4 ms·
I don't think so. Lasers are ineffective as lethal weapons (they are very effective as blinding weapons, which is probably worse and inhumane).
by atemerev 9y ago
I don't think so. Lasers are ineffective as lethal weapons (they are very effective as blinding weapons, which is probably worse and inhumane).
- Filligree 9y agoI don't know about you, but I'd rather be blinded than die.
- joncrocks 9y agoI don't think you get a choice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_Certain_Conventional_Weapons#Protocol_IV:_Blinding_Laser_Weapons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_Certain_Conventi...
- gambiting 9y agoIf I absolutely had to pick, and the choice was between 1) get shot and maybe survive; or 2) 100% chance of getting blinded - I'd pick the first one.
- StavrosK 9y agoWhy are you comparing a weapon that has to hit a whole person and misses to a weapon that has to hit a 5mm retina and somehow never misses?
- atemerev 9y agoBecause lasers are usually continuous and even reflections are very dangerous.
- matthewmacleod 9y agoI think the thing is though that it doesn't. It just has to scatter off of something else in the wrong way, and boom.
- wnkrshm 9y agocause a) you can't see when you're being shot at b) it suffices if there is a sufficiently large (to you invisible) reflection within your field of vision c) you can automatically scan a whole field very quickly, invisibly, silently d) the laser spot gets larger at a distance, so the laser is not a pointer but a shotgun cone with 2m diameter
- jdietrich 9y agoIt's not difficult to track eyes consistently using computer vision. It's not difficult to aim a laser beam using a mirror galvanometer. If you're struck in the eye with a UV laser beam, the blink reflex doesn't kick in - by the time you've noticed the pain in your eyes, it's already too late. The beam doesn't have to track with particularly high accuracy to cause certain blindness, especially if there's an array of beams. A decent hardware hacker could build an area-denial laser turret in a long weekend with a couple of hundred bucks of parts. I hope to god that nobody ever does.
- wnkrshm 9y agoA UV-laser would be humane, since UV (and shorter wavelengths) will interact with the outermost portion of your eye - visible light or the near IR (up to 1500) is what your imaging system operates on and it's focused onto the retina. Edit: Also, the blink reflex isn't fast enough to save you from damage if the Class is higher than Class 2 (and even then it's a roll of the dice, since there are some who don't have that fabled reflex).
- gambiting 9y agoCan you expand on why that would be humane?
- Filligree 9y agoAt a guess, it might be possible to at least partially fix the damage afterwards, by scraping off the damaged cells. I wouldn't call that "humane", and it is a guess; it might not work at all. Nothing to do with war is 'humane', though.
- wnkrshm 9y agoYou're right, my choice of words was poor there, I didn't want to imply that there are any humane weapons or ways to wage war. I think what I was trying to say is that if I could choose the wavelength to hit my eye, I'd pick extreme UV.
- pjc50 9y agoA sufficiently powerful laser - over 0.5W - can cause blindness from diffuse reflection. A 100W laser fired into a room with white walls for a fraction of a second can permanently blind everyone whose eyes were open at the time.