Finally! The scoop on Sandia Ray Gun Weapons!

I heard about it last year, but I could never quite track down the straight scoop—Until now.

I was a little concerned that this ray gun might be dangerous, but don't worry! The 95 GHz beam only penetrates 1/64 of an inch into your skin, just deep enough to reach those tender nerve endings, so your involuntary pain receptors take over. Remember, this is billed as a non-lethal directed energy weapon.

This intense heating sensation stops only if the individual moves out of the beam’s path or the beam is turned off. The sensation caused by the system has been described by test subjects as feeling like touching a hot frying pan or the intense radiant heat from a fire. Burn injury is prevented by limiting the beam’s intensity and duration.

Just limit the intensity or the duration—so, all you have to do is move out of the beam for the pain to stop! So simple. Of course, this pre-supposes that you've moved into the beam in the first place. What if you didn't move at all, but the beam was swept over you?

I first read about these directed beam weapons in relation to crowd control. Just imagine being in a crowd, like at a demonstration, and such a beam is turned on you. You respond as if you've touched a hot poker—all over your body. How does your autonomic nervous system know which way to go to get away? It doesn't. You just thrash around in horrible pain. Your goose is cooked.

But some of the other stuff that's termed non-lethal is only marginally better. How about this:

In 2004 American soldiers in Iraq were equipped with a Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) used for land based and naval applications. LARD works like a highly directional, high power megaphone, able to blast sounds (such as crowd-dispersal instructions in Arabic) in a narrow beam and with great clarity at a deafening 150 decibels (50 times the human threshold of pain)