Captain Kirk to Chekov and Sulu: “Phasers on ‘stun’ …”
It’s not a handheld device … yet. Raytheon’s Silent Guardian™:
From Raytheon promotional video
Your tax dollars at work. William Saletan at Slate reports:
Three weeks ago, the U.S. armed forces tested it on volunteers at an Air Force base in Georgia. You can watch the video on a military Web site. Three colonels get zapped, along with an Associated Press reporter. The beam is invisible, but its effects are vivid. Two dozen airmen scatter. The AP guy shrieks and bolts out of the target zone. He says it felt like heat all over his body, as though his jacket were on fire.
The feeling is an illusion. No one is harmed. The beam’s energy waves penetrate just one-sixty-fourth of an inch into your body, heating your skin like microwaves. They inflame your nerve endings without actually burning you. This could be the future of warfare: less bloodshed, more pain.
Don’t worry, this “less-than-lethal directed-energy application” will only be used against bad guys. It will never be used to intimidate the innocent or help maintain despotic rule.
At the Silent Guardian console, targeting one such (pretend) bad guy:
From Raytheon promotional video
Read more about it at Slate and ponder the ethical issues involved.
You’re right — this looks really cool!!! As far as any ethical issues, I’d try really hard not to use maximum power most of the time.
You know, apparently in anticipation of your comment, I had actually pictured you in the driver’s seat of the Silent Guardian™, wheeling around the quiet residential streets of Takoma Park, zapping all those
harmlessextremely dangerous pacifists! I mean, the place is crawling with them. It would be like shooting ducks in a barrel. Just for fun, of course. Just in our minds. (Boys and guns … oy vey!)I’ve actually tested it out (like the time I got to use their thought-receiver-transmitter device on Tony Snow.)
I set old “Silent Guardian” on “medium low” at first, but they usually turn around and flip me the bird, especially in Takoma Park. Then I punish them.