only guessing, but nobody so far has really done such a study, so the question is open. And as I mentioned, one died just recently in my own town. I do not think anyone in this town has ever died from beatings by nightsticks... and believe me, there have been some over the last couple of hundred years.
PROBLEM #2 is the conception that "no permanent harm" means "no harm". Bullshit. People hit with a Taser fall down hard, in unnatural positions, and hurt themselves. It is also excruciatingly painful. I believe most people who have been Tasered would rather have been hit with a nightstick, even though the latter would hurt for a much longer time.
Years ago, a popular interrogation (or control) device was a length of rubber hose, because it could be extremely painful but leave few marks and do "no permanent harm". Sound familiar? Strangely, the rubber hose is internationally vilified as a "torture device" while the Taser is not. Somebody please explain this to me!
PROBLEM #3 Police forces tend to attract the kind of people who like to bully and control other people. You could argue with me all you want about that but history supports that statement beyond dispute. I am not saying that all cops are bad, but a disproportionate percentage of them are, and always have been. Plain, simple truth. I wish it were otherwise.
PROBLEM #4 is actually just the consequences of 1, 2, and 3: Police forces (at least in the U.S.) have started using Tasers in ways that are completely inappropriate: to avoid physical confrontation at all; as an alternative to nightsticks (rather than as an alternative to guns, as it should be); and even just as a convenience, such as to avoid having to tell someone something one more time. I have seen video clips of police Tasering people for such things as talking back, not moving fast enough for the officer's taste, and other such "criminal" acts. That very recent video of the student getting Tasered at the Kerry speech is a classic case. The student might have been a mouthy ass, but he did not deserve the treatment he received.
People need to get together and demand that their state or city restrict the use of Tasers (again) to "an alternative to deadly force". Otherwise, their use will escalate and the public will surely regret it.
The projectiles from those are affected by gravity, wind, and cause a sight more permanent damage than these things.
I hope the technology doesn't get too cheap and leaked into the public, otherwise child abuse and other kinds of crime/abuse would get a whole lot easier (no visible trauma, and people would have a lot less moral issues with just hurting someone temporarily rather than shooting them).
which is totally what she said
What the CIA is doing is nasty. But it's nowhere near as bad as the KGB got up to.
Which is pretty much the US all over these days.
"USA - less nasty than the USSR!"
"USA - fewer human rights violations than Uzbekistan!"
"USA - not too nice, but hey, we're better than Burma!"
Target a plane, in flight, from another plane. Dead, along with his family, no evidence. Bafflement and panic cited as causes.
Something bad is coming when people are suddenly anxious to tell the truth.
(This isn't really in response to the parent, it's just part of the discussion.) CS is Chlorobenzylidene Malononitrile. It's "non-lethal" in the sense that exposure can cause damage to the heart and kidneys, interstitial scarring of lung tissue, and miscarriages in pregnant women exposed to the gas (Journal of the American Medical Association). If the concentration is high enough and you happen to be in an enclosed space, it can kill you (Waco, Texas).
.357 magnum, his fists, and his mouth. When your only non-verbal options are "Kill Them" or "Beat Them" you -have- to be good at verbal de-escalation techniques, ie: negotiation. You learn to talk people down, gain trust, establish rapport, so you don't have to maul them with the Big F'ing Stick. Nowadays police don't need to do that, because they can just use something "harmless" like CS gas, tasers, or "the pain gun" and the only response from the average person seems to be "They should have done what the police told them to do." Hello, Police State!
So obviously tasers are preferable, right?!? I mean, they're mostly harmless aside from randomly killing people that have any kind of heart defect, including something as simple as arrhythmia, which they may not even know they have. But I'm sure if you
"Less-lethal" weapons are a lie, and they're a way to assuage any potential guilt an officer might have about assaulting the citizenry ("Don't worry about it, this is harmless"). My father was a state police officer for years, and I've heard all the war stories. He had a nightstick, a
--Obyron
To the contrary. Fear of repeated pain is the strongest conditioning agent there is. There need be no fear of physical damage whatsoever -- the body still reacts to pain *as if* it will be damaged, and if you can repeat that pain without damage, you can take the conditioning a lot deeper than if you're worrying about missing body parts.
Try a whip or club vs a cattle prod, and you'll see what I mean real quick.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?