StunRay Incapacitates With a Flash of Light 431
Hugh Pickens writes "Scientific American reports that a newly patented method of non-lethal incapacitation can render an assailant helpless for several minutes by overloading the neural networks connected to the retina with a brief flash of high-intensity light. 'It's the inverse of blindness—the technical term is a loss of contrast sensitivity,' says Todd Eisenberg, the engineer who invented the device. The device consists of a 75-watt lamp, combined with optics that collect and focus the visible light into a targeted beam, which can be aimed like a flashlight to project a controlled beam of white light more than 10 times more intense than an aircraft landing light with a range as far away as 150 feet. Recovery time ranges from 'seconds to 20 minutes,' says Eisenberg. 'It's very analogous to walking from a very bright room into a very dark room.'"
Re:Does not sound safe (Score:5, Informative)
A laser is very concentrated light, further focused by the eye, which is why it will cause burning damage to the retina.
This is similar to the flash-bang grenade. A very strong difuse source of light will drain your retina of the signal substance it uses to detect light, and it takes the body considerable time to produce new signal substance. Fire a camera flash in your own face and you can experience a mild form of the effect.
Thereby not said anything about the viability of the product. I doubt something that can be stopped with sunglasses will replace tasers any time soon.
What's old is new (Score:5, Informative)
I saw this as a kid in Looker.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Odj86eBenWk&feature=related [youtube.com]
Re:...liabilities (Score:3, Informative)
Re:...liabilities (Score:5, Informative)
"Excited delirium."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taser_safety_issues [wikipedia.org]
Re:Clancy? (Score:5, Informative)
In "Debt of Honor", Clark and Chavez blind the pilots of a Japanese AWACS. They also use it several times to incapacitate guards. Their device was a 1kW light flash though, so I suppose this new invention is a bit more efficient.
Re:Clancy? (Score:4, Informative)
And the Brits got it from Alfred Hitchcock's "Rear Window"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kz06t7PGD-E [youtube.com]
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BMO
The goggles do nothing (Score:4, Informative)
For an example of how this works, go into a mostly dark room with a camera. Have a look around. Turn on the camera, look straight into the flash as you fire it. Have a look around again.... Your wide-open pupils just let the full force of the flash in before you could blink, every receptor on your retina just fired, and it's going to be a few minutes before you can see anything again.
With a high enough power light source, this works just fine in daylight. I know this because I've flashed myself with a MIG welder - It was just a brief flash as I flicked the trigger at an inopportune moment, but the center of my vision was completely blank for several minutes. Simply turning off the machine and finding a safe place to sit down to wait for my vision to return was a challenge. I would have been screwed in a melee.
Anyway, no, goggles won't save you. If it's white light, you can't filter a narrow band like laser goggles. When welding with a shade 10 filter, when the arc is on, you can see what you're working on OK, but the arc itself is just white, completely clipping at the top of your eyes' sensitivity. When you turn the arc off, you're blind if you're indoors unless you have a 150 watt light inches away from what you're looking at. Outdoors you can just barely see what's going on, but at many angles the reflections of light leaking in from behind you overwhelm your forward vision (like with glossy screen laptops used outdoors, but worse). Using those kind of lenses will leave you blind anyway - they wouldn't need to flash you. Anything less and you'll still be vulnerable to the flash.
Re:...liabilities (Score:5, Informative)
i'm confused
this is either a whoosh on my part or people don't know about eisenhower's famous speech
everyone should read eisenhower's farewell speech
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/dwightdeisenhowerfarewell.html [americanrhetoric.com]
here's an excerpt, but the whole thing is extraordinary and prescient and should be mandatory slashdot nerd reading
eisenhower, on the flip side, was the guy who put "in god we trust" as the motto of the usa and "under god" into the pledge. boooooo. i understand he was a religious guy, but he completely screwed up the whole separation of church and state. like any man, brilliant and some respects, moron in others
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/president-eisenhower-signs-in-god-we-trust-into-law [history.com]
Re:...liabilities (Score:4, Informative)
Re:...liabilities (Score:2, Informative)
This is not the same USA I grew up in...
Yes, it is. [wikipedia.org]