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Sound Generator Lethal From 10 Meters
penguinrecorder writes "The Thunder Generator uses a mixture of liquefied petroleum, cooking gas, and air to create explosions, which in turn generate shock waves capable of stunning people from 30 to 100 meters away. At that range, the weapon is relatively harmless, making people run in panic when they feel the sonic blast hitting their bodies. However, at less than ten meters, the Thunder Generator is capable of causing permanent damage or killing people."
Just firing a handgun without hearing protection is enough to rip out the hair cells in your ears (which don't grow back) and cause permanent hearing loss. I'm pretty sure that if this thing is capable of "stunning" people it's doing lasting damage to your auditory system. That damage may be small, but it remains that the ringing you hear in your ears afterward is still a set of frequencies you'll never hear again.
Yet again, OP gets it a little bit wrong, but in this case you can't blame the poster because TFA states it wrong as well. LPG is short for for Liquified Petroleum Gas, and it IS "cooking gas", it isn't "mixed with" cooking gas. Jeez. LPG is usually propane or butane or a mixture of them.
Having stated that, I will add my voice to what others have already posted: this device is a disaster waiting to happen. It has no place in "positive" enforcement scenarios. It might be useful as a self-defense weapon, but I question even that.
This is not the only sound based non-lethal weapon used by the IAF. They also use a device called The Scream, which emits a sound that causes disorientation and nausea. This one works at low, inaudible frequencies that vibrate the internal organs of the targets. There is also an high frequency version that is audible, that also produces a burning sensation on the skin (but does not produce any permanent damage).
I think they were also toying with using these types of weapons against the pirates in Somalia.
"Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish"
Albert Einstein
Yes, the detonation can be faster than the speed of sound but the resulting sound only propagates at the speed of sound.
To get those bursts to propagate to the target at supersonic rates there would have to be combustible gas all the way from the device to the target.
A jet fighter going at mach 2 carries with it a sonic boom traveling at 6 times the speed of sound.
When it passes overhead at an altitude of 6k feet, you see it pass and you hear it 6 seconds later.
The sonic boom travels at mach 2 only because the fighter goes at mach 2, the sound propagates perpendicular to the fighter only at the speed of sound.
Have you read the page you just quoted? Below the table appears:
The Uniform Vehicle Code states:
Upon all roadways any vehicle proceeding at less than the normal speed of traffic at the time and place and under the conditions then existing shall be driven in the right-hand lane then available for traffic ...
Note that this law refers to the "normal" speed of traffic, not the "legal" speed of traffic. The 60 MPH driver in a 55 MPH zone where everybody else is going 65 MPH must move right. Contrast Alaska's rule, 13 AAC 002.50, allowing vehicles driving at the speed limit to use the left lane, and Colorado rev. stat. 42-4-1103, prohibiting blocking the "normal and reasonable" movement of traffic.
Emphasis is mine. It's almost as if the author of that page is responding directly to your GP post...