D-Bone
Jun 19th '06, 05:29 PM
Instead of quelling riotous crowds with tear gas or rubber bullets, peacekeepers may soon be sliming them.
A portable device worn like a Ghostbuster backpack allows the wearer to cover the ground in goo so slippery it's almost impossible for a person to maintain their footing.
"It's like walking on ice," said Errol Brigance, a senior research engineer at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, TX.
Brigance and his colleague Rolf Glauser filed for a patent on the anti-traction method earlier this year.
The technology, developed in partnership with the U.S. Marine Corps, offers another non-lethal weapon to the military's crowd control arsenal.
Although other methods ? including tear gas, acoustic guns, stun guns, strobe lights and crowd barriers ? work well, not every technique is appropriate for every situation. Barriers are bulky and require advance planning, for example, and in some cases, stun guns have proved lethal.
"This is about adding more tools to the toolbox," said Brigance.
Read More: http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2006/06/19/goo_tec.html?category=technology&guid=20060619160030
A portable device worn like a Ghostbuster backpack allows the wearer to cover the ground in goo so slippery it's almost impossible for a person to maintain their footing.
"It's like walking on ice," said Errol Brigance, a senior research engineer at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, TX.
Brigance and his colleague Rolf Glauser filed for a patent on the anti-traction method earlier this year.
The technology, developed in partnership with the U.S. Marine Corps, offers another non-lethal weapon to the military's crowd control arsenal.
Although other methods ? including tear gas, acoustic guns, stun guns, strobe lights and crowd barriers ? work well, not every technique is appropriate for every situation. Barriers are bulky and require advance planning, for example, and in some cases, stun guns have proved lethal.
"This is about adding more tools to the toolbox," said Brigance.
Read More: http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2006/06/19/goo_tec.html?category=technology&guid=20060619160030