Potentially deadly laser for 200 USD...

S

Silent_Buddha

Legend
http://gizmodo.com/5560206/the-spyder-iii-pro-arctic-is-a-real-life-lightsaber

OK, that scares me...no wait... It terrifies me.

200 dollars for a weapon that can blind someone in a fraction of a second from 700 meters away (longers distances with longer exposure) and is untraceable.

A weapon that could almost instantly give someone 3rd degree and greater burns again at 700+ meters and untraceable.

You won't even know why the person next to you is suddenly on the ground screaming in pain as his flesh catches on fire or his eye starts to boil.

And anyone with 200 USD can buy one. W.T.F.

Hell, going through the comments, if the power claims are true you can be almost instantly blinded just looking at the point on a wall where the laser is being pointed.

Regards,
SB
 
These people should have some terror laws thrown at them and renditioned to say...Syria, for example. The level of irresponsibility to even consider selling lasers of this magnitude is incomprehensible.

I'm surprised it's legal to begin with. That needs to change, now that such powerful devices are available for such small amounts of money. Even blu-ray lasers are strong enough to damage or even set fire to solid objects on shorter ranges (to say nothing of what happens to the living eye), this is taking things to a wholly different level of stupidity.
 
These kinds of lasers should require a HAM like license to buy and operate in public really (laser light shows use powerful lasers as well).

A safety exam and a bit of cash would weed out most of the nutters.

PS. one day I want to build my own kWatt range pulse laser for creation of holograms by the way :) There are people with harmless hobbies which want powerful lasers.
 
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I want one for self defense. We're not allowed to carry firearms in my country, but im pretty sure a lasor falls between the cracks of the legal system! :D
 
Squilliam said:
I want one for self defense. We're not allowed to carry firearms in my country, but im pretty sure a lasor falls between the cracks of the legal system! :D
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I was wondering as well about the status of this in Belgium and Europe in general as they seem to offer worldwide shipping.
 
Squilliam said:
I want one for self defense.
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As noted in the comments on the gizmodo page linked in the OP, this thing is actually powerful enough to blind you (or any bystander that might be looking) purely from reflected light bouncing off whatever object it hits. So you shine it at an assailant, you'll incapacitate yourself also at the same time... Awesome method of self defense, huh? :rolleyes: :LOL:

Chances are you'll do more damage to yourself actually as you probably won't be able to hit the assailant in/near the eyes with that tiny little dot of a beam before he dodges away.
 
Grall said:
As noted in the comments on the gizmodo page linked in the OP, this thing is actually powerful enough to blind you (or any bystander that might be looking) purely from reflected light bouncing off whatever object it hits. So you shine it at an assailant, you'll incapacitate yourself also at the same time... Awesome method of self defense, huh? :rolleyes: :LOL:

Chances are you'll do more damage to yourself actually as you probably won't be able to hit the assailant in/near the eyes with that tiny little dot of a beam before he dodges away.
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In the world of fantasy its the perfect self defense! :D
 
Grall said:
As noted in the comments on the gizmodo page linked in the OP, this thing is actually powerful enough to blind you (or any bystander that might be looking) purely from reflected light bouncing off whatever object it hits. So you shine it at an assailant, you'll incapacitate yourself also at the same time... Awesome method of self defense, huh? :rolleyes: :LOL:
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Wicked Lasers is throwing in a free pair of safety glasses with the purchase of a Spyder III, which might make wielding one marginally safer,
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might!
 
Silent_Buddha said:
Hell, going through the comments, if the power claims are true you can be almost instantly blinded just looking at the point on a wall where the laser is being pointed.
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Hmm, common engineer sense gives an alert on claims like these. Blinded by reflection from matte surface? The light from the point on the wall propagates in a half sphere front. Compare this to a 1 watt light bulb. How can it blind your eye?
 
homerdog said:
This sounds like a bunch of bullshit to me. Or at least greatly exaggerated.
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You can pop balloons with as little as 45mw. While I don't think this laser will blind you if you look at where its pointed at, you surely don't want it pointed at your eyes or your skin. Sounds really irresponsible to sell this freely.

Having said that, I'd love to have one! ;)
 
I've popped balloons with the lasers from CD players. This kind of tool has absolutely zero use in the general market. If you were going to build it into something else, high speed etcher?, or some other useful tool then it has a point.

Mind you this, some lego mindstorm kit, a rep rap printer (Darwin edition), and a nice black box ANN or some other learning system and you could build an autonomous, automated, self repairing security drone... Or just blind the postman.
 
Squilliam said:
I want one for self defense. We're not allowed to carry firearms in my country, but im pretty sure a lasor falls between the cracks of the legal system! :D
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Lasors*? - perfectly legal, but probably also very ineffective



*light amplification by stimulated omission of radiation :D
 
They're wrong: there is a much more powerful (1.9 kW) hand-held, portable laser:

http://www.defensereview.com/352003/TIS1.pdf

1.9 kW in .35 sec is 665,000 joules of energy, or like being hit with 370 (!) 5.56mm NATO bullets simultaneously, at point-blank range. Or, with a firing rate of 170 pulses/min, 62900 bullets/min.

Then again, would you want to walk around with something that encapsulates about 150g very lethal Polonium-210 inside a lightweight bottle filled with gas heated to 2173K, pressurized to 272 atm?

Now THAT is scary!

;)


(Edit: I got the decimal point wrong, it's 665 joule, which is about equal to a .357 Sig bullet...

Still, carrying a flimsy nuclear reactor under your arm isn't what I would call safe.

Then again, you can fire 170 times/min for 60 days, so that's a whopping amount of ammo.)
 
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MfA said:
Pollonium-210 as a fuel ... seriously?

Also ... 100 KWatt continuous heat production per rifle ... WTF? How do you get rid of that?
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Yea, especially as it's at most 30% efficient and produces that heat all the time. So even if you shoot it non-stop, it will simply melt pretty soon.

But it's pretty interesting to see that just a bit of Polonium actually produces enough energy for something like that. Add a bunch of Peltier elements / thermocouples to power some serious active cooling carried around as a backpack, and it could very well work.

The main problem would be the shelf-life of 60 days.
 
You only want to active cool the parts the soldier touches, and those parts should be thermally isolated from the main gun ... the main gun should be cooled passively, although at 100 KWatt I don't know if putting the heatsink on a backpack would provide enough separation ... might need to pull a cart ...
 
Probably a bit too extreme, costly and dangerous to make it into a practical, actual product. For example, a simple grenade/artillery round would reduce that laser gun to the equivalent of a mini-Chernobyl that could potentially do far more damage to your own side than it would do to the enemy as a functional weapon...

Also... You can just imagine the environmentalist uproar that would ensue, should there ever be any nuclear-powered handheld laser firearms produced, lol!
 
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