Quote:
Originally Posted by Nancy Fulda
I like three stages. Good.
Now I've just got to figure out what kinds of stuff would be involved in freefall combat training. How to shoot your enemy without punching a hole in the ship wall?
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Tasers!
Look at current non-lethal weaponry prototypes; the pain beams, tanglers, foam grenades, etc.
Then up the ante beyond non-lethal levels.
A fast hardening sticky foam grenade to the face can be as lethal as a garrote. Or a direct contact shock-stick with enough amps to kill and not just stun. Would look "cool", too; kinda like a bo staff. Lethal gasses might be part of the toolkit. An inert gas attack in an enclosed space might also do the trick. If you want to get fancier/more speculative; nanites...
The microwave beams in particular are a good choice, methinks, because most space electronics need to be radiation hardened so there is likely a range of beam intensity that will really mess up humans without killing hardened electronics.
Breaking things is easy; selectively breaking the *right* things is a lot harder.
And the skills to properly use these selective weapons in constrained environments would definitely qualify the troops as "elite".
Edit: I forgot the contemporary options -- blowgun/airgun darts loaded with fast-acting poison inducing near instant anaphylactic shock. Rubber pellets coated with a similar contact toxin. Lots of possibilities on the biochem front.