One day I was sitting in my home office and a little runt (misspelling) 100 yards up the road shone a laser through my window. I was staggered by the effect of what must have been a very momentary flash from what was probably a low-powered device (he was about ten years old so doubt he would have gotten hold of anything seriously powerful); my world turned green and I was seeing spots for quite a few minutes afterwards - I would not have liked to be piloting an aircraft, or driving or doing anything requiring decent vision. Seems to me that some of the posters who are suggesting it's not a potentially very serious problem have never had one of these things shone in their faces.....