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Tuesday, August 07, 2007
Department of Homeland Security
The LED Incapacitator prototype.
It looks like a big flashlight — but it's really a nonlethal weapon designed to make you sick. Intelligent Optical Systems, Inc., of Torrance, Calif., has been granted a contract by the Department of Homeland Security to develop what it calls the "LED Incapacitator," according to a DHS online newsletter.
The handheld device using light-emitting diodes to emit super-bright pulses of light at rapidly changing wavelengths, causing disorientation, nausea and even vomiting in whomever it's pointed at.
"There's one wavelength that gets everybody," says IOS President Bob Lieberman. "Vlad [IOS top scientist Vladimir Rubtsov] calls it 'the evil color.'"
Phase 1 of the contract — creating a working prototype — has already been completed, and Phase 2 will begin this fall as researchers at Penn State'sInstitute of Nonlethal Defense Technology put the puke-saber through its paces.
"Phase 3 will be our shrink phase," Lieberman said, admitting that the prototype, 15 inches long with a 4-inch lens, is too large and heavy to be comfortably carried on a belt.
DHS hopes to equip police, Border Patrol agents and National Guardsmen with the barf-beamers by 2010.
Reminds me of the "waterless defroster" that a friend of mine came up with back in '91 while in the Applied Mechanical Engineering program at University of Washington.
It used high frequency microwaves to "vaporize" the built-up condensation on an old fashioned ice box (straight from solid to gas, forgoing the liquid state).
When tested around (and on) humans, the modulation of the microwaves screwed with the "targets" inner ear/equilibrium and made some people (usually drunk ones) vomit.
Wonder if this will make it past the epilepsy focus group....
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oderint dum metuant (Latin for 'let them hate, so long as they fear').
Well, in truth I'm actually not a total hawk, but I'm not a dove either -- I'm more like an angry pigeon flying over the political arena after a really big meal. -Abba Gav
How much you wanna bet researchers discover this thing causes seizures in a small percentage of people, but we won't hear about it until it's used in a law enforcement situation and someone injures themselves in the process?
Sounds like the "sick stick" they used in "Minority Report"
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