Future non-leathal hand held weaponry

[Very_big_ship]

I'm thinking about weapon ideas that can work as simply disabling the target in some unharmful way. Like tasers, microwave guns, stun grenades, pepper sprays and tear gases although any gases could cause problems with the ventilation and air purifying systems. Guns that police would use against individual targets and small groups. Well, tasers are not exactly harmless but you get the idea. I'd guess rubber bullet guns count as well.

The idea is to have guns that you can shoot inside spaceships and space stations without having to be afraid too much about shooting through walls and nuclear reactors.The way I see it non-leathal hand held weapons seem to be gaining popularity and in future in space ship I'd imagine that could be the route the hand held weapons could take.

Some of the ideas I have are very simple. For example getting just a dna sample of the attacker means you can catch him later. Just shoot a needle at the target, the needle collects some blood and drops on the floor. Then just collect it and analyse the sample. Close down the station and check everyone. But if you are already shooting needles you could also use some poisons that cause the target to lose consciousness...

Other thing is some kind of electromagnetic gun that somehow affects the brain of the target or the muscles in the area you are aiming. For example aim at hand and suddenly the target lose control of his hand muscles making it impossible to pull the trigger/whatever. Would this kind of thing be feasible?

I'm mostly looking at this from hard scifi perspective so I'm mostly interested about ideas that scientifically could work. No mind controlling guns or bees that are telepathically controlled to sting the target. Biological options do sound fun though..

[Zixinus]

The best I can think of is a robot that crawls around the target with a rope. The kinetic impact would still be bad but not as bad as beanbags because the robot could be a wider target.
Plus variants of that idea. Small, cat or dog-sized spider robots that walk around and latch unto people's arms and legs.

Taser round that would first test its target and then apply just enough voltage to get him down would be nice too. It would not go if the target is not organic or has a pacemaker (if it is even possible to detect that). Sure terrorists and the like can do modifications that will make something to mimic that and make such rounds useless, but at that rate they could also just buy or even make body armor. At which point you just have to get the guns out anyway.

I'm not sure what else you could do.
The thing about going high-tech with non-lethal force is that there is just no "off" button for humans. Anything that can stop a person can kill a person. Drugs that cause unconsciousness have famously been shown to easily kill people unless the right dose is used (again intelligent bullets or guns might compensate for that). Electricity through the body can easily kill someone, especially if they have stuff like pacemakers. Even tear-gas can kill someone, making them choke at too high a dosage.

[Korto]

I've seen the electro-laser idea a couple of times. A laser ionizes a path to the target, which then conducts an electric charge, working as a taser.

Drugs now are rather difficult. The dose that knocks out an ordinary man will kill a child and have no discernible effect on an angry heavyweight. Not to mention allergies and immunities. Of course, it's completely believable that in the future some more reliable and error-tolerant drugs could be devised.
I could also imagine a gun that shoots a "smart needle", when you pull the trigger, the gun scans and estimates the target, programming its estimate into the needle. The needle also has a small computer built in that monitors the victim it's hit, injecting more of the drug if it's not having enough effect, or injecting the antidote if something's going wrong.

A gun that fires some rubbery webbing, unbreakable but porous enough to breathe through?

[Very_big_ship]

The small robot idea sounds interesting. The problem to me is probably how the robots get there. Do the police officers carry couple of them with them. Or do a swarm of small robots always follow the police when they are patrolling the space station on foot for example? Or maybe just have the robots be everywhere and couple of people sit in some room watching the cameras and when they see trouble they command the robots to attack the trouble while a swat team is dispatched to the target. The type of robot I'm thinking is some relatively simple robot that just attaches to the target and then uses electric shocks to stop the target from moving.

Tasers are also problematic I'd imagine if you have any implants or some other wearable tech? Or pacemakers/insulin pumps/other medical stuff.

Bullets filled with teargas that "explode" when they are just about to hit the target could be interesting. Basically you could spray at people's faces from really far away.

[Darmalus]

I've seen tanglers in various fiction. Basically a wad of really sticky fibers that explodes and wraps around the target to prevent them from moving around. Usually has some sort of easy application anti-stick spray or similar so that police can quickly remove any bits that cover your air holes.

[Elheru Aran]

Glop guns are being developed even now, actually. So are guns that spray super-slippery lubricant (yes really) so people can't walk. We also have a variety of lovely things like insanely powerful stink bombs and blinding strobe lights. Really, if there's something that can incapacitate a person, it's probably been weaponized at some point, or is being...

[Formless]

Just fire a net. Instead of trying to come up with more advanced technologies to solve the problem, just look into ways of upgrading ancient ones. Plus, you could combine this with a taser or electroshock technology. Only issue is bulk.

If you are very concerned with penetrating the hull (and its actually an exaggerated problem as anyone who has read Atomic Rockets can tell you) you could use close quarters weapons instead, like batons and cattle prods. Nothing says projectiles are always ideal.

Alternatively, one idea I've toyed for one piece of fiction set more close to the modern day is to use a tranquilizer dart filled with psychedelics instead of traditional narcotics and sedatives. They don't cause incapacitation via unconsciousness, but the effects on perception and altered states of mind could make for a pretty nice substitute. And something like LSD has such a high LD50, there is little to no chance of causing death by overdose. The chemical I specifically toyed with was Dimethyltryptamine (or DMT for short) because it has an onset of only 45 seconds (at least when inhaled), and the primary psychedelic effects last between 5 to 20 minutes (and lingering effects should be gone within an hour) so you can have a handcuffed prisoner coherent and ready for questioning shortly after being shot up.

[biostem]

Something like a bola gun or sticky foam that can later be neutralized, would work well. I wonder if you could develop something akin to a flashbang, but one that those using it could be protected against via a specialized helmet or so forth.

[Simon_Jester]

Bullets filled with teargas that "explode" when they are just about to hit the target could be interesting. Basically you could spray at people's faces from really far away.

Gas grenades are already a thing, and have some advantages over bullets fired from a quasi-conventional gun. They don't move as fast so they're less likely to kill someone if they don't crack open on schedule. And they release gas in a controlled fashion over a large enough area that your target can't just duck out of the cloud trivially.

Just fire a net. Instead of trying to come up with more advanced technologies to solve the problem, just look into ways of upgrading ancient ones. Plus, you could combine this with a taser or electroshock technology. Only issue is bulk.

This is true. There are of course practical problems with a net gun, the main one being that the net has to deploy correctly or it's totally ineffective. I can imagine something like...

Oooh. Imagine a net that's "weighted" by a bunch of tiny flying microdrones on the net's periphery. The drones can sense their surroundings and steer so as to capture a moving target, while trying to avoid getting hung up on obstacles.

The image of a fugitive running from a flying net that's chasing him is entertaining and potentially makes for a cool movie scene.

I like the LSD idea too.

[biostem]

In the new Captain America movie, they try to restrain someone at one point using these magnetic cuffs, with the cuff being sort of C-shaped, and them using the wall of an elevator as the connection point. I wonder if something like that would actually be practical.


I wonder if something like Spiderman's web shooters could be made into a reality as well.

[madd0ct0r]

the answer to this, like many of lifes problems is builder's foam.


from : http://www.howitworksdaily.com/technolo ... riot-foam/

I believe the trouble was not suffocating people, but spraying down a street with this would certainly slow a riot down to an entertaining waddle.

[Zixinus]

Just fire a net. Instead of trying to come up with more advanced technologies to solve the problem, just look into ways of upgrading ancient ones.

The problem with net guns is that they are limited in their applicability by one crucial reason: guns.

Nets, if you can't just cut through them, might only stop you from moving on foot. It won't stop you from aiming and pulling the trigger. Even if you manage to make the net somehow self-closing, the bad guy can still aim his gun at people (unless the net closes and tightens around the person VERY FAST). Even with a crossbow.

Which still makes it good for capturing running people or people armed with melee weapons, but you want a more universal solution on-hand in case your perp is armed.

Plus, you could combine this with a taser or electroshock technology.

At which point why not just use tasers and do away with the net? With the net you are just limiting your range.

Alternatively, one idea I've toyed for one piece of fiction set more close to the modern day is to use a tranquilizer dart filled with psychedelics instead of traditional narcotics and sedatives.

I really like this idea, though won't a drugged-up guy still be able to fire his weapon indiscrimately? Or even more so than he otherwise would, because now he's shooting at imaginary things?

[Simon_Jester]

It's still possible, but he's less of a threat than he would be otherwise, and will probably not be able to resist effectively if you follow up with another nonlethal weapon. Even one that might otherwise be easy to counter... like a net.

[Formless]

The problem with net guns is that they are limited in their applicability by one crucial reason: guns.

Nets, if you can't just cut through them, might only stop you from moving on foot. It won't stop you from aiming and pulling the trigger. Even if you manage to make the net somehow self-closing, the bad guy can still aim his gun at people (unless the net closes and tightens around the person VERY FAST). Even with a crossbow.

Oh, I don't disagree. Like I said, the OP is mistaken in thinking that penetrating a spaceship hull is that much of an issue. Even if it were, there are bullet designs like the glaser safety slug that are specifically intended to under penetrate (for Very_big_ship's sake, glasers and similar ammunition basically cause a granular impact in reverse). If someone has a gun, you respond with a gun, and if you have to get into a spacesuit in case decompression happens, everyone on a spaceship should understand that contingency even if they aren't on a military vehicle. Meteorite impacts happen to everyone.

Which still makes it good for capturing running people or people armed with melee weapons, but you want a more universal solution on-hand in case your perp is armed.

Exactly. As I see it, net weapons at least fulfill the same niche as the foam based weapons everyone here is talking about; but also, to me those foam based weapons seem much too impractical by comparison in terms of range and safety. Hence why they have never gotten out of beta testing in real life. Plus, like I said, this proposal is about improving an existing technology, like Simon's idea of adding robotics to the net to make a smart-net. Things like that let you deploy it in ways that the foam just can't.

At which point why not just use tasers and do away with the net? With the net you are just limiting your range.

I don't think you are, actually. The net should be able to carry its own battery(s), so you wouldn't need wires linking it back to the gun that fired it like tazers have. They also need a bigger launcher, so you might as well give it a big compressed air canister that can reach decent ranges-- assuming that it isn't for indoor use like the OP was talking about. Oh, and then there is Simon's smart net. There is no telling what range that idea could achieve with sufficient advancements in robotics.

I really like this idea, though won't a drugged-up guy still be able to fire his weapon indiscrimately? Or even more so than he otherwise would, because now he's shooting at imaginary things?

Depends on the hallucinogen. DMT mainly causes geometric hallucinations and imagery that is apparently very alien in nature. There does appear to be a dosage or mode of administration where people will experience the sensation of an alien consciousness, but I don't think its like they are seeing targets they can shoot at. Its a risk, but like I said you generally respond to guns with guns even on a spaceship.

I originally came up with this concept as a way for people (the antagonists actually) to capture someone silently, and alive and unharmed without them fleeing. I decided that normal tranquilizer darts would be too unreliable and dangerous, because firstly they are too dose sensitive, and because unlike animals human beings recognize darts and will take the time to hide or seek aid before the dart takes effect. Even among psychedelics it was hard to find chemicals that will act fast enough, and I'm still uncertain if DMT can be administered by intramuscular injection (but then, if not I could resort to something like paintballs for inhalation which I know will work and work fast). If anyone knows of a better chemical, I would love to know what it is.

[Very_big_ship]

One thing I just thought about. If we assume that the gravity on the spaceship or on the spacestation is create by rotation of the craft then doesn't that make slow flying objects very inaccurate due to the coriolis effect? Also my brain hurts when I try to imagine what would happen to flying robots in such environment...

Like I said, the OP is mistaken in thinking that penetrating a spaceship hull is that much of an issue. Even if it were, there are bullet designs like the glaser safety slug that are specifically intended to under penetrate (for Very_big_ship's sake, glasers and similar ammunition basically cause a granular impact in reverse). If someone has a gun, you respond with a gun, and if you have to get into a spacesuit in case decompression happens, everyone on a spaceship should understand that contingency even if they aren't on a military vehicle. Meteorite impacts happen to everyone.

Thanks for the links. As obvious as it sounds I never thought about making special bullets for shooting inside spaceships and spacestations!

The reason I'm worried about shooting inside spaceships is mostly that a stray bullet can for example take out the ftl drive or cause some other small damage that is still serious enough to make the whole spaceship inoperable in some very important way (damage to lifesupport, nuclear reactors, engines, fuel cells, control instruments, radiators, communications, air containers etc..).

I'm mostly interested about non-leathal weapons because to me it just looks like that is the future of the police weapons. Lasers are dangerous because of reflections, slug throwers are dangerous because they can break important stuff on the ship. Even if the danger of the catastrophic danger is really low it still exists. Plus I'd imagine the reasons why to not have weapons on board spaceships is similar to not having weapons on passenger jets.

[Mr Bean]

the answer to this, like many of lifes problems is builder's foam.

I believe the trouble was not suffocating people, but spraying down a street with this would certainly slow a riot down to an entertaining waddle.

The problem is not with suffocation (But that is a problem) but with deployment see in order for the foam to be useful it has to have a setting time. As in a time between you fire it and it hardens. If that time is one second your not even going to clear the gun, if it's five seconds that's useful within twenty meters but useless beyond.

See the issue? No matter what your setting or hardening time is.. it's only good for tiny target window, to close they can push it off before it hardens or it simply won't stick... to far and your firing solid foam at them which they can brush aside.... oh yes and you can suffocate them.

As every single attempt at a foam agent has failed the "man with a brick" test, IE a rioter charging your foam canon intent on caving in your head with a brick. Tasers stop them most of the time, Senior Nightstick does slightly worse, a riot shield does great properly handled and a water canon works wonders... but foam guy gets his brains smashed in every time.

[Formless]

One thing I just thought about. If we assume that the gravity on the spaceship or on the spacestation is create by rotation of the craft then doesn't that make slow flying objects very inaccurate due to the coriolis effect? Also my brain hurts when I try to imagine what would happen to flying robots in such environment...

Eh, it might effect a paper plane, but most objects should have the inertia to go straight enough for government work. Velocity is only part of the picture.

The reason I'm worried about shooting inside spaceships is mostly that a stray bullet can for example take out the ftl drive or cause some other small damage that is still serious enough to make the whole spaceship inoperable in some very important way (damage to lifesupport, nuclear reactors, engines, fuel cells, control instruments, radiators, communications, air containers etc..).

Then don't design the ship with Trek approved pinto technology? The concerns are understandable, but aren't as much of an issue as you might think. The Federal Air Martials just use the same bullets as other law enforcement agencies. .357 Sig with hollowpoint rounds. That's actually a more powerful cartridge than the ubiquitous 9mm handguns most police departments prefer.

Radiators go on the outside of the ship. They literally cannot do their job otherwise.

Life support is a distributed system, not one machine that can be knocked out all at once like in Star Trek. It involves multiple systems, many of which can be found in your house: plumbing, lighting, food storage and preparation, heating, ventilation, air filtration, etc. Just parse the word and see what I mean. The main things that a spacecraft needs (well, besides a hull) that your house gets free from the biosphere and atmosphere is the oxygen cycle and a heat radiator to remove waste heat. In other words, your ship needs a hydroponics bay full of plants to turn CO2 back into oxygen, and this is far more vulnerable to fire than bullets. On that note, you need a fire suppression system, because fire is your worst nightmare on a spacecraft, especially on many historic spacecraft which ran a high oxygen concentration inside the cabin.

Any major piece of engineering like the reactor or stardrive should NOT be inside the cabin with a human crew the way you see it in Star Trek. There is no reason to do this, and several reasons not to come immediately to mind besides firefights. It is much safer to have the reactor be contained in another part of the ship so as to minimize the crew's exposure to radiation. Robots and automation can be used to maintain the reactor, and spacesuits can be used as a last resort method (for a writer, having a character go inside a nuclear reactor should be a very dramatic and climactic scene). Depending on the design, the reactor could even be detachable in an emergency. If the ship uses fuel cells, frankly a look at real rockets should tell you that you often have too much fuel to put it in the cabin to begin with, or else we're talking about batteries and hand tools. The engines and FTL drive likewise don't need to be in the crew cabin like it is in the Millennium Falcon. In fact, its hard to imagine the kind of miniaturization required to get something that moves thousand ton ships up to or past the speed of light to fit into a small room like that.

Communications are again something that goes on the outside of the ship; though by necessity in this case. If you have a radio or a laser or whatever broadcasting, the only components that go on the inside with the crew are the computers and interface components. Which brings me to control interfaces-- spaceships are fly by wire, which means the control scheme is unlikely to be damaged in a firefight. You might put a bullet in a computer console, but the computer itself can be inside the wall and protected by a layer of steel. Not a big issue. Just have a storage room with spare parts and tools to replace anything that breaks.

I'm mostly interested about non-leathal weapons because to me it just looks like that is the future of the police weapons. Lasers are dangerous because of reflections, slug throwers are dangerous because they can break important stuff on the ship. Even if the danger of the catastrophic danger is really low it still exists. Plus I'd imagine the reasons why to not have weapons on board spaceships is similar to not having weapons on passenger jets.

Sure. Of course, I think it is worth pointing out that there are different purposes for different less-lethal weapons. They can be made for (among other things) capture, control/compliance, riot control and mob dispersion, and (the hardest one to accomplish without lethal force) stopping power. Having one weapon that can do everything is unlikely to ever happen.

[madd0ct0r]

the answer to this, like many of lifes problems is builder's foam.

I believe the trouble was not suffocating people, but spraying down a street with this would certainly slow a riot down to an entertaining waddle.

The problem is not with suffocation (But that is a problem) but with deployment see in order for the foam to be useful it has to have a setting time. As in a time between you fire it and it hardens. If that time is one second your not even going to clear the gun, if it's five seconds that's useful within twenty meters but useless beyond.

See the issue? No matter what your setting or hardening time is.. it's only good for tiny target window, to close they can push it off before it hardens or it simply won't stick... to far and your firing solid foam at them which they can brush aside.... oh yes and you can suffocate them.

As every single attempt at a foam agent has failed the "man with a brick" test, IE a rioter charging your foam canon intent on caving in your head with a brick. Tasers stop them most of the time, Senior Nightstick does slightly worse, a riot shield does great properly handled and a water canon works wonders... but foam guy gets his brains smashed in every time.

This sounds like it should be empirically tested. I'll see if a friend will volunteer.

[Very_big_ship]

Eh, it might effect a paper plane, but most objects should have the inertia to go straight enough for government work. Velocity is only part of the picture.

The inertia makes them go straight but the "world" around them goes around in circles. Of course the coriolis effect only really affects slow objects (throwing speeds and less) in noticable way but for flying robots it can be a problem if the rotation of the ship is fast enough.

Radiators go on the outside of the ship. They literally cannot do their job otherwise.

A bullet that goes through the wall can hit the engines or the radiators outside. Of course I know radiators go outside the ship... And apparently droplet style radiators are basically immune to gunfire so that's what is probably used on passenger spaceships for example. Not to mention the safety margin. Losing half of the radiators on passenger spaceship should not be a problem just like a modern passenger jet can land with just half of its engines.

Any major piece of engineering like the reactor or stardrive should NOT be inside the cabin with a human crew the way you see it in Star Trek. There is no reason to do this, and several reasons not to come immediately to mind besides firefights. It is much safer to have the reactor be contained in another part of the ship so as to minimize the crew's exposure to radiation. Robots and automation can be used to maintain the reactor, and spacesuits can be used as a last resort method (for a writer, having a character go inside a nuclear reactor should be a very dramatic and climactic scene). Depending on the design, the reactor could even be detachable in an emergency. If the ship uses fuel cells, frankly a look at real rockets should tell you that you often have too much fuel to put it in the cabin to begin with, or else we're talking about batteries and hand tools. The engines and FTL drive likewise don't need to be in the crew cabin like it is in the Millennium Falcon. In fact, its hard to imagine the kind of miniaturization required to get something that moves thousand ton ships up to or past the speed of light to fit into a small room like that.

This is nitpicking. Of course I know the engine nor the reactor are inside the crew department. A bullet that can go through the wall can hit the engine, radiator, or any other piece of the ship that happens to be directly on its path. Not that it is likely or not that there should not be backups for the various systems.

I'm not even writing a story. I'm just doing some world building with a set of basic rules about tech and environment and future of mainly non-leathal weapons sounds like interesting topic.

Bullets hitting the various parts of the ship and causing nuisance or serious problems wasn't even the main motivation why I wanted to learn more about future non-leathal weapons. Something like a chance of a gun being fired inside a spaceship is practically non-existent if we compare similar numbers and scale as with our current aviation and naval passenger ships (chance of gun being aboard and being used is basically 0). but if there is a weapon of some kind that has essentially 0% chance of breaking something on the ship compared to 1% then that is still a plus. Same with spacestations where weapons are more likely to exist and be fired.

I'm mostly interested about non-leathal weapons because to me it just looks like that is the future of the police weapons. Lasers are dangerous because of reflections, slug throwers are dangerous because they can break important stuff on the ship. Even if the danger of the catastrophic danger is really low it still exists. Plus I'd imagine the reasons why to not have weapons on board spaceships is similar to not having weapons on passenger jets.

Sure. Of course, I think it is worth pointing out that there are different purposes for different less-lethal weapons. They can be made for (among other things) capture, control/compliance, riot control and mob dispersion, and (the hardest one to accomplish without lethal force) stopping power. Having one weapon that can do everything is unlikely to ever happen.

I'm not looking for one weapon that can magically handle all kinds of situations from one single out of control diabetic grand mother to mobs with space pitchforks and lasor metal pipes or groups of ninjarambos. A gun is something that a police officers needs very rarely but in most countries they still carry them. In germany for example in 2011 the police only shot 85 bullets during the whole year*. In america I'd guess they shoot trillions but in environment where not everybody is carrying a gun (like on spaceship or spacestation) the chances of even needing a gun are rather small.

*source: http://www.thewire.com/global/2012/05/g ... 011/52162/
(I have no interest making this thread about gun debate so please ignore the opinions in the source)

[Simon_Jester]

Trillions? Your prejudices are showing. Cehck for actual numbers.

One thing I just thought about. If we assume that the gravity on the spaceship or on the spacestation is create by rotation of the craft then doesn't that make slow flying objects very inaccurate due to the coriolis effect? Also my brain hurts when I try to imagine what would happen to flying robots in such environment...

Any functional flying robot has to be smart enough to detect a crosswind and steer accordingly.

I'm mostly interested about non-leathal weapons because to me it just looks like that is the future of the police weapons. Lasers are dangerous because of reflections, slug throwers are dangerous because they can break important stuff on the ship. Even if the danger of the catastrophic danger is really low it still exists. Plus I'd imagine the reasons why to not have weapons on board spaceships is similar to not having weapons on passenger jets.

Reflections from laser weapons are unlikely to be nearly as dangerous as the original laser beam unless you are firing at an actual mirrored surface. They might blind or even cause superficial 'burns' on a surface, but they won't drill holes in things.

[SilverDragonRed]

If you're thinking of a backup weapon to use at close range that's hilarious to think about; a squirt gun loaded up with whatever paralytic agent you want mixed with DMSO-like liquid.

[Mr Bean]

If you're thinking of a backup weapon to use at close range that's hilarious to think about; a squirt gun loaded up with whatever paralytic agent you want mixed with DMSO-like liquid.

Another veteran of the squirt gun wars. What happens if you get a face shot?

[SilverDragonRed]

Then the person ends up like most of the group's characters; melting faces from the blood agents those corporate assholes loaded into their super-soakers. That game didn't start going off the rails until the GM started sending out firetrucks filled with DMSO.

[Formless]

A bullet that goes through the wall can hit the engines or the radiators outside. Of course I know radiators go outside the ship... And apparently droplet style radiators are basically immune to gunfire so that's what is probably used on passenger spaceships for example. Not to mention the safety margin. Losing half of the radiators on passenger spaceship should not be a problem just like a modern passenger jet can land with just half of its engines.

A spacecraft normally has walls made of metal. Do you know how well bullets penetrate metal? Not well at all. A pistol bullet normally cannot get through an inch of steel. Rifle bullets can, but they are slowed down significantly. As I said, micrometeorite impacts happen all the time, so all spacecraft are built to account for them. Especially if the spacecraft is manned. And micrometeroites actually travel on average much faster than bullets of equal mass.

Also, droplet radiators aren't the only ones that are resistant to gunfire. In fact, they have a problem with droplet loss over time due to scattering, if I recall. Anyway, a while back on this forum it was realized that armoring radiators was a much simpler task than previously thought: you simply make the armor out of something IR transparent like glass or hard crystal. In fact, once realized someone came up with a new radiator design where the coolant flows through channels or tubes in the crystal/glass armor so it can radiate directly through the material instead of heating up a metal pipe first. That should give it an efficiency advantage similar to, but not quite as much as, the droplet radiator.

This is nitpicking. Of course I know the engine nor the reactor are inside the crew department. A bullet that can go through the wall can hit the engine, radiator, or any other piece of the ship that happens to be directly on its path. Not that it is likely or not that there should not be backups for the various systems.

No it can't. Have you ever fired a gun before? They aren't magically able to pass through everything. They come in every caliber from weak .22 shorts to gigantic .50 BMG rounds that are made to penetrate small tanks. But they all slow down eventually, and there are many materials that slow them down almost instantly, like sand or in most cases steel.

And reactors are normally armored by default. That's a common measure to limit radiation leaking from them. I wouldn't suggest shooting them, but it isn't likely to cause disaster.

I'm not even writing a story. I'm just doing some world building with a set of basic rules about tech and environment and future of mainly non-leathal weapons sounds like interesting topic.

I understand, but the point I'm making is that the world is interconnected in ways that can be easy to forget when construction a new one. In this case, bullets are not nearly as powerful as you seem to think. They move fast enough to kill a man (or a deer, or a bear, or a bird, etc.) at a certain distance, and no faster. You can actually make a slingshot that is more powerful than some guns, because killing a man isn't just about energy. Likewise, spacecraft aren't as delicate as you are assuming, and they aren't entirely like aircraft either. They don't have to be aerodynamic unless they are expecting to enter the atmosphere, so you can put things on the outside of the ship if you want to. The walls not only don't need to me made of thin aluminum, they shouldn't be because they have to be pressurized and protected from naturally occurring micro-impacts. Stuff like that changes how you approach them and how you interact with them.

And that's not to say I don't like talking about less lethal weapons, its just that your reasoning is faulty as to how spacecraft work or decide the weapons you would use inside them. I'm trying to be helpful.

but if there is a weapon of some kind that has essentially 0% chance of breaking something on the ship compared to 1% then that is still a plus. Same with spacestations where weapons are more likely to exist and be fired.

There is no such weapon. We call them less lethal for a reason. For example, several forms of OC spray are flammable or could damage electronics, tazers can start fires, gasses stress the air filtration system and the grenades that fire them can also start fires (notice a pattern? As I said, fire is a spacefarer's nightmare...), and even a brawl with clubs and batons can end with stuff getting smashed. And then imagine the mess that all these foam weapons make just by being fired... Point is, the reason people are interested in less lethal weapons has more to do with fulfilling those different purposes I talked about and wanting ethical alternatives to conventional weapons, no more or less.

Trillions? Your prejudices are showing. Cehck for actual numbers.

Indeed. You can start by looking up how much ammunition is even bought or sold every year. And that's not even an upper limit, because a lot of that goes into storage by the buyer. Its not like produce where you must use it within the week. I'd guess probably half of all ammo bought is never fired before the end of the year. But no pressure. Its just a suggestion. The thread is probably more interesting when we're proposing new weapons, not guns.

And by the way, the part about different weapons serving different functions was directed at everyone, since some people were poo-pooing nets without considering what their functions would be. I'm not singling you out, Very_big_ship. Just making a point people needed to hear.

[Formless]

Then the person ends up like most of the group's characters; melting faces from the blood agents those corporate assholes loaded into their super-soakers. That game didn't start going off the rails until the GM started sending out firetrucks filled with DMSO.

Ah, a fellow Counter Monkey fan, I see. Yeah, the solution to a lot of those issues with the Squirt Gun weapons is to put the liquid in a paintball so that it is more controllable; that is, you can properly aim for the lower body (the recommended technique for actual riot paintguns). Probably would extend the range as well. Also, I think a lot of those chemicals wouldn't actually work with real DMSO, and on the flip-side certain other real life chemical weapons penetrate the skin even without a carrier agent.

And most of them certainly wouldn't activate as fast as they do in role playing games.

One issue with the chemical gun I can see is that unless it delivers its payload with a dart, you could end up contaminating yourself with your own gun or grenade. Even if you didn't miss and contaminate the environment, you could contaminate yourself when handling the suspect/prisoner and their clothing. If for instance you handle capsacin in any form, even natural hot peppers, you might discover this problem the hard way as I have. Getting it in your eyes by mistake, for instance, or worse-- I've even got it on my dick once by using the restroom. That hurt more than just my skin.