[gosub100]

In a purely technical ponderance, I wonder if it's possible to design a stun gun that would inflict death by either increasing the current and voltage, or if a specific signal could be sent to the heart that would induce an arrhythmia. Basically the opposite of a defibrillator. A biotech maintenance guy told me that if you receive a shock when your heart is in a critical phase of the complex, it can cause it to shut off. Maybe a heart attack stun gun could attempt to read the cardiac waves and deliver the shock at the worst possible point.

(I have to emphasize that no homicidal motive drew me towards wondering that. It's just the borderless free thought that causes random ideas to float through my mind. If I can think of it, certainly the people who design covert weapons also have)

[Melatonic]

Defibs dont actually work like the movies - once a persons heart has truly stopped you need to provide proper CPR.

Defib is for patients with hearts that are beating incorrectly - and now are mostly automated.

Heart stopped and zapped with electricity makes for better movies though!

[RajT88]

Totally possible. This is why stun guns and tasers are referred to as "less lethal" by some instead of non-lethal. Lots of electricity will occasionally stop someone's heart, and they die.

[duffel_bag]

Was he referring to commotio cordis? There's a window of tens of milliseconds where a blow to the chest can cause sudden cardiac death, due to the ventricular rhythm being disrupted rather than any mechanical damage to the heart.

[zeroCoolMD]

Probably referring to R-on-T phenomenon or unsynced shocks delivered during cardioversion. Can send you into ventricular arrhythmia.

[thejazzman]

i have no idea if this is possible, but i have to point out that really smart people pondering out loud is heard/read by many people who may have much sinister intentions than the nerd simply pondering out loud.

1984 has become a playbook. be careful what ideas you share. the public internet is not a casual conversation among friends.

[cryptonector]

For sure, though those really sinister people in high places tend to be extremely smart too. By the time the public develops some technology that could be of great interest to those people, those people have likely already developed something along those lines.

To give an obvious example (not necessarily involving sinister people): the NSA invented public key cryptography long before Diffie and Hellman.