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Speaker 1: Stuff from how stuff flix dot com. Hello everyone, then,
Speaker 1: welcome to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Poulette, and
Speaker 1: I am an editor at how Stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Sitting across from me as usual as senior writer Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm just three days away from retirement. He
Speaker 1: really wanted to do that, even though he haven't done
Speaker 1: quotes in a while. Yeah, because you know, when we're
Speaker 1: talking about non lethal weapons, I immediately thought of that
Speaker 1: great series of documentaries lethal Weapon and uh, and so
Speaker 1: we wanted to talk today about weapons that are designed
Speaker 1: to stop a target without killing that target, or at
Speaker 1: least that that's supposed to be what they do. Well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: some some of the research I did also turned up
Speaker 1: other versions of the uh phrase non lethal weapons, including
Speaker 1: less than lethal weapons, which sounds to me like it
Speaker 1: is a a verbal uh disclaimer he's only mostly dead. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: it's not supposed to kill you. We actually had somebody, uh,
Speaker 1: we've had some people right in to ask us about
Speaker 1: a particular one of the ones we're gonna talk about today.
Speaker 1: But um, really, there there's a whole series of different
Speaker 1: kinds of things that the military and police departments around
Speaker 1: the world are investigating to basically stop people without hurting
Speaker 1: them completely. Yeah. Yeah, so and this is this is tough.
Speaker 1: I mean, how do you how do you convince someone
Speaker 1: to stop acting irrationally or dangerously without really hurting that
Speaker 1: person in turn? And it's tricky, but there are a
Speaker 1: lot of different approaches that we've tried to take. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I was I'm sorry. I was about to say
Speaker 1: though that there are a lot of reasons why you
Speaker 1: would want to do this other than you know, simply
Speaker 1: not wanting to to kill someone. Um, you know, for
Speaker 1: for strategic reasons. If you have, say uh um, and
Speaker 1: this scenario I've seen written about a lot, uh say
Speaker 1: an uprising where you have say, hundreds of people uh
Speaker 1: protesting and maybe the protest is getting out of hand. Well,
Speaker 1: the the authorities who come to subdue the protesters or
Speaker 1: dispersed the protesters, Uh, if they kill people, they are
Speaker 1: likely to escalate uh these kinds of of riots or
Speaker 1: or disquiet. And uh, you know it's uh, it's happened.
Speaker 1: You know, we can I can remember stories going back
Speaker 1: centuries of something like this happening. So if there's a
Speaker 1: way to to uh get people to leave without really
Speaker 1: hurting anybody, that that's an advantage for for everyone. Really.
Speaker 1: I mean, the protesters don't get hurt as badly or
Speaker 1: or you know, even if it just makes them feel
Speaker 1: uncomfortable and they leave as a result of that, I mean,
Speaker 1: it seems like, uh, it's a positive for everyone. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and we've tried a lot of different approaches with
Speaker 1: a lot of different methodologies and a lot of different results, right,
Speaker 1: not all of them have been successful. Here's one of
Speaker 1: the ones I wanted to talk about first that's just
Speaker 1: kind of interesting to me. This is using sound as
Speaker 1: a weapon. 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. Yes. These are focused beams
Speaker 1: of sound. You you just you crank up the decibel
Speaker 1: level to like a hundred fifty decibles, which is about
Speaker 1: fifty decibles over the pain threshold, and you direct it
Speaker 1: at the target. And that means the target suddenly has
Speaker 1: this incredibly loud noise, uh directed at them and it's
Speaker 1: a painful experience to hear it. In fact, you can
Speaker 1: suffer hearing loss if you are subjected to that for
Speaker 1: too long. Uh. Some of these devices have actually been
Speaker 1: used for a communication purpose. Is I read one report
Speaker 1: that said that there were navy ships that used a
Speaker 1: form of l R A D to send out signals
Speaker 1: to um two boats as they pulled into a harbor.
Speaker 1: So let's say that a giant navy vessel is sailing
Speaker 1: into a harbor that's got a busy fishing uh industry,
Speaker 1: and not all the fishermen are necessarily paying attention to
Speaker 1: the fact that there's an enormous ship coming in and
Speaker 1: they need to get out of the way. I read
Speaker 1: a report that said that there was a way where
Speaker 1: you could use this as a communications tool where you're
Speaker 1: not trying to overpower someone, You're not trying to cripple them.
Speaker 1: You're just trying to get their attention and say, hey, buddy,
Speaker 1: we're coming through. You might want to move, And except
Speaker 1: you're saying it in whatever the local languages, and that
Speaker 1: it totally freaks people out because suddenly they can hear
Speaker 1: this voice coming from really far away, as if it's
Speaker 1: on a radio or something, but there's no radio. I mean,
Speaker 1: just using a focused beam of sound to direct that
Speaker 1: sound at the individual and then that gets a little
Speaker 1: you know, it's a little unreal surreal, if you will.
Speaker 1: I would love to have one of these just to
Speaker 1: mess with people like, hey, hey you, I can see you,
Speaker 1: you know that kind of stuff. But but but the
Speaker 1: the other use of this is, like I said, crank
Speaker 1: it up and you cripple someone because it's just so
Speaker 1: loud that it it's the pain is um uh difficult
Speaker 1: to bear on the on the Department of Defense non
Speaker 1: Lethal Weapons program pages and they have I use these
Speaker 1: for for my research. They have a set of current
Speaker 1: and uh proposed um different kinds of non lethal weapons,
Speaker 1: and they use what they call acoustic healing devices, which
Speaker 1: I think are are probably related to these uh and
Speaker 1: they have a picture of one of those. But they
Speaker 1: say that they use them to to uh give intelligible
Speaker 1: voice coming hands over very very long distances. So I
Speaker 1: think they you know, from ship to ship, um, you
Speaker 1: know where they're not actually trying to cause pain, but
Speaker 1: they're using that level of h extra heavy amplification to
Speaker 1: get a message across and they consider it a weapon
Speaker 1: but they're not talking about using it in the exact
Speaker 1: same way. It's like a really focused bullhorn. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Another UM non lethal weapon that I saw that uses
Speaker 1: sound as the impulse stunnerd gun. UM. I don't know
Speaker 1: about this one. No, it's uh, it's it's pretty neat. UM.
Speaker 1: Some of these, some of these weapons quote unquote weapons,
Speaker 1: I guess they're technically weapons, UM, have very interesting names. Uh.
Speaker 1: This one is would have been used if you've ever
Speaker 1: watched the movie Thunderball UM, the documentary the documentary Thub
Speaker 1: Thunderball UM, which has a very scintillating underwater battle scene. UM.
Speaker 1: But if someone had had the impulse stunner gun, that
Speaker 1: might have gone in a a different way because basically this
Speaker 1: is uh used to stop people who are diving or
Speaker 1: swimming um underwater. It uses a sound wave that travels
Speaker 1: underwater that affects a way a person here's and will
Speaker 1: induce nausea. Oh so that's something you want to feel
Speaker 1: when you're underwater. No. No, And I mean if you had,
Speaker 1: you know, divers who are attempting some kind of underwater subterfuge.
Speaker 1: I wanted to say subterfuge partially, Um, you know it
Speaker 1: would it would you think about that if you were
Speaker 1: feeling suddenly like you were about to be ill, very
Speaker 1: violently ill underwater? I imagine it would be very hard
Speaker 1: to continue on with your actions. You would have to
Speaker 1: break it off and and dive for the surface, you know,
Speaker 1: dive for the surface. What swim to the surface. Here
Speaker 1: we go. Um, but yeah, that's a pretty neat application
Speaker 1: of sound too well. And another one I saw, which
Speaker 1: did not have a name, or at least not a
Speaker 1: name that I can find, is a product that was
Speaker 1: developed by some Japanese engineers. Uh. It was a gun
Speaker 1: that has a microphone, a directional microphone, and directional speakers.
Speaker 1: And the what the gun does is you pointed at
Speaker 1: someone who's being loud and obnoxious. Their voice goes into
Speaker 1: the microphone. It gets projected back from by the speakers
Speaker 1: at about a point to second delay, So the person
Speaker 1: talking starts to hear themselves speaking but point two seconds
Speaker 1: behind what they're currently saying, which is incredibly distracting. It's
Speaker 1: very difficult to continue a train of thought when you're
Speaker 1: hearing yourself at a slight delay. If you've ever talked
Speaker 1: on the phone or on any sort of radio, device
Speaker 1: where you got that little bit of an echo or
Speaker 1: on on Skype for example, anything like that where you
Speaker 1: start talking and you start hearing yourself just an instant
Speaker 1: after you're talking. It can be very disorienting. Itsori. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you start talking, then you're thinking, wait, I just said that.
Speaker 1: No no, I just said that. No no, no, I
Speaker 1: just said that, And then you can't make sense of
Speaker 1: anything anymore. So this particular quote unquote weapon was sort
Speaker 1: of a I was designed to try and take care
Speaker 1: of people who are rude. Yeah, it's not meant to
Speaker 1: be like something to disperse a crowd or whatever. But
Speaker 1: there were a lot of of notes I saw on
Speaker 1: the article. Yeah, that was popular a few a few
Speaker 1: months ago. I remember seeing seeing that a lot. So
Speaker 1: it's not it's not something that the police are using necessarily.
Speaker 1: It's more like a I'm trying to eat my dinner
Speaker 1: in a restaurant and you're having a cell phone conversation
Speaker 1: at the table next to me and you're really annoying. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or I'm at the movie theater and I just want
Speaker 1: to watch this documentary darnett Um. Yeah, the notes I
Speaker 1: saw said, what if you use this for someone who
Speaker 1: was doing some public speaking. But I would imagine that
Speaker 1: even with directional speakers, it's not so focused that only
Speaker 1: the person who is speaking can hear it. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not like you're beaming the words directly back into
Speaker 1: the person's ears. Everyone can hear it. So it's not
Speaker 1: like you could get away with doing something like that.
Speaker 1: Everyone would know who had done that, and you would, uh,
Speaker 1: you would very quickly get your come up. And I
Speaker 1: would imagine, depending upon the circumstances of where you used it,
Speaker 1: why you um, like, I just want to aim it
Speaker 1: at that valedictorian, she's so big. Um. Yeah. I was
Speaker 1: also thinking that that's interesting that we bring that up
Speaker 1: in an election year here in the United States where
Speaker 1: people are giving a lot of speeches. We'll see. That
Speaker 1: was the thing that was That was what a lot
Speaker 1: of the notes, uh, we're you know, That's what they
Speaker 1: pertained to, was the idea of some sort of person
Speaker 1: who's running for an elected office and then disrupting their
Speaker 1: speech so that they seem like they're an idiot, and
Speaker 1: then it gives their opponent an advantage. But the truth
Speaker 1: is, is is that particular weapon or that particular product, whatever
Speaker 1: you wanna call it, would not be so subtle as
Speaker 1: to allow someone to get away with that. I have
Speaker 1: another This is not another D O D product. UM
Speaker 1: actually looks sort of like a series of of flat
Speaker 1: disks that are quartered together. Doesn't look very offensive if
Speaker 1: you will weapon. But it's called the Enhanced Underwater Loudhailer.
Speaker 1: I told you they had some strange names. Basically, this
Speaker 1: is another underwater device that can be used up to
Speaker 1: uh forty deep in water. UM, and it can it
Speaker 1: can transmit sound up to four sevens away. Basically they
Speaker 1: can give It's sort of like the one that they
Speaker 1: use above the surface of the water. But um, it
Speaker 1: allows you to uh send on you know. I actually
Speaker 1: the one I was just talking about a few moments ago,
Speaker 1: where the the device that you could use to send
Speaker 1: signals for a very long time, make your commands heard
Speaker 1: for very long distance. They show a picture of a
Speaker 1: Navy ship. Think you could probably use that in other applications. UM,
Speaker 1: but yeah, they can also they can also issue commands
Speaker 1: with this underwater a loudhailer or impair uh um people's
Speaker 1: hearing underwater for up to two hours. It will operate
Speaker 1: so uh pretty neat. It's sort of it's sort of
Speaker 1: like the and some of the other research I did.
Speaker 1: I was looking at things like culture ups and devices
Speaker 1: that you would use to stop vehicles, and I wasn't
Speaker 1: really going to focus on that, but it sort of
Speaker 1: seems like that, like you could drop this underwater. It's
Speaker 1: battery operated and they can use it to give commands
Speaker 1: and and affect divers hearing underwater. So pretty neat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm ready to move on to a new category unless
Speaker 1: you have another sound one. No, this is this is
Speaker 1: moving to the category of air using air as a weapon. Oh,
Speaker 1: sort of like the air Zuka. Yeah, exactly, that's exactly
Speaker 1: what it is. So air Zuka. So you're talking about
Speaker 1: a device to Yeah, it's a toy. It's a device
Speaker 1: that creates a vortex ring. Yeah. Now text ring is
Speaker 1: kind of imagine sort of like a tornado, exceptance in
Speaker 1: a donut shape and it will it's air that will
Speaker 1: rotate in this donut shape and it actually will maintain
Speaker 1: that integrity for a pretty good distance. And the air
Speaker 1: Zuka is just a it's a toy that does this.
Speaker 1: You pull back a uh a sort of a well
Speaker 1: it's a diaphragm really, and you let go and it
Speaker 1: pushes air out through a novel and that creates the
Speaker 1: spinning vortex of air that then can go across the
Speaker 1: room and hit someone in the face and they feel
Speaker 1: like someone just you know, blew a huge breath of
Speaker 1: air 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 and there's and I mean
Speaker 1: it doesn't move that fast either, So it's kind of
Speaker 1: funny because you actually can see, you know, there's there
Speaker 1: are a few seconds between when someone might fire one
Speaker 1: and someone else might feel it, and so you're just
Speaker 1: waiting and waiting. So that didn't work. Oh yeah, there's
Speaker 1: the guy. They're flinching. Now, yep, it worked. Well, you
Speaker 1: can actually kick that up a notch and weaponize it.
Speaker 1: And if you use pressurized gas and you accelerate the
Speaker 1: gas to supersonic velocity as it exits the nozzle. Once
Speaker 1: it comes out of that nozzle, it becomes a high
Speaker 1: spin vortex ring that can travel a good long distance
Speaker 1: and be strong enough to knock over someone oh around
Speaker 1: a hundred eighty pounds. So they it's like getting shoved
Speaker 1: in the chest by a really strong person. It's just
Speaker 1: it's just that it's air. Now, you could also, if
Speaker 1: you were so inclined, add in um malodorance. I you know,
Speaker 1: there were so many jokes that I was thinking about making,
Speaker 1: and I'm you're just not helping me. Well, the malodorance
Speaker 1: would be designed maloderant, of course, of something that smells bad.
Speaker 1: But a malodorant could be designed to induce nausea or
Speaker 1: for to make your eyes water. So then you're getting
Speaker 1: shoved by a very stinky person essentially. But when I
Speaker 1: say stinky person, I'm talking about smells. They're so bad
Speaker 1: that you might feel like wretching. It's it's not like,
Speaker 1: 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 doesn't move as fast as say a
Speaker 1: bullet or even sound or anything like that, So it
Speaker 1: 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 impact of the air itself
Speaker 1: should not necessarily cause injury. M Um, I don't really
Speaker 1: have a lot of air based, I can move on
Speaker 1: to 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? This is not now, this is this
Speaker 1: is a this is a spray. But apparently what it
Speaker 1: is is essentially uh, you know, a polymer is as
Speaker 1: a chemical, and they would use it in places where
Speaker 1: the military is looking into this as a possibility apparently
Speaker 1: for especially for places that are particularly warm, like the
Speaker 1: Middle East or um, you know, places closer to the
Speaker 1: equator than say, I don't know, Greenland, UM or maybe Atlanta,
Speaker 1: Georgia on a summer's day exactly. But if it effectively
Speaker 1: creates sort of you would spray it on the ground
Speaker 1: and it would effectively create a icy situation. So this
Speaker 1: this plastic would make bull slip and fall as though
Speaker 1: they were on ice. Um. Now, if you're if you're
Speaker 1: thinking Keystone cops sort of things, So you're chasing somebody
Speaker 1: and they've set up a trap ahead of them, so
Speaker 1: that the polymer is on the ground now, so they're
Speaker 1: starting to fall, and then of course the people who
Speaker 1: are chasing them also begin to slip and fall, so
Speaker 1: everybody is writhing around in the ground because they can't
Speaker 1: get up. It's like a bunch of turtles on their backs. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: they have been working on a counter agent for this
Speaker 1: that they could use the shoes. They could use it
Speaker 1: on the shoes and tires of vehicle vehicles that are,
Speaker 1: you know, running after them. Still a really advanced version
Speaker 1: of my automatic banana peel tosser. But yeah, the the
Speaker 1: whole you know, making people fall down thing that where
Speaker 1: you were just talking about that a moment ago with
Speaker 1: using the high powered air, I thought, oh, slipping it
Speaker 1: and falling down, that sounds like the if you could
Speaker 1: use the two together, so you could really have people
Speaker 1: on their backs. So this is the reason why I
Speaker 1: really wanted to do this, uh, this topic, because the
Speaker 1: more we talk about the more it sounds like we're
Speaker 1: entering a world where Acme products from Warner Brothers cartoons
Speaker 1: are a reality. Well, people still like talking about that
Speaker 1: that effort that the US military made to weaponize bats, Well,
Speaker 1: there's also the whole weaponized dolphins things. Yes, yes, and
Speaker 1: that 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 t to seize up like that, they lose control
Speaker 1: of 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 king 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 stunned, but it wasn't enough to really be
Speaker 1: a deterrent, well, a real stun gun with a fully
Speaker 1: charged battery is serious business that can make you fall
Speaker 1: over and it can be a while before you can
Speaker 1: get 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 a stun gun, is Taser, and a
Speaker 1: typic called taser is a device that ejects a pair
Speaker 1: of electrodes, fires them at a target. UH. The electrodes
Speaker 1: trail a wire that connects back to the handheld device,
Speaker 1: and then once it comes into contact with the target,
Speaker 1: electricity flows through the wires into those electrodes and shocks
Speaker 1: the target and again creates a shock strong enough to
Speaker 1: make all those muscles contract and the person generally winces,
Speaker 1: says something along the lines of owl and falls over UM.
Speaker 1: And the intention is to do this in a non
Speaker 1: lethal way. Now, there have been deaths associated with the
Speaker 1: use of tasers. In some cases it was because of
Speaker 1: the way the target or the person will say person
Speaker 1: target is just the generic term, but the person fell,
Speaker 1: and then the fall was partially what killed the person.
Speaker 1: In some cases, it might be that the person had
Speaker 1: a pacemaker or some other medical device that got UH
Speaker 1: that malfunction due to the electric shock. Sometimes it has
Speaker 1: to do with drugs that are in the person's system. Anyway,
Speaker 1: even though it's meant to be non lethal, not every
Speaker 1: single instance is non lethal. So these are and that's
Speaker 1: pretty much true of all those things we're talking about
Speaker 1: that have these really serious consequences, is that they could
Speaker 1: potentially kill somebody. Well that that basic taser you can
Speaker 1: fire that at someone who's maybe twenty ft away. But
Speaker 1: Taser came up with something pretty interesting that I saw.
Speaker 1: I think back in two thousand nine at C E. S. Right,
Speaker 1: I believe you're talking about an article you wrote on
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works dot com. Yeah, the Taser shotgun. Yes, yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: actually isn't the shotgun itself. It's the shotgun shot But
Speaker 1: you do you do get you can 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: a 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 straight direction of where you're
Speaker 1: aiming the shotgun. And if I remember the article correctly,
Speaker 1: you wrote that there, if they try to remove it,
Speaker 1: then they get shocked. Yeah. The the wires that have
Speaker 1: the electricity running through them are not shielded, so I
Speaker 1: need to remove this. Yeah, then you grab it and
Speaker 1: then you get shocked again, and it does send pulses
Speaker 1: of electricity through and I think it's like twenty seconds
Speaker 1: of a pretty serious shock so that it'll mobilize the person. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they were showing every time I see taser at
Speaker 1: c s, they are they tend to be showing off
Speaker 1: their technology by bringing in volunteers, and I cannot imagine
Speaker 1: ever being a volunteer for that. I took a pepper
Speaker 1: spray certification course. Did you actually have to get hit
Speaker 1: by the pepper spray to be actually certified? Yes? And
Speaker 1: everyone I elected not to. I watched everyone else do it,
Speaker 1: and I was very glad that I had not elected
Speaker 1: not to. Yeah, everyone I've seen. I mean, I've known
Speaker 1: a lot of people who have gone into the military,
Speaker 1: into or into the police force, or even into uh
Speaker 1: to firefighter courses where part of it is that they
Speaker 1: have to be exposed to this stuff so that they
Speaker 1: understand what the consequences are and they know what the
Speaker 1: effect is. Well, in every case it has been a
Speaker 1: horror story to hear about their experiences. Well, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: the uh, that's the thing. One of the reasons that
Speaker 1: pepper spray is more effective than a lot of chemical weapons,
Speaker 1: from what I understand, is that, um, uh, no matter
Speaker 1: what you might be uh taking, if you're on some
Speaker 1: kind of drug that might otherwise, um, you know, make
Speaker 1: you feel less pain. Um, the pepper spray will still
Speaker 1: make everything swell up uh 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. Uh. The last one I wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about is still a taser one is the
Speaker 1: Taser shock Wave. I don't know much about this one.
Speaker 1: This was another one that I saw on display the
Speaker 1: same time as the shotgun. Now. Shock Wave is essentially,
Speaker 1: it's a bank of tasers. Take six regular taser guns
Speaker 1: together in a twenty degree arc h and put them
Speaker 1: on a tripod and then you set it out in
Speaker 1: front of you, and that way, when the rampaging horde
Speaker 1: of zombies comes at you, you can fire off if
Speaker 1: you wanted to, you can fire off all six at
Speaker 1: the same time, hitting those those people as they come
Speaker 1: at you. You can also stack them. Are zombies affected
Speaker 1: by electricity, Well, they their muscles would have to be right.
Speaker 1: You would think there would be a galvanic response. But yeah,
Speaker 1: clearly there's a galvanic response. I mean, come on, Frankenstein alone,
Speaker 1: all right. Anyway, we'll have this discussion offline. But you
Speaker 1: can stack these taser shock waves, so you can have
Speaker 1: three or four of them stacked on top of each other,
Speaker 1: which means now you've got four or three or four
Speaker 1: times that, So eighteen or twenty four stun guns at
Speaker 1: your taser stun guns at your disposal. This is terrifying
Speaker 1: to look at in person. I mean, you look at
Speaker 1: this thing and you just think of the You realize
Speaker 1: that this is for very serious problems like an uprising
Speaker 1: or a riot or something where there are there's a
Speaker 1: demonstrable danger to people in property, Like I think about
Speaker 1: the riots that happened in London and in the summer
Speaker 1: of ah. This is the sort of thing where you
Speaker 1: could a man gin uh something like this deployed where
Speaker 1: it's you know, you wouldn't think of this as a
Speaker 1: h the first option, but it's definitely one of those
Speaker 1: things that you know could be in an arsenal for
Speaker 1: trying to do crowd control or prevent a mob or
Speaker 1: a riot from attacking a particular target. Anyway, it basically
Speaker 1: functions the same way as a taser stun gun. It's
Speaker 1: just that you have uh, put a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: them together in series and uh actually I guess technically
Speaker 1: they're all in parallel and you can stack them and
Speaker 1: and so it's like instead of having to have a
Speaker 1: whole bunch on hand where as soon as you because
Speaker 1: as soon as you fire a taser, you can't just
Speaker 1: immediately redeploy it. You know, First of all, you have
Speaker 1: you would have to reel in the electrodes again, You'd
Speaker 1: have to have a new uh cartridge of propellant in
Speaker 1: order to shoot those electrodes again. You would also have
Speaker 1: to have a charged up battery to to deliver the shock.
Speaker 1: So this is what gives you that capacity without having
Speaker 1: to have a whole bunch in a box behind you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that would that would be another advantage of having the
Speaker 1: taser shotgun shell as you can reload very quickly and
Speaker 1: and yeah, that's absolutely terrifying. Really anyway, what was your
Speaker 1: next category? Let me see, before I I was gonna
Speaker 1: go onto one of my favorite types of technology of
Speaker 1: all time, lasers Okay, well before before we do that,
Speaker 1: since we were talking about the taser shotgun shell a
Speaker 1: moment ago. Um. The Department of Defense also has uh
Speaker 1: weapons that it uses in shotguns, UM, such as stingball shells. Um. Wow,
Speaker 1: sting stingballs are essentially I mean, they're shot, but they're rubber,
Speaker 1: so it's almost like the bean bag guns too. Yeah. UM.
Speaker 1: This is why I think that some people use less
Speaker 1: than ethal because I imagine that a rubber pellet, well,
Speaker 1: judging by the effects of hockey pucks on unprotected hockey
Speaker 1: players when they get hit with them or even protected ones,
Speaker 1: you know, and that's a frozen piece of rubber. So
Speaker 1: you know, I'm thinking that if it were coming at
Speaker 1: you fast enough, it could do significant damage. But they
Speaker 1: used they use sting balls in another and several other
Speaker 1: types of weapons like the there's a stingball grenade that
Speaker 1: launches the little rubber pellets and a modular crowd control
Speaker 1: munition which is about the size of a Claymore mine
Speaker 1: and send six hundred, six hundred rubber balls out at
Speaker 1: high speed quote unquote to suppress targets. And I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure if an explosion of six hundred little rubber balls
Speaker 1: we're happening right next to me, that I would probably
Speaker 1: be suppressed. Yeah, here's the thing is that when we
Speaker 1: talk about things like these, these devices that shoot out
Speaker 1: uh projectiles at high speeds, clearly there's already an added
Speaker 1: danger there because you've got something that's causing the stuff
Speaker 1: to fly out at those those velocities right right, So
Speaker 1: you have some sort of propellant or explosive that is
Speaker 1: giving these things the kinetic energy they need to suppress crowds. Clearly,
Speaker 1: I would imagine if you are right there next to
Speaker 1: whatever it is when it goes off, you could suffer
Speaker 1: a really severe injury if not, if not death. Well,
Speaker 1: you 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 the
Speaker 1: charge is loud enough, I'm sure it could damage you're hearing.
Speaker 1: I mean thinking back to uh Keith Moon's famous appearance
Speaker 1: with the who Um on The Mother's Brother's Show where
Speaker 1: he put a uh basically just an off the shelf
Speaker 1: um explosive inside his bass drum, and yeah, and Pete
Speaker 1: Townsend's hearing is was damaged. Permanently by that. Yeah. Tellnon
Speaker 1: 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? Um, one of the first things that
Speaker 1: I know, and and those use the paintball guns use
Speaker 1: compressed uh carbon dioxide capsules UM to fire the paintballs out.
Speaker 1: Now actually they use UM similar things in law enforcement.
Speaker 1: In the military. They have capsas and capsules basically pepper
Speaker 1: spray in paintball form, if you will, UM, And they
Speaker 1: have guns that that fire those. But um, you know,
Speaker 1: I was the first, very first game I played. I've
Speaker 1: never played before. Of course, you're wearing goggles. Okay, so
Speaker 1: if you have a stingball grenade and you are in
Speaker 1: a crowd and you don't have goggles on, then your
Speaker 1: eyes are obviously in danger. But that this is one
Speaker 1: of those things where you you you put the goggles
Speaker 1: on and you you're ready to go, and everybody's set
Speaker 1: up on your teams, and they blow the whistle to
Speaker 1: start the paintball game, and the paintball you start to
Speaker 1: hear the sounds of the paintballs behind you and your
Speaker 1: several hundred feet away from the people who are firing them,
Speaker 1: and you're starting to go, you know what, this is
Speaker 1: gonna hurt when I get shot, And as it turns out,
Speaker 1: it does. So I mean these these weapons, I mean
Speaker 1: talking about rubber balls and some of these other things
Speaker 1: that these projectiles, even though they are designed to be
Speaker 1: non lethal, can cause damage. Uh. You know if you
Speaker 1: if you get hit with them in the right spot,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, it might be you might get
Speaker 1: one in the arm from a thousand feet away. Ol. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you went out, but if you were standing right
Speaker 1: next to it, it it could cause a lot more damage.
Speaker 1: If you're near it and you got it in the rib,
Speaker 1: you can have a broken rib or at least a
Speaker 1: bruised rib. Well, they cause wealths, those paintballs. Moving on
Speaker 1: to lasers, one of the most basic forms of using
Speaker 1: a laser as a non lethal weapon is you don't
Speaker 1: you don't have a high powered laser, use a low
Speaker 1: powered laser to direct light at optics or sensors or
Speaker 1: people's vision, and you're just trying to blind them. Now,
Speaker 1: these are called dazzlers or personal halting and stimulation response
Speaker 1: weapons acronym is PHASER. I know it's not mine. I
Speaker 1: didn't make it up. Yeah. The Department of Defense has
Speaker 1: what 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 uh 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 funny,
Speaker 1: to blind the pilots. Yeah. The in this case, these
Speaker 1: lasers are are they're low powered in the sense that
Speaker 1: they're not they're not powered high enough to do physical
Speaker 1: damage against something. They're not going to do any sort
Speaker 1: of vaporization or ablation or anything like that, right, but
Speaker 1: they will they will cut straight through things like fog
Speaker 1: and um and they are very very bright, and they're
Speaker 1: bright enough to actually blind you temporarily if you were
Speaker 1: to look into it. And it also again is used
Speaker 1: to to uh 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 warn 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 l i PC? All right, so this
Speaker 1: is kind of an interesting idea. So you know what
Speaker 1: a plasma is, It's an ionized gas plasma. No plasma
Speaker 1: all right, let's come on really the big guys. So,
Speaker 1: plasma is an ionized gas, which means that it has
Speaker 1: free electrons flowing through this gas. It means that the
Speaker 1: gas itself can conduct electricity. So imagine that you use
Speaker 1: a laser to create a channel of plasm month 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
Speaker 1: too 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 effects and this is intended again
Speaker 1: to be a non lethal a way of of stopping
Speaker 1: people from accessing uh hallways and corridors. Uh, it's it's
Speaker 1: not you know, it's not the most efficient means of
Speaker 1: trying to keep people out because it does require quite
Speaker 1: a bit of power to operate. Um. And then I
Speaker 1: have the pulsed Energy projectile or PEP. Now, this is
Speaker 1: one of the versions of the pain ray, And in fact,
Speaker 1: we were specifically asked about the pain right now. It's
Speaker 1: a shame about this reminds me of that time you
Speaker 1: tried to draw a hole in your head. Uh, the
Speaker 1: actually was egne the But this, this particular weapon is
Speaker 1: different from the other one we'll talk about, which uses microwaves.
Speaker 1: We move onto that in a little bit. This one
Speaker 1: uses a laser and again creates plasma. So the pulsed
Speaker 1: energy projectile what it does. It uses a deuterium fluoride
Speaker 1: laser that emits a very high powered invisible laser. It's
Speaker 1: in the infrared spectrum that when it hits something, it
Speaker 1: essentially starts to vaporize what it hits, just on the
Speaker 1: very surface level. So if it hit you, it would
Speaker 1: start to vaporize you, but not like disintegrating. It would
Speaker 1: just be on the very surface, so like the top
Speaker 1: level of skin or whatever. But then it creates an
Speaker 1: exploding plasma. The electrons that the gas will give off
Speaker 1: 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 the
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 right now, weighs around
Speaker 1: like five pounds, So it's not something that could be
Speaker 1: deployed in a uh like for your average infantry soldier.
Speaker 1: You know that there's just there's no way of of
Speaker 1: miniaturizing it down at the moment. So it's effective, uh,
Speaker 1: and it is you know, supposed to again supposed to
Speaker 1: be non lethal. It essentially stunts the target and makes
Speaker 1: them hurt, but it doesn't kill them or or specifically
Speaker 1: actually injure them. It's just again activating their their nerve endings,
Speaker 1: so there's no physical damage going on. It's just stimulating
Speaker 1: those nerve endings to create pain, which in a way
Speaker 1: is like absolutely terrifying, right, you know, it's there's no
Speaker 1: physical damage being done, but still really scary, but not
Speaker 1: widely deployed, right right. Yeah, the The They've been talking
Speaker 1: about these weapons for quite some time, years and years
Speaker 1: at this point, and uh, the the one that we
Speaker 1: really should talk about has uh well, it has its
Speaker 1: own set of drawbacks, but it does use microwaves, um
Speaker 1: and uh let's see where where to begin with. I
Speaker 1: guess we can call it the the There are two
Speaker 1: different versions of it that I read about, the Active
Speaker 1: Denial System. Yeah, that's the one I've read about me. Well,
Speaker 1: there's also one called the Silent Guardian, which is kind
Speaker 1: of a little brother to h a d S SO.
Speaker 1: A d S has a range of around five and
Speaker 1: Silent Guardian has a range of around two d SO,
Speaker 1: but they both work on the same principle. They with
Speaker 1: use microwaves to create a pain ray and it gives
Speaker 1: you the sensation of burning when you're hit by it.
Speaker 1: You feel like you are are, like your skin is
Speaker 1: being subjected to incredibly high temperatures. I watched a CBS
Speaker 1: report on this, and the reporter actually withstood several blasts
Speaker 1: of this and explained what it felt like. He said
Speaker 1: that it felt like scalding water was being poured over
Speaker 1: his entire body, and he was wearing, you know, it
Speaker 1: was actually a cool day. He's wearing a pretty heavy jacket.
Speaker 1: And he says that the microwaves just penetrate straight through
Speaker 1: the clothing, so the clothing offered no protection whatsoever. It
Speaker 1: didn't matter if his skin where was exposed or not. Uh.
Speaker 1: He then held up a piece of plywood to use
Speaker 1: as a shield, and he said the problem was that
Speaker 1: using that still kept a lot of his body unprotected.
Speaker 1: And um, just hitting his feet and his hands was
Speaker 1: enough to make him dodge all the way of the
Speaker 1: the pain ray. Yeah. Now he used a mattress, which
Speaker 1: helped a little bit becauseid even then he could only
Speaker 1: get so far before it got so painful that he
Speaker 1: couldn't stand it anymore. And uh, and this is, you know,
Speaker 1: again a pretty scary technology. It uses a microwave that
Speaker 1: around nine giga hurts of frequency and at that frequency. UH,
Speaker 1: the the penetration of the microwave is only about one
Speaker 1: sixty four of an inch, So it's designed so it
Speaker 1: will not cook you from the inside out. Yeah, microwave
Speaker 1: oven goes much deeper than that. It can go several
Speaker 1: centimeters into whatever it is that it is being exposed
Speaker 1: to it. UM. And this, UH, this device is is
Speaker 1: really UM. I read that. UM. They had the military
Speaker 1: had invited several people to UH the Marine Corps Basic Quantico,
Speaker 1: Virginia to experience this because basically they've been trying to
Speaker 1: drum up support for this. This device has been around
Speaker 1: for literally like fifteen twenty years now. UM. And then again,
Speaker 1: this is one of the devices that has been pursued
Speaker 1: very actively by the military and an attempt to come
Speaker 1: up with something that is less than lethal in a
Speaker 1: way to discourage people. And yes it does work. UM.
Speaker 1: The reason they're having to drum up support for it,
Speaker 1: UH is for one thing, it's known that it uses microwaves. UM.
Speaker 1: They deployed the military deployed several of these UH pain
Speaker 1: rays to UM the Middle East to use in theaters
Speaker 1: over there in the last few years. And they never
Speaker 1: really used them because they were afraid that people would
Speaker 1: start talking about how the military we're using microwaves, uh,
Speaker 1: and they you know, oh, well, you're going to cook us,
Speaker 1: or you're going to make a sterile, you're going to
Speaker 1: irradiate us, you're going to publicity, which is if you're
Speaker 1: trying to say, look, you know, we don't want uh
Speaker 1: fighting to escalate. We just want to break this argument
Speaker 1: up and stop this particular incident right here. And it's
Speaker 1: it's funny because a lot of this is based on
Speaker 1: ignorance of how microwaves work. Because microwaves are a form
Speaker 1: of non ionizing radiation, right, But a lot of people
Speaker 1: don't they understand that. They think of it in terms
Speaker 1: of the microwave oven. We know that that can be
Speaker 1: used to irradiate and cook well, and people think this
Speaker 1: this pain ray, if it were left on someone and
Speaker 1: they were unable to move, it would cause burns. You
Speaker 1: know a couple of 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 are
Speaker 1: that's no joy either. But it heats your skin up
Speaker 1: to about a d degrees fahrenheit, which is about fifty
Speaker 1: four degrees celsius. And uh, and that amperature you're not
Speaker 1: it's it's it's enough for it to be painful, so
Speaker 1: you want to get out of the way. It's not
Speaker 1: supposed to be so hot that it's going to immediately
Speaker 1: cause blisters to form and that kind of thing. Um,
Speaker 1: but you know that's definitely there are there's a perception
Speaker 1: that since it uses microwaves, it is more even I
Speaker 1: want to say more sinister, but really, when you're talking
Speaker 1: about inflicting pain, that's pretty sinister already. But or at
Speaker 1: least it can be. It can that's what it can
Speaker 1: be perceived as. But it's not as as it doesn't
Speaker 1: cause injury the way you would immediately assume once you
Speaker 1: hear a microwave, right right. Um, there's another problem with
Speaker 1: it too. It takes a lot of energy and it
Speaker 1: takes a long time to turn on. So you can't
Speaker 1: say there's a demon demonstration that has gone out of hand.
Speaker 1: There are people throwing stuff, there are people looting and
Speaker 1: you want to stop them. You don't drive up in
Speaker 1: the truck with the pain remounted on it. Um the
Speaker 1: ones that the pictures I've seen show a Humby with
Speaker 1: a giant it looks like a giant satellite dish sort
Speaker 1: of thing on the top of the big, big antenna.
Speaker 1: The PEP is essentially a very similar form factor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you don't you don't, you know, drive up in
Speaker 1: the pain rainmobile and flip the switch and cause everybody
Speaker 1: to stop burning and looting. It takes a long time
Speaker 1: to power up. I've seen hours listed as the time
Speaker 1: it takes the power First you have to have a
Speaker 1: comedian come out warm up the crowd. Hey, So that
Speaker 1: once things really get cooking, that's when you turn on
Speaker 1: the microwave. I see you're all looting, Hey, I like
Speaker 1: to loot some shoes. You know, whenever you're looting and
Speaker 1: there's just nothing to pick up and throw through the
Speaker 1: window of that department store, doesn't that just make you crazy?
Speaker 1: Say you got a size ten can key stator over there?
Speaker 1: They run tight so so um, yeah, this is that
Speaker 1: that's also a problem with it. It's not something that
Speaker 1: it has to be in place and on um. And
Speaker 1: in the case of having it vehicle mounted, that means
Speaker 1: you have to be running the engine to keep the
Speaker 1: 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: uh non lethal weapon may just end up shelved because
Speaker 1: it's uh uh you know it's got Yeah, Now, did
Speaker 1: you have any others you wanted to talk about, because
Speaker 1: I'm done, but you said you had a few futuristic ones.
Speaker 1: There was one. I know we're running a little long,
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 googun um and uh,
Speaker 1: it's been called different things, but what it's designed to
Speaker 1: do it's sort of like the the polymer ice, except
Speaker 1: it's designed to immobilize a target by shooting gooey silly
Speaker 1: string like stuff at them, uh and wire. And I
Speaker 1: remember it saying that it used some kind of bone
Speaker 1: derivative to to use this, and it's supposed to harden
Speaker 1: up when you get sprayed with it. I see, So
Speaker 1: it's a foam that then solidifies. Yeah, and I think, um,
Speaker 1: I think now what they've been using is more of
Speaker 1: a synthetic polymer type uh material. I've I've seen pictures
Speaker 1: of it. Um. It looks almost like the pink slime
Speaker 1: that people have been talking about about meat processing lately.
Speaker 1: It's a sort of a gooey pink uh tube like stuff.
Speaker 1: The problem is it doesn't harden quickly enough to stop
Speaker 1: someone who's running, So you end up gooey, but you
Speaker 1: don't end up hardening up like a cartoon character after
Speaker 1: they've been coated in cement, which is to say, you
Speaker 1: know within about half of a second. You know, every
Speaker 1: time somebody gets poured on concrete on him in the cartoons,
Speaker 1: you know, and instantly hardens. You know. It doesn't do that. Um,
Speaker 1: So that's kind of disappeared from that um from that usage.
Speaker 1: But I have seen that people are using net guns
Speaker 1: and they've been using some kind of sticky material on
Speaker 1: the net so that the net sticks to you. And
Speaker 1: that seems like it might be promising, because if you
Speaker 1: shoot somebody with the net, um then uh, you know,
Speaker 1: and it has that sticky stuff and you can't think
Speaker 1: of it as like fly paper. All of a sudden
Speaker 1: you're tangled up in this net. You can't run anymore. Um.
Speaker 1: It seems like that would be hard to load. You know,
Speaker 1: it would be more effective against a very small number
Speaker 1: of people. If you're dealing with a horde of zombies.
Speaker 1: I don't think you're If you're by yourself, you're pretty
Speaker 1: much stuck. Well, I got five of them, but three
Speaker 1: hundred more are coming at me. I think I'm in trouble.
Speaker 1: Close up them all. Well. I found I found the
Speaker 1: article I think that you were talking about on Wired.
Speaker 1: It's called Army Reloads on Sticky Foam Weaponry. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: that is one of the newer articles they This was
Speaker 1: one of those. It was a feature on a series
Speaker 1: of things and it had the pain ray. It was
Speaker 1: it was literally like a series of a couple of
Speaker 1: paragraphs each um in the print magazine. But yes, that
Speaker 1: is that is when I consulted now, and it's the
Speaker 1: picture of the guy covered in foam. It looks like
Speaker 1: he's been attacked by a bunch of octopuses. Yes, and
Speaker 1: it's thicker than silly string. It's probably a few centimeters
Speaker 1: in diameter of the spray. It's uh, it's not an
Speaker 1: attractive look. It's not all right. Well, I think uh,
Speaker 1: I think that's a great discussion about non lethal weapons
Speaker 1: in general, and obviously there are tons more. Yeah, these
Speaker 1: are just sort of examples of some of the ones
Speaker 1: that have had probably the most publicity behind them, and
Speaker 1: of course I'm sure there are others that we don't
Speaker 1: even have any real inkling of because they are classified projects.
Speaker 1: Even the yeah, the future non lethal weapons that they
Speaker 1: list on the d O D site had a feeling
Speaker 1: that those are probably not everything they're working on, I
Speaker 1: would imagine, not just just have a feeling. So that
Speaker 1: was a good discussion. If you guys have a suggestion
Speaker 1: for topics that we should cover in future episodes, let
Speaker 1: us know. Send us a message at tech stuff at
Speaker 1: Discovery dot com, or let us know on Facebook or
Speaker 1: Twitter are handled. There's tech stuff hs W and Chris
Speaker 1: and I will talk to you again really soon for
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