Silent Guardian

Future torture device?

Run away the ray-gun is coming : We test US army’s new secret weapon – dailymail.co.uk: “Where do I put my finger? There … OK? Nothing’s happening … is it on?”
“Yes, it’s on. Move your finger a bit closer.”
“Er … ow! OW!” Not good. I try again. “OWWW!” I pull my hand away sharpish. My finger is throbbing, but seems undamaged.
I was told people can take it for a second, maximum. No way, not for a wimp like me.
I try it again. It is a bit like touching a red-hot wire, but there is no heat, only the sensation of heat. There is no burn mark or blister.
Its makers claim this infernal machine is the modern face of warfare. It has a nice, friendly sounding name, Silent Guardian.
I am told not to call it a ray-gun, though that is precisely what it is (the term “pain gun” is maybe better, but I suppose they could like that even less).
And, to be fair, the machine is not designed to vaporise, shred, atomise, dismember or otherwise cause permanent harm.



  1. Ben Waymark says:

    That’d be a great substitute for an electric fence if you localize it well enough…. unlike a normal electric fence, you would have to worry about bits of grass hitting the wire and shorting the whole thing out and draining your battery…. it would also be a fantastic device to put around your house to keep Mormon’s, JW, Local Planning Officers, and money borrowing relatives away!

    I want one!

  2. Ben Waymark says:

    Just had another thought…. what happens if the other side also has one of these…. will they cancel each other out? Or could you get into a situation where a group of anarchists have one, the police have one, and they both turn it on, and both sides flee, and no one can get close enough to the devices to turn them off…..

  3. joshua says:

    will it cook hot dogs?

  4. Pierre says:

    If a second is too much, how would an hour feel? And no trace! It will be a must-have in every interrogation room.

  5. ECA says:

    4,
    there is a trace…But only if you stay long enough…
    It should boil the water in the part exposed…

  6. Ben Waymark says:

    Do you reckon BMW will come out with a model of car that has one of those attached to the door to prevent car-jacking? If it can boil water it could prevent car jacking and make a nice cup of tea at the same time!

    Of course, if you are into car theft, it’d be perfect…. set one off on a busy street, watch everyone run, then have your pick of the cars….. ‘cor, it be great for robbing banks too….

    I reckon they are marketing it to the wrong crowd… sure there are some gangsters out there who’d love something like that ….

  7. Improbus says:

    Best. Terrorist. Weapon. EVAR.

  8. Mister Mustard says:

    Sounds like a great device to keep those pesky 1st Amendment nuts away from Little King Georgie’s speeches.

  9. Gary Marks says:

    All of the experts who maintain that information and confessions obtained through torture are highly unreliable will be zapped by one of these machines until they “realize” that they were painfully mistaken.

  10. Raff says:

    Someone invented a microwave that will run with the door off, Eh?

  11. Usagi says:

    Now, if we can just get the bad guys to keep bags of popcorn in thier pockets…

  12. grog says:

    [sarcasm]yeah, because rubber bullets, tazers and tear gas with all their potential lethality are sooooooooo much better [/sarcasm]

  13. GigG says:

    And you can even build your own.

    http://tinyurl.com/yqn447

  14. Todd says:

    Technology straight out of Dune! http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=39 Invest in Spice now!

  15. Chris says:

    Can it be blocked by some kind of Faraday cage?

  16. framitz says:

    Non-ionizing radiation is harmful, I don’t care what the claim. I’ve worked around high powered surveillance RADAR and we accidently killed trees about a mile away after operating for 5 days. Boy that was a mess.

    This particular RADAR had actually had experiments done where the engineers modified it to be continuous instead of pulsed, to be used as a weapon. It was very effective at hurting living things, but using a 3 megawatt radar in continuous wave mode shorted it’s life to a point where it was totally impractical.

    Of course a Faraday cage would stop it, but what can you do while confined in a metal box….

    Maybe chain mail made of copper would work if it completely covered you.

    I just don’t see anything good coming from this.

  17. Mr. Fusion says:

    While the original intent might have been crowd control, it appears to be too dangerous for that. Controlled laboratory studies won’t correct for real world sadistic cops.

  18. Mike Strong says:

    Dosage!

    Barely sticking a finger in the wave path for less than a second indicates that any extended dosage may well be fatal, if not directly then by causing other problems such as heart attack and so forth.

    What happens with children in a crowd, or in a crowd. You can’t move out of the way fast enough? Babies in carriages or parents arms or infants holding on to the parent’s hand.

    What happens if you fall, and can’t move away. What happens to a mass of people who block the way out, just like people blocking the way out of a fire. Do they all cook to death? Brain damage? What. This is like free-range Nazi ovens (not intended as a pun, too horrid in possibilities).

    This so-called non-violent crowd control has the potential to be one of the ugliest weapons since gas warfare.

  19. James Hill says:

    Turning on one of the debates, Republican or Democrat, will do the same thing. Big deal.

  20. Mike Voice says:

    Ahhh… the fun they must have had, Beta-testing these at those secret prisons we supposedly don’t have anymore.

    I’d probably admit to planning the 9/11 attacks, after a few days of that. 🙂

  21. Mike says:

    Sounds like the ultimate torture device for those countries that do not want to be accused of torture (or human rights abuses). Being able to inflict pain without leaving a trace as to it having been done has long been sought after by many corrupt or unethical governments. I will leave it up to the conspiracy theorists as to which governments those are. I will just say that there are more than most people want to admit.

  22. Angel H. Wong says:

    #21

    True, I bet this is a wet dream for the CIA experts in Iraq.

  23. iGlobalWarmer (YOY) says:

    I wish I’d have gone into weapons engineering….. (sigh)

  24. tallwookie says:

    Saw it last week. Its a great idea… now if only it was available to the public like tasers are… wasnt that a great idea 😉

    I bet I could get those damn worthless Mexicans to move even faster if I had one of these!!!

    three cheers for technology!! woot!!

  25. Dick Cheney says:

    Ha! And you laughed at the tin foil hat that I wear… at least my brain is protected not only from the CIA’s mind control waves being sent out disguised as GPS signals, but also from this pain-ray gizmo.
    Who turned out to be the smart one after all?????

  26. ECA says:

    Back to the OLD days…Bring out the SHINEY SHIELDS..


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