The Torture Machine

This machine is evil. This whole article just scared the living bejeezus out of me.

A square transmitter as big as a plasma TV screen is mounted on the back of a Jeep.

When turned on, it emits an invisible, focused beam of radiation – similar to the microwaves in a domestic cooker – that are tuned to a precise frequency to stimulate human nerve endings.

It can throw a wave of agony nearly half a mile.

The agony the Raytheon gun inflicts is probably equal to anything in a torture chamber – these waves are tuned to a frequency exactly designed to stimulate the pain nerves.

I couldn’t hold my finger next to the device for more than a fraction of a second. I could make the pain stop, but what if my finger had been strapped to the machine?

Dr John Wood, a biologist at UCL and an expert in the way the brain perceives pain, is horrified by the new pain weapons.

“They are so obviously useful as torture instruments,” he says.

“It is ethically dubious to say they are useful for crowd control when they will obviously be used by unscrupulous people for torture.”

We use the word “medieval” as shorthand for brutality. The truth is that new technology makes racks look benign.

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