After a long search, you’ve found your Person of Interest—and he’s making it abundantly clear that, while you were hoping for a civilized chat back at the station, he makes it clear he doesn’t like the ambiance there. You don’t want to shoot, you’re too far away to use your Taser, and it’s not like you walk around with a spare tear gas canister hanging from your belt. What’s a law enforcement officer to do?

That’s where the StunRay comes in. A non-lethal, spotlight-like weapon, this new device is designed to disorient its targets with by overloading their neural circuitry with a burst of high-intensity light. Genesis Illumination, which makes the device, patented it in January. (You can see the device in action in this video put out by Genesis.)

Inside the StunRay is a 75-watt lamp which, after optics focus the light, produces a beam “10 times more intense than an aircraft landing light.” That’s a whole lot more light than the nervous system is used to processing. It allegedly overloads the neural circuits connected to the retina, essentially using the light to flood the brain—and incapacitate the target, from distances of up to 150 feet. The effects are reportedly only temporary, generally lasting anywhere from “seconds to twenty minutes,” Todd Eisenberg, the StunRay’s inventor, told Scientific American.

Genesis Illumination’s goal was to use light “to safely disable and disorient.” Guns, of course, can cause permanent injury, and even Tasers can pose serious safety risks. In comparison, the StunRay seems relatively safe. The information about the device, however, comes directly from Genesis, which obviously has a stake in the device, and the mechanism and effectiveness haven’t been externally verified.

The StunRay isn’t the first weapon to disorient targets with a bright beam. Dazzlers, as these weapons are known, were used by the British back in the 1980′s, and the Department of Defense has developed StunRay-like weapons of its own.

Image: Flickr / Theoddnote

The idea of attacking scientists to stem technological development is an old one. Perhaps the most dramatic example from recent times is Ted Kaczynski, aka the Unabomber. In his case the targeted killings were embedded in an anti-technology philosophy fully developed in his Manifesto. In the recent assassination attempts in Iran, we see the workings of geopolitical pragmatism in its most raw form.

Regardless of what we may think of Iran having the bomb, the strategy of killing scientists and engineers of a country’s technological infrastructure is one that should give us pause. Few steps separate this ploy to making them the domestic enemy as well, a tradition with an even deadlier history that includes the Cultural Revolution and Pol Pot’s purge of academics.

Although on the fringe at present, there are parts of the public which are already in tune with this lethal segue. They view scientists as the people that bring us global warming and much else that is taking our technological society to potential crisis. Unfortunately, the way scientists are depicted for dramatic affect in popular entertainment doesn’t always help. A recent opinion piece in Nature criticized the effort of certain organizations to make the depiction of science and the work they do more accurate in movies. (I responded in another post.) Below the article, however, was one reader’s comment that made me think about how these unrealistic portrayals can be causing some real damage:

The reason that most depictions of science in movies are in a negative light is because it’s a reflection of reality. Every day, science is poisoning our oceans and air, destroying our communities and creating terrifying new weapons to be employed on the poor and oppressed of the world.

The “awkward nerd” depiction of a scientist is far too fair. They are the monsters tearing our world apart while having the temerity to hold us in contempt for “not understanding them.”

How ironic that this comment serves as its own best argument for the need of some smidgen of truth in character development, contrary to the thesis of Daniel Sarewitz, who penned the Nature opinion piece.

Not surprisingly, the motivations of scientists are much more diverse than the simple portrayals of narrative fiction. They range from a desire to make the world a better place, to the self-centered pursuit of prestige, money, and power with little regard for the ethical implications of one’s scientific work. The first type doesn’t get a whole lot of play, while the second has great dramatic potential, and so we see it a lot more. As the French novelist Henri de Montherlant wrote, “happiness writes white. It does not show up on the page.”

Could the dramatically compelling caricatures of scientists of the “evil genius” type underlie some of the thinking behind the assassination attempts on Iranian scientists? It seems a stretch. But in its suggestion of a strategy for dealing with technological development of another country that is thought of as a threat, the killing of Iran’s scientists raises some troubling concerns about how scientists can be scapegoats for a society’s discomforts with technological progress, and how narrative fiction can be a lubricant for such a move.

In the early 1930′s, Tesla claimed that he had invented a death ray that would benefit the military in battle—one capable of destroying up to 10,000 enemy aircraft at distances of up to 250 miles.  It was so lethal that it would end the spectacle of war.

Tesla died before he could build this death ray, and he had no documentation hinting at its design in his personal effects. Nobody (not even the FBI) knows what happens to the death ray plans, if any existed.

Now it seems that Tesla’s missing death ray has been found, and it’s working, operational, and frying guests at the Vdara Hotel in Las Vegas.

Because they are interested in taking their quarry alive, Carter is equipped with something he has taken to calling a “bubble gun.” The gun immobilizes its target by shooting out a temporary force-field that forms a bubble. In the real world, bubbles—or more accurately, foam—actually are the basis of a gun designed to immobilize enemies.

The real-life bubble gun belongs to a class of weapons known as non-lethal weapons. These are weapons that should, in theory at least, incapacitate a target without doing the kind of damage that a bullet produces. (There is controversy about these weapons, with some arguing that they are still pretty dangerous, but, because a police officer or soldier is told they can’t cause serious harm, that officer or soldier is more likely to use such a weapon in situations where they otherwise would have shown restraint.) Tasers fall into this category, as are the kind of sonic weapons that have been used to repel pirates off the coast of Somalia. Somalia was also the location of the first active tests of the bubble gun in 1995, during the withdrawal of U.S. forces. The real-life gun doesn’t rely on force fields, but instead shoots a sticky foam, which its creators describe as “an extremely tacky, tenacious material used to block, entangle, and impair individuals.” Apparantly, the test went well, but the technology hasn’t become widespread since because of concerns that the foam might accidentally or deliberately get sprayed on a target’s nose and mouth, suffocating them. Still, foam-based technologies are very much under research, especially with regard to targeting the smallest enemies of all: pathogenic organisms and toxic molecules. Foams have been developed to neutralize bioweapons and nerve gas.

Bioweapons are also emerging as a component of the current Eureka mystery, so we’ll stay tuned for that. As for when we’ll see Eureka return to our television screens, the current rumor has it returning in June or July.