On 27 Apr 2020 at 2:48, Kelly St. Clair wrote:

> For exactly this reason - temporarily or permanently blinding
> hundreds, if not thousands, of people who happen to be looking in your
> direction when you (almost effortlessly, if not automatically) sweep
> the laser over them - lasers /made/ for blinding are almost certain to
> be banned under most rules of warfare.  There are strong indications
> this will happen in RL, as soon as someone gets closer to actually
> making and/or deploying one.

Already done. Using lasers to blind is a war crime.

And we've been able to do it for a long time. My guess is at least
20-30 years. It doesn't take that much power to blind someone. Even
to make it permanent. There are handheld lasers that are powerful
enough.
--
Leonard Erickson (aka shadow)
shadow at shadowgard dot com