Theoretically speaking, what kind of kickback could energy weapons have?

Energy doesn’t have mass so there wouldn’t be recoil.

@Adirondackwannabe: See, that’s what I thought as well, but about the mechanisms used to create and actually fire the energy? Could that have some kind of recoil?

@KatawaGrey I don’t think so, but I’d like your input.

Great question, Kat. I never thought of that. But I think mountain man is right. Although we have to ask the question of how it would be projected out. Would there be a “hammer” that projects the energy out? How would the energy be projected?

@Blackberry Well how does a recoiless rifle work?

@Adirondackwannabe Brain fart. Makes total sense now. :)

I’m also wondering because in so many of these shows, the energy bolt/beam physically knock a person down which would lead me to believe that there is some sort of physical launching.

Also, recoilless rifle? I didn’t know those existed. Can one of you fine folk give me a good link please?

This is easy to solve, all the useful ones would have no kick back, such as star trek fasers for example, however all super awesome ones like the noisy cricket from MIB would have a kick back due to the release of energy in the form of raw awesomeness.

@KatawaGrey When weapons fire, the energy is sent out of the barrel behind the bullet, but with recoiless rifles, there’s a chamber that allows the energy to escape backwards.

The germans were experimenting with a rail gun at the end of WW2. It used an electrical pulse to fire an 88 mm projectile at 10,000 fps. For reference the flak 88 fired the same projectile at about 2750FPS. It supposedly had no recoil.

Only problem is it was tied to a power source big enough to power the city of Hamburg.