Electrostatic Grenade (Elstat)

(see: Interspex, by Clark Nida)

The novel introduces readers to the idea of a room-clearing weapon the size of a quail’s egg, favoured by the Meteor Gang. It offers this definition...

Elstat: An electrostatic grenade. Essentially a 100 microfarad capacitor charged to 100,000 volts (the energy-equivalent of approximately 1lb of TNT). Kills everyone in a room without significant damage to property.

Now a simple capacitor is hardly likely to act in that way, like as not discharging harmlessly to ground. Readers must imagine a device which radiates conducting filaments, maybe by electrostatic repulsion. The story gives the impression that such a device would be silent in operation (although nothing in the plot depends on it). This too is unlikely. It would in all likelihood make a loud bang, like the hand-grenade it matches in energy, as well as leaving fumes of ozone (which the novel describes).

A friend of mine recalls that on his Electronics course, capacitors would occasionally be charged across the mains during lab classes and tossed to some unsuspecting student with the admonition “Hey catch!”

So, contrary to what the author might have imagined, and in spite of today’s dielectrics perhaps not being up to spec for a lethal weapon that small, the electrostatic grenade has a humble precedent in the real world.

Back to Interspex    Home