In the original Terminator, the plasma weapons that wer briefly seen in the flash-forwards were somewhat realistic: when fired, the result was a brief "strobe" extending in a straight line from the weapon to the target, along with a kind of crackling/popping sound. And these were some kind of "plasma rifle" (in the 40 watt range), no specifically a laser weapon.
Alas, by the time of Terminator 2, the weapons more more traditional: like a slow tracer bullet.
One could imagine, perhaps, that such a weapon was firing some high energy plasma, perhaps encased in a self-propogating soliton wave bubble ... or some other technobabble.
That leads to another false trope: the hand-held energy weapon that can selectively incenerate a human target. First: that's an awful lot of energy! Second: wouldn't the target turn into a giant light bulb filiment and roast everyone and everything in the immediate vicinity?
In the original Terminator, the plasma weapons that wer briefly seen in the flash-forwards were somewhat realistic: when fired, the result was a brief "strobe" extending in a straight line from the weapon to the target, along with a kind of crackling/popping sound. And these were some kind of "plasma rifle" (in the 40 watt range), no specifically a laser weapon.
Alas, by the time of Terminator 2, the weapons more more traditional: like a slow tracer bullet.
One could imagine, perhaps, that such a weapon was firing some high energy plasma, perhaps encased in a self-propogating soliton wave bubble ... or some other technobabble.
That leads to another false trope: the hand-held energy weapon that can selectively incenerate a human target. First: that's an awful lot of energy! Second: wouldn't the target turn into a giant light bulb filiment and roast everyone and everything in the immediate vicinity?