Re: Non Violent Weapons

On Sun, 8 Mar 1998 14:11:15 -0500, Thomas Barclay
<Thomas.Barclay@sofkin.ca> wrote:

>I've been working on Non Violent weapons for peacekeeping ops, and 
>I'm wondering if anyone has any experience in the real world with 
>rubber or wax bullets.

I first came across "non-lethal" weapons about 5 years ago. Someone
who was in an apa with me was working with Janet Morris and others on
introducing non-lethal weapons. Unfortunately, the Morris' were
essentially discredited in the coming years. In essence, the Pentagon
has been working on such weapons on their own and they didn't want
civilians (especially flakey SF types) butting in. The Pentagon--in
this case--was more than a little bit justified...

At any rate, they are working on "non-lethal" weapons, both truly
non-lethal weapons and reduced lethality weapons. There are laser
systems being developed to blind soldiers (you can't see, but you will
live...). There are microwave weapons to cause nausea (and possible
brain damage). They were also working on noxious gasses that don't
kill but severly impair. 

There have been all sorts of different weapon systems in various
stages of development. One of the more intriguing was a an aerosol
that would be brought into an engine through it's air intake, mix with
gasoline, and cause the gasoline or diesel to congeal. It would be
essentially harmless to people but would disable a force's weapons. I
don't know whatever happened to that.

My favourite weapon was the "snot gun." It was a projectile weapon
that fired a stream of, well, brownish gunk. It could completely bind
a man and hold him in place, helpless. It fired much like a
flamethrower. It would probably be useless in a military setting, but
police forces are always interested in non-lethal weaponry and that
was the main target. There were a number of problems with the system,
though having the miscreant's friends fall over laughing was probably
a bonus side effect.

This is an excellent area for SF extrapolation. How about a "snot
bomb?" It detonates over troops and drops an expanding foam guck on
top of them. And that's just a "top of the head" idea.

Allan Goodall	     agoodall@sympatico.ca

"Once again, the half time score, 
 Alien Overlords: 142,000. Scotland: zip."
  - This Hour Has 22 Minutes