Looks like the future of warfare will be more like Lazer-Tag. According to this article, we’ve developed a weapon that fires an invisible beam of searing pain. It makes people run in terror, feeling like their skin is on fire. But here’s the interesting part…
The feeling is an illusion. No one is harmed. The beam’s energy waves penetrate just one-sixty-fourth of an inch into your body, heating your skin like microwaves. They inflame your nerve endings without actually burning you. This could be the future of warfare: less bloodshed, more pain.
I firmly believe that Romans 13 gives governments the authority to use lethal force to implement justice. But since I come from a long line of pacifist Mennonites on both sides of my family, I also have some queasiness about the horrible consequences of war. This weapon seems like a pacifist’s dream come true. But, as usual, there’s another side to the equation:
But the ability to inflict pain without injury doesn’t just make injury less necessary. It makes pain more essential to military operations—and easier to inflict. To achieve the desired “repel effect,” I have to make you suffer. Knowing that your agony will be brief and leave no physical damage makes the weapon easier to fire.
Now warfare becomes the ultimate video game. Secure in the knowledge that I’m not causing any lasting harm, I can laugh and giggle as I wave around my little heat gun and make people writhe in pain. Slowly I become a sadistic puppetmaster, bending peoples’ actions to my whims.
Maybe we do need to think about this stuff some more.