Hardcore Electronic Realities
-----------------------------

Seen 'em in movies, always wanted one... Maybe you watched
Catwoman use a Stun Gun in a recent flick. Personal lightening tech
on a 9v battery. Just happens that Nova Technologies of Austin, TX
holds patent rights to stuns, producing the most popular models.

Meeting with Maurie Wagner, Nova's director of legal affairs, we
role-play through an attack scenario. Walking past me on a sidewalk,
Maurie grabs, executes a choke-hold at a random moment. My test is
to spray mace in defense... Even with West Point-honed reactions and
moves, I'm either too early or too late to counter-attack. Too early
means no chance to articulate "for cause" and my civilian ass lands in
jail. Too late means I mace both of us. A knife or firearm would be the
same story. Local Aikido maven, Tom Parish, sums my fate with
quasi-oriental detachment: "Staying focused on your balance,
dropping the other person to the ground may be your only choice."
Just like the old saying, you can throw some of the people some of the
time, but...

 Hacker Fashion Accessories

OK, I'm sold. True, a 9mm automatic feels solid to fire, but is
practically - generally - useless. I not only want to survive an assailant,
I wanna survive cops who arrive on the scene and the judge
afterwards, no less. Besides, I'd get busted (felony) for having a
firearm in too many places. Most attacks initiate within 2 ft of the
victim, most attacks are unarmed. Shit, drawing blood against an
unarmed attack is a crime, electronic stun isn't. Simple. Nova's
XR-5000 Stun Gun tech is the best "defensive" alternative around.

The stun is a black ABS plastic unit... looks like any VCR remote
controller, but with a single, grim button. Local gun shops sells stuns
for about $100, depending on battery options - more like buying a
notebook PC than a weapon. No license required. Inside, the device
has one small, single-layer printed circuit board with relay, a few
resistors and the most enormous capacitor this side of RShack
Hall-o-Fame. Elegant, durable design. My model uses 9v NiCad or
alkaline for many, many discharges. Lithium battery option
guarantees a 2 year charge. My softpack brief now features all the
essentials: checkbook, passport, 386 notebook, 88 Mb Syquest
backups, several hair-ties and an XR-5000 stun.

 The Electrode & The Damage Done

Just like in the PIL song, "Anger is an energy." 40-45 Kvolts, 3-4
milliamp equiv, arc out in 17-22 pulses/sec. You've seen electronic
pain relief units - used for chronic back pain and elderly care? TENS
Tech - electrode derm patches intercept pain neurosignals from
reaching the brain... Nova's stun tech work like that, in reverse: it
stops muscle control signals between cerebellum and major body
muscles. I check with a local neurophysiologist - yeh, think of
jamming all xmit inside your muscle feedback loop. A shallow arc
forms under the skin between the stun's contact trodes, the arc follows
a path of least resistance. Unless your target is made of ceramic,
there's no chance of short circuiting the cardiac region. Nice and safe.
95% of the population collapses during a 3 sec burst. Remaining 5%
reacts slower: extremely obese persons, people who work around high
voltage, etc., appear to have a limited tolerance.

I check independent test reports... 1 mA starts an electro-Huxley
"threshold of perception", 5 mA produces harmless let-go stimulus, eg.
electric fences. You've gotta suck up double-digit mA for a few secs
before ventricular fibrillation, ie. death. So Nova's 3-4 mA range is
more than a tickle, but much less than fatal. In ten years of
production, use in over 1K PD's across Gaia, numerous academic
studies, Medline searches, etc., no serious injuries have been reported.
Nova has never even needed to revise their original, UL approved
design. Nice Q/A.

 Physical Reality Hacking

A 3 sec train of damped, sinusoidal pulses also has VR implications...
"I've been taken down over 30 times" sez Maurie. "You feel an electric
charge that's not painful, but not pleasant. In your mind you want to
get away from the device... You think you're moving away." On tape,
police training demonstrates this reality warp. An officer gets stunned,
goes down fast and hard. After coming back up, he SWEARS he
jumped six feet away from the stun, but other officers just giggle in
response.

Psychiatrist and neuro-researcher Lawrence Sergic remarks on this
phenom: "The cerebellem acts as a 'motion computer' to calc an
evasive plan... starts to implement the plan, sends feedback to the
cortex, but motor system cannot act." Cortical fake-out. "Unlike being
paralyzed, this is similar to 'phantom pain' experienced by amputees...
Peripheral nervous system can't return feedback, permiting the person
a chance to manufacture a sensory experience." Stun guns achieve
virtual reality's exhaulted "suspension of disbelief", albeit at high
personal cost.

Another score on the reality hacking side is Fear. People distrust
electronics being pointed in their general direction. Maurie, a K9
trainer/officer, laments "I've had suspects ready to go up against my
dog, but yet afraid of the stun!" Shakes his head. I look at a trail of
canine scars on the trainer's arm. Somehow those eager, flesh-renting
teeth promise more damage than any 3 mA, but people strung on an
anger/emotion trip don't think that way...

Whether through fear or function, this technology
INCAPACITATES during an attack, giving you time enough to
create space. The reptilian part of the human brain becomes dominant
during an attack. Instincts. Reptilian neuroware serves, as holographic
mind researcher Carl Pribram sez, "the 4 F's of survival: fleeing,
feeding, fighting and sex." The nice part about a stun is that disabling
current doesn't transfer from attacker to victim... unless you engage
in Carl's 2nd or 4th points. You have a choice after taking down a
target: run or counter-attack. Manufacturer suggests choosing the
better part of valor.

 Tradeoffs

Nova has imitators. Offshore copies tout "higher voltages" which
translate in couch potato minds to "more impact". Maurie scoffs:
"Outside our parameters, a stun only works by hurting, not by
incapacitating. The offensive angle gives users a false sense of
security."  Yeh, as the DIY crowd knows, Sep 86 issue of Radio
Electronics (true street techoids memorize all back issues of RadEl)
featured a 70 Kv stun design - with large bold letters saying "Don't
ever test or use this" circ... There's also a nasty little unit called the
Taser - Rodney King was brought down by an LAPD Taser. Those
have about 68% effectiveness, and work via projectile darts (surgical
removal suggested) with trailing wires... Clearly not "defensive"
weapons and, in the US, only available to police.

Geographics and demographics aren't big issues. Stuns sell
internationally, to a wide populace, maybe with an expected slant
toward seniors, single women. "US is more restrictive than other
places, except maybe Canada." The kinder, gentler fascists of the
North don't consider ANY self-defense legal.

Another point: my pomo-dojo suggests a blending of protein and
electrical potentials. "The goal of budo is victory-over-self. Each day
we're tested with new events our mind sees as fear, confusion," Parish
sez, tempering my techolust for the stun. "Owning one doesn't provide
a solution to being hassled." True, attack defense is an art... "You only
have a few moments to think. Without practice you freeze, panic. The
key is learning how to stay calm and self confident, the images our
minds use to represent these events." OK, how 'bout low-level stun for
VR martial arts training?

 Conclusion

On the electronic frontier, one finds console cowboys, voice mail
squatters, homesteaders in cyberspace. Weapons may be used to
defend virtual territory - some metaphorical, pure data, like Info
America records - some high tech firepower. US courts have proven
a weird point: police are sworn to protect communities, but not sworn
to protect individuals. So next time you get "asked" to fork over a
wallet, password, etc., introduce your assailant to the hardcore
electronic realities of a stun.

Nova Technologies 2120F West Braker Lane Austin, TX 78758 512
832 5591 512 832 0707 fax

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Copyright (c)1992, Paco Xander Nathan. All rights reserved. First
appeared in _Mondo 2000_, issue #8:

Mondo 2000 PO Box 10171 Berkeley, CA 94709-5171 510 845 9018
