If you have been reading my fiction for a while, you will notice that I am a fan of certain tactics. One of my favorites involves disrupting the target's O-O-D-A loop by super-saturating their sensory input.
The use of a spot-light and trip-wires were two recent examples.
Spot-lights are used everywhere for poaching. When used for deer it is sometimes called "jack-lighting" or "jacking" deer. Even non-hunters are familiar with the term "deer-in-the-headlights" as a term for the disorienting effect of too much stimulus.
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In the Cumberland Saga segment, a 200,000 lumen, LED spot-light was MacGyvered with a remote switch (probably from a shop-light) so any return fire would not be directly at the defenders. You can find many examples of LED spotlights at the $30-to-$40 price point.
In sports
In sports, coaches teach their players that the key to winning one-on-one contests is to lose the defender by changes of speed-and/or-direction. These are the basics of one-v-one and team-v-team. Bring the ball down the sideline and pass to the center or to the other side of the goal.
Lights are a simple way to shift the attackers' attention and to knock them off balance.
Trip-wires
The trip-wires were not tensioned when the attackers went up the drive but were when the attackers were rapidly retreating. SURPRISE!
Their sensory-overload was due to loss of balance and smashing their face into the gravel. That gave Gregor time to deal with two, armed attacker in relative safety.
Vision, sound, pain, smell (80%, 15%, 4%, 1%)
Vision can be disrupted with light, irritants (pepper-spray, dust, wood-ashes), darkness, camo.
Hearing can be disrupted with horns, fire-crackers, barking dogs, recordings of crowds.
Pain can be supplied with electric shocks (electric fence energizer), heat, cold, puncture wounds. If the noise is loud enough or a shockwave, it can rupture ear-drums.
Smell can be produced by vomit, fecal matter, cinnamon dust. Vultures vomit. Skunks spray. Camels spit.
The "D" in O-O-D-A
Sensory overload interrupts both the "Observe" in O-O-D-A loop and the "Decide".
Decision-making or Executive function is degraded by sudden fear: Falling (remember the Home-Alone scene?), fire (Elmore Leonard had a protagonist dowse an invader with gasoline and then start flicking a lighter. The gas can had a couple of ounces of gas for smell and the remainder was water...but the invader did not know that), large amounts of blood-like substances or fake-corpses.
Disrupting Command-and-Control functions is a multiplier for the ability to kinetically repel invaders. Zero times anything is still zero. Disrupting C-n-C buys the defenders time. The ability to mount a kinetic defense is still required.
Generates some potentially usefull thoughts. Thanks--ken
ReplyDeleteI recall a story where an SAS unit used a bag of sheep guts under an explosive charge to breach a door during a hostage rescue. The theory being the terrorists would be somewhat disoriented by the charge and then look down and see themselves covered in blood and guts, which would take them a few seconds to process. (No idea whether it was a true story or fiction though).
ReplyDeleteThis is the second time in fiction you have used this device ERJ, with equally good effect.
ReplyDeleteWhat potentially makes such things as the spotlight devastating in these scenarios is the fact that no-one is prepared for that kind of resistance, thus giving precious seconds.
Well, it IS fiction.
DeleteThings will happen (like Lightning instantly bailing out). Things like spot-lights should be just one part of overlapping strategies.
Along the same lines, one laments the demise of the old school Flashcube; a battery, some bell wire and some sort of switch and one has a pretty good, cheap, disposable distraction / disorentation device. There are sources of flashbubs on AlGore's Intertubes, but much dinero per dozen it seems.
ReplyDeleteThere are replacement solutions but most appear somewhat more complicated and expensive.
My lawn has many solar powered motion lights, ten feet up in trees. Even for myself its disconcerting to have a light come on at times. Woody
ReplyDeleteRats
ReplyDelete