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Comment by epolanski | Hacker News Reader

Serious question, what if instead of pointing it to drones it was pointed to organic flesh? Wouldn't that microwave burst the water contained in someone's body?

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Water has a pretty high heat capacity. Takes a lot more energy to kill a person this way than a drone swarm. For instance, assuming it’s about 20,000Watts effectively focused on one person, it’d take about an entire minute before you manage to increase body temperature by 3 degrees. Versus like a second to knock a drone out of the sky.

The question is, how much can you focus it? It would be enough to boil one vessel in the brain, to kill someone.

Not at all easily. Blood pumps quickly through the brain and back through the torso, quickly distributing heat. And probably the first thing a target would do when feeling heat would be to protect their head.

Bullets are more effective against flesh.

contrary to popular belief microwaves don't cook from the inside out. if you are getting a vessel in the brain to boil you have just fried their face like a egg

There is a non-lethal version of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Denial_System

It's hard to know exactly how much energy this is pumping out and how focused the beam is, but suffice to say anyone in the way might start to boil.

Yeah that's why the microwave spectrum is unlicensed. It's not supposed to be used and blasted on humans.

that already is a weapon. as an example, they believe a low power version is what was used in havana.

Came to say this. It’s not a big mystery like the news keeps saying it is. How can one defend against this?

Tinfoil hat lining

Please make a tinfoil hat and cook it in your microwave and let us know how it goes.

The latest I heard about Havana is they believe that to not be the case any more. There are however crowd control versions for anti-riot purposes. They induce a burning feeling on the skin without permanent damage, supposedly.

I wonder who is doing the studies to prove no long term harm.

How would non-ionizing radiation that doesn't cause an acute injury result in long term harm? I would assume that you would need to propose a mechanism for it to happen, rather than try and prove a negative.

heat induced denaturing of proteins?

It is lower frequency than visible light, so, of course burning things is harmful but we’re not talking about ionizing radiation.

well if is actually heating the skin it could denature proteins? that can happen at a little 105 degree F. your body operates in the mid 90s naturally if its hot out it wouldn't take much added energy to push you over the limit.

EDIT

a quick wikipedai search says it can heat the skin to 111 degree F so yeah it could easily do damage.

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