ShockRounds

[Linwood]

Came across this in a new technology e-newsletter this morning. The technology looks interesting, although apparently no one's yet made these rounds in production. Here's the web site:
http://www.shockrounds.com/


Anyone out there know more about this? And any thoughts on appropriate Traveller stats -- assuming, of course, that the idea actually works??

 

[Anthony]

It looks grossly unlikely to work. The only way to have a 'shock' bullet that has an effect area larger than its own size (the distance between positive and negative anodes) would be a very powerful electrostatic charge, which would be extremely unpleasant for the person firing the weapon, and not especially safe for the target.

 

[mike wightman]

Negative anode???????

It's called a cathode.

 

[Straybow]

Anthony, the bullet derives its shock through piezo-electric effect. No electrodes necessary.

The question is, can PZE generate sufficient voltage to do the trick? A "stun gun" gets many charges from a pair of 9-volt batteries, but also requires a coil to ramp the voltage up by a factor of many thousands.

 

[Andrew Boulton]

Interesting idea, but that seems to be all it is at the moment.

 

[Anthony]

Originally posted by Straybow:
Anthony, the bullet derives its shock through piezo-electric effect. No electrodes necessary.

The piezo-electric effect doesn't magically create a charge from nowhere, it just causes a charge separation, producing positive and negative anodes. There's nothing you can do with a current produced by the piezo-electric effect that you can't also do with another sort of battery capable of comparable power output.

Not sure of the limits of piezo-electric devices, so this might be more efficient than directly sending a battery downrange (though the 10-50 joules required for an effective stunner are not especially hard to get out of a battery either), but you still need a reasonable separation between the positive and negative anodes, and I think stunners need more than a microsecond of current. A specially designed 37mm grenade might be able to work, but no way could a regular bullet work.

 

[Straybow]

Most bullets are made of metal, and last I checked, a chunk of metal serves as a pretty good electrode. Even lead, like the battery terminal connectors on many cars (so chosen because lead is non-sparking).

Given that a decent pistol round has 500+ J KE, getting 50 J out of that shouldn't be hard.

Obviously there are some nit-picky technical details to work out. But we're playing Traveller, and we can say they figured that out ages ago.

 

[Anthony]

The problem isn't with making a conductive bullet -- that's easy. The problem is that the current you create runs from one electrode to the other -- and if the electrodes are only half an inch apart, most of the current is only going through around half an inch of flesh, and the net effect on the target is minimal.

An effective stun gun involves electrodes more than an inch apart apart, and requires several seconds of contact to get reliable incapacitation (half a second or so for even basic effect). Neither of these requirements can be matched by a bullet. An electrostatic device can incapacitate in a much shorter time, but an incapacitating electrostatic shock has a pretty good chance of killing the target outright, which means it fails in its purpose as a stun weapon.

 

[mike wightman]

As for killing the target outright, the bullet version still causes the usual wound effects of a round of that calibre. It's not meant to be non-lethal, but to be instantly incapacitating. This is to avoid those situations where a gunman can be shot and wounded, sometimes to mortal effect, only to continue fighting for several minutes and putting friendly lives at risk.
That's how I read it.