Homeland Security Commissions LED-Based Puke-Saber 378
E++99 writes "Homeland Security has contracted with Intelligent Optical Systems, Inc. to develop an "LED Incapacitator," a nonlethal weapon consisting of a large flashlight with a cluster of LEDs capable of emitting "super-bright pulses of light at rapidly changing wavelengths." Sounds innocuous enough... until they they shine "the evil color" at you and you start puking! A working prototype has been completed, and they will soon be putting it through its paces. Homeland Security hopes to give it to Border Patrol agents and National Guardsmen by 2010."
Real source (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The good and the bad (Score:5, Informative)
You are correct in that non-lethal control measures are 'easier' to implement. But I think that once the decision is made to bring a situation under control, it is going to happen regardless. Maybe I just don't trust cops, but it seems like once things go bad they go the whole way. If firehoses are at hand, they bring out the firehoses. Tasers, clubs, rubber bullets, PIT maneuvers, etc etc.
Whatever it takes.
Re:So I'm confused here... (Score:5, Informative)
Right after a neuron fires it "rearms" the membrane by pumping ions across it. In time sequence its sensitivity varies smoothly through:
- The absolute refractory period: Nothing can fire it.
- The negative afterpotential: It can be fired but it takes extra stimulus.
- The positive afterpotential: It takes LESS than the usual amount of stimulus to fire it.
Then it returns to its normal, resting, sensitivity.
The sensitivity slope may be an artifact of the ion pumps and channels, but it appears to function as a mechanism for encoding the strength of a stimulus as a pulse rate.
This has a side effect: If a nerve is given short pulses of stimulation with a spacing corresponding to the length of time between a stimulus that fires it and the peak of the positive afterpotential, once it fires once it will tend to continue to fire in synchrony with the pulses from then on. If you have a bundle of such nerves with similar timing and all affected by the stimulus, each additional pulse picks up additional nerves and phase-locks them to the stimulus. Within a few pulses most of the fibers in the bundle tend to be firing rapidly and in unison.
You can see this with a strobe light with a variable repetition rate. Run it slow and you see distinct pulses - a flicker. Run it fast and you see a continuous light - the pulses have fused into a continuous response. But run it near the "flicker fusion rate" boundary and you get a lot of weird visual effects - notably flickering rainbow colors across the neighboring (or entire) visual field that tend to enhance and obscure the actual image with a flickering, undecipherable, psychedelic-poster version of itself.
You get colors other than those of the actual source (if it is colored rather than white) and effects in other parts of the visual field than the actual strobing light and things it is illuminating. This is because nerves for parts of the eye that would not normally be stimulated enough to trigger by this light (if it were non-strobing) still become entrained when they happen to be in a positive afterpotential period when a blink occurs.
(By the way: Don't try this if you're epileptic. It can produce a seizure. Indeed: Some people discover they're epileptic when they are exposed to such flickering lights.)
One speculation about the hypothetical "brown note" was that infrasound at a positive-afterpotential repetition rate matching that of nerves controlling the intestines might force peristalsis in the colon or trigger the appropriate reflexes for defecation. (It might be interesting to retry the debunking experiments with a train of narrow high-pressure pulses, approximating impulses, rather than a sine wave. B-) )
This flashlight appears to be attempting a variation of the same effect. By entraining the nerves of the visual processing responsible for locating onself in space and/or ones motion, it could create a visual illusion of movement that doesn't match the signals from the inner ear and the muscle-position sensors. A mismatch among these three systems produces motion sickness, nausea, and vomiting.
This reflex appears to be a defense against ingestion of neurotoxic poisons (such as those in some mushrooms and food-poisoning bacteria), using their disruption of the complex navigation system as an early warning and attempting to eliminate them from the digestive system before enough are absorbed to disable a critical system and kill the victim.
Re:Legal liability? (Score:3, Informative)
This sounds a whole lot less likely (especially than tasers) to be lethal. The exception would be with epileptics, but I think those would be very rare cases.
I'm sure that egregious applications of ANYTHING could still result in lawsuits. But if you're talking about liability for using the device when the sufficient cause to use it is being challenged, I think the devices you mentioned are a lot more problematic, because they are all much more traumatic for the subject than a device that causes dizziness or disorientation (even if it leads to puking) without pain.
Re:Sweet! (Score:3, Informative)
Sorry, but I would think that saying it gets people to want to close their eyes and puke, and that one guy tried to change his wallpaper with his eyes closed, would clue most people.
You've got to admit, it sure out-does the goat guy or tubgirl ...
Re:This will work just great... (Score:3, Informative)