Potato Bazookas

Zog The Undeniable writes "The latest craze in Germany is "Kartoffelkanone" or potato bazookas. These use hairspray ignited by a spark to fire potatoes at colossal speeds. The authorities are not amused." Everyone needs a hobby I guess.

Comments

Odd.

[g(zerofunk.org)]

Bet you can't shoot just one!
g

Re:Odd.

[giel]

Sooner or later Iraq will have to prove they don't own potatoes.

Re:Odd.

[HyperLemur]

You mean...SPUD missiles?

Re:Odd.

[Old Uncle Bill]

Definitely. From the article: Local stores that sell hairsprays and pressurised lighter fluid, the favourite propellants for the DIY weapons, may also be asked to sell them only to adults. Failing that, police suggest that youngsters should have to explain why they are buying them.
I would definitely be suspicious of any teenagers buying hairspray. God only knows what they are planning.

Damage

[SPF6]

Potato's as weapons. You could supply an army and feed them at the same time. Kill two birds with one stone.

Re:Damage

[BrokenHalo]

You could supply an army and feed them at the same time

I hope not... I wouldn't want to be fed by one of those machines :-)

Re:Damage

[carlos_benj]

Potato's as weapons. You could supply an army and feed them at the same time.

Wouldn't you be feeding the enemy though? Or are you suggesting we eat our own ammo and be overtaken by the Huns!?!?

Re:So 1985

[ducman]

About 20 years ago, as a kid in Denver, we used to shoot tennis balls out of guns made from soda cans and fuled with ligher fluid. At least we did until I had the great idea to soak the ball with lighter fluid before we fired it. The first few times were great, but soon one of our flaming balls set the neighbor's yard on fire.

Re:Hardly new

[Cpt_Kirks]

Pity the poor Germans. Once they led the world in starch based weapons technology, now they have to play a distant game of catch up.

The Iraqis don't stand a chance against our mighty potato cannon, not to mention our highly intelligent french fry cluster bombs!

Tests have shown

[zeus_tfc]

My favorite part of the article:
German police fear that the youths will turn to more lethal ammunition than potatoes. Tests have shown that such a bazooka firing an empty film canister filled with sand and the cardboard centres of toilet rolls filled with cement could penetrate brickwork.

I can just picture these "experts" in a lab doing "testing".

It probably went something like "Whoa, that was way cool, lets see what else we can use. Hey, if we use something really heavy it'll be just like those cannons on junkyard wars!"

Those guys must have a cool job.

Stop! It's Deadly! ....but have you tried THIS?

[nettdata]

From the story:

German police fear that the youths will turn to more lethal ammunition than potatoes. Tests have shown that such a bazooka firing an empty film canister filled with sand and the cardboard centres of toilet rolls filled with cement could penetrate brickwork.

I love that... "hey kids, those potato gun things are WAY too dangerous for you! Don't try it, but THESE things are WAY more destructive!"

Ya gotta wonder.

Wow...

[new death barbie]

An apple fired from one of the guns almost took out the eye of a middle-aged man near the Baltic coast.

...that's got to be distance record...

Potato guns, for great justice.

[revision1_1]

I went back to my parents house to build one (and test fire, since the apartment complex I was living in presented an environment a little too target-rich). After the PVC cement dried and I completed some test firing with a rag stuffed into the barrel, I managed to put a potato into the air, across the street, over the house across the street and smack into a humongous water tower that has loomed over my childhood memories for 20 years.

Talk about a thrill. It was early evening, and a little dark, so you could see the long tongue of orange flaming Aqua-net.

First a click (of the grill igniter in the trigger)...then a sort of "thomp" sound...then a long silence...then a huge, resounding GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG sound.

It was awesome. A childhood dream come true.

I need to build another.

Alternate ammo

[John Harrison]

One year driving back from winter break a large group of us stopped off at Circus Circus and actually had some fun there doing the carnival games. We ended up with a lot of small stuffed animals including several penguins. We discovered that the penguins fit very nicely in the barrel of our potato gun. They soon became standard ammo to be launched off our balconey at a variety of targets. You got the same boom of launching fruit but with less danger and less mess. Of course they didn't fly as far as that one legendary apple, but that helped them be a recoverable form of ammo, good for using again and again.

Now if only RMS had seen us launching little penguins... he would have made us call it a GNU/Gun.

Re:Behind the times...

[carlos_benj]

The issue here is not that potatoe guns exist.

Dan Quayle reads /.?

Re:We made an olive gun

[cybermace5]

Not one eye was put out that summer.

Three, then? Four? Five?

Re:m-80 (fun stuff to do with them..)

[cayenne8]

Yup...and they had waterproof fuses. They used to sell them as normal fireworks. Last box of them I saw was back in HS in about 1980. We got a box of them, took them to our neighborhood pool during the winter, tied them to rocks, lit them and dropped them in...like depth chargers. Found out that summer we had cracked the bottom of the pool. But, the best thing to do with them in school, was to find someone who was sitting on the can in the bathroom on one of the lower floors...run upstairs, light an M-80, and flush it...thing would blow up, and shoot water out of the john's down below...hehehe...talk about a wet suprise..hehehe. Had to quit that when the pipes at Central High suddenly got blow out a few times....

Anything to help. . .

[go3]

. . .the Germans out of socialism and restore their war loving pride.

Look out, France.