The US Army and US Navy have been playing with ray guns!
In a recently declassified document, the American Department of Defense (DoD) reveals some of the “non-lethal” beam weapons they’ve been investigating.
They include a weapon that projects sounds into your head (potentially destroying your delicate ear bits in the process) they’ve dubbed the “Schitzo Ray”. This weapon is based on the Frey effect, and uses microwaves, so the schizoid’s traditional mode of protection — the aluminum foil hat — will not be helpful. In fact just the opposite.
Speaking of heating things up, they’ve got another microwave weapon that warms your body. It has three settings: bag-sweatingly hot, jungle fever, and cook. This one will be especially useful for the cannibal tribes in the coming economic apocalypse.
But my favourite has to be the Epilepsilazer™, which uses electromagnetic pulses to cause epilepsy-like seizures. It’s based on electro-magnetic pulses, so not only does it cause excessive mouth-foaming, it also completely wrecks a victim’s annoying Bluetooth thingy sticking out of his or her ear.
Given the latter results, it’s somewhat bad news that the DoD (pronounced dude) has no plans to make any of these delightful “non-lethal” weapons commercially available soon.
More details about the Epilepsilazer can be found at the New Scientist, or you can go straight to the source (PDF). Other mouth-foamers and schitzos here.