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Battlefield Medkits Improve
ApharmdB writes "CNN has an article on the US military's fielding of a bandage containing clotting agents that can stop blood flow within two minutes. Obviously, the hope is that they will save a lot of lives. What's next straight from your favorite FPS? Who has an estimate on how long it will take for the Army to outfit its troops with anti-personnel rocket launchers?" Those have been around for quite a while.
About those anti-personel rocket launchers, we're closer than you may think. The OICW (the next-generation combat weapon being tested for deployment throughout the armed services) includes a computer-aimed grenade launcher which is smart enough to compute a perfect air-burst over a designated target, and which can handle a range of ammunition types.
The SMAW is anti-armor, not anti-personel. Oh and Slashdot is incredibly slow. Maybe you should invest in some more hardware or bandwidth.
Except that it goes against the Genneva Convention to use them on people.
Who do you think is in the bunkers? I've fired one of these, and I assure you it will work just fine against people.
Won't need any bandages for the recipient, either.
The Davy Crockett
If you work out, you might be able to carry one on each shoulder!
Is this the promised end? Or image of that horror? KING LEAR
These have been around for a long time.
http://www.traumadex.com/
No, it goes against the Geneva Convention to use rocket launchers specifically for the use of attacking people.
You can use them on materiel, like bunkers, tanks, buildings, clothing. The Geneva convention doesn't specifically rule out the use of rocket propelled weaponry against clothing that is currently occupied either.
So, as long as you don't hit the skin, you're fine.
Black and grey are both shades of white.
No, they wouldn't. The whole idea behind "the period" is to get rid of unnecessary material so the cycle can start again. To that end, you don't want to stop the "bleeding" (which is what these bandages do) so much as simply prevent the discharge that does occur from making a mess. Two completely different objectives.
For more info, I'll simply refer the reader to any physiology textbook. For info on what happens if you do too good a job at preventing nature from taking its course, look up toxic shock syndrome.
The army already is looking to buy a BFG.
Take a look at the CRUSADER 155MM SELF PROPELLED HOWITZER
No Frag Limit.
http://www.kubuntu.org/
It's like the myth about how .50 cal can only be used against material, and not combatants. Even people in the military to this day think that it's not okay to engage humans with the .50, but instead to "shoot their canteens or weapons out of their hands..oops I accidently killed him!" This is a myth, we can engage any combatant with a .50.
.50 cal myth came from when the brass in Vietnam said told Marines and/or soldiers in a particular AO (area of operations) not to engage VC or NVA with the .50 due to ammo resupply issues, and to engage them with M16s, etc.
;)
A Capt of Marines recently told me that the
This was purely to save ammo in one instance. Not due to any international law.
Also, in the Hague convention is where you'd find anything close to regulating ammo used on combatants. Such as "weapons that cause unneeded suffering" such as "exploding bullets."
You've probably seen movies where they use rockets to clear out bunkers. What's the difference in bombing a bunker with an A-10 and firing a rocket in it? Does this make any sense to regulate the use of rockets on personal?
I'd also like to mention that I'd like snopes.com to investigate this
rm -rf ~/.signature
The anti-hemorrhagic bandage was developed by Dr. Kenton Gregory at the Oregon Medical Laser Center, and there is much more material about it at the website of the company formed to commercialize the technology, HemCon.
The secret to the patch is a particular formulation of chitin, which is to stay, crabshells. The pro-clotting properties of chitin have been well-known for some time, but Dr. Gregory and his researchers were able to figure out how to make a viable bandage out of it, which hadn't been done before.
The OMLC is working on lots of other cool stuff as well, such as laser suturing (very good for your liver, which won't take thread sutures).
Full disclosure: I'm on their Board of Directors.
gnetwerker
NASA has been investingating railgun satellite launches for 10+ years, if I understand correctly. To date, they have not had great luck.
Amusements parks, including Paramount's Kings Island, have incorporated similar technology (electromagnetic pulse) into rides. They can shoot you, from a level start, to something around 70 mph in the better part of a second.
In an unrelated note, we have teleporters, we have stimpacks. . . Doom, anyone?
I had some of this.
When I first got cancer in 1980 they applied paper tape to my back after a bone marrow asperation.
A couple hours later it was time for a spinal tap and they needed to remove the bandage. Well I learned that day I was allergic to paper tape adhesive. It pulled my skin off with the tape so I was sent home with 3 cans of Topostat to help stave off infection (I had ALL and a depressed imune system.)
Neat damn stuff, had cans of it around for about 2 years then all of a sudden we couldn't get any from out doctors.
It really helped out on the farm, one of the farm hands lost a finger tip in some machinery and started to bleed bad, the spray came in handy.
The U.S. Army has utilized a belt-fed automatic 40mm grenade launcher (the Mk-19 AGL) for some time now. It's typically mounted on helicopters or, more recently, on the pintle-mount of the Humvee in place of the usual M2 .50cal MG.
Palaces, barricades, threats, meet promises
false. A 20mm shell moves at about 1800 km/h. Pretty sure those are still in widespread use.
Not true. That is another version of the "shoot at their belt buckles with the 50 cal." myth. Don't have it handy, but what I remember from my Law of Land Warfare class at my Officers course in the Army is that the Geneva Convention prohibits weapons that are intended to maim, not wound or kill cleanly. Prohibits things such as saw tooth bayonets, dum-dum (hollow point) bullets etc. Heavy Machine Guns, RPG rounds and nukes etc are OK. Go figure. What I do remember is when the JAG Major said that all weapons in the U.S. inventory meet the Geneva Convention requirements and I asked him "What about the M-14(?) toe-popper mine?" he got huffy and locked me up at attention.
I thought i had read about this before in wired. This came out around august 2001 Wired August 2001 Here is a link to a company that makes the bandage in case someone needs a few med-kits of their own Company
Consider portability - you fire a small piece of steel at several thousand kph... the recoil is going to blow off your own arm. Every reaction and whatnot...
From Movie Physics in the Classroom:
As Lee observes, "...they said the physics [of the rail gun] were impossible", and we're inclined to heartily agree. The first problem is a nasty little law of physics called conservation of momentum. Briefly, this states that the forward momentum of the bullet must be counteracted by the backward momentum of the gun. The magnitude of an object's momentum is equal to its mass times the magnitude of its velocity, as expressed by the following equation:
p = mv
We know that the bullet is travelling close to the speed of light (3 × 108 m/s). To be conservative, we will assume the bullet travels at only half the speed of light, and that its mass is about the mass of a paper clip (0.0005 kg). For the sake of simplicity, we will ignore the effects of relativity, which would cause the bullet's mass to be even greater. Thus, we calculate the bullet's momentum:
pbullet = (0.0005 kg)(½)(3 × 108 m/s) = 7.5 × 104 Ns
If we assume the mass of the rifle is 10 kg, its backward velocity must be 7.5 × 104 Ns divided by 10 kg, which equals 7500 m/s. Compared to the velocity of a .45 cal bullet going a sedate 330 m/s, our rail gun would be a mite difficult to hold.
Okay, so the gun has a little kickback; so what? Well, let's look at the bullet's kinetic energy, calculated from the equation:
KE = ½mv2
Hence, the kinetic energy of the bullet would be:
KEbullet = (½)(0.0005 kg)(1.5 × 108 m/s)2 = 5.625 × 1012 J
The impact of our bullet would be like blowing up over 1000 tons of TNT. Needless to say this would take out a little more than just Vanessa Williams.
-T
Antipersonnel NUKES?. you on crack?
Obvious troll, but I'll bite. The army developed a special type of thermonuclear bomb during the cold war called the neutron bomb. This bomb has had a lot of bad press but it really isn't as bad as some of the alternatives (napalm, carpet bombing, regular nukes)
These neutron bombs were intended to take out invading troops. They emitted lots of beta radiation, but they didn't have a huge blast and didn't leave much lasting radioactivity. Say, for example, if the Soviets invaded W. Germany during the cold war, we could detonate a neutron bomb over the invading troops. They would be killed by the intense amount of beta radiation from the bomb. All of the trees, grass, and most living things in the vicinity would die. However, hopefully the civilians would be protected, if they were in a fallout shelter or bunker. Due to the small blast, their buildings would remain intact.
There are other examples of anti personel bombs as well.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
I wonder how long technology like this trickles down to the civilian sector. As a paramedic in New York City our protocol for trauma has always been scoop and run, the thinking being that a trauma patient needs a surgeon, not a paramedic or an EMT.
This technology could easily be used by EMS personell en route with a trauma patient to the ER.