Electricity-conducting gasses for electroshock-conducting area-effect weapons?

[Shroom Man 777]

Okay, this is really for a Star Wars RP but here goes, since I want something that can be sort of believably technobabbled. Is there any kind of gas or aerosol or even sufficiently fine particles that can create a not-so-persistent but not-instantaneously-dissipating cloud that can conduct electricity? Possibly for non-lethal incapacitory purposes?

Whatever happened to that UV-laser air-ionizing wireless taser ray gun thing?

In game I want to make an area-effect ion charge grenade, like overcharged power packs + gas + small explosive to disperse gas. I can of course just make shit up, some spacey "tibanna gas that's not superheated into blaster-plasma can still conduct ionics" sort of thing. But... yeah. I want something sorta realistic.

[Patrick Ogaard]

Star Wars canon includes electromagnetic pulse grenades, also known as droid poppers, though they presumably only work well against droids. Non-canon, but quite logically, there are also stun grenades mentioned in various sources.

Failing that, how about a pom-pom grenade? The activated grenade bursts, expelling a cloud of whisker-thin, lightweight conductive filaments with a consistency and mechanical strength like that of cotton candy. For several seconds, a tiny power cell sends disabling electrical pulses through the slowly-settling pom-pom, also triggering arcs within the filament cloud. Within seconds, the cloud will settle to the ground, and the filaments degrade into dust within a short time. Unscrupulous sorts may install overcharged power cells, making the filaments abruptly disintegrate in a massive and deadly arc and thunderclap.
Or not. But it's plausible if you don't look at it too closely.

[Shroom Man 777]

Star Wars canon includes electromagnetic pulse grenades, also known as droid poppers, though they presumably only work well against droids. Non-canon, but quite logically, there are also stun grenades mentioned in various sources.

Failing that, how about a pom-pom grenade? The activated grenade bursts, expelling a cloud of whisker-thin, lightweight conductive filaments with a consistency and mechanical strength like that of cotton candy. For several seconds, a tiny power cell sends disabling electrical pulses through the slowly-settling pom-pom, also triggering arcs within the filament cloud. Within seconds, the cloud will settle to the ground, and the filaments degrade into dust within a short time. Unscrupulous sorts may install overcharged power cells, making the filaments abruptly disintegrate in a massive and deadly arc and thunderclap.
Or not. But it's plausible if you don't look at it too closely.

That is brilliant and if one combines that filament thing with an ion grenade or an EMP grenade, presuming my character can find the anti-droid boom-boom + other ingredients in the Rebel ship he's on, it can have anti-organic purposes. At least SW Rebels showed that anti-droid and anti-vehicle ion rifles can actually mess up organics too...

Hmmm... yes in real life that pom-pom idea might work. New conductive materials with nano-cool features allowing them to be made into really fine but flexible and durable electroconductive strands might mean that tasers and taser-grenades might have preposterous "party streamer" pom-pom attack modes! That would be horrible, like getting snared by jellyfish tentacles.

[Korto]

Huh, I was thinking something sort of similar; a grenade filled with electrostatically charged metal dust. The dust is held against its mutual repulsion by the shell, until its cracked by a small explosive charge or something, at which point all the dust goes FOOF in all directions, adhering by induced charge to anything in the area, and causing powerful earthing shocks.
The shell would need to be able to insulate the electric field from the outside until it breaks. It might also be that the shrapnel from the breaking shell would be more dangerous than the chaged dust. Electrostatic forces can be pretty strong.

OK, mine probably breaks physics more than Patrick's, but hey, it's an idea.

[Sea Skimmer]

Okay, this is really for a Star Wars RP but here goes, since I want something that can be sort of believably technobabbled. Is there any kind of gas or aerosol or even sufficiently fine particles that can create a not-so-persistent but not-instantaneously-dissipating cloud that can conduct electricity? Possibly for non-lethal incapacitory purposes?

Probably, but it will also probably also be a cancer bomb as I am hard pressed to think of a good conductor that wouldn't cause problems. That non lethal thing is rather vital; are we allowed to kill a lot of people and start a lot of fires or not? What is the actual end goal?

Also if you want a cloud that forms rapidly and lasts long enough to be useful and has a reliable shape your going to need some kind of bursting charge to dispense the payload, which will be violent. Flashbangs are already lethal at point blank range to the head or torso, so you got to compete with that and also just throwing a damn concussion grenade at the enemy instead of a frag grenade if killing some people but not all people is acceptable.

Also keep in mind making non electrically conductive clothing is entirely viable, and military uniforms in SW might be that way already. Fully insulating the body requires a mask and seals, but against a low power electrical weapon just covering over the torso and limbs + insulated boots should provide some protection. So again, design options depend on the actual goal.

One might also consider chemical weapons, depending on the goal and level of jackassery allowed. Vomiting agents aren't friendly things but they can be very effective if some lethal effect is allowable, and for bonus they make it absurdly hard for the enemy to keep a gas mask on if exposed before donning. That was largely the point. Vomiting agent makes enemy troops vulnerable to much more lethal effects, or being arrested for smoking pot, or whatever.

Whatever happened to that UV-laser air-ionizing wireless taser ray gun thing?

As I recall though it's been years, due to an advanced enemy countermeasure called 'wind' as noted above, and this 'wind' constantly blowing more mass into the laser beam effective range of that idea only proved to be something like 10 meters (within wired taser range plausibly) before you had to make the laser and electrical pulses so powerful it wasn't going to be non lethal on any reliable basis. That's a huge problem with any concept relying on a non wired conductor, since the conductivity of the air itself varies. But this led into the taser projectile idea.

In game I want to make an area-effect ion charge grenade, like overcharged power packs + gas + small explosive to disperse gas. I can of course just make shit up, some spacey "tibanna gas that's not superheated into blaster-plasma can still conduct ionics" sort of thing. But... yeah. I want something sorta realistic.

If you have Starwars tech and you want a non lethal weapon then an idea and some hardware already exists for very small self contained taser projectiles. Nothing would stop you from bundling these into a grenade given Star Wars's superior energy density (battery is your main limit today) and just throwing that at people. Though you've got to keep velocity down to avoid killing people, and have enough balls to ensure a reliable radius of effect, and in Star Wars you have that BONUS PROBLEM of radically different forms of aliens you might want to use it against. An electrical waveform that incapacitates one species might prove utterly lethal to another.

Failing that, how about a pom-pom grenade? The activated grenade bursts, expelling a cloud of whisker-thin, lightweight conductive filaments with a consistency and mechanical strength like that of cotton candy.

That might work, but avoiding lung injury unlikely.

Huh, I was thinking something sort of similar; a grenade filled with electrostatically charged metal dust.

Seems to me like you'd need an awful lot of dust to make that work, making it a certain lung nuking bomb, and just not having much radius of effect otherwise. Even if the dust itself was harmless in chemical terms it's still...inhaling dust. This could be fatal in one breath if its thick enough.

Electrostatic based dispersion is an interesting idea though. Also thinking on it a grenade which air bursts but orients down only (its not like it can't be guided damnit, Star Wars has been rendered rather dated on what droid tech/micro UAVs could do) might be able to use some kind of tiny railgun like device for dispersion and deploy a tiny drogue chute to reduce probability of the grenade shell causing fatal head wounds.

[Zixinus]

A thought: have you considered instead of gas, some sort of goo? Maybe non-Newtonian? That explosive doesn't explode regularly but spreads goo in a relatively wide area and degrades with air.

[Shroom Man 777]

A thought: have you considered instead of gas, some sort of goo? Maybe non-Newtonian? That explosive doesn't explode regularly but spreads goo in a relatively wide area and degrades with air.

Hurm thanks for the idea. I was thinking of some shenenigans involving liquid plastoid (or whatever space-adhesives, plastic cement or epoxy equivalent SW has) and some gas-based explosive dispersion thing.

[Khaat]

How about just "charged goo" grenade? A binary compound that generates a charge when mixed (on any surface it strikes)?

[Zixinus]

Another idea: layers of sticky, floaty wires that shoot out that is so light and non-dense that it barely drops in the air. Like a little sea urchin with very long spines.

[Shroom Man 777]

Conductive spider-silk-like strands or conductive lamprey-mucus snot strands! Electro-sniveling!

[Sea Skimmer]

https://www.google.com/patents/US8981261

So this isn't exactly what you were asking for but I randomly just saw it, and its, actually pretty damn related if you want a plasma grenade type anything. Because Boeing got enough win points together to patent a method for using a laser, microwave beam or plain electrical arc flash to target and counter enemy EXPLOSIONS by launching a vaporized bolt of plasma back at them. Which should give an idea as to how powerful some kind of air ionizing blast is, powerful enough that if you could ever make this work it really could considerably muffle an explosive shockwave before it hit you. Which means its will also plonk dead people at close range by explosively punching them in the everywhere.

[Shroom Man 777]

Wait... "patent" can mean all sorts of things. There are patents for all sorts of kooky woo-woo pseudo-cold fusiony stuff. But this one's filed by Boeing...

[The_Saint]

By my understanding of the Boeing concept: this magic voodoo works in theory on paper but they've never managed to get any form of prototype or technology demonstration to work (if they've even tried)

[Sea Skimmer]

Yes this is patent for boosting stock price not building anything. The problem for actually making it work is the incredibly high energy density you'd need out of the system, without self destructing. It can't cancel out an explosive blast very much without exerting explosive like energy density.

But hey that electric armor that was all the internet rage of ~2005, and vaporizes RPG warhead jets has actually panned out and is now service ready technology with standardized panels. It's just no vehicle has yet used it operationally. So weird things can work.

[The_Saint]

...
But hey that electric armor that was all the internet rage of ~2005, and vaporizes RPG warhead jets has actually panned out and is now service ready technology with standardized panels. It's just no vehicle has yet used it operationally. So weird things can work.

Really? I thought that had died a quiet death after proving 'not-really-combat-feasible'.

[Sea Skimmer]

Even at the time of those decade reports they'd already proved it works in multi shot live fire trials, the issue really was and remains cost, its not cheap and a major job to install, but its much lighter then any other solution for making the flank of a vehicle proof against RPG-7s.

The problem is among all US Army vehicles only the new MRAP type vehicles can easily mount a bigger generator to power it, and MRAPs aren't much use against Russia, nor is the existing model of electric armor much use against heavy ATGM warheads or 30mm cannon fire on heavy force vehicles. THat means other solutions are going to end up being favored for armor upgrades, the Bradley being in need of a total revamp since it's never going to get replaced in a useful timescale, and every idea ever being pushed for M1A3.

So like many ideas it's been perfected just in time to no longer be useful at the moment, if the US had been fighting Islamic State on the ground more I suspect SOCOM would have managed to get some MRAPs fielded with it by now.

A while ago BTW I found references that the electric armor's actual R&D date stems from about 1990, and probably came out of SDI research at some point. Which makes sense in hindsight, imagine secret electric armor on a spacecraft whipple shield that vaporizes incoming debris to negate communist hypervelocity steel shrapnel...ect.

[Cykeisme]

I know this is SLAM, but the OP does specify that the question is to make a plausible nonlethal weapon for a Star Wars RP.

Doesn't Star Wars have some "stun setting" on blasters that someone renders someone unconscious reliably without killing them, like the stormies used on Leia right at the start of Ep4?
Whatever the hell it is the stun setting shoots, I'm pretty sure it'll be easy to engineer a throwable device that shoots those stun rays out in every direction.

As to the question itself, this being SLAM, I think the realistic throwable taser that shoots lightweight conductive wires in all directions sounds about right.

Conductive spider-silk-like strands or conductive lamprey-mucus snot strands! Electro-sniveling!

..imagine secret electric armor on a spacecraft whipple shield that vaporizes incoming debris to negate communist hypervelocity steel shrapnel

You guys have this shit down to an art, I have no idea how you do it.

[Sea Skimmer]

I know this is SLAM, but the OP does specify that the question is to make a plausible nonlethal weapon for a Star Wars RP.

Doesn't Star Wars have some "stun setting" on blasters that someone renders someone unconscious reliably without killing them, like the stormies used on Leia right at the start of Ep4?
Whatever the hell it is the stun setting shoots, I'm pretty sure it'll be easy to engineer a throwable device that shoots those stun rays out in every direction.

Yeah, but it might end up fairly big and hard to throw. It may require geometry which does not scale down. That was why I didn't consider it earlier, also cause Shroom wanted electric, otherwise that microwave active denial system (which can be notionally scaled down in physics, just not at all with RL tech) mounted on your weapon, plus a laser blinder, would totally be the way to go. It won't work on anyone electrically insulated, but nor would any kind of taser. Also unlike a taser microwaves can penetrate glass into rooms and such.

You guys have this shit down to an art, I have no idea how you do it.

Ha, well really its just connecting the dots, in both cases. The result will be better the more and crazier things you know certainly. The other thing is just always remember, whatever people do, other people will try to come up with countermeasures too.

[Cykeisme]

Ha, well really its just connecting the dots, in both cases. The result will be better the more and crazier things you know certainly. The other thing is just always remember, whatever people do, other people will try to come up with countermeasures too.

I was referring both to the interesting innovative application of scientific principles, as much as i meant the irreverent humor
Never fails to get a laugh outta me.