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Comment by _underfl0w_ | Hacker News Reader

I'm not the only one imagining the danger in misuse of this technology, right? This seems like figurative deity-level power in handheld form if I understand it right. The type that could direct a lightning bolt to hit your neighbor's fancy new electric car, or a nation state could use to target nuclear or power grid infrastructure. I'm sure the accuracy isn't 100% and requires an existing electrical storm but... still.

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> The type that could direct a lightning bolt to hit your neighbor's fancy new electric car, or a nation state could use to target nuclear or power grid infrastructure

No, that is not possible. The idea is to have a tower made out of metal and use a laser attached, inside or nearby to create a heated, ionized path of particles from the cloud to the tower. This path offers a lower resistance to the ground for the electric voltage difference which means that the lightning strike will prefer to safely follow the already ionized channel and hit the tower than to hit some random tree that ends up ablaze and igniting other trees nearby.

It's like taking a helium balloon, attach a grounded metal wire and letting it rise into the midst of the cloud - just with the laser replacing the wire.

Which part of this are you saying is impossible to accomplish in an adversarial situation? Is it that you need to have control of where the laser starts out?

I can imagine a covert operation sneaking in a helium balloon into the enemy's power grid infrastructure, or tying it to his fancy car, even in a situation where you can't do the same with barrels of high explosives.

Surely you could do more damage with a small explosive device than a large helium balloon and some wire, and maybe lightning will strike? The attack you suggest sounds like something a comic book villain might do. It speaks to the imagination but is impractical and inefficient.

All power grid infra is already hardened against lightning strikes because power lines are, trees aside, usually the highest point and thus the best target for lightning.

Usually there is one or two lines at the top that are grounded at each pole to dissipate lightning, and in the event that lightning does hit a power-carrying line there are arc "spikes" at the isolators so that the lightning energy can again dissipate over the masts to the ground safely.

It's certainly possible but, as you say, you'd need tie/attach the laser to whatever of your neighbor's property that you want to effect. You can't do this from afar because the lightning strike is coming toward the laser emitter.

Expect your door to get knocked in soon thereafter.

Unless if you use two connected lasers. One pointing to the cloud and another to the target.

Could the laser be split to strike multiple targets simultaneously? Put a tower like this outside an outpost, when hostiles are spotted create a laser beam to each one then unleash a lightning strike somehow killing them all damn near instantly or at least incapacitating them.

Yeah, you might have something there.

> create a heated, ionized path of particles from the cloud to the tower.

How does this mesh with the "handheld device" the article mentions?

> target nuclear or power grid infrastructure

No nuclear power plant is vulnerable to lightning strikes, and only last-mile power grid infrastructure is really vulnerable to lightning strikes, the rest has redundancy and safety mechanisms that will probably prevent prolonged outtages. Even in underdeveloped places with stuff like overhead last-mile power lines, the damage from lightning strikes is generally nothing major or lasting.

Plus you don't need anything that sophisticated and wait for bad weather. A bunch of guns will do: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalf_sniper_attack

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