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A long time ago, in an engineering project far, far away, I had occasion to help on some

death rate designs. Unfortunately, the prototype was destroyed by militant protesters and the two gentlemen running the

show had a falling out, but I remain optimistic about future attempts to build death rays and

the potential peaceful purposes for people's prosperity. So it's another sci-fi Sunday here on Science and Futurism with Isaac Arthur, and I am your

aforementioned host, Isaac Arthur.

On this show we mostly focus on future technologies under known science, but once a month

we like to let our hair down and put our Vulcan ears on and dip a bit deeper into

science fiction concepts.

Today we'll be looking at the classic death ray, what it is, why you might want it,

and if such thing is possible.

Now as to why you might want it, while a death ray is obviously useful to any supervillain looking

to upgrade their toolbox, the thing we always have to keep in mind is that weapons and

tools tend to be interchangeable, swords to plowshares and so on.

Even variations of death rays that literally just kill someone with no outside damage

have peaceful applications, like potentially being able to recalibrate

to kill something specific like a virus or microorganism, while the classic giant laser

...