“Set phasers on stun!” Captain Kirk used to order his crew, the usual preference of the United Federation of Planets being to avoid killing aliens, no matter how bad their make-up, if at all possible.
Alas, in the real world, we don’t always have that option. Aside from the Taser, which zaps people with an incapacitating dose of electricity via electrical wires, non-lethal weapons that can be used from a distance are in short supply.
What armed forces of all kinds, from the police to the army, really need is…well, a phaser you can set on stun. Or, more generally, a non-lethal ray gun.
Such things were common in science fiction long before Star Trek came along. (In general, any science fiction concept that makes it into a movie or TV show existed in written science fiction years earlier).
For example, here’s a short passage from E. C. Tubb’s 1958 science fiction novel The Mechanical Monarch: “Blue fire streamed through the air where he had stood a moment before. It swung, lifted and Curt felt his legs go numb and almost lifeless as the blue ray stabbed past him, missing him by a fraction.”
But in real life, we haven’t had any long-range stunners. Until, that is, now.
Spurred by the need for better ways to control crowds, the U.S. Department of Defense has funded research into several non-lethal weapons.
Probably the one that has gotten the most attention is the U.S. Air Force’s Active Denial System (ADS), which has been certified safe to use after lengthy testing. The ADS shoots an invisible beam of millimeter waves, which have a longer wavelength that x-rays but a shorter wavelength than microwaves. When this beam hits human skin, the top layer absorbs most of the radiation (83 percent), causing it to heat rapidly.
The beam has been tested on humans–volunteer military personnel–and even demonstrated to the media (though not on them) so we know what it feels like. Said one test subject. “If hit by the beam, you will move out of it–reflexively and quickly. You for sure will not be eager to experience it again.” Most subjects reached their pain threshold within three seconds, and nobody put up with it for more than five seconds before exhibiting, as the military called it, “prompt and highly motivated escape behavior.”
Yet even though it felt to the volunteers as though they were suffering serious burns, in more than 10,000 test exposures, there were only six cases of blistering. A few people had “prolonged redness.” Only one person suffered burns, and that was in a laboratory accident.
The ADS isn’t the only non-lethal “ray gun” being developed. Another is something called the Pulsed Energy Projectile, or PEP, which fires a short, intense pulse of laser energy at a target, creating a “flash-bang” of rapidly expanding plasma. This stimulates nerve cells in humans, and can reportedly cause temporary paralysis, or, depending on how the weapon is tuned, sensations of heat, pain, pressure or cold.
And then there’s the…well, it’s so new it doesn’t even have a name yet, much less an acronym. But the U.S. Army’s Aviation Applied Technology Directorate, which does have an acronym (AATD) plans to award contracts to Peak Systems, maker of the world’s most powerful searchlights (7.5 million candlepower, capable of illuminating targets well over two kilometers away), to “design and fabricate a light-based immobilization system/deterrent device and integrate it with an unmanned aerial system. This will include any necessary medical research on frequency and amplitude modulation of high-intensity light that will cause immobilization to all those within the beam.”
There’s not a lot of information available, but apparently a super-bright strobing light can have some effect on the human nervous system.
Not only that, but Peak Systems’ super-searchlight (the Maxa Beam) is small enough to be hand-held–which it would have to be, since the Army wants to mount it on an unmanned aerial vehicle (acronym: UAV).
We’ve got lots of ways to kill people outright. It’d be nice to have a few more non-lethal options…even if it involves ray-guns.
And acronyms.
