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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
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.
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
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.