Phasers on STUN

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Phasers on STUN.

Who says life doesn't imitate art?

In a move to gladden the heart of many a Trekkie, HSV Technologies announced it is developing a non-lethal weapon that uses UV laser beams to knock both humans and animals out at a distance.

The phaser-like device first squirts out twin steams of UV radiation to ionize a passage in the air along which a high energy electrical burst is conducted towards the target.

In a similar fashion to those existing US stun guns (highly illegal here in the UK by the way), the beams generate the 'wires' that then travel through the atmosphere towards the target.

The current within the energy beam needs to be within a couple of HZ close to the current of the electric impulses which control our (and animals, by the way) skeletal muscles.

For the non-violence fans among you, you'll be happy to hear that the weapon is almost imperceptible to the person being shot because the impact feeling varies from the target's own neural impulses only in the fact that the cycle rate of the current is accelerated to paralyze muscle tissue.

Phaser

This is a big difference from the current wire-fed stun guns which use a far blunter approach to - let's face it - fry the victim's nervous system.

The current prototype is back-pack mounted and looks like either a flame thrower or the weapons used in the movie Ghostbusters, depending on the personal opinion of the viewer.

Most interest has been expressed by the US military, who can see a distinct possibility of tank-mounting the device and firing in a sweep pattern for riot control and foreign peace-keeping operations, where bodycounts - even among the enemy - is becoming a big political no-no.

Oddly, there's also been an interest shown by the African safari lobby, who see a possibility for hunters being allowed into parks to shoot up elephants and lions without actually harming the poor old endangered species.

The corporate base for HSV is over at http://www.hsvt.org/
You'll also find a nifty article on non-lethal weapon technologies at the Sunday Times here.

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