So, the hundreds of millions of people of a certain large country finally got sick of working sixteen hours for a small bowl of carbohydrates a day and decided to accept their country's propaganda that life is better spent waging war against their true capitalist, foreign oppressors than in their factories producing cheap plastic garbage for them.

So the war was well underway and we on this side were all getting pretty lazy and sick of dying for no reason. So we decided to build the lightning gun. Basically the first model worked pretty well. It was a large electronic generator with a gigantic capacitor that fired a large conductive ordianance toward the enemy. The ordinance when first fired would be positively charged and the capacitor would fire an increasingly larger voltage of electricity at it in increments, travelling through the plasmacized atmosphere. The ordinance would stay positive through induction and loss of electrons due to friction of movement.

Eventually when the ordianance reaches the enemy soldiers the Lightning Gun is blasting it with such high voltage, the voltage jumps and electrocutes everyone nearby, while we yell, "make our plastic dollar store junk!"
-- schmendrick, Sep 25 2005

Wireless Plasma-Taser http://www.newscien...rticle.ns?id=dn3749
With an effective range of only seven meters, this brings reinforced meaning to the instruction "Don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes." [jurist, Sep 25 2005]

Capitalism is vindicated with giant tasers? [link]
-- jurist, Sep 25 2005


thanks [jurist], it looks like the invention in link is just to increase stock price.
-- schmendrick, Sep 25 2005


Good, but you might even do better. Create the "Power of the Sun" gun. Then those countries who offend...well, you can just create a pseudo-star of appropriate size (somewhere between a kilometer and 1000 kilometers) to hold above them and threaten them - if they don't behave, lower the star and cook a large part of the country and it's people. (no, it is not a nuclear bomb - those are often unexpected and unfair - this one hangs above as a warning, and you will give notice before you lower it)

Sure there are large issues with: fusion/ gravity/ heat/ brightness/ containment/ environmental damage/ accidents.

But someone in the HB must be smart enough to solve them.
-- sleeka, Sep 25 2005


in the meantime, all the dollars they made are being spent on developing a superior lightning gun that can wipe out whole capitalist oppresor cities.
-- dentworth, Sep 26 2005


Like like like the Power of the Sun Gun, and that mean sunset.
-- bungston, Sep 26 2005


Agree with [UB], this idea is full of holes, plus I didn't enjoy the clumsy rant presumably targeting China [-].
-- DocBrown, Sep 26 2005


[UB] Not quite. Lightning has pretty high voltages, but the discharge only last a few microseconds. If it contained as much energy as you state, every thunderstorm would leave craters from the lightning strikes, just from the sheer amount of energy released. Also, the energy for it is stored in thunderclouds. How much energy can you store in some mist and snowflakes?
-- nietsch, Sep 26 2005


thank you for your patronage.
-- schmendrick, Sep 26 2005



random, halfbakery