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[Strife26]

Rule of awesome, I always thought. Like How I managed to beat 7 hard computers with three apocalypses and a war miner.

[Leafsnail]

Non lethal lasers are currently banned under international law.  You're allowed to kill or fatally injure someone, but blinding them with a laser is a war crime.

[Yanlin]

Non lethal lasers are currently banned under international law.  You're allowed to kill or fatally injure someone, but blinding them with a laser is a war crime.

That *is* disturbing! How can I help?

[Leafsnail]

The main implication is that if, say, a laser hits a plane, and some of the laser is reflected by the metal of the plane, the reflected bits of laser off could potentially be weak, and blind a random person.  Thus, warcrime.

[Aqizzar]

Score another zing for Yanlin.

I'm pretty sure the warcrime thing actually spawned from using lasers to blind people in firefights.  Generally though, the Geneva Convention nations have all had a serious beef with anything that might somehow cause blindness since the gas weapons of WWI.

[umiman]

The main implication is that if, say, a laser hits a plane, and some of the laser is reflected by the metal of the plane, the reflected bits of laser off could potentially be weak, and blind a random person.  Thus, warcrime.

How would the random person even know he got hit by a blinding laser? And it's not like it would be permanent damage.

[Tormy]

how would a laser bomb work exactly anyway?

Now this is a good question.  What about plasma bombs? 

[Duke 2.0]

The main implication is that if, say, a laser hits a plane, and some of the laser is reflected by the metal of the plane, the reflected bits of laser off could potentially be weak, and blind a random person.  Thus, warcrime.

How would the random person even know he got hit by a blinding laser? And it's not like it would be permanent damage.

1. Agh I can't see!
 2. When dealing with lasers made to melt metals at a range, you have a large magnitude of laser strength that the atmosphere needs to absorb before a laser no longer causes permanent blindness.
 Although lasers made to temporarily blind people would be a good idea when dealing with civilian-dense locations.

 But yes, having been blinded by a cheap laser before I know what it feels like. One would know a laser was involved.

[JoshuaFH]

I'm reminded somewhat of the microwave bomb, which, when dropped, would emit microwaves that would cook every living thing alive within a certain radius.

Any nearby Marshmallow Peep factories are destroyed also.

[Virex]

I'd expect electrolasers to become common weapons long before normal lasers, especialy since an electrolaser's a lot more efficient power-wise. A laser has an efficiency of 10%. An electrolaser's efficiency would probably come close to that of a long piece of electrical wiring.

[umiman]

As a weapon, to make a thunderhead deliver a precise and plausibly deniable lightning strike onto a target from an aircraft; in this case, the aircraft and laser can be compared to a transistor, in that the relatively minor amount of initial input from the laser (base) allows a large amount of energy to flow between the cloud (collector) and the ground (emitter).

:/

I always dreamed of that... summoning a lightning bolt to strike down aircraft...

[Duke 2.0]

 Hell, I've been looking at it for a while because of it's uses for tasers. Imagine being able to shock people without needing to reel back in the cables. Just swap batteries every couple of shocks(As I imagine you would use a hefty capacitor for such a shock).

[Cthulhu]

They already have a taser that doesn't use cables.  It's fired out of an ordinary police-issue shotgun.

Link

[Strife26]

I'll need to get some of those. In case the zombies only die to electricity . . .

[Duke 2.0]

 Except a taser is more civilian-friendly  in the sense that you would rather see a civilian with a taser than a shotgun.