There’s also talk of making the weapon bigger, too. “…immobilizing a mob, for instance, might call for a wide-angle ‘bazooka’ version.”
The LED contains layers of electronic control circuitry, multicolored LEDs, special cicuitry and optics that produce disorienting and nausea-inducing patterns of ultrabright flashing colors. Image courtesy of Department of Homeland Security
Puke Ray, Courtesy of DHS
By Noah Shachtman
Government-funded researchers are building a flashlight that makes people puke on command.
The LED Incapacitator uses a range-finder to measure the distance to a target’s eyes, Threat Level notes. Then it unleashes continually changing, multi-color light pulses that make the target feel bad — really bad. The “effects, whose effectiveness depends on the person, range from disorientation to vertigo to nausea,” according to Technology Review.
The trick isn’t trying to figure out which light-pulse sequence will make people hurl. “There’s one wavelength that gets everybody,” says Robert Lieberman, who along with his partner Vladimir Rubtsov, is developing the Incapicator for the Department of Homeland Security. “Vlad calls it the evil color.”
The tough part for Lieberman and Rubstov is getting the thing down to a manageable size, a DHS newsletter notes.
At 15 inches long by 4 inches wide, the current prototype is more transportable than portable. The next-generation weapon must be as short and svelte as a D-cell Maglite, designed to fit on a duty belt. “Phase 3 will be our shrink phase,” Lieberman says.
There’s also talk of making the weapon bigger, too. “immobilizing a mob, for instance, might call for a wide-angle ‘bazooka’ version,” the newsletter muses. But even king-sized vomit-lights could have some pretty obvious countermeasures, Technology Review notes. “The person being targeted could easily look away, or he or she might be wearing heavily tinted glasses.”
Harder to beat would be a radio-frequency puke ray. Lucky for us, the Navy is backing one of those, too.
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Incapacitating LED Flashlight Makes People Vomit
The MIT Technology Review is reporting on a new LED flashlight that can disable people by either temporarily blinding them or by nausiating them to the point of physical illness.
The LED contains layers of electronic control circuitry, multicolored LEDs, special cicuitry and optics that produce disorienting and nausea-inducing patterns of ultrabright flashing colors. Image courtesy of Department of Homeland Security
The LED contains layers of electronic control circuitry, multicolored LEDs, special cicuitry and optics that produce disorienting and nausea-inducing patterns of ultrabright flashing colors. Image courtesy of Department of Homeland Security
The flashlight, which is being developed as a nonlethal weapon for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), uses a range finder to measure the distance to the target’s eyes so that it can adjust the energy of the light to a level that won’t cause permanent damage. Then it rapidly shoots out pulses of light from an array of ultrabright light emitting diodes (LEDs).
The flashes incapacitate a person in two different ways, says Robert Lieberman, CEO of Intelligent Optical Systems, based in Torrance, CA, which is making the device. The flashes temporarily blind a person, as any bright light would, and the light pulses, which quickly change both in color and duration, also cause what Lieberman calls psychophysical effects. These effects, whose effectiveness depends on the person, range from disorientation to vertigo to nausea, and they wear off in a few minutes.
The Department of Homeland Security intend arming police, border-security agents and the National Guard with the new flashlight by 2010.
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Flashlight Weapon Makes Targets Throw Up
“There’s one wavelength that gets everybody,” says IOS President Bob Lieberman. “Vlad [IOS top scientist Vladimir Rubtsov] calls it ‘the evil color.’”
It looks like a big flashlight — but it’s really a nonlethal weapon designed to make you sick.
Intelligent Optical Systems, Inc., of Torrance, Calif., has been granted a contract by the Department of Homeland Security to develop what it calls the “LED Incapacitator,” according to a DHS online newsletter.
The handheld device using light-emitting diodes to emit super-bright pulses of light at rapidly changing wavelengths, causing disorientation, nausea and even vomiting in whomever it’s pointed at.
“There’s one wavelength that gets everybody,” says IOS President Bob Lieberman. “Vlad [IOS top scientist Vladimir Rubtsov] calls it ‘the evil color.’”
Phase 1 of the contract — creating a working prototype — has already been completed, and Phase 2 will begin this fall as researchers at Penn State’s Institute of Nonlethal Defense Technology put the puke-saber through its paces.
“Phase 3 will be our shrink phase,” Lieberman said, admitting that the prototype, 15 inches long with a 4-inch lens, is too large and heavy to be comfortably carried on a belt.
DHS hopes to equip police, Border Patrol agents and National Guardsmen with the barf-beamers by 2010.
5 responses so far ↓
dianarn // August 8, 2007 at 9:13 pm
Fuckers. They consider tazers non-lethal, but that hasn’t stopped them from killing a bunch of people already.
Henry Deacon // February 6, 2008 at 11:35 pm
“LED Incapacitator,” can cause millions of people to go instantly blind due to a genetic disease they have called: Retinitis Pigmentosa This is a bad idea.. as how are you going to protect those people who have “R.P.” ?
Henry Deacon // February 6, 2008 at 11:52 pm
“LED Incapacitator,” may cause millions of people to go Instantly blind due to a genetic disease called: Retinitis Pigmentosa
This is a bad idea.. as how are you going to protect those people who have “R.P.” ?
Do your research on this disease PLEASE !!!!
Protect those who are already going blind normally – slowly (over a period of many decades)..
Protect them from losing their precious sight due to a single exposure from this type of light.. due to the light’s effect on rhodopsin in the eye.
pjwalker911 // February 6, 2008 at 11:59 pm
Homeland Security is not meant to protect anyone but the elites themselves. “Homeland” is code for the New World Order, and “Security” is code for a high-tech, scifi Orwellian panopitcon neo-feudal tyranny. Less-than-lethal (often lethal), weaponry is meant solely for the purpose of increased control over the masses who are to be herded into their pens with cattleprods and either enslaved or exterminated. That is the horrible truth, but most people are too scared, too morally corrupt or too ignorant to stand up against it, let alone even understand the true nature of this threat or that a threat to their health and freedoms even exists. Most people walking around today don’t even know who the top political candidates are (watch Jay Leno and see for yourself, haha, heehee, real funny), but they can tell you who won the SuperBowl and if you ask them about Britney Spears, they know all about her.
What I am saying is we are a nation of retards, cowards and jerks. What then do we expect? Where we are headed is straight into a situation like that of Russia where the majority live in poverty and ignorance, where families are shattered and children are bought and sold for sex, where all the cops are on the take, where political dissidents are still put in mental hospitals, where nobody can be relied upon for anything, where thugs roam the land at will taking whatever they want when they want it. I could go on, but you get the general picture.
People used to flee hellish places like Russia to come here and find freedom and happiness, but soon this possibility will be no more and people will begin fleeing this place in search of another land of hope, if it even exists.
Me_me_me // May 22, 2009 at 12:44 pm
I say buy those mirror sunglasses NOW,
That’ll really make “them” sick.