Speaker 1: Welcome to tex Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tex Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works and I heart Radio and I love
Speaker 1: all things tech. It's time for another qualifier on that.
Speaker 1: This is a classic episode that originally aired on July nine,
Speaker 1: two twelve, and it is titled tex Stuff Arms Itself
Speaker 1: with non Lethal Weapons. Chris and I sit down to
Speaker 1: talk about the whole idea behind non lethal weapons, including
Speaker 1: the somewhat flexible definition of what non lethal is. I
Speaker 1: hope you guys enjoy and so we wanted to talk
Speaker 1: today about weapons that are designed to stop a target
Speaker 1: without killing that target, or at least that that's supposed
Speaker 1: to be what they do. Well, yeah, some some of
Speaker 1: the research I did also turned up other versions of
Speaker 1: the uh phrase non lethal weapons, including less than lethal weapons,
Speaker 1: which sounds to me like it is a a verbal
Speaker 1: uh disclaimer, he's only mostly dead. Well, it's not supposed
Speaker 1: to kill you. We actually had somebody, uh we've had
Speaker 1: some people right in to ask us about a particular
Speaker 1: one of the ones we're gonna talk about today, But um,
Speaker 1: really there there's a whole series of different kinds of
Speaker 1: things that the military and police departments around the world
Speaker 1: are investigating to basically stop people without hurting them completely. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so and this is this is tough. I mean, how
Speaker 1: do you how do you convince someone to stop acting
Speaker 1: irrationally or dangerously without really hurting that person in turn?
Speaker 1: And it's tricky, but there are a lot of different
Speaker 1: approaches that we've tried to take. Yeah, and I was
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. I was about to say though that there
Speaker 1: are a lot of reasons why you would want to
Speaker 1: do this other than you know, simply not wanting to
Speaker 1: to kill someone. Um, you know, for for strategic reasons.
Speaker 1: If you have, say, uh um and this scenario I've
Speaker 1: seen written about a lot, uh, say an uprising where
Speaker 1: you have say, hundreds of people uh protesting and maybe
Speaker 1: the protest is getting out of hand. Well, the the
Speaker 1: authorities who come to subdue the protesters or dispersed the protesters, Uh,
Speaker 1: if they kill people, they are likely to escalate uh
Speaker 1: these kinds of of riots or or disquiet. And uh,
Speaker 1: you know it's uh, it's happened, you know, we can
Speaker 1: I can remember stories going back centuries of something like
Speaker 1: this happening. So if there's a way to to uh
Speaker 1: get people to leave without really hurting anybody, that that's
Speaker 1: an advantage for for everyone. Really. I mean, the protesters
Speaker 1: don't get hurt as badly or or you know, even
Speaker 1: if it just makes them feel uncomfortable and they leave
Speaker 1: as a result of that, I mean, it seems like
Speaker 1: it's a positive for everyone. Yeah. And and we've tried
Speaker 1: a lot of different approaches with a lot of different
Speaker 1: methodologies and a lot of different results, right, not all
Speaker 1: of them have been successful. Here's one of the ones
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about first. That's just kind of
Speaker 1: interesting to me. This is using sound as a weapon
Speaker 1: due to now there are two different ways that sound
Speaker 1: tends to be used as a weapon. One of them
Speaker 1: is in something called a long range acoustic device or
Speaker 1: l l r a D. These are focused beams of sound.
Speaker 1: You just you crank up the decibel level to like
Speaker 1: a hundred fifty deciples, which is about fifty deciples over
Speaker 1: the pain threshold, and you direct it at the target.
Speaker 1: And that means the target suddenly has this incredibly loud noise,
Speaker 1: uh directed at them, and it's a painful experience to
Speaker 1: hear it. In fact, you can suffer hearing loss if
Speaker 1: you are subjected to that for two long uh. Some
Speaker 1: of these devices have actually been used for communication purposes.
Speaker 1: I read one report that said that there were navy
Speaker 1: ships that used a form of l R A D
Speaker 1: to send out signals to um two boats as they
Speaker 1: pulled into a harbor. So let's say that a giant
Speaker 1: navy vessel is sailing into a harbor that's got a
Speaker 1: busy fishing uh industry, and not all the fishermen are
Speaker 1: necessarily paying attention to the fact that there's an enormous
Speaker 1: ship coming in and they need to get out of
Speaker 1: the way. I read a report that said that there
Speaker 1: was a way where you could use this as a
Speaker 1: communications tool where you're not trying to overpower someone, You're
Speaker 1: not trying to cripple them. You're just trying to get
Speaker 1: their attention and say, hey, buddy, we're coming through. You
Speaker 1: might want to move, and except you're saying it in
Speaker 1: whatever the local languages, and that it totally freaks people
Speaker 1: out because suddenly they can hear this voice coming from
Speaker 1: really far away, as if it's on a radio or something.
Speaker 1: But there's no radio. I mean, it's just using a
Speaker 1: focused beam of sound to direct that sound at the
Speaker 1: individual and then that gets a little you know, it's
Speaker 1: a little unreal surreal, if you will. I would love
Speaker 1: to have one of these just to mess with people like, hey,
Speaker 1: hey you, I can see you, you know that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. But but but the the other use of
Speaker 1: this is, like I said, crank it up and you
Speaker 1: cripple someone because it's just so loud that it it's
Speaker 1: the pain is um uh difficult to bear on the
Speaker 1: on the Department of Defense non Lethal Weapons program pages
Speaker 1: and they have I use these for for my research.
Speaker 1: They have a set of current and uh proposed um
Speaker 1: different kinds of non lethal weapons, and they use what
Speaker 1: they call acoustic healing devices, which I think are probably
Speaker 1: related to these uh and they have a picture of
Speaker 1: one of those. But they say that they use them
Speaker 1: to to uh give intelligible voice commands over very very
Speaker 1: long distances. So I think they you know, from ship
Speaker 1: to ship, UM, you know, where they're not actually trying
Speaker 1: to cause pain, but they're using that level of U
Speaker 1: extra heavy amplification to get a message across and they
Speaker 1: consider it a weapon. But they're not talking about using
Speaker 1: it in the exact same way. It's like a really
Speaker 1: focused bullhorn. Yeah. Yeah. Another UM non lethal weapon that
Speaker 1: I saw that uses sound as the impulse stunnerd gun. UM.
Speaker 1: I don't know about this one. No, it's uh, it's
Speaker 1: it's pretty neat. UM. Some of these, some of these
Speaker 1: weapon quote unquote weapons, I guess they're technically weapons, UM,
Speaker 1: have very interesting names. Uh. This one is would have
Speaker 1: been used if you've ever watched the movie Thunderball UM,
Speaker 1: the documentary documentary Thunderball UM, which has a very scintillating
Speaker 1: underwater battle scene. UM. But if someone had had the
Speaker 1: impulse stunder gun, that might have gone a different way
Speaker 1: because basically this is uh used to stop people who
Speaker 1: are diving or swimming um underwater. It uses a sound
Speaker 1: wave that travels underwater that affects the way a person
Speaker 1: here's and will induce nausea. Oh so it's something you
Speaker 1: want to feel when you're underwater. No. No, And I
Speaker 1: mean if you had, you know, divers who are attempting
Speaker 1: some kind of underwater subterfuge, I wanted to say subterfuge
Speaker 1: partially underwater. UM, you know it would it would you
Speaker 1: think about that, if you were feeling suddenly like you
Speaker 1: were about to be ill, very violently ill underwater, I
Speaker 1: imagine it would be very hard to continue on with
Speaker 1: your actions. You would have to break it off and
Speaker 1: and for the surface, you know, dive for the surface,
Speaker 1: what swim to the surface. There we go. Um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a pretty neat application of sound too well. And
Speaker 1: and another one I saw, which did not have a name,
Speaker 1: or at least not a name that I could find,
Speaker 1: is a product that was developed by some Japanese engineers. Uh.
Speaker 1: It was a gun that has a microphone, a directional microphone,
Speaker 1: and directional speakers. And the what the gun does is
Speaker 1: you pointed at someone who's being loud and obnoxious, their
Speaker 1: voice goes into the microphone. It gets projected back from
Speaker 1: by the speakers at about a point to second delay,
Speaker 1: So the person talking starts to hear themselves speaking but
Speaker 1: point two seconds behind what they're currently saying, which is
Speaker 1: incredibly distracting. It's very difficult to continue a train of
Speaker 1: thought when you're hearing yourself at a slight delay. If
Speaker 1: you've ever talked on the phone or on any sort
Speaker 1: of radio device where you got that little bit of
Speaker 1: an echo or on on Skype, for example, anything like
Speaker 1: that where you start talking and you start hearing yourself
Speaker 1: just an instant after you're talking. It can be very disorienting.
Speaker 1: It can be very disorienting. Yeah, you start talking, then
Speaker 1: you're thinking, wait, I just said that. No no, I
Speaker 1: just said that. No no, no, I just said that,
Speaker 1: And then you can't make sense of anything anymore. So
Speaker 1: this particular quote unquote weapon was a sort of a
Speaker 1: I was designed to try and take care of people
Speaker 1: who are rude. Yeah, it's not meant to be like
Speaker 1: something to disperse a crowd or whatever. But there were
Speaker 1: a lot of of notes I saw on the article. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was popular a few a few months ago. I
Speaker 1: remember seeing seeing that a lot. So it's not it's
Speaker 1: not something that the police are using necessarily. It's more
Speaker 1: like a I'm trying to eat my dinner in a
Speaker 1: restaurant and you're having a cell phone conversation at the
Speaker 1: table next to me and you're really annoying. Or I'm
Speaker 1: at the movie theater and I just want to watch
Speaker 1: this documentary darnett Um. Yeah, the notes I saw said,
Speaker 1: what if you use this for someone who's doing some
Speaker 1: public speaking. But I would imagine that even with directional speakers,
Speaker 1: it's not so focused that only the person who is
Speaker 1: speaking can hear it. You know, it's not like you're
Speaker 1: beaming the words directly back into the person's ears. Everyone
Speaker 1: can hear it. So it's not like you could get
Speaker 1: away with doing something like that. Everyone would know who
Speaker 1: had done that, and you would, uh, you would very
Speaker 1: quickly get your come up. And I would imagine depending
Speaker 1: upon the circumstances of where you used it. Why, um,
Speaker 1: like I just want to aim at that valedictorian, think
Speaker 1: she's so big? Um. Yeah. I was also thinking that
Speaker 1: that's interesting that we bring that up in an election
Speaker 1: year here in the United States where people are giving
Speaker 1: a lot of speeches. We'll see. That was the thing
Speaker 1: that was That was what a lot of the notes, uh,
Speaker 1: we're you know, That's what they pertained to, was the
Speaker 1: idea of some sort of person who's running for an
Speaker 1: elected office and then disrupting their speech so that they
Speaker 1: seem like they're an idiot and then gives their opponent
Speaker 1: an advantage. But the truth is is that particular weapon
Speaker 1: or that particular product, whatever you want to call it,
Speaker 1: would not be so subtle as to allow someone to
Speaker 1: get away with that. I have another This is not
Speaker 1: another D O D product. UM actually looks sort of
Speaker 1: like a series of of flat disks that are a
Speaker 1: quartered together. Doesn't look very offensive if you will weapon.
Speaker 1: But it's called the Enhanced Underwater Loudhailer. I told you
Speaker 1: they had some strange names. Basically, this is another underwater
Speaker 1: device that can be used up to uh forty deep
Speaker 1: in water. UM, and it can it can transmit sound
Speaker 1: up to four sevens away. Basically they can give It's
Speaker 1: sort of like the one that they use above the
Speaker 1: surface of the water. But um, it allows you to
Speaker 1: uh send on you know. I actually the one I
Speaker 1: was just talking about a few moments ago, where the
Speaker 1: the device that you could use to send signals for
Speaker 1: a very long time, uh, make your commands heard for
Speaker 1: a very long distance. They show a picture of a
Speaker 1: Navy ship. I think you could probably use that in
Speaker 1: other applications. UM, but yeah, they can also they can
Speaker 1: also issue commands with this underwater allowed haailer or impair
Speaker 1: uh um people's hearing underwater for up to two hours.
Speaker 1: It will operate so uh pretty neat. It's sort of
Speaker 1: it's sort of like the In some of the other
Speaker 1: research I did, I was looking at things like culture
Speaker 1: ups and devices that you would use to stop vehicles,
Speaker 1: and I wasn't really going to focus on that, but
Speaker 1: it sort of seems like that, Like you could drop
Speaker 1: this underwater. It's battery operated and they can use it
Speaker 1: to give commands and and affect divers hearing underwater. So
Speaker 1: pretty neat. Yeah, I'm ready to move on to a
Speaker 1: new category unless you have another sound. One no other
Speaker 1: sound on this is this is moving to the category
Speaker 1: of air. Okay, using air as a weapon, Oh, sort
Speaker 1: of like the air Zuka. Yeah, exactly, that's exactly what
Speaker 1: it is. So air Zuka. So you're talking about a
Speaker 1: device toy. Yeah, it's a toy. It's a device that
Speaker 1: creates a vortex ring. Now vortex ring is kind of
Speaker 1: imagined sort of like a tornado, except it's in a
Speaker 1: donut shape and it will it's air that will rotate
Speaker 1: in this donut shape and it actually will maintain that
Speaker 1: integrity for a pretty good distance. And the air Zuoka
Speaker 1: is just a it's a toy that does this. You
Speaker 1: pull back a uh a sort of a well, it's
Speaker 1: a diaphragm really and you let go and it pushes
Speaker 1: air out through a nozzle and that creates the spinning
Speaker 1: vortex of air that then can go across the room
Speaker 1: and hit someone in the face and they feel like
Speaker 1: someone just you know, blew a huge breath of air
Speaker 1: right in their face for for no apparent reason. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: you walk in the door of a room, someone across
Speaker 1: the room has gone whoop, and then you go, hey,
Speaker 1: what was that? Well, and there's and I mean it
Speaker 1: doesn't move that fast either, So it's kind of funny
Speaker 1: because you actually can see, you know, there's there are
Speaker 1: a few seconds between when someone might fire one and
Speaker 1: someone else might feel it, and so you're just waiting
Speaker 1: in waitings that didn't work. Oh yeah, there's the guy.
Speaker 1: They're flinching. Now, yep, it worked. Well, you can actually
Speaker 1: kick that up a notch and weaponize it. And if
Speaker 1: you use pressurized gas and you accelerate the gas to
Speaker 1: supersonic velocity as it exits the nozzle. Once it comes
Speaker 1: out of that nozzle, it becomes a high spin vortex
Speaker 1: ring that can travel a good long distance and be
Speaker 1: strong enough to knock over someone. Oh around a hundred
Speaker 1: eighty pounds, so they it's like getting shoved in the
Speaker 1: chest by a really strong person. It's just it's just
Speaker 1: that it's air. Now, you could also, if you were
Speaker 1: so inclined, add in um malodorance. I you know, there
Speaker 1: were so many jokes that I was thinking about making,
Speaker 1: and I'm you're just not helping you. Well, the malodorance
Speaker 1: would be designed the maloderant, of course, of something that
Speaker 1: smells bad. But a malodorant could be designed to induce nausea, uh,
Speaker 1: or for to make your eyes water. So then you're
Speaker 1: getting shoved by a very stinky person essentially. But when
Speaker 1: I say stinky person, I'm talking about smells. They're so
Speaker 1: bad that you might feel like wretching. It's it's not
Speaker 1: like it's not just you know, oh that's like rotten eggs. No,
Speaker 1: it's way way worse. And uh you could even put
Speaker 1: in other stuff too, if you really wanted to, like
Speaker 1: some something that would affect you even more um acutely
Speaker 1: than a malodorant. But anyway, that's the general idea is
Speaker 1: just using air to knock back a person. Now, in
Speaker 1: this case, you're talking about a weapon designed to really
Speaker 1: knocked back individuals, right, you're not talking about like if
Speaker 1: there's a group of people, uh, walking up, shooting each
Speaker 1: one with a vortex of air is gonna take a
Speaker 1: while because you have to let that pressure build back
Speaker 1: up again and you have to then release the gas
Speaker 1: so that it goes out. And of course, again that's
Speaker 1: a projectile that does and move as fast as say
Speaker 1: a bullet or even sound or anything like that. So
Speaker 1: it starts to slow down almost immediately as it moves out,
Speaker 1: well really immediately as soon as it objects from the nozzle.
Speaker 1: So even though it's moving at supersonic speeds within the nozzle,
Speaker 1: once it gets out, it starts to slow down. Um.
Speaker 1: So it's not it's not something that you could use
Speaker 1: on a mass of people. But if you're talking about
Speaker 1: aiming at a specific person to knock them down, perhaps
Speaker 1: it's a individual who has shown himself to be a
Speaker 1: danger or herself to be a danger to others, than
Speaker 1: it would be a useful tool without actually causing that
Speaker 1: person direct harm. Now, granted, if the person falls down,
Speaker 1: there's always the chance that person could suffer serious injury
Speaker 1: in that fall, but the the impact of the air
Speaker 1: itself should not necessarily cause injury. Um. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: really have a lot of air based I can move
Speaker 1: onto electricity. Well you know it. I do have one
Speaker 1: that's uh that sort of reminds me of that sort
Speaker 1: of out of that um that field. And there was
Speaker 1: one that that I saw as a UM it would
Speaker 1: be very effective against vehicles, but it also would make you, um,
Speaker 1: well slip called polymer ice. Did you run across this
Speaker 1: one at all? Oh, this is not now, this is
Speaker 1: this is a this is a spray. But apparently what
Speaker 1: it is is essentially uh, you know, a polymer is
Speaker 1: as a chemical, and they would use it in places
Speaker 1: where the military is looking into this as a possibility
Speaker 1: apparently for especially for places that are particularly warm, like
Speaker 1: the Middle East or um, you know, places closer to
Speaker 1: the equator than say, I don't know, Greenland, um or
Speaker 1: maybe Atlanta, Georgia on a summer's day exactly. But if
Speaker 1: effectively creates sort of you would spray it on the
Speaker 1: ground and it would effectively create a icy situation. So
Speaker 1: this this plastic would make people slip and fall as
Speaker 1: though they were on ice. Um. Now, if you're if
Speaker 1: you're thinking Keystone Cops sort of thing. So you're chasing
Speaker 1: somebody and they've set up a trap ahead of them
Speaker 1: so that the polymer is on the ground now, so
Speaker 1: they're starting to fall, and then of course the people
Speaker 1: who are chasing them also begin to slip and fall,
Speaker 1: so everybody is writhing around in the ground because they
Speaker 1: can't get up. It's like a bunch of turtles on
Speaker 1: their backs. Yeah. Um, they have been working on a
Speaker 1: counter agent for this that they could use the shoes.
Speaker 1: They could use it on the shoes and tires of
Speaker 1: vehicle vehicles that are, you know, running after them. It's
Speaker 1: still a really advanced version of my automatic banana peel tosser.
Speaker 1: But yeah, the whole you know, making people fall down
Speaker 1: thing where you were just talking about that a moment
Speaker 1: ago with using the high powered air, I thought, oh,
Speaker 1: slipping in falling down, that sounds like the if you
Speaker 1: could use the two together, so you could really have
Speaker 1: people on their backs. So this is the reason why
Speaker 1: I really wanted to do this, uh, this topic, because
Speaker 1: the more we talk about the more it sounds like
Speaker 1: we're entering a world where Acme products from Warner Brothers
Speaker 1: cartoons are a reality. Well, people still like talking about
Speaker 1: that that effort that the US military made to weaponize bats.
Speaker 1: Well there's also the whole weaponized dolphins thing. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: and then those those things are actually well we're actually real.
Speaker 1: So hey, yeah, there's some some of these are really
Speaker 1: cool and some of them are sillier than not. You
Speaker 1: take advantages anyway you can get them, and not everything
Speaker 1: pans out, all right, So let's move on to electricity.
Speaker 1: So there's plenty of that. Yeah, you know, you have
Speaker 1: your typical stun guns, which a basic stun gun is
Speaker 1: a device that has a couple of electrode prongs that
Speaker 1: when you when you activate it, electricity passes between the
Speaker 1: two prongs. So if you were to put that in
Speaker 1: contact with a human you could shock them and generally
Speaker 1: it's a strong enough electric shock to make their muscles
Speaker 1: seize up. It causes pain, and it also makes people
Speaker 1: fall over if the if the shocks enough for their
Speaker 1: muscles to seize up like that, they lose control of
Speaker 1: their muscle um, their muscle movements and they fall over.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, it's you can't you can't stop that, you know,
Speaker 1: because our muscles do work on electrochemical signals. So if
Speaker 1: you use electricity to override those signals, then suddenly they
Speaker 1: just start contracting like crazy and you can't really do anything. Um.
Speaker 1: As someone who has actually felt the sting of an
Speaker 1: underpowered stunt gun, I can tell you it is not
Speaker 1: a pleasant experience. It felt like it felt like a
Speaker 1: really intense beasting because the one that was I was
Speaker 1: gonna say, used on me, but really I used it
Speaker 1: on myself. Uh, I was an idiot kid. I don't
Speaker 1: want to know. It was not the first one to
Speaker 1: do it either. I watched until several other people went
Speaker 1: owl that that hurts. The next one's like, hey give
Speaker 1: me that owl, Well, that does hurt, and next person, hey,
Speaker 1: give me that al and then came round to me.
Speaker 1: I'm like, all right, give me that. But the battery
Speaker 1: had really run down, so it wasn't a very powerful
Speaker 1: stun gun. And really the reaction we all had was
Speaker 1: if you hit an attacker with that particular stun gun
Speaker 1: because the battery been worn down so much, you really
Speaker 1: would have just irritated them, because again, it wasn't enough
Speaker 1: to make all your muscles contract. It made you made
Speaker 1: made whatever muscle it was in contact with twitch like crazy,
Speaker 1: and it stung, but it wasn't enough to really be
Speaker 1: a deterrent well, a real stun gun with a fully
Speaker 1: charged batteries serious business that can make you fall over
Speaker 1: and it can be a while before you can get
Speaker 1: back up again. And perhaps the most I would argue,
Speaker 1: the most famous name in this sort of technology, although
Speaker 1: it's not just stunt gun, is taser, and a typical
Speaker 1: taser is a device that ejects a pair of electrodes,
Speaker 1: fires them at a target. UH. The electrodes trail a
Speaker 1: wire that connects back to the handheld device, and then
Speaker 1: once it comes into contact with the target, electricity flows
Speaker 1: through the wires into those electrodes and shocks the target
Speaker 1: and again creates a shock strong enough to make all
Speaker 1: those muscles contract and the person generally winces, says something
Speaker 1: along the lines of al and falls over UM. And
Speaker 1: the intention is to do this in a non lethal way. Now,
Speaker 1: there have been deaths associated with the use of tasers.
Speaker 1: In some cases it was because of the way the
Speaker 1: target or the person will say person target is just
Speaker 1: the generic term, but the person fell, and then the
Speaker 1: fall was partially what killed the person. In some cases,
Speaker 1: it might be that the person had a pacemaker or
Speaker 1: some other medical device that got UH that malfunction due
Speaker 1: to the electric shock. Sometimes it has to do with
Speaker 1: drugs that are in the persons system. Anyway, even though
Speaker 1: it's meant to be non lethal, not every single instance
Speaker 1: is non lethal. So these are and that's pretty much
Speaker 1: true of all those things we're talking about that have
Speaker 1: these really serious consequences, is that they could potentially kill somebody.
Speaker 1: Well that that basic taser you can fire that at
Speaker 1: someone who's maybe twenty ft away. But Taser came up
Speaker 1: with something pretty interesting that I saw, I think back
Speaker 1: in two thousand nine at c S. Right, I believe
Speaker 1: you're talking about an article you wrote on how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Yeah, the Taser shotgun. Yes, yeah, well
Speaker 1: actually isn't the shotgun itself just the shotgun show. But
Speaker 1: you do you do get you can't have a specific
Speaker 1: shotgun that is designed to only fire these Taser shotgun shells,
Speaker 1: so they won't fire a round of shot. But these
Speaker 1: Taser shotgun shells, inside the the shell is a Taser device.
Speaker 1: There are the little electronic probes that will stick into
Speaker 1: whatever the target is. The back half of the shell
Speaker 1: detaches and there are a bunch of there are a
Speaker 1: couple of wires where it will attach to the probes.
Speaker 1: The back half dangles down from the target and then
Speaker 1: shoots electricity through those prongs. So that gives military or
Speaker 1: police the ability of firing a taser at a much
Speaker 1: greater range than they could if they were just using
Speaker 1: a handheld device. Also, the shotgun shell has little fins
Speaker 1: on it that stabilize its flight. So yeah, I've seen
Speaker 1: my regular shotgun that has shot that dispersed, disperses as
Speaker 1: soon as you fire. Yeah, this this is so that
Speaker 1: it will give it a stable flight paths, so that
Speaker 1: it'll it'll fly in the the straight direction of where
Speaker 1: you're aiming the shotgun. Right, And if I remember the
Speaker 1: article correctly, you wrote that there if if they try
Speaker 1: to remove it, then they get shocked. Yeah, the the
Speaker 1: wires that have the electricity running through them are not shielded,
Speaker 1: so I need to remove this. Yeah, then you grab
Speaker 1: it and then you get shocked again, and it does
Speaker 1: send pulses of electricity through and I think it's like
Speaker 1: twenty seconds of a pretty serious shock so that it'll
Speaker 1: immobilize the person. Um. Yeah, And they were showing every
Speaker 1: time I see taser at c s, they are they
Speaker 1: tend to be showing off their technology by bringing in volunteers,
Speaker 1: and I cannot imagine ever being a volunteer for that.
Speaker 1: I took a pepper spray certification course. Did you actually
Speaker 1: have to get hit by the pepper spray to be
Speaker 1: actually certified? Yes? And everyone I elected not to. I
Speaker 1: watched everyone else do it, and I was very glad
Speaker 1: that I had not elected not to. Yeah, everyone I've seen,
Speaker 1: I mean, I've known a lot of people who have
Speaker 1: gone into the military, into or into the police force,
Speaker 1: or even into uh to firefighter courses where part of
Speaker 1: it is that they have to be exposed to this
Speaker 1: stuff so that they understand what the consequences are and
Speaker 1: they know what the effect is. Well, in every case
Speaker 1: it has been a horror story to hear about their experiences. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the uh, that's the thing. One of the reasons
Speaker 1: that pepper spray is more effective than a lot of
Speaker 1: chemical weapons, from what I understand, is that, um uh,
Speaker 1: no matter what you might be uh taking, if you're
Speaker 1: on some kind of drug that might otherwise, um, you know,
Speaker 1: make you feel less pain. Uh, the pepper spray will
Speaker 1: still make everything swell up involuntarily. UM, So you might
Speaker 1: you might not notice the pain, but the swelling will
Speaker 1: still impede you. Yeah, and that was one of the
Speaker 1: reasons that that they have to do that. It was
Speaker 1: because actually goes back to your shocking yourself story, is
Speaker 1: to keep people from going, hey, Bill, look at that.
Speaker 1: You know, uh, you don't want to do that on
Speaker 1: on just just for kicks. It's not something that that's
Speaker 1: serious business. But well, yeah, I have one other electricity one. Okay, cool,
Speaker 1: and then I can actually add a couple of things
Speaker 1: that are similar. Groovy. Chris and I will be back
Speaker 1: to talk more about non lethal weapons in just a moment,
Speaker 1: but first let's take a quick break. The last one
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about is still a taser one
Speaker 1: is the Taser shock Wave. I don't know much about
Speaker 1: this one. This was another one that I saw on
Speaker 1: display the same time as a shotgun. Now. Shock Wave
Speaker 1: is essentially it's a bank of tasers. Take six regular
Speaker 1: taser guns to get they're in a twenty degree arc,
Speaker 1: uh and put them on a tripod and then you
Speaker 1: set it out in front of you and that way,
Speaker 1: when the rampaging horde of zombies comes at you, you
Speaker 1: can fire off if you wanted to. You can fire
Speaker 1: off all six at the same time, hitting those those
Speaker 1: people as they come at you. You can also stack them.
Speaker 1: Are zombies affected by electricity? Well they there muscles would
Speaker 1: have to be right. You would think there would be
Speaker 1: a galvanic response. Yeah, clearly there's a galvanic response. I mean,
Speaker 1: come on, Frankenstein alone, all right. Anyway, we'll have this
Speaker 1: discussion offline. But you can stack these taser shock waves,
Speaker 1: so you can have three or four of them stacked
Speaker 1: on top of each other, which means now you've got
Speaker 1: four or three or four times that, and so eighteen
Speaker 1: or twenty four stun guns at your taser stun guns
Speaker 1: at your disposal. This is terrifying to look at in person.
Speaker 1: I mean, you look at this thing and you just
Speaker 1: think of the You realize that this is for very
Speaker 1: serious problems like an uprising or a riot or something
Speaker 1: where there are there's a demonstrable danger to people in property,
Speaker 1: Like I think about the riots that happened in London
Speaker 1: and in the summer of Uh. This is the sort
Speaker 1: of thing where you could imagine UH, something like this
Speaker 1: deployed where it's you know, you wouldn't think of this
Speaker 1: as a uh. The first option, But it's definitely one
Speaker 1: of those things that you know, could be in an
Speaker 1: arsenal for trying to do crowd control or prevent a
Speaker 1: mob or a riot from attacking a particular target. Anyway,
Speaker 1: it basically functions the same way as a taser stun gun.
Speaker 1: It's just that you have, uh, put a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of them together in series and uh actually I guess
Speaker 1: technically they're all in parallel and you can stack them
Speaker 1: and and so it's like instead of having to have
Speaker 1: a whole bunch on hand where as soon as you
Speaker 1: because as soon as you fire a taser, you can't
Speaker 1: just immediately redeploy it. You know, First of all, you
Speaker 1: have you would have to reel in the electrodes again,
Speaker 1: You'd have to have a new uh cartridge of propellant
Speaker 1: in order to shoot those electrodes out again. You would
Speaker 1: also have to have a charged up battery to to
Speaker 1: deliver the shock. So this is what gives you that
Speaker 1: capacity without having to have a whole bunch in a
Speaker 1: box behind you. Yeah, that would that would be another
Speaker 1: advantage of having the taser shotgun shell, Yeah, because you
Speaker 1: can reload very quickly and and yeah, that's absolutely terrifying.
Speaker 1: Really anyway, what was your next category? Let me see
Speaker 1: before I I was going to go onto one of
Speaker 1: my favorite types of technology of all time, lasers. Okay,
Speaker 1: well before before we do that, since we were talking
Speaker 1: about the taser shotgun shell a moment ago um. The
Speaker 1: Department of Defense also has weapons that it uses in shotguns, UM,
Speaker 1: such as stingball shells. Um. Wow. Sting sting balls are
Speaker 1: essentially I mean, they're shot, but they're rubber, so it's
Speaker 1: almost like the bean bag guns too. Um. This is
Speaker 1: why I think that some people use less than lethal
Speaker 1: because I imagine that a rubber pellet, well judging by
Speaker 1: the effects of hockey pucks on unprotected hockey players when
Speaker 1: they get hit with them or even protected ones, you know,
Speaker 1: and that's a frozen piece of rubber. So you know,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking that if it were coming at you fast enough,
Speaker 1: it could do significant damage. But they used they use
Speaker 1: sting balls in another and several other types of weapons
Speaker 1: like the there's a stingball grenade that launches the little
Speaker 1: rubber pellets and a modular crowd control munition which is
Speaker 1: about the size of a Claymore mine and send six
Speaker 1: hundred six hundred rubber balls out at high speed quote
Speaker 1: unquote to suppress targets. And I'm pretty sure if an
Speaker 1: explosion of six hundred little rubber balls we're happening right
Speaker 1: next to me, then I would probably be suppressed. Yeah. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: here's the thing is that when we talk about things
Speaker 1: like these, these devices that shoot out uh projectiles at
Speaker 1: high speeds, clearly there's already an added danger there because
Speaker 1: you've got something that's causing the stuff to fly out
Speaker 1: at those those velocities right right, So you have some
Speaker 1: sort of propellant or explosive that is giving these things
Speaker 1: the kinetic energy they need to suppress crowds. Clearly, I
Speaker 1: would imagine if you are right there next to whatever
Speaker 1: it is when it goes off, you could suffer a
Speaker 1: really severe injury, if not, if not death. Well, you
Speaker 1: know they used the flash band grenades. Uh, they use,
Speaker 1: you know, these explosive devices to propel these out, and
Speaker 1: if you're standing right next to it, if the uh
Speaker 1: the charge is loud enough, I'm sure it could damage
Speaker 1: you're hearing. I mean thinking back to uh Keith Moon's
Speaker 1: famous appearance with the who um on the Smothers Brothers show.
Speaker 1: Where he put a uh, basically just an off the
Speaker 1: shelf UM explosive inside his bass drum. And yeah, and
Speaker 1: and Pete Townsend's hearing is was damaged permanently by that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Townsend had some some some interesting things to say about that,
Speaker 1: although not immediately after the explosion because he couldn't hear anything. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: so so that's certainly an issue. I've played paintball too,
Speaker 1: Have you ever played? Um? One of the first things
Speaker 1: that I know, and those use the paintball guns use
Speaker 1: compressed carbon dioxide capsules UM to fire the paintballs out. Now,
Speaker 1: actually they use UM similar things in law enforcement. In
Speaker 1: the military, they have capstas and capsules basically pepper spray
Speaker 1: in paintball form if you will, UM, and they have
Speaker 1: guns that that fire those. But UM, you know, I
Speaker 1: was the first, very first game I played. I'd never
Speaker 1: played before. If you're wearing goggles, okay, so if you
Speaker 1: have a stingball grenade and you are in a crowd
Speaker 1: and you don't have goggles on, then your eyes are
Speaker 1: obviously in danger. But this is one of those things
Speaker 1: where you you put the goggles on and you you're
Speaker 1: ready to go and everybody's set up on your teams,
Speaker 1: and they blow the whistle to start the paintball game,
Speaker 1: and the paintball you start to hear the sounds of
Speaker 1: the paintballs behind you and your several hundred feet away
Speaker 1: from the people who are firing them, and you're starting
Speaker 1: to go, you know what, this is gonna hurt when
Speaker 1: I get shot, And as it turns out, it does.
Speaker 1: So I mean these these weapons, I mean talking about
Speaker 1: rubber balls and some of these other things that these projectiles,
Speaker 1: even though they are designed to be non lethal, can
Speaker 1: cause damage. Uh, you know if you if you get
Speaker 1: hit with them in the right spot, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: it might be you might get one in the arm
Speaker 1: from a thousand feet away. Go ow, Okay, so you
Speaker 1: went out, But if you were standing right next to it,
Speaker 1: it could cause a lot more damage. If you're near
Speaker 1: it and you got it in the rib, you can
Speaker 1: have a broken rib or at least a bruised rib. Well,
Speaker 1: they cause wealth, those paintballs, I would imagine. So moving
Speaker 1: on to lasers, one of the most basic forms of
Speaker 1: using a laser as a non lethal weapon is you
Speaker 1: don't you don't have a high powered laser use a
Speaker 1: low powered laser to direct light at optics or sensors
Speaker 1: or people's vision and you're just trying to blind them. Now,
Speaker 1: these are called dazzlers or personal halting and stimulation response weapons.
Speaker 1: Acronym is phaser. I know it's not mine. I didn't
Speaker 1: make it up. Yeah. The Department of Defense has what
Speaker 1: it calls the Green Laser Interdiction System. Yeah, that's exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's another way of putting it. Yeah, and they mount
Speaker 1: those on rifles to h to dazzle their opponents. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, you think about it. There have been stories
Speaker 1: in the media about people who are using off the
Speaker 1: shelf laser pointers and pointing them at aircraft to be
Speaker 1: funny to blind the pilots. Yeah. The in this case,
Speaker 1: which these these lasers are are, they're low powered in
Speaker 1: the sense that they're not they're not powered high enough
Speaker 1: to do physical damage against something. They're not going to
Speaker 1: do any sort of vaporization or ablation or anything like that.
Speaker 1: But they will they will cut straight through things like
Speaker 1: fog and um and they are very very bright, and
Speaker 1: they're bright enough to actually blind you temporarily if you
Speaker 1: were to look into it. And it also again is
Speaker 1: used to to confuse sensors and optics, so that let's
Speaker 1: say that you've got a coordinated attack on a target.
Speaker 1: This way you can, um, you can minimize their defenses
Speaker 1: as much as you can when you're attack is approaching. Um. Actually,
Speaker 1: if you think about it, you um, well, they also
Speaker 1: have a device called ocular interruption, which is sort of
Speaker 1: a broader effect. Um. You know, they could use it
Speaker 1: to uh to worn and suppress uh people who are
Speaker 1: you know, the enemy or the the opponents of the military,
Speaker 1: law enforcement trying to stop people. But it uh, it's
Speaker 1: a it's rather than shining a pinpoint type laser directly
Speaker 1: at somebody, it's more of a very very bright light
Speaker 1: distributed um. And you think about you get some smoke
Speaker 1: grenades and uh some some lasers and very bright lights,
Speaker 1: and you either have a very effective way to confuse
Speaker 1: people or a rock concert, a Pink Floyd concert. Well,
Speaker 1: and looking at pictures of this, it's very it's very
Speaker 1: reminiscent of the kinds of effects that you would see
Speaker 1: at a at a rock concert. All in all, there's
Speaker 1: just another brick in the wall. Okay, So moving on
Speaker 1: with more laser stuff. How have you heard about laser
Speaker 1: induced plasma channels. No, I haven't l i PC. All right,
Speaker 1: so this is kind of an interesting idea. So you
Speaker 1: know what a plasma is. It's an ionized gas. Plasm,
Speaker 1: no plasma, all right, let's just come on really in,
Speaker 1: big guy. So plasma is an ionized gas, which means
Speaker 1: that it has free electrons flowing through this gas. It
Speaker 1: means that the gas itself can conduct electricity. So imagine
Speaker 1: that you use a laser to create a channel of plasma. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, you've got this area of of atmosphere
Speaker 1: and then you create a channel of plasma within a
Speaker 1: pretty narrow channel, and then you fire electricity down that channel.
Speaker 1: It'll go across that channel as if it were a wire,
Speaker 1: so you could beam electricity in a way. Now, these
Speaker 1: things require a lot of power and they don't have
Speaker 1: a lot of distance to them. So instead of being
Speaker 1: used as a weapon where you would direct it at
Speaker 1: an approaching enemy, you use it as a way of
Speaker 1: barricading a hallway or a corridor. So you create these
Speaker 1: lasers that go up and down, say a wall, so
Speaker 1: they're they're aligned horizontally like you could do them vertically too,
Speaker 1: if you wanted to but horizontally across um a hallway.
Speaker 1: You shoot this laser across the hallway, which creates this
Speaker 1: thin channel of plasma that spans the hallway. Then you
Speaker 1: shoot electricity along that channel, and now you've got these
Speaker 1: zapping beams of electricity spanning the hallway, which act as
Speaker 1: a pretty strong deterrent against anyone who has trying to
Speaker 1: make unauthorized access to that corridor. I don't know, I've
Speaker 1: seen all those spy movies. All you have to do is,
Speaker 1: you know, do cartwheels and stuff over the lasers. Electricity
Speaker 1: works a little differently than lasers do. But yeah, go
Speaker 1: ahead and give that a shot. Um. Yeah, Actually that's reminiscent,
Speaker 1: you know, jokes aside, that's reminiscent of the Plasma Cutter
Speaker 1: podcast that we did sometime ago. Yeah, it's not not
Speaker 1: entirely different. Now most of the effects and this is
Speaker 1: intended again to be a non lethal a way of
Speaker 1: of stopping people from accessing uh hallways and court ours. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's not you know, it's not the most efficient
Speaker 1: means of trying to keep people out because it does
Speaker 1: require quite a bit of power to operate. Um. And
Speaker 1: then I have the pulsed energy projectile or p e P.
Speaker 1: Now this is one of the versions of the pain ray,
Speaker 1: and in fact, we were specifically asked about the pain
Speaker 1: right now, it's a shame about ray. This reminds me
Speaker 1: of that time you tried to draw a hole in
Speaker 1: your head. Uh. The actually was egne the But this,
Speaker 1: this particular weapon is different from the other one we'll
Speaker 1: talk about, which uses microwaves. We move onto that in
Speaker 1: a little bit. This one uses a laser and again
Speaker 1: creates plasma. We have a bit more to say about
Speaker 1: non lethal weapons, but Chris and I will have to
Speaker 1: do that after we take this quick break. So the
Speaker 1: pulsed energy projectile what it does. It uses a deuterium
Speaker 1: fluoride laser that emits a very high powered invisible laser.
Speaker 1: It's in the infrared spectrum that when it hits something,
Speaker 1: it essentially starts to vaporize what it hits, just on
Speaker 1: the very surface level. So if it hit you, it
Speaker 1: would start to vaporize you, but not like disintegrating. It
Speaker 1: would just be on the very surface, so like the
Speaker 1: top level of skin or whatever. But then it creates
Speaker 1: an exploding plasma. The electrons that the gas will give
Speaker 1: off start to get even more energized as this laser pulses,
Speaker 1: and that energy creates this exploding plasma and that in
Speaker 1: turn will stun a target and it gives off this
Speaker 1: electromagnetic radiation that activates your nerve cells, which can give
Speaker 1: you the sense of pain. And that pain could be
Speaker 1: in many different forms. It could be depending upon the
Speaker 1: the pulse. It could be a stabbing pain, it could
Speaker 1: feel like burning, it could feel like ice um. And
Speaker 1: then there's also a lethal version of this technology called
Speaker 1: the pulse impulsive kill laser, which has the best acronym
Speaker 1: of all time pickle m p I k L so
Speaker 1: deadly pickle. So when you fire, fire that you oppressed
Speaker 1: the pickle switch. That's right, Yes, give him the pickle.
Speaker 1: So this was developed by a company called Mission Research Corporation,
Speaker 1: which is now part of Alliance Tech Systems. And there's
Speaker 1: some downsides to this weapon. Uh. One of the biggest
Speaker 1: is that it's huge. This is an enormous weapon that
Speaker 1: requires essentially a vehicle to move it around, so it's
Speaker 1: a mounted weapon at the time and right now, and
Speaker 1: weighs around like five pounds, So it's not something that
Speaker 1: could be deployed in a uh like for your average
Speaker 1: infantry soldier. You know that there's just there's no way
Speaker 1: of of miniaturizing it down at the moment, so it's effective. Uh,
Speaker 1: and it is supposed to again supposed to be non lethal.
Speaker 1: It essentially stuns the target and makes them hurt, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't kill them or or specifically actually injure them.
Speaker 1: It's just again activating their their nerve endings, so there's
Speaker 1: no physical damage going on. It's just stimulating those nerve
Speaker 1: endings to create pain, which in a way is like
Speaker 1: absolutely terrifying, right, you know, it's there's no physical damage
Speaker 1: being done, but still really scary. Uh. But not widely deployed,
Speaker 1: right right. Yeah, the the they've been talking about these
Speaker 1: weapons for quite some time, years and years at this point,
Speaker 1: and uh, the the one that we really should talk
Speaker 1: about has uh well its own set of drawbacks, but
Speaker 1: it does use microwaves. Um and uh let's see where
Speaker 1: where to begin. Well, I guess we can call it
Speaker 1: the the There are two different versions of it that
Speaker 1: I read about, the active denial system. Yeah, that's the
Speaker 1: one I've read about MEDS. Well, there's also one called
Speaker 1: the silent Guardian, which is kind of a little brother
Speaker 1: to a d S. So a d S has a
Speaker 1: range of around five and silent Guardian has a range
Speaker 1: of around two. So, but they both work on the
Speaker 1: same principle. They both use microwaves to create a pain
Speaker 1: ray and it gives you the sensation of burning when
Speaker 1: you're hit by it. You feel like you are are
Speaker 1: like your skin is being subjected to incredibly high temperatures.
Speaker 1: I watched a CBS report on this, and the reporter
Speaker 1: actually withstood several blasts of this and explain what it like.
Speaker 1: He said that it felt like scalding water was being
Speaker 1: poured over his entire body, and he was wearing you know,
Speaker 1: it was actually a cool day. He was wearing a
Speaker 1: pretty heavy jacket. And he says that the microwaves just
Speaker 1: penetrate straight through the clothing, so the clothing offered no
Speaker 1: protection whatsoever. It didn't matter if his skin where was
Speaker 1: exposed or not. Uh. He then held up a piece
Speaker 1: of plywood to use as a shield, and he said
Speaker 1: the problem was that using that still kept a lot
Speaker 1: of his body unprotected, and um, just hitting his feet
Speaker 1: and his hands was enough to make him dodge all
Speaker 1: the way of the the the pain ray. Now he
Speaker 1: used a mattress which helped a little bit. Beca said,
Speaker 1: even then he could only get so far before it
Speaker 1: got so painful that he couldn't stand it anymore. And uh,
Speaker 1: and this is, you know, again, a pretty scary technology.
Speaker 1: It uses a microwave around ninety giga hurts of frequency
Speaker 1: and at that frequency. Uh, the the penetration of the
Speaker 1: microwave is only about one sixty four of an inch,
Speaker 1: so it's designed so it will not cook you from
Speaker 1: the inside out. Yeah, microwave oven goes much deeper than that.
Speaker 1: It can go several centimeters into whatever it is that
Speaker 1: it is being exposed to it. Um and this, uh,
Speaker 1: this device is is really um. I read that. Um.
Speaker 1: They had the military had invited several people to uh,
Speaker 1: the Marine Corps Basic Quantico, Virginia to experience this because
Speaker 1: basically they've been trying to drum up support for this.
Speaker 1: This device has been around for literally like fifteen twenty
Speaker 1: years now. Um. And then again, this is one of
Speaker 1: the devices that has been pursued very actively by the
Speaker 1: military and an attempt to come up with something that
Speaker 1: is less than lethal in a way to discourage people
Speaker 1: and yes it does work. UM. The reason they're having
Speaker 1: to drum up support for it UH is, for one thing,
Speaker 1: it's known that it uses microwaves. UM. They deployed the
Speaker 1: military deployed several of these UH pain raise to UM
Speaker 1: the Middle East to use in theaters over there in
Speaker 1: the last few years, and they never really used them
Speaker 1: because they were afraid that people would start talking about
Speaker 1: how the military we're using microwaves UH, and they you know, oh,
Speaker 1: well you're going to cook us or you're going to
Speaker 1: make a sterile. Yeah, you're going to irradiate us. You're publicity,
Speaker 1: which is if you're trying to say, look, you know,
Speaker 1: we don't want UH fighting to escalate. We just want
Speaker 1: to break this argument up and stop this particular incident
Speaker 1: right here. It's it's funny because a lot of this
Speaker 1: is based on ignorance of how microwaves work, because microwaves
Speaker 1: are a form of non ionizing radiation, right, But a
Speaker 1: lot of people don't they understand that. They think of
Speaker 1: it in terms of the microwave oven. We know that
Speaker 1: that can be used to irradiate and cook. And people
Speaker 1: think this this pain ray if it were left on
Speaker 1: someone and they were unable to move. It would cause burns.
Speaker 1: You know, people have been put in the hospital. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you would, You could, you could suffer actual burns to
Speaker 1: your skin. Now you're not going to have the if
Speaker 1: you were sitting there long enough, those burns would start
Speaker 1: to burn through you. But the you wouldn't immediately suffer
Speaker 1: like deep burns. You would have skin burns, which aren't
Speaker 1: that's no joy either. But it heats your skin up
Speaker 1: to about degrees fahrenheit, which is about fifty four degrees celsius.
Speaker 1: And uh, at that temperature, you're not it's it's it's
Speaker 1: enough for it to be painful, so you want to
Speaker 1: get out of the way. It's not supposed to be
Speaker 1: so hot that it's going to immediately cause blisters to
Speaker 1: form and that kind of thing. Um, but you know
Speaker 1: that's it. Definitely, there are there's a perception that since
Speaker 1: it uses microwaves, it is more even I want to
Speaker 1: say more sinister, but really, when you're talking about inflicting pain,
Speaker 1: that's pretty sinister already, or at least it can be.
Speaker 1: Can that's what it can be perceived as. But it's
Speaker 1: not as as it doesn't cause injury the way you
Speaker 1: would immediately assume once you hear a microwave, right right, Um,
Speaker 1: there's another problem with it too, what's up. It takes
Speaker 1: a lot of energy and it takes a long time
Speaker 1: to turn on, So you can't say there's a demon
Speaker 1: demonstration that has gone out of hand. There are people
Speaker 1: throwing stuff, there are people looting, and you want to
Speaker 1: stop them. You don't drive up in the truck with
Speaker 1: the pain rain mounted on it. Um the ones that
Speaker 1: the pictures I've seen show a humvy well, a giant
Speaker 1: it looks like a giant satellite dish sort of thing
Speaker 1: on the top of the big antenna. The P E
Speaker 1: P is essentially a very similar form factor. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you don't you don't, you know, drive up in the
Speaker 1: pain rainmobile and flip the switch and cause everybody to
Speaker 1: stop burning and looting. It takes a long time to
Speaker 1: power up. I've seen hours listed as the time it
Speaker 1: takes to power First, you have to have a comedian come,
Speaker 1: I'll warm up the crowd. Hey, so that wants things
Speaker 1: really get cooking. That's when you turn on the microwave.
Speaker 1: I see you're all looting. Hey, I like to say
Speaker 1: some shoes, you know. Whenever you're looting and there's just
Speaker 1: nothing to pick up and throw through the window of
Speaker 1: that department store. Doesn't that just make you crazy? Say
Speaker 1: you got a size ten can key Stonora over there,
Speaker 1: run they run tight? So so um, yeah, this is
Speaker 1: that that's also a problem with it. It's not something
Speaker 1: that it has to be in place and on um
Speaker 1: and in the case of having it vehicle mounted, that
Speaker 1: means you have to be running the engine to keep
Speaker 1: the power on or you know, a lot of battery usage,
Speaker 1: and that's uh in an arrow when fuel is a
Speaker 1: lot more dear and cost um. That is a downside
Speaker 1: that that's hard to ignore. So um, this very sophisticated
Speaker 1: non lethal weapon may just end up shelved because it uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's just yeah, Now, did you have any
Speaker 1: others you wanted to talk about, because I'm done, But
Speaker 1: you said you had a few futuristic ones that you want.
Speaker 1: There was one. I know, we're running a little along,
Speaker 1: so I just wanted to mention the one. I actually
Speaker 1: saw a thing and wired about this and in the
Speaker 1: magazine a few years ago, which is when when you
Speaker 1: mentioned this, I thought, oh, that would be fun. I
Speaker 1: still can't find where I put that, But there was
Speaker 1: one that I read about then that I just I
Speaker 1: found a little bit on and they've still they've pursued it,
Speaker 1: but it seems like it's still sort of fallen by
Speaker 1: the wayside. And that would be the goog gun um
Speaker 1: and uh. It's been called different things, but what it's
Speaker 1: designed to do, it's sort of like the the polymer ice,
Speaker 1: except it's designed to immobilize a target by shooting gooey
Speaker 1: silly string like stuff at them, uh and wired. And
Speaker 1: I remember it saying that it used some kind of
Speaker 1: bone derivative to to use this, and it's supposed to
Speaker 1: harden up when you get sprayed with it. I see,
Speaker 1: So it's a foam that that then solidifies. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I think, um, I think now what they've been using
Speaker 1: is more of a synthetic polymer type uh material. I've
Speaker 1: I've seen pictures of it. Um. It looks almost like
Speaker 1: the pink slime that people have been talking about about
Speaker 1: meat processing lately. It's a sort of a gooey pink
Speaker 1: uh tube like stuff. The problem is it doesn't harden
Speaker 1: quickly enough to stop someone who's running, so you end
Speaker 1: up gooey, but you don't end up hardening up like
Speaker 1: a cartoon character after they've been coated in cement, which
Speaker 1: is to say, you know, within about half of a second.
Speaker 1: You know, every time somebody gets poured on concrete on
Speaker 1: him in the cartoons, you know, and instantly hard you know,
Speaker 1: it doesn't do that. Um, So that's kind of disappeared
Speaker 1: from that um, from that usage. But I have seen
Speaker 1: that people are using net guns, and they've been using
Speaker 1: some kind of sticky material on the net so that
Speaker 1: the net sticks to you. And that seems like it
Speaker 1: might be promising, because if you shoot somebody with the net,
Speaker 1: um then uh, you know, and it has that sticky
Speaker 1: stuff and you can't think of it as like fly paper.
Speaker 1: All of a sudden you're tangled up in this net.
Speaker 1: You can't run anymore. Um. It seems like that would
Speaker 1: be hard to load. You know, it would be more
Speaker 1: effective against a very small number of people. If you're
Speaker 1: dealing with a horde of zombies. I don't think you're
Speaker 1: If you're by yourself, you're pretty much stuck. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I got five of them, but three hundred more are
Speaker 1: coming at me. I think I'm in trouble close up
Speaker 1: them all. Well, I found the I found the article
Speaker 1: I think that you were talking about on Wired. It's
Speaker 1: called Army reloads on Sticky Foam Weaponry. Yeah, that that
Speaker 1: is one of the newer articles they This was one
Speaker 1: of those. It was a feature on a series of
Speaker 1: things and it had the pain ray. It was it
Speaker 1: was literally like a series of a couple of paragraphs
Speaker 1: each um in the print magazine. Yes, that is. That
Speaker 1: is when I consulted now, and it's the picture of
Speaker 1: the guy covered in foam. It looks like he's been
Speaker 1: attacked by a bunch of octope. Yes string, it's probably
Speaker 1: a few centimeters in diameter to spray. It's it's not
Speaker 1: an attractive look. And that wraps up another classic episode
Speaker 1: of tech stuff. I hope you guys enjoyed it and
Speaker 1: learned something. We have more non lethal weapons that have
Speaker 1: been introduced since this podcast was recorded. But I am
Speaker 1: never ever going to forget the first time I ever
Speaker 1: saw a taser shotgun. That was a heck of a
Speaker 1: thing to see in person. Not I don't ever, ever
Speaker 1: ever want to have the experience of being hit by one,
Speaker 1: not at all. So let's just skip that part. But
Speaker 1: if you guys have any suggestions for future episodes of
Speaker 1: tech Stuff. You can write to me and let me know.
Speaker 1: The email address is text stuff at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com, or you can pop on over to our
Speaker 1: website that's tech stuff podcast dot com. There you're gonna
Speaker 1: find links to our presence on social media. You also
Speaker 1: find archives of all the episodes we've ever recorded, including
Speaker 1: these classics. And you'll find a link to our online store.
Speaker 1: And I'll talk to you again really soon. Hext Stuff
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