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Less-Lethal WeaponsIt was recently revealed that the US military was researching a rather alarming line of less-lethal weapons, the Pulsed Energy Projectile (PEP) program. (As a side note, understand that there is no such thing as a "non-lethal" weapon. This is because any weapon or gas that can reliably incapacitate or render unconscious a 300 pound world wrestling champion will be strong enough to instantly kill a small child or elderly person.) |
PEP weapons fire a laser pulse that is very intense but only a fraction of a second in duration. The pulse vaporizes a tiny portion of the hapless victim's clothing or skin, creating a plasma burst intense enough to knock the victim to the ground. This was intended to be used for crowd control. I don't know about you but it seems to me that a pulse strong enough to knock one down is also strong enough to make one's eyeballs explode if it hit your face. But I digress.
However, during test performed on animals, the researchers noticed something unexpected. The pulses were creating pain and temporary paralysis in the test animals. As it turns out, certain pulses would create a plasma burst emitting an electromagnetic signal of proper frequency to artificially stimulate the nerve endings in the animal's skin.
 Laser Stun Gun, Space 1999 (1975). Oddly enough, this "Stun" gun had a "Kill" setting.
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 The US military is researching this effect, trying to find the frequency that will cause the maximum pain sensation without actually causing any physical harm to the target. There is also the possibility that other frequencies could cause taser-like paralysis effects. The effect can be made lethal. The original name for the project was Pulsed Impulsive Kill Laser (PIKL) but was quickly changed as a cover up. Details about this are predictably sketchy. Currently PEP weapons are not man-portable, they are vehicle mounted weapons. They have a range of about two kilometers. But who knows how far they can be miniaturized. We might yet see Space-1999 style hand lasers with a "stun" setting. |
For riot control situations, the US Army is working on the The Active Denial System (ADS). This is fundamentally a titanic microwave oven, without the oven. It emits microwaves with a wavelength of around a millimeter (95GHz). You can think of it as a "pain ray". Spray this beam of concentrated agony on the hostile crowd and they are guaranteed to run like scaled cats ... er, ah, "disperse". Initial tests show that it is reasonably non-lethal, but it will occasionally raise blisters.
The microwaves only penetrate a short way into the skin, not deep enough to do permanent damage but more than deep enough to roast all the target's pain nerve endings. As with all microwave oven based designs, the heat comes from water molecules being vibrated by the microwaves. For this reason, the range of the ADS is drastically reduced by rain or heavy humidity (in tech-speak: "rain attenuates the beam.").
This will quite challenging to make into a pistol, but may come in handy installed in the corridor outside the spacescraft's control room to provide a rude surprise for pirates and mutineers. I am reminded of the "agony box" that Reverend Mother Mohiam used to test Paul Atreides in the novel DUNE. Not to mention the "agonizers" and "agony booths" from the classic Star Trek epsisode Mirror, Mirror.
Not to be out done, the US Navy is working on its Electromagnetic Personnel Interdiction Control project, AKA the Vomit Ray. The US Department of Homeland Security is working on a pistol sized version, which is a very unsettling thought.
John Ireland brought my attention to the prototype non-lethal laser dazzler developed by the U.S. Department of Defense. Some comedian gave it the name Personnel Halting and Stimulation Response rifle which has the predictable acronym "PHASR". It is intended for crowd control, using a laser to temporarily (they hope) blind the targets. It is intended to skirt the 1995 UN Protocol on Blinding Laser Weapons by not blinding the target permanently. However, researchers noted that these weapons will still permanently damage the target's eyesight if used at close range or for prolonged periods of time.
From The Stars, Like Dust by Isaac Asimov (1951)
And then the guard's gurgle dissolved into words. He yelled, 'I'll get you all!' and the very pale, almost invisible shimmer of the ionized air in the path of the (neuronic) whip's energy beam made its appearance. It swept wide through the air, and the path of the beam intersected Biron's foot.
It was as though he had stepped into a bath of boiling lead. Or as if a granite block had toppled upon it. Or as if it had been crunched off by a shark. Actually, nothing had happened to it physically. It was only that the nerve endings that governed the sensation of pain had been universally and maximally stimulated. Boiling lead could have done no more.
From Crashing Suns by Edmund Hamilton (1928)
I took a step through the darkness toward one of the corridor's doors. But in an instant I had halted, for through the darkness a buzzing sound came to me and at the same time fiery, tearing pain ran through every nerve in my body...
It was evident that our strange captors were aware in some way of every move we made in the darkness, and that the buzzing was of some pain-producing weapon of theirs. Later we were to learn that it was one that set up electrical pain- currents in the nervous system. Pain is but a sensation or electrical current in a certain nerve, and this strange weapon was one that by induction set up pain- currents of more or less intensity in every nerve in the body.
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Mark Fergerson has an interesting idea, the good old "Doc" Smith style Space Ax. He says: So, how about something like Doc Smith's Leybyrdite Spaceaxes, except with some sort of multipurpose firearm built into the haft, firing out the pointy end? It can be used as a reaction pistol for free-flight maneuvering (firing buckshot that won't harm friendly body armor), target designator (laser), brawl breaker-upper (to required degree of severity), fingernail cleaner, and so on. |
 Artwork by Ed Valigursky
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 Artwork by Ed Valigursky
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It'd be about three and a half feet long, with blade, beak, and spike on the business end and the muzzle(s) grouped around the spike. A lanyard on the grip for zero-g retention is mandatory, no? Mass, maybe ten pounds or so loaded (magazine(s)/battery at the c.g.). Well, maybe it should be unloaded when onboard one's own ship and the magazine(s)/battery slapped in only when ready to sally or repel boarders. |
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A compressed air gun shooting tranquilizer darts (or curare darts if you are not fooling around) won't damage the ship, but have other problems. Dr. Schilling said "And the target won't notice for the thirty seconds it takes the drug/poison to circulate through its system from the injection point. Unless you're a good enough shot to reliably hit one of the carotid arteries, don't expect anything but Pyrrhic victories here." Tasers are worthless. Easily defeated by armor, and many pieces of equipment do not take kindly to a charge of 20,000 volts. |
 Image from How Stuff Works
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 Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson.
Spaceman Spiff's mertilizer AKA atomic napalm neutralizer has settings such as
"Shake-n'-Bake", "Medium Well", "Deep Fat Fry" and "Liquefy"
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Dial-A-GunSome science fictional weapons have multiple settings. This is sometimes called a "Swiss Army Weapon." In Tactics of Mistake by Gordon R. Dickson one finds the "Dally Gun", short for "dial-a-gun." It was probably inspired by the real-life Stoner 63, and apparently was an equally big failure. Though not as big a failure as the ZF 1 Pod Weapons System from the movie The Fifth Element. |
From Tactics of Mistake by Gordon R. Dickson (1971)
Up front on the open seat sat a round-faced young Army Spec 9 at the controls, with a dally gun beside him.
Cletus glanced at the clumsy hand weapon with interest as he climbed aboard the car over the right-side treads. It was the first dally gun he had seen in use in the field -- although he had handled and even fired one back at the Academy. It was crossbreed -- no, it was an out-and-out mongrel of a weapon -- designed originally as a riot-control gun and all but useless in the field, where a speck of dirt could paralyze some necessary part of its complex mechanism inside the first half hour of combat.
Its name was a derivative from its original, unofficial designation of "dial-a-gun," which name proved that even ordnance men were capable of humor. With proper adjustment it could deliver anything from a single .29 caliber pellet slug to an eight-ounce, seeker-type canister shell. It was just the sort of impractical weapon that set Cletus' tactical imagination perking over possible unorthodox employments of it in unexpected situations.
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From The Fifth Element Your time for revenge is at hand! Voila, the ZF-1. [activates a ZF-1 and holds it] It's light; handle's adjustable for easy carrying; good for righties and lefties; breaks down into four parts; undetectable by X-ray; ideal for quick discreet interventions.A word on firepower. Titanium recharger; 3000-round clip with bursts of 3 to 300. With the replay button, another Zorg invention, it's even easier. [lights reveal a mannequin in a police armor] One shot... [shoots mannequin]...and replay send every following shot to the same location. [shoots a machine gun volley at Mangalores but all the bullets go to the mannequin]And to finish the job, all the Zorg oldies but goldies. [fires every weapon at the mannequin as he mentions them] Rocket launcher... [rocket blows a hole in the mannequin], arrow launcher with exploding or poisonous gas heads [mannequin's head suddenly looks like a porcupine], very practical... our famous net launcher... [mannequin is ensnared in a large net], the always-efficient flamethrower, [mannequin is engulfed in flames], my favorite... [winks to the Mangalores] and for the grand finale, the all-new 'Ice-cube System'. [fires a cloud of liquid nitrogen which freezes the remains of the mannequin, which also breaks and collapses in pieces] |
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In the novel LOGAN'S RUN by William Noaln and George Johnson the Sandmen were armed with a sort of revolver with six different loads. The gun can be reloaded with new cartridges which allow for extended use (the movie featured a gun with only one setting: acetylene flare. How boring.).
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 Image design by Gordon Carew. Click for larger image
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From Logan's Run by William Nolan and George Johnson (1967).
Only a DS man could carry a Gun. Each weapon was coded to the
operative's hand pattern, set to detonate on any other human contact.
Logan reached in and closed his hand around the big pearl-handled
revolver, drawing it free of its snug velvet nest. He checked it;
full load, six charges: tangler, ripper, needler, nitro, vapor -- and
homer.
 Click for larger image
 Click for larger image
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In the comic Judge Dredd, the infamous Lawgiver Mk II has six types of shells:
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In the movie Star Wars: A New Hope, Darth Vader tells the storm troopers that he wants the passengers taken alive. When one of the storm troopers spots Princess Leia, he says "There's one, set for stun." So Star Wars blasters have a "stun" and "kill" setting. The kill setting might be a laser in pulse beam mode (AKA "blaster" mode) while the stun setting might be a laser in Pulsed Energy Projectile mode.
As previously mentioned, the laser hand guns in SPACE 1999 also had Stun and Kill settings.
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But the real Swiss army knife of the energy weapon world is the Star Trek Phaser. It had all sorts of interesting settings, including "blow up like a grenade" er, ah, "forced chamber explosion." In the original Star Trek, phasers had settings for Stun, Heat, Disrupt, Dematerialize, and Overload. In Star Trek phase II, the settings were Stun, Kill, Heat, Disintegrate and Overload. Stun would render a living humanoid being unconscious by lighting up their nervous system like a christmas tree. Kill shorts out the nervous system of a humanoid being permanently. Heat would raise the temperature of objects, it was commonly used on wilderness planets to heat up a rock as a substitute for a campfire. Disrupt/Disintegrate "breaks down cohesion", I guess this means it causes the object to fall apart into gravel or turn into vapor. Dematerialize turns the target into energy, presumably something like neutrinos; otherwise the energy release would obliterate everything within several kilometers of ground zero. And overload turns the phaser into a hand grenade with the pin pulled, not surprising considering how much energy is in the phaser's power pack. |
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 Scotty uses a phaser to cut a precision hole in a bulkhead.
Star Trek "The Naked Time" (1966).
Image courtesy of TrekMovie.com
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We can duplicate some of this with a laser. Stun would be a laser in Pulsed Energy Projectile mode. Kill would be a laser in Pulsed Impulsive Kill Laser mode. Heat would be a laser in unpulsed heat ray mode at relatively low energy levels. Disrupt would be a laser in pulsed blaster mode or in unpulsed heat ray mode at high energy levels. Overload makes the battery explode. Dematerialize is the only one that cannot be done, but it is rather silly in the first place. ("Dematerialize" is a fancy way of saying "disintegrator ray". A weapon that can vaporize a human body without setting the walls and floor on fire or even raising the temperature of the room? Give me a break!) Remember that a laser in pulse mode could have its effect optimized to a given material by a specific setting for pulse frequency. So one could have a "metal cutting" setting for use as a tool or to open a locked door, and a "kill human" setting for war-to-the-knife combat. All with the same pulse laser, just with a different frequency. Such a weapon would have a selector switch for each mode. And it might have a "customizable" mode. This would allow an expert to manually tweak the settings: continuous or pulse, spectrum frequency, pulse timing, power level, etc. |
There were some interesting development notes in THE MAKING OF STAR TREK by Stephen Whitfield.
In the pilot, Gene Roddenberry called the hand guns "lasers." But he realized that while lasers were currently new and cutting-edge, they would be old hat by the time the first episode was aired (at the time the show was created, lasers were only five years old). Worse, there was the danger of writing an episode where the hand gun does something that lasers were not capable of doing (which as it turns out was quite insightful on Roddenberry's part, since that did indeed come to pass). The safe way out was to invent some baffle-gab name for some imaginary weapon, so there was no danger of being called out by some science-geek who was a fan of the show.
Roddenberry said
Laser Guns -- Don't forget to have a connection between the guns and the "power belt." I visualize the belt looking something like a waist-type life preserver, having individual power units, say, three inches by six inches. The units can be replaced, just as bullets in a gun can be replaced...
...Don't you think they will have a new name?... Some possible candidates for a new name might be: HEAT gun (High Energy Amplication Transport); BEE gun (Beam of Electromagnetic Energy); ACE gun (Amplified Coherent Energy); CLEB gun (Coherent Light Energy Beam)...
...(a.) Some sort of optical sight which could either be swung up or raised out of the weapon itself, or snapped onto the weapon -- a precision aiming device for very careful or very long-distance use.
(Nice thought, but I prefer the idea of aiming utilizing the actual laser optics with a reflex mechanism.)
(Ah, the joke is on me. The phasers in classic Trek did have a reflex mechanism to aim through the optics. I didn't know that until recently.)
(b.) In addition to the basic hand grip, some sort of grip near the fore part of the weapon (also either swung out from the weapon itself or snapped on) which allows a two-handed shooting stance for extreme precision firing.
(ed note: sort of like the foldable foregrip on the Beretta 93R)
But as we know, the weapons were named "Phasers", and have no power belts, optical sights, or fore hand grips. Pity.
For the proposed re-boot Star Trek Phase II, a new phaser was designed. From the notes:
PHASER I: features fully self contained, operable components with a touch actuated lighted settings bar and side-mounted trigger. Batteries included (re-chargeable). Nose key lights function with trigger for easy optical matting of phaser beam. Features different color for each energy setting, plus on/off button for total shutdown.
Energy indicator bar colors: (front to back) Green: stun (neural effect), Red: kill (neural effect), Yellow: heat (molecular movement), Blue/White: disintegrate (molecular disruption)
Special feature: overload. simultaneous depression of all four settings buttons will arm the phaser for explosive overload (grenade effect). All four color bars flash warning until canceled with off button.
PHASER II: features easy interlocking with phaser one. Nose key lights now function with hand trigger. Features top inserted dilithium crystal power booster (pulsating light). Perfectly balanced, phaser two will stand up on any flat surface without support. Features overall cool silver/blue coloration. Exact size of Colt .45.
PHASER III: features easy interlocking with phaser two. Grip and operation remain the same. Connects to handle and undercarriage -- drape-fit over forearm. Arm features booster packs (lighted). Overall shape reminiscent of old-style rifle stock.
A weapon mode that was popular with E.E."Doc" Smith and Robert Heinlein is the so-called "Fan Beam" (it appears in Smith's SPACEHOUNDS OF IPC and Heinlein's THE PUPPET MASTERS). This is when the weapon does not fire a single bolt, but instead fires a volley of bolts in an arc. Instead of drilling a single hole in your target, it suffers a series of holes spaced a few centimeters apart in a horizontal line. You could literally cut a man in two.
This is a mode that a Phaser cannot do. Of course, if your weapon has a "disintegrate" setting, who needs fan beam anyway?
The "fan" part is because as viewed from overhead, the beams would make an arc shaped pattern much like a folding Japanese fan.
My slide rule says that if a man is about 45 centimeters wide (18 inches), at a range of 5 meters, and the bolts were to be spaced 3 centimeters apart, it would take 15 bolts fired at 0.3 degree increments to the left and right. Your target would fall... in two places.
A less blood-thirsty use would be in the wilderness, chopping down trees ("Lumberjack" mode).
From The Puppet Masters by Robert Heinlein (1951). The alien master parasites are about the size of a football, waiting inside a "cell" until they can be attached to their hapless human victim.
The masters waiting in their cells were another matter. With a fan beam and a max charge I burned them all in seconds only. There were two large crates against the wall. I did not know that they contained masters but I had no reason to believe otherwise; I beamed them through and through until the wood charred.
From Spacehounds of IPC by E.E."Doc" Smith (1951).
Stevens had poised the Forlorn Hope edgewise in mid-air, so that the gleaming,
heavily armored parabolic reflectors of his projectors, mounted upon the leading edge of
the fortress, covered the scene below. As the charred corpse of the savage chieftain
dropped to the ground, it seemed to the six-limbed creatures that the demons of the
falls had indeed been annoyed beyond endurance by their intrusion; for, as if in
response to the flash of fire from the power plug, that structure so peculiarly and so
stolidly hanging in the air came plunging down toward them. From it there reached
down twin fans of death and destruction: one flaming an almost invisibly incandescent
violet which tore at the eyes and excruciatingly disintegrated brain and nervous tissues;
the other dully glowing an equally invisible red, at the touch of which body temperature
soared to lethal heights and foliage burst cracklingly into spontaneous flame.
In their massed hundreds the savages dropped where they stood, life rived away
by the torturing ultra-violet, burned away by the blast of pure heat, or consumed by the
conflagrations that raged instantly wherever that wide-sweeping fan encountered
combustible material.
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A "Lumberjack" setting would be handy for a sidearm used by a landing party crewman, first-in scout, or other person exploring wilderness planets. I already mentioned the "heat" setting of phasers being used to turn rocks into impromptu campfires. This function was seen in the original Star Trek episodes The Enemy Within and A Private Little War. In Clifford Simak's classic novel CITY, atomic guns are also useful to start campfires. |
From City by Clifford Simak (1952).
Grant stared with perlexity at the atomic gun.
A handy thing, it performed a host of services, ranging
from cigarette lighter to deadly weapon...
...The pile of twigs was laid before the bolder
and other wood lay near at hand to keep the campfire going
through the night. But if the gun wouldn't work, there
would be no fire.
In Larry Niven's RINGWORLD, the explorers are equipped with "flashlight-lasers", an item of questionable safety. Over and above the engineering problems associated with designing a laser that can also produce non-coherent light, the dual use aspect is dangerous. One can imagine a wilderness explorer awakend by a strange sound in the camp and sleepily slicing their tent to ribbons because the flashlight laser was set to the wrong mode.
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And just to be complete, in Larry Niven's 1967 short story "The Soft Weapon", space explorers discover a high-tech gadget from a long extinct species. Said gadget is a handle on a sphere, with a selector slide on the handle. Moving the slider changes the weapon mode, which manifests as the sphere technomagically re-forming itself into different devices. One would assume that it is made of pure handwavium. Settings included Sonic communications device, telescope, laser, small jet pack, energy absorber, computer, matter to energy conversion beam, and self-destruct. In 1973 this story was adapted as an animated Star Trek episode "The Slaver Weapon." |
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