Say Hello to the Goodbye Weapon.

By Alex in Weapons & War on Dec 5, 2006 at 3:08 pm

It’s a new weapon called the Active Denial System, by the US Air Force:

The crowd is getting ugly. Soldiers roll up in a Hummer. Suddenly, the whole right half of your body is screaming in agony. You feel like you’ve been dipped in molten lava. You almost faint from shock and pain, but instead you stumble backwards — and then start running. To your surprise, everyone else is running too. In a few seconds, the street is completely empty. …

The ADS shoots a beam of millimeters waves, which are longer in wavelength than x-rays but shorter than microwaves — 94 GHz (= 3 mm wavelength) compared to 2.45 GHz (= 12 cm wavelength) in a standard microwave oven. …

The beam produces what experimenters call the "Goodbye effect," or "prompt and highly motivated escape behavior." In human tests, most subjects reached their pain threshold within 3 seconds, and none of the subjects could endure more than 5 seconds.

A Wired article: Link


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  1. floyd landis
    Dec 5th, 2006 at 5:49 pm

    My mother-in-law is one of these.

  2. John Sadowski
    Dec 5th, 2006 at 11:25 pm

    cool, when i become a crotechety old man instead of yelling for kids to get off my lawn i can just point this at this mofo at ‘em.

    hey you kids!!!

  3. Guido
    Dec 6th, 2006 at 2:16 am

    I’m sure it’s been thoroughly tested and has no negative side-effects, like, say, increasing risk for cancer. Right? Right?

  4. Lasagne
    Dec 6th, 2006 at 6:09 am

    Why does that make me think of the officer who praised his men for shooting a non-violent demonstrator in the head with rubber bullets?

    And now I see people trampling each other in panic to get away, those who got trampled down getting second degree burns in addition and the military reassuring everybody, that’s it’s really necessary and totally safe. Who cares about burns or blisters, they don’t last long anyway.

    Sometimes I wonder about the scientists who develope those things…

  5. aliocha
    Dec 6th, 2006 at 2:44 pm

    wow, looks great for torture and protest marchs control…

  6. yankee
    Dec 21st, 2006 at 2:43 pm

    think mirrors. . .

  7. Poison Pen
    Dec 21st, 2006 at 6:11 pm

    I guess I’ll have to add a Faraday cage to the combat helmet, gas mask, and gloves I already wear to express my civil liberties.


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