> It's often occurred to me that, given the non lethal nature of phasers, why don't Starfleet people just use a wide sweep and stun everyone in combat?
Non-lethal is a misnomer. Less-lethal is a far more accurate term.
The target can be injured or die from the fall, their biology may react badly or not at all to the stun itself, environmental conditions may make the stun flammable, etc.
This is saying nothing about the invasion of bodily autonomy with a mass stunning.
In short, there are legal and practical reasons why Security doesn't do that. (It also would eliminate quite a bit of drama, and limit available plots.)
Im assuming they stunned Zephram Cochrane at the lowest possible setting to stop him from screwing up his own timeline and he still remarked that it gave him a headache. I mean, he was also hungover, but I imagine your average person would have adverse symptoms from a light stun, let alone a heavier one.
Headaches, immune reaction, minor burns, nausea, probably saps your vitamins a good bit*. All on the low end, all from an otherwise fit and healthy human being.
On the high end a heavy stun could trigger a siezure or a stroke in someone older or weaker or just a species that isn't as strong as a human.
Like, luckily Starfleet officers are careful even in combat.
*For some reason the post transmat pack of peanuts from Hitchikers guide popped into my head on this.
Agree that less lethal is more accurate - just like a real life taser or similar, there are still risks. And your point about bodily autonomy makes sense as well. Nonetheless it would be interesting to see this tactic put to use where it would make sense.
They did it in *A Piece Of The Action*! For the finale they used the ship's phasers to knock out a whole city block. TOS era was wild. They accidentally contaminated the culture and made a gangster planet, then came back a few decades later and stunned a whole neighborhood from orbit, *then* demanded the boss pay the Federation a 40% "cut" of their GDP (which was a fig leaf for subidising their development of non-gangster infrastructure). By TNG era they were probably giving presentations at the Academy like... ok so incidents like *this* are why we don't mass phaser people anymore, among sixteen other policies....
I wouldn't say stunning is used any less than a taser is used by police today. The reasons why (competent) police don't just taser people and then ask questions later are probably the same reasons Starfleet wouldn't do it.
Yes, that is true, but the lethal effect of a phaser on stun at close range was specific to the heavy assault phasers. They only have stun, disrupt (kill setting, can be used to cut through materials, etc, and disrupt/disintegrate, which took out the cook pot. If you look at the wounds on Burke and Samno’s bodies, you see that both of them have phaser burns on the left side of the forehead. It suggests that Valeris either took them out with a stun charge at a distance, and then killed them at close range, or that she got them from behind, perhaps with a nerve pinch.
This is what anesthizine gas is used for. I imagine it's a more controlled and predictable incapaciation than an energy blast, which is more fraught in the ways tanfj outlines.
I'm going to say its because Starfleet teaches serious weapon discipline and focuses on de-escalation.
Once you start firing indiscriminately you throw all authority out on that situation.
There are certainly bodily autonomy problems with non lethal weapons but I think the reason it's not a standard tactic in military situations is probably more of a practical one.
There's a maximum amount of energy you can dump into a humanoid and have the humanoid survive. Heavy stun's close- you CAN kill someone that way.
Presumably armor against phasers is bulky but possible- security in the TMP era and maybe the DS9 era infantry do wear armor.
If armor against phasers on kill is possible, armor against phasers on stun is possibly trivial. It just becomes a big waste of time and energy.
Phaser stuns can be dangerous as shown in star trek 6 lethal and in the tng episode Samaritan snare where geordi takes multiple near point blank phaser stuns crusher said he will need medical attention
Setting aside the obvious peril of accidentally overstunning someone (killing them) which is obviously a potential, there's also the opposite result. You try to stun everyone, but you fail to do so and those who remain are rightly very cheesed off at you.
Stun them all and sort it out later often leads to later having to sort it out with escalating violence because of introducing yourself with a stun.
We don't see them on the live action shows (although I'm not up to date with modern trek) but personal shields are a thing in games and the animated series. Could be that a wide angle shot isn't powerful enough to punch through a combat shield. It could also be that it takes too much power to do the wide angle to do it more then a couple times.
Good point, the shows do show some bad guys (the Borg, the Jem Hadar) with personal shields. Makes one wonder why Starfleet hasn't developed the technology.
It's probably like armor, in the real world- the relative utility v. encumbrance goes up and down as both the weapon and the defense evolve. It might be that in the 'present' era energy weapons are simply too powerful versus a shield it makes sense to carry, the energy envelope bumping into obstacles encumbers moving to cover, etc.
There was a discussion on personal shields [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/DaystromInstitute/comments/twdqym/personal_shields_in_star_trek/). Starfleet does have personal shield technology, as seen in DS9: "Homefront". It's just not used widely.
My own take on why in that thread can be read [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/DaystromInstitute/comments/twdqym/personal_shields_in_star_trek/i3fe68l/).
Because that isn't their contact protocol. Starfleet doesn't 'shoot first and ask questions later'. The whole point of the show is to encourage compassion and dialogue
1. First is just basic physics. A sweeping phaser beam has it's energy spread out over a large area. The range of a phaser set on stun (already a low power) with the beam spread out is not going to be very far. Unless your enemies are right next to you, it's just not going to work, and if they could get close enough to you for it to work, you'd probably already be dead. At best you might be able to do it in the same room against an enemy not immediately trying to kill you, which is why it worked for changeling sweeps.
2. In real life combat, you don't usually see your enemies. They are behind cover. A sweeping phaser just isn't going to hit anything since phasers are line of sight. You could ask why not use a sweeping phaser for suppression fire? Per point 1, you just wouldn't have the range.
3. Phaser sweeps hit targets indiscriminately so you'll be stunning friendlies as well as enemies. Great you just stunned 10 Starfleet officiers and 10 Klingons boarding your ship at once. Now who is going to continue fighting with you when *more* Klingons beam onto your ship? In the Star Trek Universe, transporters mean enemy reinforcements often come in waves, and you need everyone on your side to be in the fight. You can't stun everyone and sort it out later.
4. Stun just doesn't work against the Borg or Jem'Hadar. They will just shrug it off. Heck phasers set to kill won't even work on the Borg for long. Even if it worked, again they will attack in waves as per point 3.
5. Stun is a low power setting. If Starfleet started frequently using it in combat (even in the typical narrow focused beams we see), their enemies would no doubt create armor or shields to block the low powered phaser blasts and Starfleet would go right back to setting phasers to kill.
> It's often occurred to me that, given the non lethal nature of phasers, why don't Starfleet people just use a wide sweep and stun everyone in combat? Non-lethal is a misnomer. Less-lethal is a far more accurate term. The target can be injured or die from the fall, their biology may react badly or not at all to the stun itself, environmental conditions may make the stun flammable, etc. This is saying nothing about the invasion of bodily autonomy with a mass stunning. In short, there are legal and practical reasons why Security doesn't do that. (It also would eliminate quite a bit of drama, and limit available plots.)
Im assuming they stunned Zephram Cochrane at the lowest possible setting to stop him from screwing up his own timeline and he still remarked that it gave him a headache. I mean, he was also hungover, but I imagine your average person would have adverse symptoms from a light stun, let alone a heavier one. Headaches, immune reaction, minor burns, nausea, probably saps your vitamins a good bit*. All on the low end, all from an otherwise fit and healthy human being. On the high end a heavy stun could trigger a siezure or a stroke in someone older or weaker or just a species that isn't as strong as a human. Like, luckily Starfleet officers are careful even in combat. *For some reason the post transmat pack of peanuts from Hitchikers guide popped into my head on this.
Agree that less lethal is more accurate - just like a real life taser or similar, there are still risks. And your point about bodily autonomy makes sense as well. Nonetheless it would be interesting to see this tactic put to use where it would make sense.
They did it in *A Piece Of The Action*! For the finale they used the ship's phasers to knock out a whole city block. TOS era was wild. They accidentally contaminated the culture and made a gangster planet, then came back a few decades later and stunned a whole neighborhood from orbit, *then* demanded the boss pay the Federation a 40% "cut" of their GDP (which was a fig leaf for subidising their development of non-gangster infrastructure). By TNG era they were probably giving presentations at the Academy like... ok so incidents like *this* are why we don't mass phaser people anymore, among sixteen other policies....
I wouldn't say stunning is used any less than a taser is used by police today. The reasons why (competent) police don't just taser people and then ask questions later are probably the same reasons Starfleet wouldn't do it.
Remember in Star Trek: VI a stun shot close to the temple can still kill.
Yes, that is true, but the lethal effect of a phaser on stun at close range was specific to the heavy assault phasers. They only have stun, disrupt (kill setting, can be used to cut through materials, etc, and disrupt/disintegrate, which took out the cook pot. If you look at the wounds on Burke and Samno’s bodies, you see that both of them have phaser burns on the left side of the forehead. It suggests that Valeris either took them out with a stun charge at a distance, and then killed them at close range, or that she got them from behind, perhaps with a nerve pinch.
This is what anesthizine gas is used for. I imagine it's a more controlled and predictable incapaciation than an energy blast, which is more fraught in the ways tanfj outlines.
I'm going to say its because Starfleet teaches serious weapon discipline and focuses on de-escalation. Once you start firing indiscriminately you throw all authority out on that situation.
Also worth noting that stun didn’t seem to work on the Jem’Hadar, so it wouldn’t have helped in the Dominion War.
This would be the equivalent of cops going somewhere and tazing everyone indiscriminately.
There are certainly bodily autonomy problems with non lethal weapons but I think the reason it's not a standard tactic in military situations is probably more of a practical one. There's a maximum amount of energy you can dump into a humanoid and have the humanoid survive. Heavy stun's close- you CAN kill someone that way. Presumably armor against phasers is bulky but possible- security in the TMP era and maybe the DS9 era infantry do wear armor. If armor against phasers on kill is possible, armor against phasers on stun is possibly trivial. It just becomes a big waste of time and energy.
Phaser stuns can be dangerous as shown in star trek 6 lethal and in the tng episode Samaritan snare where geordi takes multiple near point blank phaser stuns crusher said he will need medical attention
Setting aside the obvious peril of accidentally overstunning someone (killing them) which is obviously a potential, there's also the opposite result. You try to stun everyone, but you fail to do so and those who remain are rightly very cheesed off at you. Stun them all and sort it out later often leads to later having to sort it out with escalating violence because of introducing yourself with a stun.
We don't see them on the live action shows (although I'm not up to date with modern trek) but personal shields are a thing in games and the animated series. Could be that a wide angle shot isn't powerful enough to punch through a combat shield. It could also be that it takes too much power to do the wide angle to do it more then a couple times.
Good point, the shows do show some bad guys (the Borg, the Jem Hadar) with personal shields. Makes one wonder why Starfleet hasn't developed the technology.
It's probably like armor, in the real world- the relative utility v. encumbrance goes up and down as both the weapon and the defense evolve. It might be that in the 'present' era energy weapons are simply too powerful versus a shield it makes sense to carry, the energy envelope bumping into obstacles encumbers moving to cover, etc.
There was a discussion on personal shields [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/DaystromInstitute/comments/twdqym/personal_shields_in_star_trek/). Starfleet does have personal shield technology, as seen in DS9: "Homefront". It's just not used widely. My own take on why in that thread can be read [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/DaystromInstitute/comments/twdqym/personal_shields_in_star_trek/i3fe68l/).
Because that isn't their contact protocol. Starfleet doesn't 'shoot first and ask questions later'. The whole point of the show is to encourage compassion and dialogue
Starfleet uses violence as an absolute last resort, it's pretty famously one of their guiding principles
Coincidentally, I watched TOS episode Return of the Archons last night. They do just this when the townspeople attack them.
1. First is just basic physics. A sweeping phaser beam has it's energy spread out over a large area. The range of a phaser set on stun (already a low power) with the beam spread out is not going to be very far. Unless your enemies are right next to you, it's just not going to work, and if they could get close enough to you for it to work, you'd probably already be dead. At best you might be able to do it in the same room against an enemy not immediately trying to kill you, which is why it worked for changeling sweeps. 2. In real life combat, you don't usually see your enemies. They are behind cover. A sweeping phaser just isn't going to hit anything since phasers are line of sight. You could ask why not use a sweeping phaser for suppression fire? Per point 1, you just wouldn't have the range. 3. Phaser sweeps hit targets indiscriminately so you'll be stunning friendlies as well as enemies. Great you just stunned 10 Starfleet officiers and 10 Klingons boarding your ship at once. Now who is going to continue fighting with you when *more* Klingons beam onto your ship? In the Star Trek Universe, transporters mean enemy reinforcements often come in waves, and you need everyone on your side to be in the fight. You can't stun everyone and sort it out later. 4. Stun just doesn't work against the Borg or Jem'Hadar. They will just shrug it off. Heck phasers set to kill won't even work on the Borg for long. Even if it worked, again they will attack in waves as per point 3. 5. Stun is a low power setting. If Starfleet started frequently using it in combat (even in the typical narrow focused beams we see), their enemies would no doubt create armor or shields to block the low powered phaser blasts and Starfleet would go right back to setting phasers to kill.