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    Wraith "stunner" seems like it could kill people real easily

    Ok so I caught 38 minutes a little while ago on Tv again and noticed something I didn't notice before. The Wraith goons at the begining of the episode damage a puddle jumper with stunner blasts.

    This is actually what causes the pod to stick open and create the whole plot for the episode.

    Thinking back to some more recent episodes it also seems like there's other cases of stunners doing something other than stunning. Look at Sateda for one where stunner blasts damage wooden boxes, or the flashbacks from the same episode where what looks like stunner blasts kill Ronon's squadmates.

    If you look back to early season 1's "suspicion you'll also see McKay take a stunner in the face which prompts Beckett to talk a bit about how it works.

    BECKETT: Your body experienced a full overload to its sensory and motor nervous system.

    BECKETT (to Sheppard): It's really quite fascinating, actually. The Wraith weapon impedes the firing of neurons that enable the necessary ...

    BECKETT: The paralysis is only temporary. Don't worry, Rodney. You'll be up and about in no time. (To Sheppard) Bloody good thing that Wraith weapon is only designed to incapacitate or he'd be dead.
    He says it's only designed to incapacite, but from the description he gives of how it actually works it seems like it would be ridiculously easy to make it kill someone.

    It overloads the human nervous system and stops neurons from firing, but only in such a delicate and selective way as to immobilize the person as opposed to causing massive irrepairable brain damage or stopping hearts and other organ functions, all of which rely on the nervous system's connection to the brain to operate.

    This of course is on top of the fact that it seems to be able to cause damage to a puddlejumper, which is obviously harder than McKay's face.

    So I'm thinking here that Wraith stunners probably have some sort of power level setting or a variety of "modes" like a fire selector on a modern assault rifle. The stun mode is used most often, and probably represents the default setting, but there seems to be a way to make your stunner damage inanimate objects to. I also find it likely that the portion of the weapon that plays with the nervous system could be used to kill. It's just so extrodinarily difficult to make it "only" stun someone that way, that making it kill them through the same method would be trivial by comparison.

    #2
    Originally posted by Ouroboros View Post
    Ok so I caught 38 minutes a little while ago on Tv again and noticed something I didn't notice before. The Wraith goons at the begining of the episode damage a puddle jumper with stunner blasts.

    This is actually what causes the pod to stick open and create the whole plot for the episode.

    Thinking back to some more recent episodes it also seems like there's other cases of stunners doing something other than stunning. Look at Sateda for one where stunner blasts damage wooden boxes, or the flashbacks from the same episode where what looks like stunner blasts kill Ronon's squadmates.

    If you look back to early season 1's "suspicion you'll also see McKay take a stunner in the face which prompts Beckett to talk a bit about how it works.



    He says it's only designed to incapacite, but from the description he gives of how it actually works it seems like it would be ridiculously easy to make it kill someone.

    It overloads the human nervous system and stops neurons from firing, but only in such a delicate and selective way as to immobilize the person as opposed to causing massive irrepairable brain damage or stopping hearts and other organ functions, all of which rely on the nervous system's connection to the brain to operate.

    This of course is on top of the fact that it seems to be able to cause damage to a puddlejumper, which is obviously harder than McKay's face.

    So I'm thinking here that Wraith stunners probably have some sort of power level setting or a variety of "modes" like a fire selector on a modern assault rifle. The stun mode is used most often, and probably represents the default setting, but there seems to be a way to make your stunner damage inanimate objects to. I also find it likely that the portion of the weapon that plays with the nervous system could be used to kill. It's just so extrodinarily difficult to make it "only" stun someone that way, that making it kill them through the same method would be trivial by comparison.
    deffinately i think it's highly likely that the Wraith could turn up the power on their weapons to do more damage, and by looking at the basic principles of the Weapon it wouldn't be hard to simply fry the nervous system
    Robert Jastrow (self-proclaimed agnostic): "For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."

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      #3
      Of course it would be easy to kill someone with a Wraith weapon, the rifles have those big spikes on the back, and you could pistol whip somebody to death with smaller ones. Seriously though, I see what your saying that it would be really easy to kill someone with it. I always figured it worked like a taser, but it's possible it somehow disrupts the peripheral nervous system while leaving the central nervous system alone. There's a drug called Curare which stuns by blocking the receptors for acetylcholine, the neurochemical which makes muscles contract, it leaves the heart beating but the muscles that work the lungs stop functioning so victims asphyxiate. Perhaps that's how the stunners work, if their effect was more short term than Curare the victims would be incapacitated but not have enough time to choke.
      All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing-Edmund Burke

      The question which once haunted my being has been answered. The future is not fixed, and my choices are my own... and yet, how ironic! For I now find, I have no choice at all! I am warrior... let the battle be joined.-Dinobot-Code of Hero

      Don't blame me, I voted Cthulhu

      Comment


        #4
        Originally posted by jds1982 View Post
        Of course it would be easy to kill someone with a Wraith weapon, the rifles have those big spikes on the back, and you could pistol whip somebody to death with smaller ones. Seriously though, I see what your saying that it would be really easy to kill someone with it. I always figured it worked like a taser, but it's possible it somehow disrupts the peripheral nervous system while leaving the central nervous system alone. There's a drug called Curare which stuns by blocking the receptors for acetylcholine, the neurochemical which makes muscles contract, it leaves the heart beating but the muscles that work the lungs stop functioning so victims asphyxiate. Perhaps that's how the stunners work, if their effect was more short term than Curare the victims would be incapacitated but not have enough time to choke.
        There's also the physical damage component that it can apparently have to consider to. If it can mess up a jumper flight pod chances are it's a least as powerful as a modern rifle/shotgun on some settings.

        If you take that with the potential for neurological mayhem it starts to look like a freakishly lethal weapon, something that would have a very low probablity of survival even from something normally less threatening like a limb hit.

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          #5
          Well, we're talking about an energy weapon here. Maybe the Wraith designed it so that, when hitting inanimate objects, it does physical damage, but merely incapacitates humans or biological things (for future feeding).

          I don't see why not. Either that, or there are multiple settings.

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            #6
            Originally posted by PG15 View Post
            Well, we're talking about an energy weapon here. Maybe the Wraith designed it so that, when hitting inanimate objects, it does physical damage, but merely incapacitates humans or biological things (for future feeding).

            I don't see why not. Either that, or there are multiple settings.
            I gotta go with multiple settings, it seems like the easiest explanation. It begs the question of whether hive weapons can be dialed back as well. It'd be useful for them if they could, they could stun an entire city from orbit for easier culling.
            All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing-Edmund Burke

            The question which once haunted my being has been answered. The future is not fixed, and my choices are my own... and yet, how ironic! For I now find, I have no choice at all! I am warrior... let the battle be joined.-Dinobot-Code of Hero

            Don't blame me, I voted Cthulhu

            Comment


              #7
              i reckon its power selecter at the side on those really fat wraith stunners the yellow tube


              and hasnt anyone noticed that when the new streanlined thinner wraith blasters were introduced(i think it was episode ten od season 2 atlantis)
              that no other wraith carry the the big blasters just those thin long stunners
              sigpic

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                #8
                Maybe the stunner disables all the nerves except those that go to the medula oblongata?
                Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering-Yoda
                The more bizzare a thing, the less mysterious it proves to be-Sherlock Holmes
                I reject your reality and substitute my own-Adam Savage
                A person is smart. People are stupid, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it-Agent Kay
                That is the exploration that awaits you�not mapping stars and studying nebulae, but charting the unknown possibilities of existence-Q
                Church: I learned a very valuable lesson in my travels, Tucker. No matter how bad things might seem...
                Caboose: They could be worse?
                Church: Nope, no matter how bad they seem, they can't be any better, and they can't be any worse, because that's the way things f***ing are, and you better get used to it Nancy. Quit-yer-b****ing.

                If you smoke, you choke. If you choke, you're dead. 'Nuff said.

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                  #9
                  I don't really see how it would be able to tell the difference between one set of neurons and another but then again it's already hugely technowanky so I suppose it's possible.

                  Leaving aside the nervous system part there's also the physical damage part to consider. If it can damage a puddlejumper it seems like it would be more than capable of blowing a hole in someone. Even granting that a PJ is a pretty fragile ship at times it's not going to be as fragile as human tissue.

                  I just thought of something else to. Remember in Sateda when they went back to that villiage and saw that the Wraith had killed everyone there. Well, how? You could say they did it with darts I suppose but I think some of the dead people were still indoors and the place didn't really seem shot up enough to have survived a bunch of dart strafing runs.

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                    #10
                    the wraith probably make two types of weapons in the same model, one designed to kill the other to stun. The stunner is probably the most common model.
                    Their white flags are no match to our guns!!

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                      #11
                      If you stun a person enough times, their heart will stop beating.

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Originally posted by IcyNeko View Post
                        If you stun a person enough times, their heart will stop beating.
                        we've seen the stunners kill single shot in sateda and that stil doesn't account for physical damage
                        Robert Jastrow (self-proclaimed agnostic): "For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."

                        Comment


                          #13
                          Well if my theory was right and the stunners work in the same way that curare works on the nervous system, than a really heavy stun could have left them choking on their own breath. It's also possible that the stunner rifles have a different weapon in addition to the stunner, kind of like a grenade launcher attached to an assault rifle. Just to be clear I do not think it's an actual grenade launcher I was only making a comparison between two mated weapons that I know about.
                          All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing-Edmund Burke

                          The question which once haunted my being has been answered. The future is not fixed, and my choices are my own... and yet, how ironic! For I now find, I have no choice at all! I am warrior... let the battle be joined.-Dinobot-Code of Hero

                          Don't blame me, I voted Cthulhu

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Originally posted by Buba uognarf View Post
                            we've seen the stunners kill single shot in sateda and that stil doesn't account for physical damage
                            actually when you watch it its more like a pulse of blue plasma that hit the men not a stun thing, it ate away at the uniform and left the guy with a smoking impact wound. The wraith probably assess the situation and choose if its worth the risk to use lethal weapons or go in with stunners.
                            Their white flags are no match to our guns!!

                            Comment


                              #15
                              Originally posted by jds1982 View Post
                              It's also possible that the stunner rifles have a different weapon in addition to the stunner, kind of like a grenade launcher attached to an assault rifle. Just to be clear I do not think it's an actual grenade launcher I was only making a comparison between two mated weapons that I know about.
                              This is pretty much what I'm thinking with the exception that it's not two seperate weapons but rather one weapon configured in different ways.

                              The Wraith stunner doesn't seem to even have any obvious external controls so it's possible that you need to be a Wraith with psychic powers to even switch it off of the default "stun" mode.

                              A wraith would then be able to adjust the "mix" of the bolt so to speak. This would give the bolt different properties depending on how the Wraith set the weapon to "mix" it. So you could end up with bolts that do mostly physical damage, bolts that stun people, bolts that kill people by frying their nervous systems or bolts that do that and cause physical damage. Adjusting the stunner properly for a given target/Prey might even be something of a skill for a Wraith hunter. Look at Lost boys/Hive where all of a sudden the wraith guards could stun Ford's supersoldiers when before when Shep was shooting Ford it wasn't doing anything at all.

                              If I'm right it would be because Shep, being a non psychic human, wasn't able to access any of the weapons more powerful settings aside from the normal default mode.

                              Originally posted by 2ndgenerationalteran
                              The wraith probably assess the situation and choose if its worth the risk to use lethal weapons or go in with stunners.
                              Seems likely. There's some situations where stunning people wouldn't be that practical, a long range shot in a large battle for example where he's likely to recover before anyone can drag him away.

                              They do seem to greatly prefer to stun though, which I suppose isn't surprising given how there's apparently a serious food shortage.

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