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Comment by dmurray | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

Yeah, you might have something there.

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.

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