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Fire the beam weapons! A man has been sentenced to 30 years in prison over his dream of a novel "weapon of mass destruction":
A 52-year-old industrial mechanic who was the first person in the U.S. convicted of trying to produce a weapon of mass destruction under a 2004 law intended to stop terrorists from using radiation-dispersing "dirty bombs" was sentenced Monday to 30 years in prison followed by a lifetime of supervised release.
Glendon Scott Crawford, of Galway in upstate New York, planned to kill Muslims because of their religion as well as other people whose political and social beliefs he disagreed with, U.S. Attorney Richard Hartunian said. "This is a classic case of domestic terrorism," Hartunian said after Crawford's sentencing by U.S. District Judge Gary L. Sharpe.
Investigators began tracking Crawford in 2012 after he approached two local Jewish groups with his idea for how they could defeat their enemies using a mobile X-ray weapon. Prosecutors said Crawford also sought support for the device in 2013 from a Ku Klux Klan grand wizard in North Carolina who was an FBI informant.
Also at NBC New York. Here's a story about Glendon Crawford and his friend Eric Feight being charged back in 2013.
The moral of this story? Trust no one and do it yourself.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by LoRdTAW on Thursday January 19 2017, @12:02AM
It sounds so impractical that I can't see it ever becoming an effective portable stealth weapon. Attenuation through air at any large distance would mean power output would have to be pretty high. Higher output power requires more input power draining batteries or requiring mains AC power. Not sure of the output radiation pattern, I'd assume it's not directional meaning more power drop off. And how was he going to dose people? Tell them to stand still? You couldn't get that much radiation through a building wall without high powers.
This guy is the Rube Goldberg of domestic terrorism.
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Thursday January 19 2017, @01:39AM
Masquerade as an AC/heater guy and install them in ductwork in mosques or something? It's about the only place I can think of that the hum would go unnoticed. You could then run the wires long the duct to get at the mains. I have no idea what amount of power you'd need though. I don't know a lot about xrays, but this is probably one of those inverse square law things right? If so, maybe he should have been thinking about ruining his enemies through causing them large amounts of power consumption instead.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @05:24PM
Why would you use x-rays when microwaves work much better?
High intensity 433-900mhz microwave transmitters, for a satellite uplink, radar, or industrial microwave should be more than powerful enough to get through a wall of a nearby building and could cause delayed physical injury and death after you had departed the scene of the crime. On the other hand, the FCC should have no problem noticing the huge amount of white noise your transmissions would cause at power levels great enough to kill a human. But if you wanted to make a 'death ray', microwaves make a hell of a lot more sense than X-rays and could actually do what was advertised. Proof: Story from an ex-microwave tech for the army who had two buddies die after sitting next to a portable low frequency microwave transmitter or portable ground radar unit which turned out to have been powered on. They finished lunch, complained about feeling warm, got taken to the medic and proceeded to cook from the inside out. Apparently the heat caused by the microwaves took a while to spread out, and caused a cascade of organ failures, the brain, I assume, being the most critical of those.
Two other often overlooked details: Lasers were an evolution of Masers (Microwave Lasers), and these specific kinds of directed energy weapons have been banned by the Geneva conventions exactly BECAUSE they understand how they work and what a horrible form of death it is.
Having said all that, given this guy's level of crazy, it sounds like he should probably be in an mental hospital getting treatment rather than locked up in GP with people who will either want to murder him, or help him achieve the goal.