Electrical engineer Greg Leyh, founder of Lightning On Demand and longtime member of Survival Research Laboratories, decided that a giant Tesla coil wasn’t quite dramatic enough. So he turned it into something far more intense: a high-voltage plasma cannon.

The towering 17-foot coil already generates around one million volts, but Leyh found a way to push it much further. By firing a carefully timed pulse-forming network at the exact moment a plasma arc connects with a target, the system can inject a massive current pulse, boosting the strike energy more than a thousand times beyond the coil’s normal output.

The result? Lightning-like blasts powerful enough to vaporize metal parts, ignite fuel, and rip through electronics, all while being precisely aimed using a servo-guided electrode.

Watch the Tesla coil evolve into a full-blown plasma cannon below.