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I’m doing a project about secret agents in the same vein as MIB but it’s set in the year 2050 and instead of aliens they deal with monsters similar to goblins.

The goblins evolve, growing from something the size of a dog to something the size of a gorilla standing. The monsters' weaknesses are fire and light, so I am wondering if there are any weapons out there that fit the bill. I am trying to avoid using guns but I’m open to change.

First time asking a question so if there are any issues or you need more info let me know.

Edit: so after seeing what you guys have written I’m inspired, I’m going with some type of laser device I’m currently looking at some references, but thanks peoples

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    $\begingroup$ You say "evolve" - do you mean this in terms of actual evolution over multiple generations, or do you mean "transform"? $\endgroup$
    – jdunlop
    Feb 23 at 1:33
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    $\begingroup$ is the OP asking 'what weapons should we use against monster vulnerable to fire and light?' OR asking 'what weapons should a monster vulnerable to fire and light use against us? since they (the monster) cannot handle guns (which produce fire and light)' $\endgroup$
    – Kristian
    Feb 23 at 2:41
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    $\begingroup$ Flashlights and Molotov cocktails? $\endgroup$
    – Stef
    Feb 23 at 11:40
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    $\begingroup$ Hello @ForeignKT, thanks for your first question! For future reference, it's worth taking a moment to google basic information so you can narrow your questions. WWII saw flame throwers and today we have lasers and at 100,000 lumens the Imalent MS18 flashlight could bring your goblins to their knees. If these items don't work for you, please explain why. Note that we don't permit brainstorming (see help center). $\endgroup$
    – JBH
    Feb 23 at 15:45
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    $\begingroup$ Technically, humans are vulnerable to fire and light. Actually, so are main battle tanks, given enough fire and light. I suppose the question may be how vulnerable these goblins are -- at what point do they start taking damage from light? outlighter.com/how-many-lumens-is-good-for-a-flashlight $\endgroup$
    – JamieB
    Feb 23 at 16:47

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Flashlight

enter image description here

Did I hear that right $-$ these guys are weak to light? LIGHT?

Flicks lightswitch

There. No more goblins. The goblins will stay where they are. Safe in your closet. Don't go in there anymore. It's the goblin's closet now.

The best weapon against light-sensitive goblins is a sense of personal restraint and hate of bloodshed. Leave the goblins in their dark caves and they will leave you alone.

If the goblins don't want to leave you alone, if the goblins insist on stealing and gobbling your children under the cover of night, then get yourself a flashlight. Like in Alan Wake(Pictured above). He's a writer. A WRITE-ER. And a good one to boot. He's famous.

A few blasts of Lithium-Ion will send the gobbos scurrying back to the underworld. And, unlike a firearm, there is no danger of murdering your fellow humans with a stray sweep of the beam.

If the flashlight is not powerful enough, get yourself a laser.

enter image description here

You can buy a small one to hang from your keyring. The pointer is harmless to humans and cats. But against photosensitive goblins, it works like an honest-to-god lazer beam from the cartoons. Slices up the greenskins head to toe it does.

This is a recurring joke for the MIB. The beam is only ever used on goblins. Swill With never knows for sure whether the beam is a real laser or a harmless laser pointer. At several points during the movie he almost touches it, but gets interrupted at the last second by his supervisor Jommy Pee Tones.

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    $\begingroup$ This and a few floodlights. $\endgroup$
    – Echox
    Feb 23 at 10:54
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    $\begingroup$ There have been a few projects by people who have built handheld flashlights that involve watercooled LED chips, those can thow out a hundred thousand lumen. That's dangerous for humans, let alone goblins $\endgroup$
    – Borgh
    Feb 23 at 15:07
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    $\begingroup$ @Borgh No kill like overkill $\endgroup$
    – No Name
    Feb 25 at 6:18
  • $\begingroup$ @Borgh by my reckoning 100,000 lumens is about square meter of sunlight, so that's damn bright for an LED torch, but not necessarily more dangerous than standing in the sun, as long as you don't look at it and blind yourself. $\endgroup$
    – user253751
    Feb 25 at 8:17
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    $\begingroup$ @Daron A square meter of sunlight as it arrives on Earth, not a square meter of the surface of the sun. $\endgroup$
    – user253751
    Feb 25 at 21:52
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This seems a smidgen obvious, but...

Flamethrowers

The monsters are vulnerable to fire and light. Why not give them both?

They can grow tall? Great! Bigger targets are easier to light up.

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  • $\begingroup$ Flamethrower is overkill. The heat and light is already too much for a non-goblin human man. We only need to kill the goblins once. Not ten times each. Now if you made a flamethrower one tenth the size. . . . $\endgroup$
    – Daron
    Feb 26 at 13:39
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Incendiary Bullets

While it would be nice to have a bunch of specialized weaponry to deal with these monstrosities, that would take loads of money... money your secret agency has trouble getting its filthy little paws on. There's only so much missing money that can be attributed to graft before people start getting suspicious.

Thus, agents use regular guns loaded with incendiary bullets. As the name implies, these are bullets that burn (or are covered in a flammable substance, leastways).

Pros:

  • Cheap
  • Clandestine
  • Highly available (esp. in 7.62 and .50)
  • Fire
  • Some pentrating ability, allowing them to go through light armor. Heavy armor if you break out ol' Ma Deuce.

Cons:

  • Bog-standard, boring guns.
  • Really old and boring. APIT rounds have been around since at least WWII.

Molotov Cocktails

The classic impromptu incendiary grenade, Molotov cocktails are a man-portable, military-grade solution for all your enemy-immolating needs. Since your shadow organization presumably has some budget, you can drastically improve on their performance by replacing the classic gasoline with napalm (a.k.a. gasoline with styrofoam dissolved in it). Perhaps consider making a proper grenade, complete with timed fuse, fragmentation casing, and an explosive charge to improve dispersion.

Pros:

  • Really cheap.
  • Clandestine.
  • Lots of room for variety.
  • Area denial. Monsters are strangely reluctant to go through the gasoline-scented flames of Hell.

Cons:

  • Agents can't advance through it very well, either.
  • Again, old and boring. Like incendiary rounds, they've been around since the Second World War. That said, most weapons I can think of which would be useful against these monsters have been around since then. The Military Industrial Complex was going through a "burn your enemies alive" phase.
  • Hard to use if the monsters are fast.
  • Agents will often be mistaken for no-good anarcho-bolshevist guerrillas out to pollute the public's precious bodily fluids.

Flashbangs

Grenades that make a big concussion and a massive burst of light.

Pros:

  • Commonly available. Pretty much everybody uses them.
  • Stuns whatever it doesn't kill.

Cons:

  • Bog-standard.
  • Like Molotov cocktails, they're a bit unwieldy against fast-moving things.
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    $\begingroup$ "Buckingham" incendiary rounds were used by British aircraft attacking German balloons in WWI (and only for that purpose - pilots had to carry written orders that they were on a mission to attack a balloon) so you can push back the date of availability even further. $\endgroup$
    – KerrAvon2055
    Feb 23 at 3:43
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    $\begingroup$ @KerrAvon2055 ah, yes. Ye olde sport of shooting down hostile floating objects. I remark it is making a comeback these days. $\endgroup$
    – Mindwin Remember Monica
    Feb 23 at 11:44
  • $\begingroup$ Are incendiary bullets real? Or do they only exist in Mass Effect? $\endgroup$
    – Daron
    Feb 23 at 12:46
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    $\begingroup$ @Daron they are very definitely real and have been since at least WWI, as I indicated. However, they are not legal to use in warfare against personnel, though there have been various historic and possibly current anti-materiel uses. And, no, they are not the same as tracer ammunition - tests have demonstrated that tracer will not reliably set fire to even really flammable things (eg gas bottles) - though admittedly I've had to fight at least two bushfires in tinder-dry field-firing areas that were started accidentally by tracer rounds fired during training. $\endgroup$
    – KerrAvon2055
    Feb 23 at 12:53
  • $\begingroup$ @KerrAvon2055 Thanks. For some reason I thought the only example you gave was big incendiary rounds shot out of airplanes, rather than handheld guns. $\endgroup$
    – Daron
    Feb 23 at 14:01
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Flashlights and flamethrowers have been done, that leaves flares.

enter image description here

Just the thing for a little hand-to-claw,

Or even a flambeau, in (plain speak a burning torch)

enter image description here

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    $\begingroup$ You forgot to mention a burning bag of dog-doo. $\endgroup$
    – Daron
    Feb 23 at 12:47
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Everybody loves Lasers

Others have mentioned what I think are the two best choices: Lasers and Flashlights. However, I don't think that others have really illustrated the destructive power of these devices.

1.) The World's Most Powerful Handheld Laser

enter image description here

The WickedLasers Arctic is a real-life example of something that sounds like it would fry your goblins. The device is handheld, bright enough to blind you if you're in the room and not wearing protective eye gear, and strong enough to burn paper and etch leather. You can easily modify these bad boys to be even more powerful as well. Here's a video.

Not to make this an advertisement, but looking at their website they seem to have everything your agents would need and more.

2.) The FlashTorch

Apparently the world's most powerful flashlight. If the Arctic Laser is a rifle, this baby is your shotgun. Powerful enough to burn through sheet metal at close range, it's easy to see how useful this would be for your agents.

3.) The LaserCube

Admittedly, the IRL product is not nearly as powerful as the ones mentioned above, but I thought this one was pretty cool if you used it like a defense system. Small box like device that shoots out many highly accurate and controllable lasers.

These devices are powerful enough that they're dangerous to humans in real life. Against your Goblins that are especially vulnerable to heat and light, they would be devastating.

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Fire ... or heat?

Is their weakness specifically fire, or is it heat in general?

If their weakness is heat then this opens up the door to all kinds of heat based close combat weapons, you could put a heating element inside a sword to give it a thermal blade, or simply run a strong enough electric current through a heating element to make any metal weapon into a thermal weapon.

Hammer or axe with a red hot head Glowing red baseball bat Katana with a white hot edge

You could also make defensive equipment like this. For example, a shield where the center is thermal. Or gloves with heating coil built in.

Maybe some kind of emergency defense of last resort device that super heats ribbons of thermite in your characters uniforms so if they're dragged down to the ground they can burn anything that touches them for a short period of time.

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I feel like there's a certain amount of, well, dramatic tension that's missed here. How much fire and light - and since these creatures hate light, where do they live?

With modern LEDs, and maybe future ones flashlights are very efficient. We used to go from 'we need to top off the battery every 2-3 days' to weekly or even monthly top offs.

Lets assume small amounts of light drive them off, sensitive eyes and all that, but you need something truely powerful to hurt them. I do like the idea of 'cutting' grade lasers and bright lights as 'weapons' and smaller lights for normal use, with batteries running out for dramatic tension.

Apparently google used to give these out as swag in the good old days - Adam Savage has a review of it. Basically its a baton that happens to hold batteries and lots of bright LEDs. It lasts a total of NINE minutes on its full batteries. If you're hunting down creatures that hate the light, you'd probably want 'seeing' lights, and something like this.

As for fire, if I was fighting an elephant sized one or a small plague of them, something like a TOS-1 or 2, and more importantly thermobaric ammunition would be nice - . I believe there's smaller RPG sized versions as well. Its more for open spaces or when you can launch something across a large open space. However inside a confined space something that causes lots of heat, fire and sucks out all the oxygen would be a bad idea. Likewise white phosphorous burns and keeps burning but causes oxygen deprivation -it would be perfect other than the smoke (which IIRC also does a number on thermal/night vision gear) and potentially killing your own troops

Flamethrowers are messy - they're large, need tanks and impede mobility but I'd certainly want incendiaries. If low tech, molotov cocktails might work. There's little balls used for fire suppression burns and having something with its own oxidiser is a good idea. Thermite mines might be an idea, or similar incendiary devices

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Even if those things are vulnerable to fire and light, that does not mean you cannot simply shoot them with a conventional gun. Or slice them to pieces with a sword. Or bash their heads in with an axe. Or turn them to red mist with an anti-tank-gun.

Not to forget protective gear:

Just equip your jumpsuit with a reflective coating, add 20 to 50 meters of LED-Strips and a battery. Kill monsters with the flick of a switch by just being there.

That being said: you will have to find a very good reason these things evolved. It is flat out impossible that a being vulnerable to light could ever get very big in a world that has both sunlight and artificial light.

It could be a nocturnal species, yes, but it still needs somewhere to hide during the day. Once a hideout is discoverd, Hunters would just install a permanent light-source during the day and starve the beasts out into extinction.

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    $\begingroup$ Actually, I already mentioned flashbangs in my answer. $\endgroup$
    – The Daleks
    Feb 23 at 13:17
  • $\begingroup$ Dang, your right. Sorry! $\endgroup$
    – markgraf
    Feb 23 at 13:18
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Napalm

This fire sticks to the very fire sensitive monster. It burns and burns and cannot easily be scraped off. Some phosphorus containing formulations reignite even after going underwater.

I love the smell of dead monsters in the morning.

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Sensitive to light and fire reminds me of vampires in some ways, and a fun little aside in a Ben Aarovonitch book, I forget which one, where they were dealing with vampires in a modern setting. Turns out it is remarkably easy, just visit their house during daylight, throw a few flashbangs into the bedrooms, and then go inside to clear up the dust.

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