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Author: Epiblast

Apr 1st 2009 at 1:10:06 AM

@Dante668:  I'm thinking of stuff that shoots electricity across a sizable gap of air at an object that shows no sign of being charged.  Note that a taser makes contact with the target at two points and sets up a current between those points.

@FrodoGoofballCoTV:  Tesla's particle beam weapon is very interesting, although I note that while it uses electricity to accelerate them it actually ends up firing neutral atoms at the target; they do damage with kinetic energy rather than electric shock.  The electrolaser is a bit closer, as it actually does damage via electric shock.

It does seem like I was overly cut-and-dried about the differences between fictional versus real electrical weapons in the initial post, as worded.  I recognize that, in theory, there are ways to make a weapon based around generating an electrical current through air or a similarly heavily resisting medium to damage a target.  This trope is mainly about the idea that lightning is a "thing" that you can shoot at objects and doesn't behave all that differently from a bullet, an arrow, or a shell; at its margins it may blend into stuff with a stronger basis in real physics ([[MohsScaleOfSciFiHardness or internally consistent, well-defined fictional physics that doesn't redefine how electricity works]]) like the electrolaser or the Wunderland Treatymaker, although these are not core examples of the trope.