Desert warfare is apparently appropriate. The future? Leeching supplies from nearby planets results a human society with unlimited resources. As humans fight for the remaining precious metals of earth, advanced anti-personal weaponary is developed.
Most of earth has become a sandy wasteland; oceans rising and falling rapidly over thousands of years has taken its toll. Animals no longer survive. Deadly bacteria and vaccine/treatment resistent virii rule the planet. Humans can survive through personal eviroments.
The few remaining powers carry creative weaponry in the battle for resources. The DBG1 is about the size of the original M16. Soldiers scoop sand into the clip and load it up into the gun traditionally. Extreme heat and lighting quick chemical meltdown changes the sand to superheated shards of glass. Fatal range is about 150m, and at that distance there is a 5m coverage circle.-- lolzcakes, Jul 04 2008 Sliver rifle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DorsaiSection on "weapons", near the bottom of the page. [8th of 7, Jul 05 2008] From your Halfbakery page - "Some say i'm charismatic, that i light up the room. they say people notice when i walk in"
I'm noticing. Is this a Halfbakery idea, or an incomplete idea for a movie pitch? There's some spots pretty well glossed over - "extreme heat and lighting quick chemical processes".
Why limit your range and area of coverage, since you're skipping over what you would need to make it happen? Why not "it blows up the world, and it's all over" ?-- normzone, Jul 04 2008 Isn't noticing people's presence a natural thing? Anyways, funny profile page. You don't really explain how this is going to work, but it's a sharp idea.-- daseva, Jul 04 2008 You probably should have thought this out a bit more, but it could be a good idea. Perhaps it could have a battery that can be charged by a solar charger carried by its users and can be plugged into an electrical outlet, which is used in conjunction with some chemical reactions to heat the sand.
It would probably take some time to melt the sand unless the weapon is exceedingly heavy. Perhaps a more practical method would be to have multiple heating chambers, allowing you to prepare a few projectiles at once. You could fire these few shots in quick succesion, then get cover. It should also have a hinged part of the barrel to change the spread of the glass shards based on distance.
[+]-- apocalyps956, Jul 05 2008 why not just use regular lead bullets? or is metal in short supply? even though plenty of material for "chemical processes" is available?-- ServoMan314, Jul 05 2008 Already largely HalfBaked, in the form of the Dorsai "Sliver rifle" <link>-- 8th of 7, Jul 05 2008 random, halfbakery