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Questionable Claims edit
The Test of the laser was unclear as to the distance at which it was being fired, and the burning skin at 1km was just a ridiculous claim. Perhaps we should expand the scepticism section? Also, I found a YouTube video where a guy takes issue with the frequency here.
I agree. I did more digging and I found out that there are many problems with the original claims in the SCMP article:
1) There is no indication that the weapon is even called ZKZM-500. ZKZM is a Chinese company that manufactures industrial lasers for cutting or 3D laser printing.
2) This video (posted by an official Chinese military news channel on June 9th) states that "ZKZM-500" has a range of 150 meters. CCTV military video on handheld laser
3) The video above made no claims about "carbonizing human skin at 800 meters". The scientist interviewed only stated that the weapon can be used to damage sensitive telecommunication devices and flammable material.
4) An article posted by CCP mouthpiece Huanqiu news interviewed with the manufacturer of the weapon, Hengan, who claimed that the weapon is incapable of instantly "carbonizing human skin" and can only cause pain in human skin. Huanqiu article on handheld laser -Monkeyfishninja
A huge skepticism section is probably not the right way to present this info, considering that the sources consist of 1 article in the SCMP that creates the subject and a hundred articles that call it nonsense. This is barely even a notable hoax. -- bornLoser (talk) 19:21, 8 February 2019 (UTC)