Portal Denial System Electrolaser Intruder Zapper

That will keep the fly's out. Where can I get details to build a system?

I give it a seven, I like the beat but it's hard to dance to.

There sure is a larger zap-free zone at the bottom, presumably a space for the body to fall where it won't get zapped over-and-over.

I had this idea quite a few years ago. It's really easy to make a several Megawatt pulsing Nitrogen laser using basically nothing more than the atmosphere. I figured, send a pulse of UV light, ionize the air, then send, say, 30,000 Volts down the ionized path. Might make for the beginnings of a particle beam weapon. Never got around to making it though.

One other thing, I'm thinking that there has to be some sort of aerosol that would de-ionize the path in between and allow one to pass without getting shocked.

How's about leaning an opaque, non-conductive panel up against one side or the other? Heck, a piece of lightweight plastic would might work. In the installation shown, it looks as though the lasers are all located on the same side. Cover them over, and you won't have a conductive path at all. UV lasers powerful enough to ionize the air would probably be powerful enough to eventually punch holes through plastic sheet, but other materials - say, glass-filled epoxy - may fare better.

At any rate, I'd say this system would be trivally easy to defeat.

Actually, air is pretty easy to ionize.

All the better for someone wishing to defeat such a system, since lower-power lasers would suffice and would be less destructive of whatever you placed in front of them.

Will this lead to a new generation (leadless) "stun gun"? What sort of range. Will it be even more dangerous because you get skin cancer as well as dead.

It wouldn't work as a stun gun as-is. You need a return path for the current. Two beams from your stun gun might be one solution; one beam would constitute the return path. The path between the two gun ports in this case would have to be isolated so they wouldn't arc between themselves. I suspect such a stun gun is feasible, but, like I said, you'll need a return path for the current.

Or just use AC.

A.C. is no different in D.C. in requiring a return path. Or perhaps you meant something else?

The return path can be the floor is conductive. On the other hand, if used by an ocean-going vessel (plasma-weapon) the sea makes a nice return path.

The floor, seawater, or some other surface is conductive to D.C. as well. My concern would be my target (as a policeman, in the stun-gun case) standing on some kind of insulating surface that prevented my stunner from working. Or, say he/she wasn't on a conductive surface at all. Say he was a jewel thief hanging by a nylon harness while he hoisted the Crown Jewels out of their case. I'd want a guaranteed return path, and so I'd use two beams. Besides, it'd look cool.

The guaranteed return path is called a .45 caliber slug.

When I was living in Albuquerque, Manzano Weapons Research Lab was developing a laser anti-missile weapon. The idea was to char/score the re-entry vehicle nosecone (the intended targets were ICBMs) so that the charred area would overheat on re-entry and burn up while still high in the atmosphere. They were testing a massive CO₂ gas-flow dynamic laser on a range which had instrument towers spaced every so often. After precisely aligning the optics with low-power lasers, they discovered the whole alignment process was pointless. The beam was ionizing and strongly heating the atmosphere, forcing the beam to wander all over the place, setting brush fires and causing general havoc. Turns out atmospheric CO₂ was absorbing the beam to a large extent. Sometimes the beam would even fork, but never did it strike even one of the instrument probes. It seemed to me then - as now - that this should have more or less been expected from the outset, and that they should have designed for a wavelength having a far smaller atmospheric absorption cross-section. But what does a high-school kid know, yes?

The last strategic laser I heard of was a very large chemical laser that sprayed high-velocity oxygen and iodine vapor together. Gave off a butt-load of X-rays. The mirrored cavity was at the place where the two chemicals interacted and was perpendicular to the chemical flow. ZAP!!! Let me know if you want a picture (diagram).

Sure! I'd especially be interested in their x-ray mirrors. Btw, is this an example of an eximer laser?

In MWRL's CO₂ laser, the gas flow was also perpendicular to the cavity axis. I seem to recall that in their arrangement, they ionized the gas by means of an electric discharge, then passed the ionized gas through a venturi at high speed, forming a shock wave on the outlet side. The beam energy was extracted at this point.

I will clear off my scanner and get you a picture.

No, not an excimer laser. Those guys put a halogen and a noble gas inside the same tube and fry it to create temporary compounds based on the combination of, say, fluorine and argon. Within those temporary molecules, they pump it to create laser light. Just a sec....

ArF excimer = 0.192 μm, pulsed to tens of Watts

KrF excimer = 0.248 μm, pulsed to over 100 Watts average

XeCl excimer = 0.308 μm pulsed to tens of Watts

XeF excimer = 0.351 μm pulsed to tens of Watts

I thought you might be interested in the info above.

"...Let me know if you want a picture (diagram)..."

I do.