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Build Your Own HERF Gun
James writes "Rostislav Persion from Voltage Labs has successfully constructed a HERF gun (a device like EMP but directional) in his home that is capable of stalling cars at a distance and crashing computers as well. He has videos of the device in action as it lights up LED's at a distance and triggers motion detectors. Theres also a bunch of other security stuff and science stuff which is quite interesting and controversial, such as cell phone tracking, mood altering audio signals, gyro guns, and other things of this nature. The site owner was also featured in US News Magazine and MTV for some of his work."
Well actually if the car is older than 1980, it probably won't stall due to the lack of computerized components in the car. That's why I love driving a '56 Chevy. :-)
Similar, more powerful, device has been used by German police during hot pursuits. I'm not sure if its still used (because of the EU rules etc). Stop sticks are cheaper, although not as safe, and also don't kill the car as the EMG gun does. Oh yea, besides your dead engine/car you can say bye bye to all electronic equipment in the car; even your watch!
Yeah, you can use a microwave oven but putting tires inside the oven is kind of hard.
This would probably work on those automatic traffic controller systems with digital cameras that take pictures of speeding to...
Melius mori in libertate quam vivere in servitute.
Just a little history repeating itself.
Another tool, that when in the hands of the wrong people could be very dangerous! However to end a high speed chase, before someone gets killed?
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
I'll install one in the rear window of my vehicle and when the pigs start chasing me down, I'll zap 'em before they get close enough to read my license plate. :-)
Karma: NaN
I am certain that a lot of things affect moods. Audio is one of them. But I also believe that visual characteristics have a lot to do with mood. What's that Chinese art of interior decorating that is supposed to bring harmony? I forgot the name.
Mexico City (for those of you who don't know what D.F. stands for) is a heavily populated place. I've heard different accounts that it is the biggest city (or the third biggest) in the world, and I don't know if this means by population or by physical size. In any case, there is a LOT of traffic here. I have found that I am quite affected by "road rage," or let's just call it frustration behind the wheel, when I'm driving around town: Traffic moves along slowly. Going ten miles can take between 30 minutes and an hour, depending on the circumstances. It's just such a pain, and it is frustrating. Now, in my case, my frustration behind the wheel is caused by a number of factors:
Now all of this might sound totally psycho to you but I'm serious... people can't explain why they are the nicest people but turn into total bastards when they get in a car. It's not just sound waves that can piss you off... it's everything that your brain has to assign resources to, like motion and shape. I think this is why we associate certain feelings with certain faces, colors, shapes, body language, etc.
P.d., the worst road rage I've ever had was yelling profanities at the top of my lungs, and that only happened once when I was three hours late to work because I slept too long at my girlfriend's house and couldn't get to work fast enough. But that's how life is in the big city... I just go home in the evening and have some tequila. Because Denial is a river in Egypt.
Hmm, let's see- a 500V harpoon that, if it misses, impales some hapless bastard on the sidewalk, or takes out a bus or something. Can you imagine the fallout the first time they used something like that and missed? :-)
It's probably doable, but it would only be able to be used if there were no pedestrians/buildings/other cars about.
Hard to say exactly, but here are my guesses...
Comms and avionics would be damaged.
Flight control wouldn't be too affected, even if it's an aircraft using a fly-by-wire control system as they're equipped with hydraulic backups (non-military).
Engine control might be lost. Not something like an engine failure of any type, just loss of control.
Landing gear control might be lost, though gear could be brought down manually by a member of the flight crew going below deck.
what would be kind of cool is to track down the cops using directional methods. every single one of them has a computer in their squad car, right? maybe there's some sort of "ping" equivalent. if so, you could find what compass heading the police are in. use simple trigonometry, and a moving vehicle can then pinpoint their position. no officer, i was not speeding!
The Boing 777 does not have hydraulic backups, it is 100% fly by wire, the Boing studies showed that well done redundant electronic systems were less likely to fail then a mechanical backup was to cause problems. I doubt a simple 1KV gun would do any damage at even a hundred feet to an airliner as the electronics are already hardened against the severe amounts of radiation they are exposed to at cruising altitude (a cross country flight would expose you to more radiation then a full body xray if it were not for the planes skin).
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
"I would think car companies don't make these systems dependent on delicate electronics"
:o)
You would think that, wouldn't you?
In modern cars an electronics failure means that the car will stall, power assissted steering and brakeing will revert to manual, the ECU will fail (not exactly critical that one), traction control will drop out, ABS will stop working and several other problems. If you have an automatic the gears will stop shifting.
If you are used to driving a power assisted car, then the termination of power steering alone will probably be enough to send you off the road, especially when the lack of power assissted ABS/traction control brakes puts you into a skid.
In my car electronics failure means that the lights no longer work. Not exactly a disaster
Beep beep.
The site now redirects to a suspension message.
Fortunately for the owner, it looks like his host cuts off traffic after 30GB. A lot of them will simply keep jacking up the bill. Maybe Slashdot should direct some of the money from their banner ads to the owners of the sites they link to?
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
not much there though, looks like most of it was pictures and google doesn't cache those.
My own question is why don't editors post the google cache along with the real link? It's very rare a site can survive a slashdotting, so it only makes sense to post the cache along with the actual link.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
I never will get why people talking on cellphones in a restaraunt is annoying, but people talking just as loudly to people sitting next to them is not a problem.
People talking on cell phones often talk louder than people talking to someone across the table from them, plus you can't eavesdrop on the other half of the conversation. Remember those Sprint PCS commercials with the guy in the trenchcoat helping the poor soul who always yells because he's so used to talking on cell phones?
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Can someone explain the second provision of this to me?
I've NEVER understood why a device should have to "accept interference received that causes undesired operation." This means the device cannot be shielded against interference? What on Earth for? Is this a way to let the gubmint cheat?
+++ATH0
The output voltage of a microwave oven transformer (MOT) is more in the range of 2KV than 6 KV. Just as lethal (500mA) but a bit cheaper to manufacture. Otherwise BigBlockMopar told a good story.
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
Its designed to keep dicksize wars off of the airwaves.
You can shield your device all you want.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
The EMP will fry the anti-lock brakes. ABS systems are designed to lock the wheels in case of system failure. (Ironic in a way...)
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
I've always found people talking on cell phones rather irritating. Maybe it's because of the way our brains process auditory data. When two people are having a conversation in person, their speech will follow a general pattern. Maybe they'll take turns speaking, maybe one always interrupts the other, or maybe they both trip on each other's sentences all the time, but there will be a pattern your brain can pick out, and then it can recognize that pattern as unimportant and dismiss it if you're not interested in their conversation. But when a person is talking to a phone, you can't hear the other end of the conversation, so your brain can't pick out the pattern. Instead of a flowing conversation, you've got one person speaking, then silence, then the same person speaking again at some random interval. It's very jarring, especially when people get LOUD as many tend to do on cell phones. Kind of like having a noisy, slow, irregular drip from your bathroom faucet. Because you never quite know when that next "plonk!" is coming, you find yourself anticipating it, and it really messes with your concentration...and of course, when it finally comes, it always makes you jump a little because you can't predict exactly *when* it's coming. In the same way, you can never anticipate when a cell phone user is going to start speaking again, and every time he/she does, it kind of startles you. This makes it harder to tune out cell phone users than it is to tune out a tableful of people chatting with each other...
DennyK
Cavity magnetrons were invented in the Second World War by the Brits (iirc, apologies to the Yanks if I am wrong) and were used to hunt and kill German submarines in the Battle of the Atlantic. They blast electrons over small cavities and create microwave radiation - which was good enough to detect, by radar, submarines in the Atlantic swell. That, plus the combination of longer range bomber aircraft, finished the job started by Station X.
This is the way it used to be, but no more :(((
:/
This isn't a flaw in your logic, just a change in the way car manufacturers are putting together the braking system. In the old days, ABS was just slapped on top of a normal, mechanical braking system. If ABS failed, you'd have normal brake pressure, in fact, just a normal braking system.
These days, however, they have changed to a completely electronic braking system. In this case, the brake pressure applied to _each_ wheel is different when breaking. It is all controlled by the computer, and when that computer shuts off, the braking system reverts to equal pressure to all 4 wheels.
As you most likely know, cars are designed to brake with less pressure to the back brakes, usually it's about 70% to the front brakes, and 30% to the back brakes. It makes sense because of the engine weight.
So, now that these boneheads have gone to full electronic control of the braking pressure, it means that when ABS is killed, you have rear brakes that almost always lockup when you try to brake with any sort of power. 25% power to each wheel is _not_ good for braking. Not at all. Not a good thing.
I have to wonder how long it will before this sort of "drive by wire" stuff causes a death. Look at BMW and the problems they had with their systems. Now we have ABS braking that is useless without power to the engine. Soon, we won't have a steering shaft, and it will too be controlled by wire.
I tried different car manufactureres, from Subaru to Toyota, and all had a newer braking system like this in place, or next year's model had it.
This pisses me off so much, that I've taken my 1987 Jetta (which I was about to replace with a 2003 Jetta or GTI), and decided to retrofit it with a new V6 engine. After the body work, an extremely high quality paint job and interior work, and the new engine is fitted, I will still pay less than HALF the price of the new car. I also won't end up with ABS brakes and quite a few other annoyances.
Ah well.
Heh. Yeah, as I recall from my Army time, when we trained on a new weapon/radio/etc the phrase we most hated to hear was "man-portable". All that meant was that some damn fool put a shoulder strap on it or squeezed it into a box small enough to jam into a ruck or strap to a pack frame. Of course, nothing compares to the sinking feeling that comes with the realization that "light infantry" means "no vehicles-- you carry it".
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
It is sad to see that you look at a technology and only see what could be wrong about it. Every piece of knowledge has the power to be used for good or evil, not just this. Fo example, knowing how to blow up a building might help a potential criminal pull off the technical aspect of blowing it up, but the police officers investigating use the knowledge of how to build a bomb to seek out the places where he got his materials, and in general, where to start thier investigation. In fact, the final exam for a high-level government bomb-squad school, is to build a bomb, detonate it, and then investigate each other. I saw this on the Discovery channel a while back, so I can't remember what school it was though (Maybe ATF?).