Linear accelerators - The future?

These guns work on the principle of accelerating projectiles using magnetic fields created by large currents; a huge current is sent up one rail and down the other, both rails then repel eachother very strongly and anything between them will be repelled by both. The advantage of this is that projectiles accelerated over the length of the barrel rather distribute the forces on the weapon across the whole length of the barrel, whereas a projectile weapon relying on an explosive has all of the force acting immediately and then begins to dissipate.

This also means, where the top speed of a projectile is determined by the explosion velocity of the explosive used in the gun, railguns apply a constant force down the length of the barrel, thus the theoretical top speed of a railgun is near the speed of light! At these speeds objects can start to increase in mass as they speed up allowing them to reach phenomenally high energy rivalling missile payloads with solid slugs.

Popularised in many games linear accelerator style weapons have been seen in several modern games such as S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and Crysis with the gauss rifle or eve online with the ship based railguns, there are countless references to these technologies as they become more viable.

Large scale efficient systems aren't viable yet however. The energy draw of a system such as this is huge and current generators and battery requirements are not really adequate to deal with this load at the moment, also the issue of producing the number of amps required for big systems is a bit scary; while household systems run up to around 13 amps, to produce strong enough electromagnetic fields, millions of amps can be required. Even in the first video, with the slug a plasma cloud was slot along with each slug; this is where the huge temperatures caused by the massive amperage are vaporising the metal!

Be really careful if you're going to try something like this yourself, I wouldn't advise it, electricity is very dangerous, especially so at high voltages which are often required. Make sure you wear appropriate electrical PPE and understand any risks before you take them!