Season 5
EP04 - Blinding Lasers (Post-War Burden)
Explore why blinding laser weapons were banned before widespread deployment. Learn how post-war medical burden and the principle of unnecessary suffering shaped the Protocol on Blinding Lasers before a single battlefield use.
This is absurd! I am literally the most moral player on this entire server!
Killing my enemies is too cruel, so I used "Curse of Eternal Blindness"!
I didn't delete their hitpoints! I just lowered their stats! I gave them a permanent debuff so they couldn't fight anymore!
I let them live! They keep their accounts as a debuffed player! Why am I the one getting banned for being merciful?!
"Merciful?"
You didn't spare their lives, Shez. You broke the server's economy.
You think death is the worst thing you can inflict on an enemy.
A military engineer knows that death is incredibly cheap. It's life—specifically, a severely damaged life—that bankrupts an empire.
In the late 20th century, humanity invented the "Dazzler," a Blinding Laser Weapon.
No explosions. No blood. No deaths. It is a pulse of light that permanently burns the opponent's eyes.
Exactly! You pop their optic nerves, they drop their guns, the battle is over! Nobody has to die!
Death is infinitely WORSE than blinding!
In your video game, a dead player clicks "Respawn."
In the real world, if you shoot 10,000 enemy soldiers, the war ends. The dead are buried, and society rebuilds.
But if you blind 10,000 enemy soldiers... they don't despawn.
They go home.
A quiet, beautifully kept military cemetery. A single groundskeeper is peacefully mowing the grass. A small ledger floating above it reads: UPKEEP COST: NEAR ZERO. Right Panel: A massive, sprawling, chaotic Veterans Hospital. It is overflowing with thousands of permanently blinded 20-year-olds. Nurses are exhausted, machines are buzzing, and the building is bursting at the seams. A ledger floating above it reads: UPKEEP COST: $14,000,000,000 ANNUALLY.
A dead soldier is a tragedy.
A blinded society is a catastrophic economic collapse.
You only thought about what happens during the war. You haven't thought what happens after.
I... I didn't think about the upkeep.
This is the math of your "mercy." A blinded 20-year-old soldier will live for another 60 years
He requires medical care, a disability pension, and rehabilitation..
And in a post-war economy trying to rebuild its factories and farms... a blind person can hardly contribute any physical labor.
The economic damage doesn't stop there. It also creates an Area of Effect debuff.
Because he cannot navigate alone, a civilian must reduce their own working hours to care for him.
You didn't just remove one worker from the economy. You removed one and a half.
The entire tax base of the nation instantly collapses under the crushing gravity of disability care.
Remember the ultimate irony of war. Who usually pays to rebuild the conquered nation?
The... the victor?
Yes. If you conquer a territory, you inherit its population. If you blind them all, you pay for their disability checks.
In 1995, the United Nations drafted the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW).
Specifically, Protocol IV. The Protocol on Blinding Laser Weapons.
The militaries of the world realized that if blinding lasers became standard infantry issue, the next war would bankrupt the entire planet.
So... they didn't ban it because it was "evil". They banned it because it was too expensive to survive.
It’s the darkest secret of humanitarian law.
We tolerate bullets and bombs because they solve the equation.
It reduces the enemy’s combat effectiveness to zero, and it only costs the winner the price of a wooden box.
Culturally, we tell ourselves that nothing is worse than death. Economically, we behaved and priced like something else was worse.
We prefer death to burden. That is the cold calculus of mercy.
I didn't save their lives. The players I cursed... they couldn't grind for gold. They couldn't run dungeons.
They just sat in the town square, begging other players to carry them, draining the guild's resources until everyone ragequits the game...
You forced the healthy players to spend all their time managing the debuffed players.
You didn't win in PvP. You griefed the entire social structure.
I deserve the ban.
I thought I was a saint for sparing them. I was the most toxic player on the server.
Don't feel too bad. Real-world weapons engineers made the exact same mistake in the 80s.
What do I do now? My main account is gone.
Reroll a new character. This time, if you're going PvP, have the basic economic courtesy to finish them off.
EP03 - Chemical Weapons (Fresh Air of Victory)
Discover the history and prohibition of chemical weapons from WWI chlorine to modern nerve agents. Learn why the Chemical Weapons Convention bans these indiscriminate weapons and the science of how nerve agents disrupt human biology.
EP05 - Hollow Points (Dum-Dum Bullets)
Understand the legal and humanitarian debate around expanding dum-dum bullets in armed conflict. Learn why hollow points are banned in war under the Hague Convention but remain standard in law enforcement.
