6 Frightening Applications of Taser Technololgy

Tasers are the new pepper spray, and a cop’s best friend. When it comes to “less than lethal” force, things like batons and spray can fail to stop people on meth or with a high pain threshold, but tasers actually cause the muscles to seize, so whether your problem is an angry linebacker, or just some college kid who won’t shut up, it does the job; Making them cry like a little girl and scream in terror/agony is just a bonus.

But if you thought the world of Taser ended with a simple plastic gun attached to several thousand volts of ass-kicking, then do I have news for you, and a recommendation; don’t piss off the cops. Just don’t. Because their arsenal of stuff that can (and likely will) cause you to scream uncontrollably while peeing yourself is growing.

If you thought tasers were limited by the length of their wires… well, you’re mostly right, but just mostly. Like any popular or useful technology, tasers are evolving beyond a simple party favor or suicide-by-cop method of electrolysis; they are gaining the ability to fly and even get you wirelessly. Put on your best behavior, because in the future, the police will probably be able to tase you for thinking about crime.

Just think, they could have saved 115 minutes by just zapping Tom Cruise’s balls off as soon as he registered positive. Come to think of it, 30 minutes of any Scientoligist screaming on the floor would be worth the cover price.

6) The Taser Wildlife ECD

Is a large animal bearing down on you? Why not really piss it off with a blast of lightning from your fist? Taser international has come up with a taser that has been “optimised for wildlife professionals”,  which is comforting, because the idea of optimizing a weapon for wildlife amateurs is pretty terrifying.

This design was hatched from an incident where a Fish and Game employee tased a pissed off moose in the leg and knocked her down. The moose was all crazy and shit because her kids had been trapped by the officer and were crying for her. The stupid animal was making it hard for the nice officer to get to her frightened and crying children because animals do dumb shit, like stick up for their kids. Contrast this with the human mother who wisely used her baby as a human taser shield.

They have been rated safe to be used on bears and moose, which makes me wonder how many insanely pissed off giant forest animals it took to prove this thing had the punch necessary to immobilize 700 pounds of angry woods-monster.

What if your issue is not a giant angry deer-beast? Instead, it’s a bunch of drunken assholes who think Molotov cocktails and stolen TVs are the proper way to show your team spirit. Sure, the ECD will allow the errant forest ranger to dispense capital punishment on the street, but when the first guy is done cooking, his friends will still be standing, ready to pummel him with his remains. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could reduce a crowd to a bunch of screaming infants?

Very good, that will do nicely. The Taser Shockwave mounts several tasers and fires them all at once, ensuring that an angry mob can quickly be reduced to a loud puddle of urine in a matter of seconds. It’s like Metalstorm and Thor had a baby and it looked like a claymore mine. In case a dozen highly electrified darts simultaneously fired into a crowd just isn’t “it goes to eleven” for you, try 51 of them:

That is a bargain there. Sure, it costs five times as much, but you make up for it with the fact that everyone who sees it pees their pants long before you ever have to fire it off. But why wouldn’t you want to let it go?

Seriously, if I had one of those, I would lure cats into my yard just to let it rip.

You are probably wondering why in hell anyone would want to wear a taser. Well, there are a couple of answers to that, the first being, the people wearing the stun belt don’t want to be wearing it, they have to. The idea is to put tasing power in your hands when transporting prisoners that are otherwise considered too dangerous. There are freaks of nature who can break a pair of cuffs, but even they would be stopped dead in their tracks by 50,000 volts delivered straight to their kidneys. And some models have wrist restraints, too, so they can punch themselves in the face when they lose all bladder control.

All the cops need to do is push a button. No human being should have access to that kind of awesome power.

Another idea that has been patented, but not put into service yet, is basically putting the defibrillator on the outside of the garment, and allowing someone to remotely trigger it. This has the incredible ability to make you more dangerous to those around you than yourself. It has been suggested that this technology could be used to defend someone, say, cops on a sting.

Or, as one site suggested, use it on K-9 units. That way, when the police doggy is chewing someone’s arm off and they resist, the human officer can hit a button, and the perp will go from a screaming mess to an electrified screaming mess. Seriously, don’t fuck with police dogs; the world was a scary enough place without thunder-powered carnivores.

3) Taser Robots

If the title made you fear for our future a little, then congratulations, you have a soul. Fortunately for our boys in blue, the good people who bring us less-than-lethal protection sold theirs to some sparking demon years ago and came up with all this crazy shit so I could write about it. So, if making the Shockwave wasn’t enough, they have decided to make an autonomous variety in case you need to fry someone but can’t be there in person.

Sure, it looks a little goofy, but then again so do orangutans, and they can rip your arm off. But if an autonomous sentry is a little too static for you, how about a taser-armed robot with tank treads?

Not to get too overloaded with 80’s movie references, but that is the synergy of Short Circuit, Batteries Not Included and Deadly Friend, only with less “Cristy Swanson” and more “Cooking your testicles like a pair of Scotch Eggs.” Oh, and speaking of tiny flying saucers, the French are apparently trying to shed their “wuss” image and bolster their “asshole” one by conceiving and making miniature flying saucer taser drones.

2) Wireless Tasing

As I have mentioned before, wires suck, and they especially suck if you are trying to electrocute something, and don’t want to be anywhere near it. But we live in the modern world, where wires are quickly becoming an option. Enter the aerosol taser, which sprays a conductive cloud and then allows you to zap the living shit out of everything inside it. Imagine a can of bug zapper that you can use on people.

Just try not to get it mixed up with your hairspray, because that could really mess up your day. The “Plasma-Taser” as they call it has the bonus feature of allowing you to repeatedly send bursts of electricity into the cloud, making it useful for torturing many people at once, because everything is better super-sized. It was also designed by the Omega Foundation, which could not sound more like a Bond villain organization if they tried.

But, it apparently only has a range of ten feet, has limited conductivity, and the unfortunate side effect of not caring if there are innocent bystanders (or you know, you) in the cloud when you send the jolt.  So, the collateral damage is a definite negative, because what is fun when done to others is tragic when  it happens to you.

Then there is the electrolaser. Imagine a laser that creates a “plasma channel”, and then sends a bolt of lightning down it. Scientists used one to conjure lightning from the sky, proving there is no power God wields that science won’t try to make a cheap Wal-Mart knock off of. Lasers create what is called a “bloom” when it passes through air, because the light excites the air molecules. Electricity can be sent down this, making essentially man-made lightning, which apparently even have a loud thunderclap associated with it.

However, the Wikipedia link does mention that it could be used to “incapacitate or kill”, so you may want to save your smiting for people you could do without. (For the record, public servants are in fact people and take care of shit you would not want to, so save it for loud neighbors and smart-ass kids)

1) More Tase-tastic crowd control!

Do you know what don’t electrocute enough people? Water cannons, riot shields and shotguns. I’ll give you three guesses as to what is next on the list. The water cannon idea was tested a few years back and never went anywhere, despite the fact that it could knock someone on their ass from 20 feet away and affected them even if they were wearing heavy clothes or armor. Unfortunately, since a garbage bag was probably enough to defeat it, it never came to fruition.

What has come to fruition, though, is a kit to retrofit riot shields with electric pads so that prison guards and riot cops can subdue unruly crowds Spartan style.

The beauty of it is that all they have to do is push the people back and them turn it on. When Big Butch from cell block D winds up on the ground with snot dripping from his nose and shit in his shorts, the rest of the mob is probably going to rethink their strategy. Finally, if you want to pick off rioters/college students/squirrels without having to get, say, closer than it takes to kill a duck, there is the X-Rep taser projectile. It’s a taser shotgun shell:

That looks like the world’s most terrifying bumble bee, and it is being fired from a shotgun. The only thing they could possibly make more horrifying than that would be a minigun that shot flaming spiders (DARPA is probably working on right now). They also make a 40mm grenade version, that shoots 75 feet further than the shotgun version’s 100 feet. Guess what? From now on, I am just going to be a good boy and never ever do anything to risk getting shotgunned or grenaded with electricity. That is only slightly less horrifying than a flying bear-shark.

I am just going to stay in my home; society and the outdoors are overrated.