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Slippery Slime Developed to Control Crowds
powlow writes "Southwest Research Institute (press release )developed a non-hazardous chemical spray system that spreads a highly slippery, viscous gel (which the lab designated a "mobility denial system" and dubbed "banana peel
in a can") to inhibit the movement of individuals or vehicles on treated surfaces. Marines Corps believes it can be used for crowd control. (Defense Technical Information Center's PDF Report) In tests, volunteers attempted in vain to walk across a lawn sprayed
with the slime, and in fact, had they not been safety-harnessed during the tests, many would have broken bones."
the chemical itself is labeled as non-hazardous, as in, you wont see your finger melt off if you dip it in the stuff.
id say the process of using it would be considered "non-lethal", but i suppose that certainly somebody could crack their skull open in a fall, but the site does say it "will help the Marines stop or deter threats without the use of deadly force."
beats the heck out of shootin people, but could really could cause a lot of injuries too it sounds like
As a former trombone player, I'm guessing this stuff wouldn't be what you'd want. It sounds like they lay this stuff on thick enough that the slipperyness is provided by low-friction shear within their gloop. A trombone slide is a tight enough fit (at the bottom seal area anyway) that their gloop wouldn't be thick enough to contain the internal shear.
One of those silicone pastes and water is still probably the best bet for you. (Please don't tell me you're still using oil!)
--Rob
Neither of the links show me anything about tests, and I can't find anything looking around the site either. Does anyone have a link to the results of these fracture-fests, or do I have to just take it on faith? Marvita
The problem with fences is that people get crushed against them. It's a known problem at soccer-games and the riots afterwards and/or during. Maybe if they did it with fences + the goo people would just slip away from eachother? ;)
rxvt, suse, vi, solaris, debian, java, c, feel the love. #unix@IRCnet, #gimp & #gnome@GIMPnet
Non-lethal is ver relative. CS (tear) gas is one of the least lethal and hurtful ways of dispersing a crowd but rarely used. I went through the CS test in the military, not comforable but not very painful.
Not always. During the WTO demonstrations in London last summer, the response to a very small proportion of violent demonstrators was to box large numbers of (overwhelmingly peaceful) people in and stop them leaving. We're talking all day here, until the demonstraters were cold, hungry and just wanted to go home. Illegal detention, say the detractors; screw the damn hippies, say proponents (when translated from Weaselese).
Any device that gives control is going to be looked on favourably.
To give some perspective, credit where credit is due: British riot police have learned some long, hard lessons, and are, I think, the finest in the world.
I participate in fairly large scale historic reenactments including shield wall and mixed infantry and cavalry actions. In fact, reenactors were solicited as police extras in a recent film about the 1984 British miner's strike, because we are used to doing shieldwalls and charges.
But our level of expertise stops at the 1984 level, when the British riot police used haphazard tactics and made a lot of mistakes. Eighteen years later, they are simply astonishing to watch in action, and they do it (largely) without using chemical weapons or firearms or even batons, they do it through slick manouvres and integrated foot and horse actions that put the right amount of deterrent in the right place at the right time, to stop conflicts before they start.
Argue the morality of controlling political demonstrations, but don't forget that crowd control also involves preventing injury at otherwise good natured public events. And you can definitely do that without fancy chemical weapons, you just have to invest in training. Crowd control is about people, not about technology.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Riots are typically started by the police.
My discussions with rioters showed that in Gothemburg last summer this was very clearly not the case.
Sure, the Black Block did whine a lot about police provocation, but it was very, very clear that they came to Gothemburg intent on rioting. Out of principle. The thrown rock is a Political Statement. Just listen to their arguments. It's very, very clear.
the powers that be want ruthless, violent psychopaths there to control the populace.
Control the populace? In this context the police are pawns. They have no more say in the general political directions of the country than any other voters. They are not your adversary. They control riots, not national political directions, nor corporations. Pawns. Forget about them.
The idea that the police provoke riots by repressing the crowd is pitiful. When the police tells you to stop, or to go that way, or whatever, then just do what they say and that's it. Going this street or the other street will not change the political directions of the country.
Do you realize that there are strong political forces that stand to gain a lot by the riots? You can't have a strong, purposeful, universally respected political movement of the people, respected so that everybody listens, if at the same time you have football-hooligan clowns smashing up the streets.
The broken windows costs pennies compared to the enormous gains that some interests have from the riots.
So if the police says stop, just stop. They're not your adversary.
The propaganda of the so-called Anarchists is rife with vested interests of those who profit by two things: The riots, and the national protectionsm that holds down the economies of the developing countries. (Keep the countries from trading so they stay poor, just like a guy who can't find a job stays poor. It's almost exactly the same thing.)
No, it's not a conspiracy. I don't believe in conspiracies. It's just a few books, and after that simple human gullibility. It's really very, very sad.
Just open your eyes. Just listen to what they say.
Give a man a fish and he eats for one day. Teach him how to fish, and though he'll eat for a lifetime, he'll call you a miser for not giving him your fish.
Terrorists can't threaten a country's freedom and democracy. Only lawmakers and voters can do that.
Why do the Marines need crowd control? Wouldn't this be the job of law enforcement, and maybe National Guard?
Our elected officials have this notion in their head that the Marine Corps is the world's 911 force. Somalia was a hell of a wake up call for the Marines. Until that time, they didn't really spend any time training for crowd control or less than lethal methods of controlling or attacking people. Why should they? It wasn't their job to do so. Let the MPs deal with that shit!
Well, they've since woken up and realized that it is now their job to do so, for good or bad. I've been to Quantico during the phase of The Basic School (the officer training program through which *all* Marine Corps officers go and learn to be rifle platoon leaders) which they are taught riot control. It's quite impressive.
Should the Marines should have to deal with this shit? That's another discussion all together (and I'm sure that you can guess my opinion). But the reality is that as long as our elected officials keep sending them into giving them missions where crowd control is required, the Marine Corps will keep training for it.
Kevin
This reminds me of some great fun I had as a small child. We took a can of green slime (some of you may remember its glory barely contained in those little plastic garbage cans) and decided it would be fun to squish it out onto the carport.
I don't remember the details of this event progressing to the point of wetting down the entire carport floor and sliding across it, but the effect was to destroy any frictive capacity of the concrete. This was incredibly fun until dad arrived from work that day and attempted to park his car.
Microwave pain devices, crowd stunners, directed painful noise producers, movement inhibitors, etc.
What's happening to our right to protest? Didn't we used to have a voice?
The problem is that so many people (probably not including you) who say "there is no absolute truth!" mean "I don't have to listen to any reasoned peaceful argument at all!"
When you state an opinion on an issue, you should be able to state your moral assumptions and how you came to that opinion from those assumptions. Moral assumptions are totally subjective, but the conclusions we draw from them are absolutely/objectively logically valid or logically invalid.
Once you have logically valid conclusions we can decide if I share your assumptions, or at least if the conclusions derived from my assumptions match the conclusions from yours.
>Ought to be lucky you live in a country that tolerates this bs and doesn't just shoot you.
Also a country that, uniquely, guarantees us a constitutional right to own firearms. Isn't that a curious coincidence.