Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey, there ever be one? And Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking, the podcast that looks at the future and
Speaker 1: says strange love A star Woman teaches. I'm John in Strickland,
Speaker 1: I'm Lauren Vocal, and I'm Joe McCormick. Hey, did you
Speaker 1: guys know that the Star Trek theme has lyrics to it?
Speaker 1: That's what I just quoted. Yeah, oh yeah, Michelle Nichols
Speaker 1: does a great version of it. Sometime. I'll play it
Speaker 1: for you guys. Sure she does, because when she does things,
Speaker 1: they're great things. So, hey, you know why I brought
Speaker 1: up Star Trek because we're talking about stunned technology today
Speaker 1: and you know in science fiction we see it all
Speaker 1: the time, right, Star Trek does it? Star Wars does it?
Speaker 1: Depends on what science fiction you're watching, because if I
Speaker 1: recall correctly, Star Wars does it once ever? Yeah, when
Speaker 1: it was the main character a k a princess, but
Speaker 1: it was also to keep around. It's also the once
Speaker 1: ever when a Stormtrooper was able to hit something. So
Speaker 1: it's obviously significant because in every other instance I can
Speaker 1: a member of a Stormtrooper firing with the with the
Speaker 1: exception of the nameless guys who die at the very
Speaker 1: beginning of episode four, they don't hit anything. Maybe they're
Speaker 1: all pacifists. Lauren makes a good point. It's because stormtroopers
Speaker 1: are always shooting at the main characters who are not
Speaker 1: supposed to die, So you're saying that they're protected by
Speaker 1: plot significance. Exactly. I got to get me some of
Speaker 1: the plot shields. But okay, so if you will call.
Speaker 1: At the beginning of Star Wars and New Hope, Princess
Speaker 1: Leiah's chilling in her corvette and the stormtroopers come on
Speaker 1: and they say there's one set for Stun, and she
Speaker 1: blasts one of them, I guess kills him. And then
Speaker 1: and then they shoot her with They don't look like
Speaker 1: those normal, you know, blaster bolts. There these rings they
Speaker 1: come out of the gun. That's how you know it's Stunn. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so the rings come out and then she just falls
Speaker 1: over like she's just taking a little nap. So yeah,
Speaker 1: stunt technolog g right, I mean that's the whole ideas
Speaker 1: you incapacitate your target without killing him or her. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's the idea. So it's um it's a
Speaker 1: form of science fiction non lethal uh warfare, I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe not ware non lethal. It's it's designed to incapacitate
Speaker 1: or paralyze someone. It's a good humane way of putting
Speaker 1: someone who's being unreasonable um out of the plot line,
Speaker 1: or if you need to, you know, take them on
Speaker 1: board your ships that you can torture them to discover
Speaker 1: the location of the rebel base. But but humanely you
Speaker 1: can torture them and find out the location the rebel base. Well,
Speaker 1: there's a very weird Geneva convention that guided the imperial action.
Speaker 1: Sure if the Imperial forces were really following yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know at any rate, any start Trek we had
Speaker 1: it as well, where the there and clearly the crew
Speaker 1: of the Enterprise was all about exploring the universe and
Speaker 1: learning about it, not killing everything that came across its path. Everything.
Speaker 1: They did some killing, oh sure, but only after like
Speaker 1: eight or nine Red Shirts died. So really it was
Speaker 1: just coming on after either Kirker Ryker had had slept
Speaker 1: with it. So okay, depending upon whether we're talking original
Speaker 1: series or next generation, that's fair so okay, But uh
Speaker 1: so I just kind of I don't know, about y'all.
Speaker 1: I kind of grew up believing that this had some
Speaker 1: real life analogy. Well, let's let's talk about all right, Lauren.
Speaker 1: I know you've looked into the biology of of what
Speaker 1: we human beings work on and stuff and like the
Speaker 1: gooey mess that keeps us going. What exactly how would
Speaker 1: stun technology interact with a body to incapacitate us in
Speaker 1: some way? Okay, well, so your your body uses electrical
Speaker 1: signals to get things done. Um, your your brain communicates
Speaker 1: with your nerves via electrical signals, and those signals spur
Speaker 1: the release of neurotransmitter chemicals that control your muscles. So
Speaker 1: so we are we are walking squishy electrical systems, is
Speaker 1: really what's going on. And the the idea of modern
Speaker 1: and stun guns anyway, is to disrupt those electrical communication systems.
Speaker 1: So you're kind of overloading the electrical grid of a
Speaker 1: human being, right, which, you know, which is a pretty
Speaker 1: effective way of doing it. You know, you can hypothetically
Speaker 1: also or I mean you you literally can also use
Speaker 1: chemicals that are going to either be unpleasant enough to
Speaker 1: make you stop doing what you are doing temporarily or um,
Speaker 1: you could if you wanted to be kind of smart
Speaker 1: about it or or very dangerous about it, depending on
Speaker 1: the situation, use neurotransmitter chemicals or otherwise disrupt that process
Speaker 1: to to make that that mess up on gotcha. So
Speaker 1: in other words, we're talking about just interrupting the body's
Speaker 1: communication system between one way and and and the muscular story.
Speaker 1: So you know, in this case, we're talking about using
Speaker 1: high voltage low amperage kinds of right on modern existing
Speaker 1: stun weapons. That's what we're aiming to do. And so
Speaker 1: so what what what does a high voltage low amperage?
Speaker 1: So if you want to think about electricity into like water, uh,
Speaker 1: and you know that that that's helpful when you're talking
Speaker 1: about voltage. Voltage is pressure. That's how much water pressure,
Speaker 1: Like if you were to look at a water system,
Speaker 1: it's kind of analogous to that. Voltage is how much
Speaker 1: you've got behind it. Amperage is sort of the intensity
Speaker 1: of that electrical current. And I know those two things
Speaker 1: sound a little confusing, but essentially, if you have high
Speaker 1: voltage and low amperage, it is for a given definition
Speaker 1: of the word safe safe and that it will pack
Speaker 1: a wallop and it will make your your nervous system
Speaker 1: kind of go into a little bit of a short
Speaker 1: term freak out mode. But it shouldn't cause lasting damage
Speaker 1: for your average healthy human. But but you know, if
Speaker 1: you had high amperage, that's deadly stuff, right, Okay, So
Speaker 1: so what this means is that this is gonna This
Speaker 1: can really affect you in two different ways. And in
Speaker 1: the body, this current can mimic the pulse frequency of
Speaker 1: the electrical signals that you're getting from your brain, which
Speaker 1: can make the body's muscles and this is the technical
Speaker 1: term crazy go nuts. Um, it's you're talking about involuntary
Speaker 1: muscle contractions and at the standard sixty hurts or so
Speaker 1: it's going to occur with shocks of between six and
Speaker 1: sixteen millie amps um. This is a little bit painful,
Speaker 1: and um, the main action of it is is that
Speaker 1: I will okay, you know, as opposed to extreme pain,
Speaker 1: which I can talk about a little bit later, I
Speaker 1: can talk about how painful it is from personal experience.
Speaker 1: You have been shocked with a personal was do you
Speaker 1: want now? You want to know the story was trying
Speaker 1: to get too close to Brent spin Or at a convention,
Speaker 1: and uh, it was Jonathan Frakes and you know it. No, U, No,
Speaker 1: that's not the case. And Joe knows this story because
Speaker 1: I've already related it earlier today. But I know what
Speaker 1: happened was I was at is that a camping event,
Speaker 1: and a bunch of people sitting around the campfire, and
Speaker 1: the discussion turned to, you know, non lethal weapons, as
Speaker 1: it is on your typical camping trip. In case Jason
Speaker 1: Vorhees comes out of the woods, you need to find
Speaker 1: some way of slowing him down so he gets the
Speaker 1: weaker of the group so the rest of you can
Speaker 1: get away. Why didn't you bring a magic dagger with you?
Speaker 1: Turned out that I did not have a magical dagger.
Speaker 1: In fact, right now, we don't even have our mystical acts. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: how is it? The tiger are not with us at
Speaker 1: any rate? So what happened was one of one of
Speaker 1: the people there had a stunt gun and explained that
Speaker 1: the juice had run down quite a bit to the
Speaker 1: point where it was no longer really an effective deterrent
Speaker 1: in any sense, and then demonstrated by stunt gunning himself
Speaker 1: in the leg uh and uh, and just made his
Speaker 1: leg twitch a little bit. And he said, see it's
Speaker 1: not even really effective. And then the person next to
Speaker 1: him said, let me see that and took it and went, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: it kind of hurts, but that's it. And then the
Speaker 1: next person said, let me see that. And I was
Speaker 1: about two more people down the line, and of course
Speaker 1: by then I'm like, well, the peer pressure is already
Speaker 1: gained to the point where I cannot just no thanks,
Speaker 1: and handed to the next first said, so I also
Speaker 1: did it. It felt like kind of a beasting and
Speaker 1: it made my muscles in my thigh contract. But like
Speaker 1: I said, the juice and this one, the voltage was
Speaker 1: much lower than what it should have been to be
Speaker 1: a true deterrent. So at this point are our decision
Speaker 1: was that if if any attacker were hit by this thing,
Speaker 1: it would only encourage them to hurt you more. It
Speaker 1: would really only make them angry. Yeah, what what you're
Speaker 1: really looking to do with a stun gun is to
Speaker 1: um to deplete a person's muscular energy reserves with these contractions,
Speaker 1: therefore making them temporarily too weak to move um. And secondly,
Speaker 1: the current in the brain it can it can introduce
Speaker 1: kind of like random noise into the brain's ordered signal
Speaker 1: system and that can cause a sense of of confusion
Speaker 1: and and off balancedness. It's sort of temporary mental paralysis.
Speaker 1: So this is kind of like the concept of getting
Speaker 1: UH interference on a radio signal. It's where you you
Speaker 1: can you're still getting a signal through, but you might
Speaker 1: have a competing signal that's that's coming in on it
Speaker 1: and it starts getting all jumbled. That's sort of the
Speaker 1: same sort of thing. It's like, you know, you've you've
Speaker 1: kind of done a little power surge in the body
Speaker 1: and your brain can't quite handle it exactly. Yeah. Um, So,
Speaker 1: so that covers the electrical system. On the chemical end,
Speaker 1: you know today we use stuff like tear gas and
Speaker 1: pepper spray sometimes in in terms of UM attacker or
Speaker 1: crowd control. And the idea is that these these chemicals
Speaker 1: are strong but non lethal irritants UM more precisely mucous
Speaker 1: membrane inflammatory agents which are going to cause UM pain
Speaker 1: eye swelling to the point of swelling shut for fifteen
Speaker 1: to thirty minutes and UM throat and no swelling that
Speaker 1: can compare breathing for about five to thirteen minutes. And
Speaker 1: I I do have the names of the two most
Speaker 1: common tear gases in use. If you guys really want
Speaker 1: to torture me and everyone else by saying seventeen syllable chemical,
Speaker 1: I don't think that's necessary. I think we get the point. Yeah, really,
Speaker 1: when you get down to it, When you get down
Speaker 1: to it, these chemicals aren't so much stunning people as
Speaker 1: convincing them they want to be any where other than
Speaker 1: where they are right then at that moment. Now, those
Speaker 1: those nerve agents, the kind of things that we um
Speaker 1: saw in Syria, work by inhibiting an enzyme that breaks
Speaker 1: down the narrow transmitter that's released to signal muscles to contract. Therefore,
Speaker 1: they prevent muscles from relaxing, which leads to a lot
Speaker 1: of really nasty stuff, but but most critically to suffocation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not stun day. We're looking for non lethal stun
Speaker 1: technology the source stuff we see in Star Trek. That's
Speaker 1: clearly not the case. So right, but most of the time,
Speaker 1: when you're talking about messing with neuro neurotoxins, it's going
Speaker 1: to be on the level of death pretty soon, not this,
Speaker 1: not this. Yeah, So do we have anything that's a
Speaker 1: little bit closer to what this stunt technology would be? Like,
Speaker 1: I mean well, is there a way to zap somebody
Speaker 1: and knock them out? Yeahout hurting them? No, Now you
Speaker 1: made it tricky. I was. I was ready to talk
Speaker 1: about and then you made it more difficult. Okay, So
Speaker 1: stun guns are kind of the basic that we basic
Speaker 1: unit we need to talk about. And I chatted about
Speaker 1: it a second ago when I talked about stunning myself
Speaker 1: in the leg like an idiot. By the way, just
Speaker 1: in my defense, I was a stupid teenager at the time,
Speaker 1: all right. So also, kids, don't use stun guns on yourself. No,
Speaker 1: it's not it's not a good plan. Don't be like Jonathan.
Speaker 1: Don't be like me. I mean, look at me. I
Speaker 1: stunned myself in the leg and became an incredibly successful
Speaker 1: and famous person. So don't do that. Um, those two things,
Speaker 1: by the way, not not no causation there, And just
Speaker 1: just keep that in mind. I had not told that
Speaker 1: story for like fifteen years, so um at any rate.
Speaker 1: The the stun gun is your sort of basic stun weapon,
Speaker 1: and it's kind of a bad name for it, stun gun,
Speaker 1: because it it is not the same effect as you
Speaker 1: would imagine a stunned phaser like it doesn't harmlessly render
Speaker 1: someone unconscious exactly. And you know, like in Star Trek,
Speaker 1: not only are they just harmlessly rendered unconscious, they slump
Speaker 1: over in such a way that doesn't cause them physical damage. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they kind of sit down. Yeah, I don't know. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you've ever seen anyone actually lose consciousness
Speaker 1: while upright. It is nothing like that. Sometimes they're allowed
Speaker 1: sounds when like skull bone hits the ground. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: not good. So anyway, the basic stun gun is designed
Speaker 1: where you have two sets of electrodes generally speaking uh
Speaker 1: an outer set and interset, meaning that there are two
Speaker 1: that are closer together and to their further apart. The
Speaker 1: two that are further apart of the ones that are
Speaker 1: actually designed to make contact with your target. The two
Speaker 1: that are closer together are meant to allow sparks to spark,
Speaker 1: thus acting as a deterrent. So if I hold up
Speaker 1: a stun gun, not not all of them have these
Speaker 1: two sets, by the way, but a lot of them do.
Speaker 1: So if I hold up a stun gun and I
Speaker 1: hit the button and you hear that d get noise
Speaker 1: and you see the sparks across, Yeah, that's just it's
Speaker 1: meant to be. It's really meant to to for the
Speaker 1: person who's wielding it to say, please, please, please, don't
Speaker 1: make me use this, because it's not going to be
Speaker 1: pleasant for you. The outer set of electrodes are what
Speaker 1: would actually pass the electric current through the body of
Speaker 1: the target. Uh. So you've also got a capacitor. Capacitors
Speaker 1: are very useful in electronics. They store up energy and
Speaker 1: then release it all at once, So they're different from batteries.
Speaker 1: Batteries release energy gradually through a chemical uh. Usually you know,
Speaker 1: we talked about it as being a chemical reaction that
Speaker 1: releases electricity. A capacitor stores up electricity and then releases
Speaker 1: it all at once. There are a lot of electronics
Speaker 1: that use capacitors. For example, your camera flash is a
Speaker 1: capacity uses a capacitor because you know, you want that
Speaker 1: energy released in a very quick burst to get that flash.
Speaker 1: Otherwise the light would come on slowly and then go
Speaker 1: off slowly and not be useful for photographs. So in
Speaker 1: this case, the capacitor is there so that you can
Speaker 1: actually release a shock all at once to the target.
Speaker 1: You have a battery that actually stores the electricity usually
Speaker 1: gets a certain number of charges. Each charge tend to
Speaker 1: be a little weaker than the one before it until
Speaker 1: you can recharge to full or replace the battery, usually
Speaker 1: a standard nine vault battery. I think yeah, nine volt
Speaker 1: batteries pretty common. They also have oscillators that fluctuate the
Speaker 1: current to provide pulses of electricity, and the pulses of
Speaker 1: electricity are what create that pattern that makes muscles wear
Speaker 1: out faster because they contract for while the pulses going.
Speaker 1: Then they stop and they contract again, and it's really
Speaker 1: really rapid, so it exhausts the muscle very quickly. So
Speaker 1: that's your basic stun gun, but there are, of course
Speaker 1: some variations. There's the Taser, which is actually named after
Speaker 1: a science fiction weapon, but the Taser is uh adds
Speaker 1: another element to your basic stun gun, which is that
Speaker 1: has a little air canister in it that allows it
Speaker 1: to project those electrodes out from the base unit, and
Speaker 1: they are connected to the base unit by wires, so
Speaker 1: that means you can actually have a range to this
Speaker 1: thing as opposed to just being you know, face to
Speaker 1: face with whoever you are trying to zap. They could
Speaker 1: be fifteen feet away and it fires the electrodes attached
Speaker 1: to the target and it's about as pleasant as it sounds.
Speaker 1: And then electricity passes through the wires to the electrodes
Speaker 1: and causes the target to go through the same convulsion, right, right,
Speaker 1: So in all of these cases you need physical contact
Speaker 1: of some kind. It's it's not like it's not like
Speaker 1: a Star Trek phaser, where you know there's a there's
Speaker 1: there's a ray and you can be a long way away.
Speaker 1: You have to physically make contact so that these electrodes
Speaker 1: can use the the person that you are using it
Speaker 1: on as the as the connection point. It's completing the circuit. Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 1: So these the handheld unit has like all the battery
Speaker 1: and everything in it, so you and you can actually
Speaker 1: usually at least with the Taser one, you can administer
Speaker 1: additional shock if you have to. In other words, if
Speaker 1: someone is still being combative and in a danger to
Speaker 1: either themselves or to other people, then you can admit
Speaker 1: stir another couple of apps. Um, pretty serious stuff. But
Speaker 1: I mean even that, you know, you're still talking about
Speaker 1: a range of ten to fifteen feet maybe, Um, if
Speaker 1: you want to go beyond that, then you could look
Speaker 1: at their shotgun taser, which is a pretty interesting piece
Speaker 1: of technology. I got to see it at c e
Speaker 1: S before it was rolled out as an actual product.
Speaker 1: They were showing it off as the prototype stage. Absolutely
Speaker 1: fascinating technology. Very scary stuff too, obviously, because you think
Speaker 1: about this, not less scary, I would say, than an
Speaker 1: actual shotgun blast, but um so imagine a shotgun shell,
Speaker 1: but instead of it having shot inside of it, it
Speaker 1: has this little plastic device that's got two electrodes on
Speaker 1: the end of it, and when you fire it, a
Speaker 1: little fins pop out to stabilize its flight and it
Speaker 1: flies to its target. Once it impacts the target, the
Speaker 1: back half of this device separates and it's connected to
Speaker 1: the front half that has the electrodes by wires. So
Speaker 1: in a way, it's like having a handheld taser unit,
Speaker 1: but it's mantorized and it's all on the target, and
Speaker 1: it's like you throw if you were going to throw
Speaker 1: the taser, and so the wires are not insulated, so
Speaker 1: in other words, if you reach to try and pull
Speaker 1: the taser unit off of yourself, you're gonna get shocked
Speaker 1: by the wires too. Uh. And it also has enough
Speaker 1: juice in it to administer several pulses of electricity through
Speaker 1: it to render the target immobile. So, uh, it's a
Speaker 1: I'll put it this way, it's effective. Uh So this sounds, though,
Speaker 1: I guess, intended to be not lethal somehow not quite
Speaker 1: as humane as the stick and spans star treks done gun. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, I would say if you're talking about humane,
Speaker 1: as in the target experiences no discomfort or pain, then
Speaker 1: obviously this is not that same world. We're talking about
Speaker 1: two totally different things here. Uh. It's an incredibly tricky
Speaker 1: situation because if you're talking about situations where there are
Speaker 1: a lot of people out of control and they are
Speaker 1: a potential threat to innocent bystanders, and yet they themselves
Speaker 1: are not necessarily criminals or otherwise dangerous. It's just the
Speaker 1: situation has gotten out of control. What are people who
Speaker 1: are supposed to keep the peace to do about that
Speaker 1: kind of situation that minimizes the impact of their own
Speaker 1: actions keeping things in control, limiting the damage that's done.
Speaker 1: It's a really tricky problem. I don't know that stun
Speaker 1: technology is necessarily the right approach for that, but it's
Speaker 1: at least an attempt for people to try and find
Speaker 1: a way of dealing with something that is truly a
Speaker 1: sticky situation, right, and an electrical stunt technology in particular
Speaker 1: is very tricky because you're working with UM within very
Speaker 1: limited parameters of what is going to be effective without
Speaker 1: being permanently damaging. UM. You know, it's and and the
Speaker 1: exact numbers can vary depending on what source you're looking at,
Speaker 1: but about one to two million amps is the threshold
Speaker 1: of human perception that you're going to feel a tingle,
Speaker 1: but it's not really going to going to be painful. UM.
Speaker 1: Below five million amps, most people retain control of their muscles.
Speaker 1: That's probably about what you guys were delivering to each
Speaker 1: other with that with that stune gun way back. Maybe
Speaker 1: a little bit more, but not by much. UM six
Speaker 1: to sixteen is is the range at which most electrical
Speaker 1: stun weapons fall into. If you go above that, you're
Speaker 1: going to involve UM a lot of pain and and
Speaker 1: risk throwing the person into respiratory arrest or paralysis and
Speaker 1: UM death can even occur at this range, depending on
Speaker 1: the length of the shock that's delivered. When you get
Speaker 1: up above a hundred million amps, you're you're going to
Speaker 1: risk ventricular fibrillation, which is erratic or uncontrolled heartbeats right. Well,
Speaker 1: and also I mean to to add to the complexity
Speaker 1: of this issue and the fact that stun technology uh.
Speaker 1: While you know, the the premise is something that I
Speaker 1: think is easily agreeable, like the idea of a technology
Speaker 1: that can incapacitate a potentially dangerous target humanely. Uh, I
Speaker 1: think that you know, most people would say, well, I
Speaker 1: that's something I think would be good because it may
Speaker 1: be a weird set of circumstances that brought this all about.
Speaker 1: And you don't want to necessarily use lethal force or
Speaker 1: hurt the person you but you definitely want to stop
Speaker 1: them from being able to hurt someone else. I mean
Speaker 1: that part I agree with. Yeah, these are these are
Speaker 1: real problems that we face and know. There are other
Speaker 1: ones too that are you know, different levels of they
Speaker 1: give me different levels of squak. Uh. They're riot shields
Speaker 1: that have capacitive strips on them that can administer a shock.
Speaker 1: Uh so for riot control that would be used. There
Speaker 1: are other one that there's one type of right shield
Speaker 1: it's called let's see, I think I actually have written
Speaker 1: down what it was called. Um, it's sell extraction shields.
Speaker 1: Or capture shields. So imagine a riot shield, but the
Speaker 1: curve is in the opposite direction of what it normally is,
Speaker 1: So instead of being convex, it's concave, so meaning that
Speaker 1: since it's concave, you could use it to corral someone
Speaker 1: using the capacity of bands on it. And so these
Speaker 1: are things that are are troubling not at the same time,
Speaker 1: it's also troubling to think of people who have to
Speaker 1: deal with uh, truly violent offenders and how do you
Speaker 1: do that in a way that keeps the person who
Speaker 1: has to you know, deal with this person safe? Like,
Speaker 1: how do you do that in a way where the
Speaker 1: guards not put in physical danger uh, while still being
Speaker 1: as humane as possible in the dealing of of prisoners.
Speaker 1: This is tough stuff. I mean, obviously this is not
Speaker 1: an easy thing to talk about. UM. And then there
Speaker 1: was one other sun technology I wanted to talk about
Speaker 1: before we get into some the future stuff. Actually to
Speaker 1: I'll talk about one is um flash bang grenades. You
Speaker 1: guys heard about this, right, I mean, like you know,
Speaker 1: they're used in video games, you see him in movies.
Speaker 1: They do exist. They're meant to give off a bright
Speaker 1: flash of light and allowed noise to disorient the targets somless.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you know, like in the in the movies,
Speaker 1: you might see something like a team of bank robbers
Speaker 1: and one of them tosses a flash bang grenade into
Speaker 1: a bank and it immediately disorients everyone. Then they rush in,
Speaker 1: or or it could be a task force that's about
Speaker 1: to come in on a criminal gang and they toss
Speaker 1: one in and it ends up causing enough confusion for
Speaker 1: them to execute a maneuver or whatever. Um In truth,
Speaker 1: these things can cause massive amounts of damage. I mean,
Speaker 1: they are explosives. They're meant to just do light and
Speaker 1: sound really, but there's a concussive force that goes along
Speaker 1: with that. So I've seen some videos of like training
Speaker 1: video where someone was using a flash bang grenade within
Speaker 1: a a hallway that like an office hallway, and they
Speaker 1: toss it into the room and the explosion was so
Speaker 1: great that all of the ceiling tiles fell in on
Speaker 1: the team outside in the hallway. Yeah, so that would
Speaker 1: be disorienting for both the people in the room and
Speaker 1: the people who are out in the hallway that are
Speaker 1: supposed to be ready to rush in. Um Uh, that
Speaker 1: that's a da know, obviously danger anytime you're using concussive
Speaker 1: force to knock someone out, that is dangerous. Concussion concussion essentially,
Speaker 1: any sort of concussive force attack is essentially you're you're
Speaker 1: accelraing the skull so that the brain collides with the
Speaker 1: inside of the skull, and that can cause permanent nerve
Speaker 1: and brain damage. Sort of like hitting them on the head. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the knock them on the head with a hammer
Speaker 1: cartoon thing. We would like to note for the record
Speaker 1: that whenever you see in in perhaps your favorite television show,
Speaker 1: someone knocking out, especially a friend of theirs, for for
Speaker 1: some brief period of time by just cracking them one
Speaker 1: on the knoggin, um, that's a bad plan. Don't don't
Speaker 1: do that. That can cause permanent damage. I mean that.
Speaker 1: I mean you're talking about making the brain collide with
Speaker 1: the skull so that it shorts out the nervous system.
Speaker 1: That's essentially what you're talking about. So anything with cacussa
Speaker 1: force is already by its very nature not you know,
Speaker 1: it's not harmless. It's going to cause some form of harm.
Speaker 1: It may be temporary, but it could be permanent. And
Speaker 1: then the last one we're going to talk about, which
Speaker 1: is you know, less harmful, it's more truly disorienting and not.
Speaker 1: I don't really consider it a stun technology as so
Speaker 1: much as again it's something that just truly disorients the
Speaker 1: target is using light, high intensity light. So for example,
Speaker 1: Genesis Illumination developed a strobe light that uses powerful lights
Speaker 1: to create a disorienting effect that's effective up to a
Speaker 1: d fifty feet away and they use xenon gas plasma
Speaker 1: bulbs to generate the light. And you know, a right
Speaker 1: you know, like a car headlight. When it's on high,
Speaker 1: this thing is about twenty three times more intense than
Speaker 1: that ouch, so intense that if someone were pointing when
Speaker 1: at you and you were a mile away, you could
Speaker 1: read to buy it in the middle of the night.
Speaker 1: That's how bright this thing is. Uh So, the idea
Speaker 1: is that you hina that the target and it's so
Speaker 1: bright that the target cannot look in that direction at all,
Speaker 1: and it's disorienting. So if you are behind the light,
Speaker 1: then you're essentially invisible to that person because they cannot
Speaker 1: see due to that light. So that's a that's one
Speaker 1: that you know, it it's a deterrent for the person
Speaker 1: to behave in a particular way, but not truly a stunt,
Speaker 1: but not a physical overload. Yeah. Alright, So so that
Speaker 1: kind of catches us up on the technology being used
Speaker 1: right now. And obviously this is not ideal because like
Speaker 1: we said, we would love to have the technology that
Speaker 1: would this is kind of grim. Um does does the
Speaker 1: future hold anything perhaps less terrifying? Well, I was trying
Speaker 1: to think of what might be more similar to the
Speaker 1: actual style of stunted phaser we see and say Star Trek, which,
Speaker 1: if you'll recall, is a directed energy weapon, you know.
Speaker 1: So what we're talking about mostly is like stunned guns
Speaker 1: where you have to stick somebody with something and pumping
Speaker 1: physical contact with something that's generating electricity. Yeah, so that's
Speaker 1: one part of it. Also, as as we've just been discussing,
Speaker 1: it is potentially painful and potentially dangerous. So so it's
Speaker 1: not as as clean as the Star Trek portrayal. Is
Speaker 1: there anything like that? Well, short answer, as far as
Speaker 1: I can tell, no, Keep in mind, there's stuff that's
Speaker 1: classified that we can't know about. Um, So there may
Speaker 1: be things like this in development. There may be things
Speaker 1: like this we discover in the future. But h but
Speaker 1: here here's a few things I found that that are
Speaker 1: sort of getting close as far as the directed energy
Speaker 1: weapon goes. I mean, one thing about the stun setting
Speaker 1: on the Phaser and Star Trek is that you can
Speaker 1: be pretty far away, um and you can zap somebody
Speaker 1: and and and put them out that way. Uh. Is
Speaker 1: there anything like that, like a like a sort of blast.
Speaker 1: Well could Yeah. So in two thousand five, the U. S.
Speaker 1: Department of Defense announced that they developed a thing called
Speaker 1: a personal Halting and Stimulation Response Rifles. That was the
Speaker 1: Phaser acronym there phaser without any so it's like faster uh.
Speaker 1: And basically this would be a low energy pulsing laser.
Speaker 1: And what they claim is that it was a non lethal,
Speaker 1: non permanent blinding effect. So would temporarily blind the enemy
Speaker 1: or the victim or whatever you would call them, blind
Speaker 1: someone temporarily without permanent damage, and that would incapacitate them.
Speaker 1: Now again, that's not the same thing as a yeah,
Speaker 1: the strobe disorienting um and uh so yeah, it would
Speaker 1: simply the quote they used was dazzle the victim um
Speaker 1: like a mutant from X Men. Yeah. The funny thing
Speaker 1: that that was that there was a little buzz about
Speaker 1: this when it came out, but I haven't read a
Speaker 1: whole lot about it since then. Um And so it
Speaker 1: wouldn't introduce paralysis or unconsciousness. Also, it sounds a little fishy,
Speaker 1: like I'd be worried that the purveyors of this technology
Speaker 1: might be a little overly sanguine about its supposed harmlessness. Right,
Speaker 1: I'd say that in general, the the inventors of things
Speaker 1: like this are more willing to sign off on on
Speaker 1: the safety than perhaps entire teams of of third parties
Speaker 1: that are you know, a little bit more that aren't
Speaker 1: aren't directly interested in whether or not the project succeeds
Speaker 1: or fails. Um. So yeah, so that's a sort of
Speaker 1: at least that is directed energy. Right. So would that
Speaker 1: be a laser thing? You could do it at a
Speaker 1: distance and um and it would be non lethal and
Speaker 1: supposedly not cause any permanent damage. Okay, but on the
Speaker 1: other side, wouldn't knock you unconscious? And don't know how
Speaker 1: actually non damaging? Well? Well, what else? Uh, there's the
Speaker 1: active denial system. Okay, what's this? I have not but
Speaker 1: that sounds amazing. I go through every day. It's a
Speaker 1: combination of amazing and messed up. Yeah. So basically this
Speaker 1: is an idea of incapacitating people, but again it's not
Speaker 1: going to make them unconscious. The idea is that you
Speaker 1: blast a sort of focused beam of millimeter wave radiation
Speaker 1: and what's the effect When it hits you. It causes intense,
Speaker 1: non damaging pain. So did I tell you guys about
Speaker 1: the time I went camping and hit myself in an
Speaker 1: active denial system ray? I mean it was going around
Speaker 1: the whole group, and I thought, well, okay, it was
Speaker 1: it was low power. Anyway, I've actually seen one of these,
Speaker 1: and not personally. I have seen one of these used
Speaker 1: in a video where it was something similar to this anyway,
Speaker 1: may not have been this specific implementation you're talking about,
Speaker 1: but there was a reporter who was talking about this
Speaker 1: technology and was being shown how it works, and the
Speaker 1: the reporter was first told to stand in this one
Speaker 1: position and they were going to turn the ray on
Speaker 1: on him. The ray, by the way, it was just
Speaker 1: connected to a big truck. It was not what you
Speaker 1: would call portable. Um not well, I mean not portable
Speaker 1: in the sense of a single person. A team could
Speaker 1: move it around, but anyway, the ray was directed at him,
Speaker 1: and he immediately needed to jump out the way. So
Speaker 1: it was like a kind of a very hot sensation
Speaker 1: that he like, it was just too hot to to
Speaker 1: to stand. Yeah. And so then they gave him various
Speaker 1: types of stuff to hold in front of him as
Speaker 1: he would advance on the position of the ray to
Speaker 1: see like if help. Yeah, so you had like plywood
Speaker 1: or a mattress or all this other kind of stuff
Speaker 1: because I again, this was a sort of a kind
Speaker 1: of a riot dispersal sort of of tool. And uh,
Speaker 1: and he couldn't He couldn't do that either. He couldn't
Speaker 1: withstand it much longer than he could if it was
Speaker 1: just standing there, and he was wearing it was a
Speaker 1: cold day, so he was wearing layers of clothing too.
Speaker 1: It was clear that this thing worked quickly. Yeah. Uh yeah.
Speaker 1: So again interesting in that it's directed energy, so you
Speaker 1: can do it at a distance. Um. It is non lethal, um,
Speaker 1: but some similar objections as the other one. It's not
Speaker 1: going to render you unconscious. The ethics of it or
Speaker 1: a little questionable in that it is intentionally meant to
Speaker 1: cause pain pain right the same way that that tear
Speaker 1: gas or something like that is meant to cause you
Speaker 1: such extreme discomfort that you want to be anywhere else. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think there's also a question, even though it's
Speaker 1: generally agreed to be non lethal, there's a question of well,
Speaker 1: I mean, could it's in some sorry, could it in
Speaker 1: some cases cause injury that could there be cell mutation
Speaker 1: that could lead to very serious problems down the line.
Speaker 1: I mean you're talking about things that could potentially have
Speaker 1: implications years later. Yeah, all right, well, okay, so we've
Speaker 1: got we've got pain, and we've got light. Is there
Speaker 1: anything else out there? There's another light? One actually can
Speaker 1: still be directed energy. It's a version of don't remember
Speaker 1: in Minority Report the six stick. Yeah, yeah, I have
Speaker 1: no memory of this. Actually I remember Minority Report, but
Speaker 1: for some reason, this is not coming back to me.
Speaker 1: It's a non lethal weapon where basically it's designed to
Speaker 1: instead of injuring you, just to make you sick so
Speaker 1: I can suddenly become nauseated. Yeah. It incapacitates you by
Speaker 1: making you double over with nausea and vomiting and dizziness
Speaker 1: fun times. Yeah, and so that's in a way it's
Speaker 1: similar to active denial. You might say and that it's
Speaker 1: supposed to cause you discomfort that makes it unable for
Speaker 1: you to continue doing whatever you're doing. After effects of
Speaker 1: a frat party, yeah, but without injuring you in any
Speaker 1: permanent way, unlike the after effects of a front party. Right.
Speaker 1: But apparently you can sort of recreate some of this
Speaker 1: experience by creating what some people have, which is a
Speaker 1: a display of pulsing led lights, and if you have
Speaker 1: them pulse at different frequencies, can actually it'll sort of
Speaker 1: cause waves of sea sickness to I know people who
Speaker 1: who replicate this effect on a weekly basis, but they
Speaker 1: do it voluntarily. Um. So that's that's another one. So
Speaker 1: that could be directed energy at a distance. And supposedly,
Speaker 1: how if you could get this to work really well,
Speaker 1: you could incapacitate someone with a wave of sickness just
Speaker 1: by light. Um. So that's interesting. But again, it it's
Speaker 1: not quite as clean as Star Trek. It's I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not nice to make people double over with vomiting. Um.
Speaker 1: I think it might be preferable to killing them, I guess,
Speaker 1: I guess, but it's still right, a little bit less
Speaker 1: than humane. Yeah, I'm looking forward to a directed energy
Speaker 1: weapon that just shoots Internet cat memes into the eyes
Speaker 1: of the attackers, so they just stop and go oh
Speaker 1: that's interesting. Yeah. I wonder if there there could be
Speaker 1: like a procrastination gun, so that what whenever somebody has
Speaker 1: designs to do something really bad, like they're running at
Speaker 1: you with a knife, you display images that make them
Speaker 1: really distracted and want to click. You know, there is
Speaker 1: a procrastination gun, but you can't actually fire it because
Speaker 1: you always put it off till later. I I think
Speaker 1: that this will have great application when we all have
Speaker 1: Google Glass and etcetera wired directly into our brains. So
Speaker 1: oh yeah, somebody could like hack your vision huh yeah
Speaker 1: and just just send you straight to the like cute
Speaker 1: ducks riding room bows channel or something just like. It
Speaker 1: would just be that for the next three hours. Suddenly
Speaker 1: we just go out. I was going to commit violence.
Speaker 1: U it's the only thing better? Is the only thing
Speaker 1: better is cute ducks riding doom buzz Oh No, we're
Speaker 1: back to the dark place again. Guys. All right, let's
Speaker 1: let's get out of this. All right. Well, you know
Speaker 1: that do you have anything other than the various forms
Speaker 1: of ridiculous? No, So I just wanted to report after
Speaker 1: all that that I, as far as I know, there's
Speaker 1: nothing like a phaser set to stunt out there. There
Speaker 1: is no such technology that we know of, and I
Speaker 1: haven't I haven't even really found anybody saying here's how
Speaker 1: it might be done. Well, here here's what I how
Speaker 1: I want to wrap this up. I mean, first of all, obviously,
Speaker 1: if we have to have these kind of tools, then
Speaker 1: I would prefer it if we could find a way
Speaker 1: where we could have that wonderful Star Trek approach where
Speaker 1: you know where it is safe and and you know,
Speaker 1: you just gently kind of sit down right, and then
Speaker 1: you wake up and you're in the holding cell until
Speaker 1: you're calmed down and then everything's okay, or you're you know,
Speaker 1: con and you end up taking over the enterprise from
Speaker 1: the holding cell. Whatever. But what I really hope is
Speaker 1: that we can strive for a future where this sort
Speaker 1: of becomes a moot point anyway, where we don't even
Speaker 1: need to worry about this kind of thing because we've
Speaker 1: gotten to a point where we're able to have conversations
Speaker 1: and work things out. And I mean, obviously that's like
Speaker 1: the touching clearly Star Trek future, but that's more. Really,
Speaker 1: I really strive for that there aren't the kind of
Speaker 1: socioeconomic factors that drive the kind of riots that make
Speaker 1: the story exactly we're talking. We're talking about a world
Speaker 1: that is dramatically different from the one we have, and
Speaker 1: I think it's one that I honestly think it really
Speaker 1: is something that is attainable if we if we really
Speaker 1: put our minds to it. And uh, you know that
Speaker 1: certainly can sound a little pollyannish to some people, but
Speaker 1: I don't care. You know what, I'm reading Jim Hinson's
Speaker 1: by aography and it's really affecting me. So if the
Speaker 1: dude thought that puppets could change the world, I think,
Speaker 1: you know, why don't we all give that a shot.
Speaker 1: So we've had some fun talking about this, and of
Speaker 1: course we've also addressed the very real concerns about this
Speaker 1: kind of technology, but ultimately it's one of those that
Speaker 1: we hope eventually phases out onto the phase thing I did,
Speaker 1: I see exactly what you did there? Well, that wraps
Speaker 1: up this discussion. A forward thinking guys go to f
Speaker 1: W thinking dot com. That is the website where we
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