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E-Bombs: Technology Update 514

Posted by michael from the other-people-wood-work-we-bomb dept.
vaderhelmet writes "'In these media-fueled times, when war is a television spectacle and wiping out large numbers of civilians is generally frowned upon, the perfect weapon would literally stop an enemy in his tracks, yet harm neither hide nor hair. Such a weapon might shut down telecommunications networks, disrupt power supplies, and fry an adversary's countless computers and electronic gadgets, yet still leave buildings, bridges, and highways intact. It would strike with precision, in an instant, and leave behind no trace of where it came from.' (Story from IEEE Spectrum Online)"
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E-Bombs: Technology Update More

E-Bombs: Technology Update

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  • Terror? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by dolo666 ( 195584 ) *
    The problem is that most of the generals wear pacemakers, and these bombs would kill them, thus causing the US to respond with nukes. You might not think it's possible, but what if an ebomb was detonated near Washington? How many senators have pacemakers? The President likely has one. It would be a nightmare to all, if such a thing happened, especially the innocent.

    Technologically inclined countries would suffer the most from such attacks.However, terrorists would rather use low-cost/high-bodycount methods

    • Forget pacemakers . . . (Score:5, Funny)

      by shystershep ( 643874 ) * <bdshepherd AT gmail DOT com> on Friday November 21, 2003 @11:13AM (#7528237) Homepage Journal

      Just reading the story made my teeth tingle.

      "Most types of matter are transparent to microwaves, but metallic conductors . . . strongly absorb them, which in turn heats the material."

      Maybe somebody with better physics can help me out here, but I think I'd rather be shot than have all my fillings melt.

      • ya, fillings would be bad, but just think of all the poor bastards with braces...
      • Your fillings will not melt. The tiny junctions in intergated circuits and the smaller types of transistor will. My guess is that your fillings might rise in temperature by 1/10 degree, you would hardly notice.

        It is rumoured that these things have been used a fair number of times in the cities by morons who want to disrupt computer systems etc. The electrically powered type is easy to make, but might take a while to charge up before each pulse. It is quite simple to generate nanosecond pulses of millions

    • Re:Terror? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      It's actually a pretty useless weapon in the current war or terror really. As you say, it doesn't work on AK-47s and RPG-7s. The biggest problem with such a weapon existing is that the best target to use it against would be our selves, hence you then have the added danger of fabrication becoming common knowledge. But...

      Could you use a directional version of it to disable bomb circuitry? Ok, actually that's a bad idea, cos the bomb would probably go off, but I'm pretty sure if you could design something wit

    • Re:Terror? (Score:2, Informative)

      by rherbert ( 565206 )
      Bush is in excellent health and does not have a pacemaker. Cheney, on the other hand...

    • Re:Terror? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by TheDredd ( 529506 )
      However, terrorists would rather use low-cost/high-bodycount methods, like hijacking a plane and flying it into a building; no cost to Al Queda (they just had to pay for training and carpet knives).

      That's why the Bush method for fighting terrorismn is not working: cost America 100 + billion dollars, Al Queda nothing (in comparison)

      • Re:Terror? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Atzanteol ( 99067 )
        That's why the Bush method for fighting terrorismn is not working: cost America 100 + billion dollars, Al Queda nothing (in comparison)

        Sooo, we should spend less on fighting terrorism? Just stop fighting all together? "Open Source" the war against terrorism? Find a cheaper war to fight?

        I fail to see why the war is a failure because it cost money.

        Also, Al Queda *does* spend quite a bit of money too (remember the U.S. trying to freeze assets?). Arms dealers aren't working for free ya know.

        • Re:Terror? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by TheDredd ( 529506 ) on Friday November 21, 2003 @11:51AM (#7528608)
          I fail to see why the war is a failure because it cost money.

          Well both Osama Bin Laden, and Saddam Hussein are still have not been captured or killed. The primary objectives of this war against terrorism.

          Also, Al Queda *does* spend quite a bit of money too (remember the U.S. trying to freeze assets?). Arms dealers aren't working for free ya know.

          Which is still nothing compared to what America is spending

          And what I'm trying to say is, the way America is trying to fight this war is, like trying to kill a fly with a nuclear bomb. Maybe they should use there resources more effectively
      • Nothing? That's riddiculous. Bin Laden is a multimillionare and is using that money to fund his terror network. In addition, it is well-known that they get large sums of money from charities and wealthy Arab businessmen. To say that they're spending nothing on their jihad is ludicrous.
      • There are plenty of low-cost equivalents for this. One example is an Oudin coil. You can make one of these for under a hundred bucks. Embed it into a wall near the computer equipment, along with a source of power, connected to 2 timers in series (so that the time it's activated drifts by a few hours every day - making it look random to us poor schmucks), and let the errors, bad data, etc. fly.
      • How much money do we spend fighting crime? A huge sum, i'd think..Compared to that, the criminals spend almost nothing or actually end up with a tidy profit. Should we just stop fighting crime?

    • Types of terrorists (Score:4, Interesting)

      by chrestomanci ( 558400 ) * <{david} {at} {chrestomanci.org}> on Friday November 21, 2003 @11:48AM (#7528568)
      Technologically inclined countries would suffer the most from such attacks.However, terrorists would rather use low-cost/high-bodycount methods, like hijacking a plane and flying it into a building; no cost to Al Queda (they just had to pay for training and carpet knives).

      That would depend on who the teroists are. Al Queda are not the only teroist group, and they are considered unusual because they are prepared (even eager) to commit attrocites with a high civilian death toll.

      According to conventional doctrine a rational terrorists group will avoid killing large numbers of civilian bystanders in order to avoid aleanating the community from which they draw their support (and funding). For such a teroist group, a weapon capable of causing billions of dollars of economic damage to an enemy, while killing few if any civilians would be quite attractive.

      An example of and economic attack would be the IRA (Irish Republican Army) bombs in the City of London financial district, which killed few if any people, (I can't remember the details) but did close to a billion dollars of damage. Had microwave weapons been avalable to the IRA at the time, it is likely that they would have used them.

      • WRONG (Score:5, Insightful)

        by overunderunderdone ( 521462 ) on Friday November 21, 2003 @12:59PM (#7529300)
        According to conventional doctrine a rational terrorists group will avoid killing large numbers of civilian bystanders in order to avoid aleanating the community from which they draw their support (and funding).

        You are confusing Terrorist with Guerilla. A terrorist by definition is doing things to cause a general sense of "terror" in his enemies civillian population. This is best achieved if the targets are essentially random so every member of the population is at potential risk and if the attacks are as horrific as possible. So a bomb in a crowded pizza parlor is an act of terrorism while a sniper targetting a soldier is an act of guerrilla warfare. Either act is a matter of tactics so any particular group can be engaged in both kinds of activities.

        Obviously as in the case of the IRA bombing in the City of London a single terrorist act can have multiple advantages. It WAS a terrorist attack in that it killed a number of people that belong to the "opinion class" and thus invokes terror throughout that class. It also did financial damage to a much wider group so they felt it have an impact on their lives personally. The whole point of their terrorism was to demoralize the enemy population so that they would conclude that Northern Ireland was not worth the cost of having to live in fear. A technological attack that did even more economic damage may have been effective but part of what the terrorist wants is the graphic scenes on TV of bleeding civillians running from the blast and the sight of all that damage (the City of London bombing was dramatic). Being TOLD about a bunch of computers being disrupted doesn't move public opinion the way that the random and horrific deaths of large numbers of people *just like you* does.

    • Modern Pacemakers EMP resistant (Score:5, Informative)

      by krysith ( 648105 ) on Friday November 21, 2003 @11:53AM (#7528618) Journal
      Believe it or not, most modern pacemakers are fairly well shielded against EMP. Most of the problems that were had with people being near microwaves, etc. were with older designs of pacemakers. They have to put the warning signs on microwaves because you never know who has an old pacemaker. However, the amount of old (unipolar lead) pacemakers still around is rather small. Any EMP which damages the new designs is going to make every muscle in your body twitch, and do heart damage to those without pacemakers too.

      I'm afraid I don't have a link, but I could refer you to the Report of Task Group 34, from the American Association or Physicists in Medicine, section IV. Don't ask why I have that paper lying around my office - it's a long story. The basic gist is, pacemakers are already encased in a Faraday cage.
    • You might not think it's possible, but what if an ebomb was detonated near Washington?

      At least as bad: detonate one on Wall Street. Similarly high symbolic PR value, plus high economic impact. Or detonate a few small ones near vulnerable spots on the power grid.

      Technologically inclined countries would suffer the most from such attacks.However, terrorists would rather use low-cost/high-bodycount methods, like hijacking a plane and flying it into a building; no cost to Al Queda (they just had to pay

    • Also, I'd like to add that grounded circuitry will most likely not be affected by this. For example: your computer basically sits in a Fahraday cage (its case) that is grounded. Such a cage will neither emit nor receive any EM radiations so long as it's properly grounded. Add a UPS with proper fuses, and it's pretty much invulnerable so long as the bomb doesn't blow up right above your house (as it seems to be said in the article concerning the Iraq'i broadcast station).

      What scares me is this quote:There

    • Re:Terror? (Score:5, Informative)

      by niko9 ( 315647 ) * on Friday November 21, 2003 @01:05PM (#7529360)
      Ummm, you woudn't just drop dead if your pacemaker was disabled. Most people with pacemakers have them to augment their normal SA node pacemeaker, account for skiped beats. Other are combination defibrillators/pacemakers that help quell superventricular tachycardias, or speed up theur hearts during periods of bradycardia.

      Very few people walk around with a pacemaker as their soul rhythm generator. These are the people that generally get heart transplants.

    • Re:Terror? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ElGanzoLoco ( 642888 ) on Friday November 21, 2003 @02:20PM (#7530123) Homepage
      It might make the general population of "liberated" countries like Iraq, even more hostile if you blow up their computers and Internet connections! Nothing worse than a horde of angry Iraqi children denied their Quake time.

      Are you trying to be funny here?
      Iraqis are pissed off because they had, for almost a month after their "liberation", no *FOOD* to put on their tables, no *WATER* to drink, no *MEDICINE* to use...
      Even now, *GAS* and *WATER* electricity supplies remain sloppy.

      Nobody gives a fuck about the internet.

  • It would strick with precision, ...

    It appears to have already stricked someone...

  • Better living through science? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Fux the Penguin ( 724045 ) on Friday November 21, 2003 @11:12AM (#7528227) Journal
    First, the geek in me says: "Cool!" I know the military has been working on these kinds of weapons for decades, and it looks like they're getting closer. Anything that adds to the arsenal is a win in my book.

    Now, it's too bad we didn't have this weapon last year for use in the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Imagine the effectiveness of such a weapon! We could have annihilated the entire high-tech infrastructure of Afghanistan far more quickly than we could have using conventional weapons. The invasion would have been far more effective if the Taliban's high-tech, integrated command and control technology could have been disrupted from the start. I'd just like to see those camel-jockeys try to coordinate their attacks without their iPaq's and virtual reality headsets! Good luck with that one, Ahmed!

    However, I'm a little concerned with the effectiveness of this type of weapon from a ratings point of view. How exactly do you keep the audience entertained without any explosions or visible signs of destruction? I really don't think people are going to stay tuned through the commercials for this. "After these exciting messages from our sponsors, watch all the lights blink off!" Great... Perhaps, as part of this research, they could integrated a conventional weapon with an E-weapon. I guess what I'd like to see is a combination E-Bomb/MOAB. Then you still get the visual effects, sure to scare the poop out of Terrorists (and their camels), with the added bonus of disrupting their sensitive, high-tech infrastructures. It's a win-win! Just make sure the next invasion is during sweeps week.

    • Re:Better living through science? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by AllUsernamesAreGone ( 688381 ) on Friday November 21, 2003 @11:19AM (#7528291)
      "guess what I'd like to see is a combination E-Bomb/MOAB. "

      Already on the drawing-board: mini-nukes [newscientist.com] - you get the destructive power of several MOABs and an EMP into the bargain.
    • You would be surprised to see how much low-tech countries depend on high-tech. When country was not "blessed" with POTS telephone lines, it is much more likely to jump into advanced cell technologies.
      Even some years back, every war lord in Afghan sported a sat phone. GPS is the way of life there if you are anyone significant at all.
      Good point on visual effects. What kind of shock-and-awe is that? BZZZZZ-whooosh, you microwave is gone?
    • The enemy seem to be driving a diesel truck with an AK47 at their side stuffed full with Ammonium nitrate/fuel oil on a fast burning fuse. A major disaster, attacked with one of these, the lights on the truck won't work!!!

      Rumour has it that some of the older SAM installations from USSR times are stuffed with thermionic valves. Not much to go wrong there either.

  • e-bomb eh? Well, I guess that's better than an i-bomb.. Already have too many i-bomb's on the market as it is..

  • E-Bombs? (Score:5, Funny)

    by freeze128 ( 544774 ) on Friday November 21, 2003 @11:12AM (#7528231)
    i-surrender!

  • Zion (Score:5, Funny)

    by plexxer ( 214589 ) on Friday November 21, 2003 @11:13AM (#7528240)
    It would strick with precision, in an instant, and leave behind no trace of where it came from.' (Story from IEEE Spectrum Online)"

    That's why they didn't have any EMPs at Zion - they were still waiting for IEEE Compliancy.

  • Such a perfect weapon.... (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    would create the perfect shadow environment for good old fashioned guerilla warfare.

    It might just be better to leave the lights on.

  • The Red Cross (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dcs ( 42578 ) on Friday November 21, 2003 @11:15AM (#7528253)
    It would also strike all hospitals, causing loss of life. Which is particularly bad, because the Geneva convention forbids attacks against medical facilities, which shall be marked with a red cross, and the e-Bomb *would* attack such.

    • Re:The Red Cross (Score:4, Informative)

      by Erwos ( 553607 ) on Friday November 21, 2003 @11:33AM (#7528420)
      Nice try, but the Geneva Conventions also allows for a certain amount of collateral damage, provided it's not way out of proportion to the military value of the primary target.

      Assuming the hospital as collateral damage: Using an e-bomb to disable a PDA would be probably be a violation. Using an e-bomb to disable a tank division would not be.

      -Erwos
      • Who else but the USA actually confines to the Geneva Convention?

        • Geneva Convention (Score:5, Informative)

          by missing000 ( 602285 ) on Friday November 21, 2003 @11:53AM (#7528620)
          Shockingly, we are one of the worst violators [catalyzerjournal.com]
          • I don't see how this makes us one of the worst violators. What they never tell you is that we feed and house them better than if they weren't prisoners.
      • Evern if you can justify the collateral damage on the hospital without violating the Geneva Convention it's still a bad policy to do so.

        I think that the experience from Gulf War 2 shows that destroying "infrastructure"* is very effective during the war, but also makes it more difficault to control the country after the war.
        And destroying a hospital makes people much more pissed than if you "just" take their electricity. It makes it kind of hard to appear as "liberators".

        *in this case military speak for

    • Re:The Red Cross (Score:4, Informative)

      by AllUsernamesAreGone ( 688381 ) on Friday November 21, 2003 @11:38AM (#7528475)
      Like [guardian.co.uk] that [ananova.com] stops [utah.edu] anyone [commondreams.org]
    • Collateral damage happens regardless of the weapon. Which would you rather, have the hospital building collapse, break windows, send shrapnel all over, or have all the electronics die? Electronics are a lot easier to replace and workaround than collapsed buildings. A lot easier to come in and rescue survivors too.
    • Actually the effects of the eBomb will not
      affect medical facilities - using the same
      rationale as smoke from smoking sections not
      reaching non-smoking sections in restaurants.

  • Wiping out civilians is frowned upon? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Gizzmonic ( 412910 ) on Friday November 21, 2003 @11:15AM (#7528255) Homepage Journal
    Don't tell that to Rockstar games!

  • Truck on a bridge (Score:3, Funny)

    by Space cowboy ( 13680 ) on Friday November 21, 2003 @11:17AM (#7528271) Journal
    It'll look a lot less impressive if the truck just slowly comes to a halt rather than have the entire bridge blow up.

    On a more serious note, what about tactical bombing - you blow up bridges to deny the enemy choice within the battlezone. You attack dams to deny the enemy water, etc.

    Somehow I think there'll still be big explosions in any up-and-coming war... Of course, it could be an E-bomb, targetted at a nuclear reactor...

    Simon

    • On a more serious note, what about tactical bombing - you blow up bridges to deny the enemy choice within the battlezone. You attack dams to deny the enemy water, etc.

      You attack and destroy a dam and most likely you are going to cause a natural disaster short of a nuclear explosion.

      Thousands would drown in the subsequent water rush. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps. Attacking a dam and releasing that kind of kinetic energy on an innocent civilian populace is the VERY FREAKING DEFINITION OF A WA

      • Re:Bad idea. (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Space cowboy ( 13680 )
        Err, dunno what planet you're from. Welcome to Earth. Have you ever heard of dambusters ? WW2 ? Bunch of Lancaster bombers, the bouncing bomb, etc. etc.

        The explosion caused by the bombs wasn't that great, but because it blew up right next to the dam, and because water is relatively incompressible, they broke (two of the three, I think) the dams.

        You certainly don't need a nuclear weapon to blow up a dam!

        as for "natural disaster", that depends on the flow-rate when it hits civilisation. I'd argue "natural"
  • This type of weapon would be great against a large massed force, especially the type that the United States usually sends out - tanks, helicopters, aircraft...

    But what will it do against a single person with an explosive belt who is determined to die and take as many people with them as they can?

    Nothing!

    The United States doesn't know how to fight against an idea, it only knows how to fight against a militia...

    • This type of weapon would be great against a large massed force, especially the type that the United States usually sends out - tanks, helicopters, aircraft...
      But what will it do against a single person with an explosive belt who is determined to die and take as many people with them as they can?

      Nothing!

      The United States doesn't know how to fight against an idea, it only knows how to fight against a militia...

      I wouldn't call it "an idea".

      Anyone that blows themselves up along will innocent people is ins

    • Re:what if your enemy doesn't use technology? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by YrWrstNtmr ( 564987 ) on Friday November 21, 2003 @11:28AM (#7528384)
      Well...obviously one type of weapon is not proof against all types of attacks.

      Consider Desert Storm. This mght have been good against the Iraqi tanks semi buried and used as fixed gun emplacements. And against Saddam's command and control facilities.

      For the lone suicide bomber, you employ other tactics.
    • That's not an 'idea', that's a homicidal asshole.

      And since you freaks scream "1984!!! BIG BROTHER!!!" every time the government scratches its ass, much less when they actually do anything, you're right, we're not going to have the capability to stop one single person in an undisclosed location from doing something that requires no overt or hostile action aside from the explosion itself.

      You people don't even know what you want. First you scream freedom, then you scream security. Can't have both at top capa

    • Re:what if your enemy doesn't use technology? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by TonyZahn ( 534930 ) on Friday November 21, 2003 @12:08PM (#7528774) Homepage
      Ok, since everyone else replying to this post doesn't seem to get it, I'll put it in terms /.ers can relate to...

      Think of it as MS vs Open Source. The US military gets to be MS (more $$ than god, everywhere, and nearly all-powerful). And the "terrorists" get to be Open Source (devoted to some ideal, hard/impossible to discourage, and extremely decentralized).

      Just as you can't kill Open Source because it's too decentralized and adaptive, you can't win Bush's "War on Terrorism". It's just not possible. The only way to stop it is to somehow come to terms with it.

      Instead of trying to wipeout all these people, why not try to figure out why they see us as such a threat and such a hated enemy that hundreds of people each year are willing to violently kill themselves in an attemt to hurt us. Everyone here knows (or at least suspects) that the US has done many terrible things over the decades to many different people around the world in order to shape things to our liking. We can never win a war against terrorism, but we will destroy ourselves trying to, and you all know it.

  • But still they don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)

    by liquidsin ( 398151 ) on Friday November 21, 2003 @11:19AM (#7528290) Homepage
    And in these times when men are willing to sacrifice their lives by crashing planes and strapping bombs to themselves, that EMP won't do you much good. How does an EMP stop the guy in a heavily populated area from emptying an M16 into a crowd, or blowing up a U-Haul full of kerosene and fertilizer? So long as people are dedicated to their cause, they will fight, with or without their Palm Pilots. The Romans did.
    • I don't agree with your insightful rating - nobody claimed this was the be-all and end-all of military weapons. If we used one of these to take out military infrastructure during the war, we would have had even fewer civilian casualties.

      Being that war is sometimes necessary, I don't see why people are bitching about something like this.
    • I find it very discomforting that the most obvious targets for this type of weapon would be western countries that heavily depend on electronics, especially in warfare.
    • Brilliant! I guess there is no longer a need for Navies or Air Forces, since all future enemies will be guy with rifles or truck bombs.

    • Re:But still they don't get it (Score:5, Interesting)

      by starseeker ( 141897 ) on Friday November 21, 2003 @11:53AM (#7528629) Homepage
      Exactly. I view this as perhaps the most fundamental mindset mistake of the US - we assume once the technological problem is solved, we are done and the problem is over. We deal in technology and discount people. This is true even in our regular society - our business culture, for example, is not know for it's awareness or sympathy for the human condition. Television replaces human contact (says the slashdot geek :-/). As a consequence, we forget what human beings are capable of even without technology. 9/11 was a wakeup call, but I expect everything but the horror and hate of the crime was lost on US. The lesson that people always have some power to impact the world around them wasn't and isn't likely to be heeded, because it makes us less powerful. It makes us vulnerable. We don't like the feelings, and thus ignore the truth.

      Part of the problem is peace is an inherantly fragile condition. We want a peaceful society, but there is a line from the Lord of the Rings I've always liked that sums up the facts well: "We learned long ago that those without swords can still die upon them." The US hasn't learned this. We have tried to create the concepts of civilian and soldier, but when you get right down to it we are all a part of this civilization, and if someone wants to do damage to the civilization they won't hit the strong points first. The concept of civilian is a luxury - in the ultimate scenario of doom, we all must either fight or die. Our thinking and strategy militarily has always centered around repeling a conqueroring invasion. That is no longer a possibility, thanks to the nuclear deterrant. But the conventional thinking then assumes because enemies can't conqueror, they will give up. Coming to terms with the different reality is not something we appear to be ready to do. People fighting hopeless fights is something we seem to have forgotten, or assumed that the bad guys won't do.

      The truth that we can't do anything about certain threats is a bitter one, but not recognizing it leads to things like the Patriot Act. We must accept the vulnerability of being human and peaceful, or give it up and accept a police state. People have long said that democracy is worth dynig for, but the context has always been war or battle. I think it has to be taken beyond that - democracy is worth dying in a terrorist attack for. If we can't make that decision, we can't maintain a reasonably open society. Right now we're on the fence, hoping we won't have to decide. Certain of the political elements are salivating at the power of a police state, and they are also very dangerous. I would rather die as a consequence of our being an open, free society than see the US become something other than the last, best hope of mankind. If someone wishes to kill there is no way of peace, but I would prefer we keep trying than become another closed, fearful, government controlled footnote in world history.
    • And in these times when men are willing to sacrifice their lives by crashing planes and strapping bombs to themselves, that EMP won't do you much good. How does an EMP stop the guy in a heavily populated area from emptying an M16 into a crowd, or blowing up a U-Haul full of kerosene and fertilizer? So long as people are dedicated to their cause, they will fight, with or without their Palm Pilots. The Romans did.

      They don't get it? Sounds like *you* don't get it buddy. Or maybe you have some urge to sta
  • Did anybody else confuse this for flux capacitor when they first read it?!? :)
  • this e-bomb would have been useful in the 80s before everything had a circuit board.

    i remember reading an article about the east coast black out where auto flushing toilets ceased to work. so much stuff has circuitry in it. as i look around my cube and office: phone, computer, speakers, watch, wall clock, lights, thermostat, water fountain, auto-on/off lights in the bathroom, elevators.

    i would think that dropping this type of bomb on the downtown of a top 1000 most developed city in the world would have

  • Spock, do you hear explosions? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Sloppy ( 14984 ) * on Friday November 21, 2003 @11:35AM (#7528445) Homepage Journal
    I saw that episode, so I know how it goes. If you remove the terror and destruction from war, then people will never have incentive to give it up, and they'll fight for centuries, until do-gooders from outside come and give us A Taste Of Armageddon.

    Don't. Make Me. Repeat. Some of the. Speeches. They Would Give.

  • Lessons I learned from Star Trek
    "A Taste of Armageddon" A Federation ambassador named Fox, who boards the Enterprise to reach the planet Eminiar VII, where he hopes to negotiate a peace treaty with the inhabitants. Instead the crew of the Enterprise gets caught in the middle of an interplanetary war between Eminiar and neighboring planet Vendikar. The twist is that the war is being fought on computers, and compliant residents of those "destroyed" areas obediently report to disintegration chambers, where the
  • > the perfect weapon would literally stop an enemy in his tracks,
    > yet harm neither hide nor hair.

    Nope. The perfect weapon kills all of your enemies. 'What if' we killed no Iraqis in Bush's war? Instead of 50,000 insurgents, how many hundreds of thousands of guerrilla fighters would we be facing now? Guerilla fighters do not need electronics, just weapons and the ability to talk to each other face-to-face.

    Death is preferable in so many things. Suppose you accidentally drive over a pedestrian. Your
    • Suppose you accidentally drive over a pedestrian. Your civil suit fines will be much higher if you maim the person instead of kill him because you're paying for pain & suffering to cover the rest of his life.

      Evidence for this claim, please? I'm honestly curious to know whether it's true.

    • Re:Perfect weapon -- NOT! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by paiute ( 550198 ) on Friday November 21, 2003 @12:12PM (#7528808)
      You and many others have forgotten one of the fundamentals in life: Never get in a fight with someone who has less to lose than you.

    • Re:Perfect weapon -- NOT! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ediron2 ( 246908 ) * on Friday November 21, 2003 @12:58PM (#7529281) Journal
      Wow, 'The perfect weapon kills all of your enemies' reads like the logic of an 18-year-old. Since I turned 18, I've learned:

      Injuries are preferred in combat: Kill an opposing combatant, and you take one enemy out of combat; wound him and you take out two or three people (to carry him, provide medical support, etc.). Plus, screaming comrades are a lot more demoralizing and distracting than dead ones.

      Most combatants are not eager and hateful. They're conscripts or patriotic supporters of their government. When governments say the fighting should stop, they're happier alive than dead, and within decades most citizens can reconcile the deepest of rifts with former enemies, if their leadership doesn't continue to incite animosity.

      In that vein, a man wounded in combat will reconcile, generally. His kids will, too. Kill him, and they'll never forget and are somewhat less likely to forgive.

      Most importantly, your argument is hugely simplistic. Ignoring the lack of a pure litmus test that allows you tell the difference between friendlies and enemies, you can't kill *EVERYONE*. There's always a compassionate bystander. Kill a man, his family resents you. Kill a town, and you piss off a lot of friends and relatives. Kill all Iraqis and you just piss off all of the other arab nations. Kill off all the arabs, and muslims worldwide will hold a deep grudge. Once the damage exceeds the personal level, the circle of influence grows.

      Sorry for the ad-homenim about you sounding like an 18-yr-old, but you got rated as insightful. Nothing could be further from the truth.
  • Drop one of these on the house of file-swappers, that will teach em. 8)

  • America is doomed (Score:5, Funny)

    by fizban ( 58094 ) <fizban@umich.edu> on Friday November 21, 2003 @11:40AM (#7528494) Homepage
    High Technology always loses! Hasn't anyone ever seen Stargate? Camel-riding nomads will always destroy their teched-out overlords!

  • Correct me if I'm wrong (Score:5, Insightful)

    by lawpoop ( 604919 ) on Friday November 21, 2003 @11:41AM (#7528503) Homepage Journal
    But it seems that this weapon would work wonderfully against the US, Europe, and other highly developed countries with armies that rely heavily on electronics.

    Where it wouldn't work is a place like Afganistan, where a local irregular knows how to use a camel and a kalashnikov. (Unless this device melts guns).

    So, in summary, it seems like the perfect underdog weapon, where the underdog is not the US, but, say, Palestinians or Baathists. Terrorists could use it in the US, and we would be virtually defenseless, and it would render our expensive, high-tech army useless overseas.

    • Re:Correct me if I'm wrong (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MxTxL ( 307166 ) on Friday November 21, 2003 @12:06PM (#7528746)
      But it seems that this weapon would work wonderfully against the US, Europe, and other highly developed countries with armies that rely heavily on electronics.

      Well, it would if military hardware weren't hardened against EMP. The US has been preparing since the 50's for a war that involved nuclear weapons. The effects of EMP caused circuit disruptions has been understood at least since then. The application of a Faraday cage will catch and ground the pulse energy sufficiently to protect electronic circuits. This is almost a non-issue.

      For military hardware.

      Unprotected circuits (read: civilian) are and remain extremely vulnerable to such attacks. This is really where this technology is scary. In a crowded urban area it could really disrupt a LOT of vital systems.
      • If you'd RTFA you'd know that parts of the US military quit doing EMP protection after the USSR broke up, and much of the military computer equipment is essentially unprotected civilian equipment with a different paintjob.
  • Okay, that bomb is great for taking down semiconductor gadgets. The question is, whose military (except the United States and its allies) is vulnerable to that?

    Old Soviet military designs, which are the foundation of e.g. Russian, Chinese and North Korean armies don't use sophisticated semiconductor circuitry that extensively, and when used, these parts are heavily shielded.

    On the other side of spectrum there are irregular combatants such as Taliban formations and Iraqi guerrilas, whose most advanced gadg
  • So someone saw it and thought it was real huh?

    http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0138304/
  • And this is useful for anyone because... why? To start, I was against this war from the start, but to analyze it a little further, Iraq didn't seem to put up much of a fight, and what fight there was was usually low-tech, just regular guns firing from the sides of the roads. Now that the actual war part is over, what is left? Roadside bombs, most of them detonated by timer (could be mechanical) or remote control (could possibly be affected by a weapon such as this). But the problem is no one knows where the

  • Haven't we had this already? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Zog The Undeniable ( 632031 ) on Friday November 21, 2003 @11:48AM (#7528561)
    I think it was called Nimda!
  • A weapon like this brings out the best arguments for believing in peace and adopting a peaceful attitude (which I admit only works if everyone does it).

    Why? Because this weapon naturally works against the most powerful member of a conflict. Weapons like these (as the article points out) are inherently more harmful to those countries who have a heavy reliance on technology. That's us. So there will be little disincentive or disadvantages for poor countries to try to build them and use them -- what do
  • You know folks, the scary thing i see about this is... what if the enemy had one of these microwave devices and were able to deploy it around a vital target. The second we tried to bomb the target, that very bomb or cruise missile would be disabled in no time flat, and the bomb would fly off course and blow up a children's hospital... Of course this would also be a very cool way to stop an enemy's missile attack, it would probably make a far better missile defence system than those lasers they have mounted

  • The War on Terror isn't the only war (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sielwolf ( 246764 ) on Friday November 21, 2003 @12:14PM (#7528820) Homepage Journal
    The military must prepare for The Next Enemy, whomever that may be. That's how you stay ahead of the curve and assured your not blindsided by something (say Sputnik and the possibility of living under a Commie Moon). Most nations out there have a varied mix of irregular and regular land, sea, and air branches. Predicting their national government, culture and outlook (and their possible hostility towards us and our friends) 40 years into the future is the domain of the State Department and think tanks.

    So, yeah, an e-bomb might just gather dust... now. But in 10 years when it's in production? 20? Back in 1983 could anyone here predict the path of events that lead us to now?

    Politicians start wars. Armies finish them. The military is just preparing for any contigency our governments decide to point and click them towards.

  • What if? (Score:5, Funny)

    by lqqkout4elfy ( 658231 ) on Friday November 21, 2003 @12:20PM (#7528887)
    I wonder what sort of effect this would have on our lives if one just "accidently" gets dropped on the Microsoft campus? Hmmm.

  • Movie "The Day the Earth Stood Still" (Score:4, Interesting)

    by peter303 ( 12292 ) on Friday November 21, 2003 @01:06PM (#7529369)
    The disabling all electric devices and motors by an alien from outer space was the gave the title to this 1950s movie, consider among the best in the genre. The alien could show more discrimination in turning off devices than an e-bomb. The movie was considered a metaphor for the cold war, where the alien represented a powerful Soviet Union.
    "Gort, Klaatu barada nikto"

  • Quoth Niccolo Machiavelli.. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by utahjazz ( 177190 ) on Friday November 21, 2003 @01:36PM (#7529657)
    Quoth Niccolo Machiavelli: For it must be noted, that men must either be caressed or else annihilated; they will revenge themselves for small injuries, but cannot do so for great ones; the injury therefore that we do to a man must be such that we need not fear his vengeance.

    The only path to peace is elimination of enemies. Think genocide will just make more enemies? Ask the American Indians. No one cares about their plight, because there are so few of them left. And becuase of this, they stopped fighting back. We need not fear his vengence.

    Does anyone honestly think that somday the Israelis and Palestinians will come up with a really good peice of paper for the to sign that will lead to peace? The only way there will ever be peace in that region (or anywhere) is if one side decicevly eliminates the other.

    Dump the e-bomb, hang on to the h-bomb.
    • You're right, genocide is the answer.

      Only problem is, it's sort of "frowned upon" these days. Not sure why, really, with all the billions on the earth we could lose a few and I sure as hell wouldn't miss them.

      It's ironic that as the human population has grown, the the protections afforded civilians have increased. In the good ole days, armies would kill every living thing in the cities they conquered, and the streets would literally run with blood. I guess we like to pretend we're more civilized now.

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