Re: Gauss Weapons

On Thu, 27 Apr 2000 11:30:44 EDT, Popeyesays@aol.com wrote:

>AT which point he will tie up medics, transportation people, hospital 
>facilities, graves and registration people and expend a large portion
of cash 
>to support his last days - a "wounded" individual is always more
expense than 
>a KIA to his war effort. 

The problem is that it's still fairly slow acting (as weapons go). A
soldier
hit by such a weapon could still walk to the aid station to find out
he's
going to die. I forget the name of the scientist who died during the
Manhattan
Project due to a test pile going critical, but he was able to make it to
the
hospital on his own power before dying a couple of days later. 

I'm not saying this is isn't a valid weapon. However, I think the care
needed
to manufacture and store such a weapon, not to mention the fact that
it's
pretty rare and could be better used for other purposes, makes it an
impractical weapon. 

Finally, do you REALLY want the other guy's wounded soldiers to think
that
they're gonners in 30 days anyway, so they might as well take you with
them...? I'd rather the other guy's wounded walked, crawled, or dragged
themselves to the nearest aid station.

But it might work. I'm trying to think of a reason for doing it. Perhaps
in a
universe where limb replacement and battlefield surgery are very easy,
and
most soldiers have good body armour, there would be a need for killing
soldiers with an incurable "poison". 

Allan Goodall		       agoodall@interlog.com
Goodall's Grotto: http://www.interlog.com/~agoodall/

"Surprisingly, when you throw two naked women with sex
toys into a living room full of drunken men, things 
always go bad." - Kyle Baker, "You Are Here"