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Silly String Goes to War Against IEDs
Luban Doyle writes "In an age of multimillion-dollar high-tech weapons systems, sometimes it's the simplest ideas that can save lives. Which is why a New Jersey mother is organizing a drive to send cans of Silly String to Iraq.
American troops use the stuff to detect trip wires around bombs, as Marcelle Shriver learned from her son, a soldier in Iraq."
New slogan? "Iraq: It's a Party Over There!"
They're also using bees. (Seriously). Silly string and bees.
How can one ship this stuff without hiring a private shipper if the post office won't accept aerosol cans?
Slinky's and Super Balls... Pretty cool idea, you've got to hand it to our GI's.
Infra-red emmitting diode?
Intermittent Explosive Disorder?
Institute for Educational Development?
Institution of Engineering Designers?
Innovative Electronic Designs?
I'm sure they once called these "booby traps". What's the obsession with acronyms?
Why isn't the government providing the tools the military needs.
Additionally there should be a significant discount if they make a nice large contract
That's a really ingenious use of Silly String. I just hope it continues to work.
biopowered.co.uk - catalytically cracking triglycerides for home automotive use since 2008. Just say no to big oil!
"IED-like device" supposedly found near Cincinnati
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
OK call me overly sensitive, I usually am against Political Correctness, but this is a serious issue. DEADLY serious.
I'm glad this low tech method of booby trap detection is being used. My nit however is in leading the article with the "It's Funny, Laugh" icon.
There is a humorous element in using a humorously named children's toy for sure, but I still chafe at the juxtaposition of the Monty Python foot with something that is in actuality so far removed from humor.
Letter To Iran
Can you say free good PR? I knew you could.
Also doesn't silly string and a zippo = intpocket napalm?
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
Let's make it in olive green and sell it for ten times as much!
they can also use the silly string can with a lighter as an improvised flame thrower!
After all, the Geneva conventions don't apply when you're fighting terrists
You have to love email forwards disguised as news articles.
This has been floating around for years -- I first saw it as a piece promoting British Special Forces ingenuity. Our very own Bruce Schneier mentioned it (and the suppressed Cockeyed piece) around this time last year.
Even if the government does pay, where do you think they'll get that money from? I'll tell you: you, your neighbors, that New Jersey mother, the company that makes Silly String, and basically every other American individual or organization. So in the end, it really isn't the government that pays anything.
No, I'm not kidding.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
This was mildly interesting when it was reported about the SAS ages ago.
Because Slashdotters have, ummm...how do I say this nicely, a different view of what BOOBY trap means?
In fact, I'm going to teach that to our guys tonight.
Who'd've thunk I'd pick up a tactical tip from Slashdot?
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
Seriously, silly string can be used during skirmishes as well.....has anyone ever gotten an eye-full of that stuff? Hurts like hell....
Quite a bit of assembly required, actually....
Isn't this the 2nd time war and toys have crossed paths? IIRC Silly Putty was made by accident in WW2, attempting to make an explosion. While no explosive was made, the designers pressed it on a newspaper photo and went "but hey! Look what you can do with Hitler's face!"
Let's look for other toys with the word "silly" in them to see if they are usful in military applications. I'm betting now there's some research funds diverting towards it.
In todays politically correct society where there is a fear of lawsuits and an assumption that any word that can be taken in a childish context will be. For example in my organization: Primary Management System was renamed because the acronym was PMS. The Financial Unit reports were renamed because some manager couldn't ask for the F-U reports with a straight face. And most recently a data translation application had its name changed because someone tried to pronounce the acronym as "La-tee-dah-tol".
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Now that would be silly... The thing is supposed to be well visible so it detects booby traps. Making it camouflage-colored is hardly going to improve its performance. Again, it would be so fitting... "Silly String in stupid format for an idiotic war!"
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
I would think that this tactic would be harder for insurgents to get around... the tripwire needs to be there to work after all. You could make the tripline super sensitive, so the string itself sets it off, but that would put the soldiers further from the blast when it happened. Also, setting a super-sensitive tripline would hopefully kill a few more terrorists while they're setting it up.
The insurgents' next tactics will probably involve laser-armed proximity mines like in Star Wars: Jedi Knight 2. It's cool though, you just jump really high to minimize damage, then hit F5 a few times to heal...
"Silly String?"
Couldn't we at least change the name to Freedom String-In-A-Can?
If Nalgene water bottles are outlawed, only outlaws will have Nalgene water bottles.
We used to use a metal coat hanger.
Untie the hook part and strighten it up. Make a finger loop at the top and curve it slightly at the bottom. Hold in font of you when walking, you will notice when it contacts something trust me.
The use of silly string is hardly enviromentally friendly and I see that US forces did not learn of the even cheaper trick from the Brits. Perhaps you dont have metal coat hangers in the US who knows.
I still think tin upon tin of silly string will amount to lots of $$$ though.
Ibbo
Linux user #349545 (GNU/Linux)iD8DBQBAzWjX+MZAIjBWXGURAmflAKCntuBbuK
silly string is not only hours upon hours of annoying fun, but also highly flamable...looks like we've just discovered world's greatest weapon, now availabe at the local toys 'r us....i think i've just cut the US military budget by $50 trillion www.popculturepundit.com
The BSharps can put that whole "poisonous" thing behind them and start producing the silly string again!
Monstar L
Could you also use spray on fake snow for this?
:-)
It's more in keeping with the season!
Might be harder to clean up, though. I doubt that it sprays as far, either.
"The military is reluctant to talk about the use of Silly String, saying that discussing specific tactics will tip off insurgents."
Would that then make silly string an IIEDDD?
improvised improvised explosive device detection device
I'm glad to see something I have always considered to be completely useless and extremely annoying at the office come to such constructive use. Way to go American ingenuity!
Except in military usage, it wouldn't be called "silly". (This, besides being pejorative and politically incorrect, might infringe upon trademark.)
Expect instead "long-chained nontoxic polycarbon semi-liquid fast drying compound."
Also, some of your information seems to be missing. Accounting forwarded the following rejection notice:
Please supply
Department
Cost Code
Category type
Expected use rates for prepaid asset scheduling
Routing number
Authorized sign-off official
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I knew that string theory would have an answer! Unfortunately we'll need to add a silly dimension to get everything to work. :(
Also, soldiers put condoms and rubber bands around their rifle muzzles to keep out sand.
That particular trick dates back to world war 2.I think there was a 60 Minutes story on this back about a year ago, but you'd think I could find it? The following link should be good enough.
Called the Cooper Sling. Kind of interesting. At the time of the story, the military was apparently "still investigating" how well it worked, even soldiers were already buying them themselves.
And if the officers sent in a requisition, and someone pushed it through, I can see the headlines:
Pentagon spends millions on children's toys
Military awards no-bid contract for toys
Millions of cans of toys bought, unable to track
Military fails to provide tools to troops, uses toys instead
You are 100% right about the edge of irregulars being able to use whatever works. However, clearly our troops are just as smart and figured out how to improvise, and away go the cans of silly string. So it's being done voluntarily by people on the home front, so what, that just makes them wonderful patriots. What is with the statist notion that it is only okay if it goes through taxes and government procurement.
The biggest problem is that we have two generations of reporters that believe their job is to undermine the government, and that that is an example of freedom of the press.
Take the body armor issue... Our troops have some older body armor, and there is a dispute as to which ones to replace. If the government replaced EVERYTHING, we'd be screaming about waste from throwing out our perfectly good 2 year old body armor that we spent billions on. In addition, the guys in the cities don't want the bulkier armor, and were refusing to wear it, so the Pentagon, sick of the bad PR, REQUIRED the use, even for units that didn't want it.
The anti-government press goes beyond reporting problems so that they can be fixed, and tries to play gotcha with our government. So government officials play CYA, instead of doing the right thing. It's a HORRIBLE mess, and it will take more than an emergency requisition of silly string to fix it.
And they probably call Band-Aids(TM) adhesive bandages and refer to Ping Pong(TM) as table tennis. What a bunch of idiots!
Do you have any idea what you say. How exactly do you think the muslims behave ? Fortunately, the quran provides prescribed behavior for soldiers in these cases. So we only have to behave better than islamic terrorists' behavior, described in the quran. That would mean behaving better than :
... repeat ... (for an illustration on video of this ... there ARE videos of the armenian genocide)
1. raiding entire villages with superior power killing everyone and anyone we find until the street goes quiet
2. collect all remaining adult (older than 8 or so) men, have them dig their own grave in the center of the town, then shoot them, make the survivors close the graves and dig another trench
3. distribute all surviving women among the soldiers (double the allotment of a normal soldier to any commander that commands more than 10 people) to use "any way they see fit"
4. leave the raped women and children to die in the desert if the soldiers doesn't marry them, then occupy their houses and shoot any that dare return (which is VERY unlikely to happen because of the desert sun)
See "khaybar" in the quran.
I think we can manage to behave a LOT better than the islamists by killing anyone that even raises a finger to the soldiers without thinking twice and we'd STILL have the moral high ground.
And, yes, you are overly sensitive. Most issues are serious to one person or another. You may find one issue amusing, but others will not and vice versa.
...was the scene in Shelob's Lair from the LOTR movies. Seriously.
I wonder, could we make something akin to "Silly String" that could fire huge globs of a gooey, rubbery, net-like substance that could be used to immobilize people?
I figure, if anybody out there knows, or has tried this, they're probably on Slashdot...
Don't know why this triggered. :) But it recalls me back to more devious dungeon masters who built traps so that when you found it you were basically screwed.
Things like using 10 foot poles to trigger traps which have been set 10 feet back from where the trigger is.
In this case I can see the tripwires changing. Rather then catgut (fishing line) have a weaker string that reacts to the chemicals in silly string so when its sprayed the bomb goes off.
...and still counting.
Extra points for those who get their testicles and a few limbs blown off but survive. That way they cannot poison the gene-pool and still have a whole life thinking about their idiocy.
It had to be said... :-)
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
I like that idea better.
With silly string you leave a trail that you were there, plus some slight noise.
With cotton string there is no evidence, and it is quieter.
> When talking about risks and countermeasures, it pays to be specific.
So, when talking to a bunch of slashdotters, the extra detail implied by the acronym 'IED' vs 'booby-trap' (or even just 'trap') has some kind of pay-off?
Like, some slashdotter out there may die trying to detect trip wires on a non-IED bobby-trap in his back yard?
Seriously, unnecessary precision in your speach can cause more confusion than it resolves.
You should try reading the entire book sometime instead of just the verses that make you feel better about being an atheist.
[sarcasm]
Nice heel icon on the page, because NOTHING is funnier than soldiers getting killed by IEDs. Hil-frickin'-arious!
[/sarcasm]
you are trying to apply logic to religion : it does not work like that.
If the government provided this, it would cost $129 a can sold by Haliburton or similar contractor. Watch "Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers" It costs $99 per load of laundry because of these greedy contractors. Guess who pays them... YOU!!
I hope everyone over there is back over here ASAP!!
Come back when you learn how to spell.
For some reason, I just pictured a girl with gigantic tits jumping up and down on a trampoline followed immediately by Admiral Akbar yelling "it's a trap!"
fun times.
So, ehh.. Can we infer that Booby Traps are trademarked?
If J.K.R wrote Windows: Puteulanus fenestra mortalis!
So...Monkey Boy et al sprayed Silly String before going into Iraq in 2003, huh? Once they knew there were no WMDs to be had, in he sent and in went the barbarian hordes...
Using every day objects and the sort is pretty commonplace on the battlefield. Back during the Napoleanic war soldiers used to piss down the barrels of their guns to clean them out. In World war I, allied soldiers brought bathtubs with them into the trenches, and would launch them with catapults into the enemy trenches. The Germans and Turks had developed completely different bathtubs at the time, and were terrified of the Allied tubs. This always led to a horrendous panic in the German trenches, which would almost always be followed by a push across no mans land by the allies. It's said that the Dardanelles could have been taken, had Churchill been provided with adequate bathtubs. During World War II allied soldiers brought white makeup along with them so if they ever got caught they'd paint themselves up like mimes. When the Germans tried to question them and saw the white makeup they just let them go, knowing that there'd be absolutely no way they could get a mime to talk. Then during the Korean war soldiers made good use of old coffee grounds. Since the North Koreans knew soldiers always drank a lot of coffee, if they found old coffee grounds they assumed there was a base near by and retreat. In the first Iraq war American soldiers used to bring soccer balls along with them. At the outbreak of the war almost all of Iraq's soccer balls were destroyed in a freak smoke stack toppeling. When ever the Americans got in a serious fire fight, they'd just lob their soccer ball into the frey and all the enemy soldiers would just stop and try to get it, which usually ended quite badly for the enemy. Unfortunatley Iraq was able to build up a tremendous stock pile of soccer balls since the first war, so the strategy doesn't work any more.
It's quite remarkible how such common things can prove to be so useful. I think it's overall a great testimant to human ingenuity in time of war.
I don't own a snook, and if I did I wouldn't leave it cocked.
I suppose IED is safer to use here, because for most slashdotters, the B-word resolves to a null-pointer. We don't want slashdotters dumping core because of an access violation.
If J.K.R wrote Windows: Puteulanus fenestra mortalis!
A year ago (November 2005) there was a flurry of military silly string articles (LifeHacker, Schneier, others) all leading back to a cockeyed.com article, which quoted a soldier saying they used it for locating tripwires. The site didn't leave the content up for long, but it's preserved at the Internet Archive.
Thanks for your utterly unhelpful commentary. You could say the same thing about the 9/11 hijackers too ya know =D
Actually the pope has made multiple statements opposing the war in Iraq, and has been generally a voice for peace in recent history. In fact, many Catholic organizations, such as the Catholic Workers have actively opposed US wars.
It was professional killers that created the country that allows you to say stupid stuff. So don't get to high brow, slick.
And it doesn't matter what country tyour in, that holds true.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I believe the best solution would be human-like robots driving Humvees. The bombers won't be able to tell them from the real thing, and the cool part is that after the Humvee is blown up, the robot can calmly climb out of the wreckage, detect the heartbeat of the insurgent hiding in the bushes 50 meters away, and go rip him to shreds.
If that's not technically feasible yet, they can at least stick an insurgent prisoner in the back seat of every vehicle in the convoy, or maybe tied to the roof where he's nice and visible. They blow up a vehicle, they'll know they're taking out one of their own in the process.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
When he coems uot and says anyone who kills with be excomunicated, then we will talk. Until then it's just talk.
Of course, taking the word of someone who thinks they talk to a giant invisible man might be a little risky.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"But then he could just cast an anti-anti love spell spell... spell"
the feeling's mutual.
Cunt Caps?
When we were first given our hats, the TI says "These used to be called cunt caps. You are not allowed to use that term."
It never would have occured to me to call it that, but afer he said that, "cunt cap" is the first thing that pops into my head.
That was 22 years ago, hopefully that has changed.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Maybe they can do aerial dispersion over a large area to show up trip mines. The military could pay for R&D of a silly string bomb or artillery shell.
Prov 9:8 Do not rebuke mockers or they will hate you; rebuke the wise and they will love you.
Note to soldiers: You can stick a needle in the nozzle of a can of shaving cream, use a lighter to melt and form the nozzle around the needle, and then remove the needle to have a higher volume, much cheaper form of silly string. I think this would work just as well to detect tripwires.
Playtex(tm)
What part of it would one believe? There's a lot of verses that contradict other verses. That's what happens when people have changed something over hundreds of years to serve their own purposes.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
And they probably call Band-Aids(TM) adhesive bandages and refer to Ping Pong(TM) as table tennis. What a bunch of idiots!
Well, since they (the gov't) granted the use of those trademarks, why shouldn't they use them? Or maybe take them away, if there's any complaints.
String, Silly
Color: Olive Drab
Use: Aim can in the direction of suspected trip wire.
If string falls to ground no trip wire is detected.
So according to you if one is against the illegal invasion of a sovereign country, one is automatically pro-flying-planes-into-buildings?
Excuse me, but what kind of stupid logic is that?
Not even mentioning that Saddam and Osama were *not* friends.
You're talking about atheism, right?
... and send over some Twister
tone
For what it's worth, The maker of the Silly String brand, Just for Kicks Inc. is in Watertown, N.Y., about a 10 minute drive from Fort Drum, home of the 10th Mountain Division. http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/agency/army /10mtn.htm
http://www.drum.army.mil/sites/about/hist-10mtn.as p
And, no, we should not have invaded Iraq. We knew it then, we know it now.
If she is so motivated, perhaps a better use of her time is to organize a political group to put pressure on her representatives and bring the troops home...but that wouldnt' make the news now would it.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
No. Just because many people and their nations have done so since the dawn of civilization does not make it a valid move (bandwagon.)
The "protection" of economic interests fuel and even are the underlying causes for a great many wars and covert acts all over the world (gaining a lock on mutually exclusive resources.)
Allowing nations to perceive it as a VALID means to their ends will allow them to continue excusing it and perpetuating such actions in the world. (Before you say "welcome to the real world," think about the same reasoning on a smaller local scale in a "civilized" community vs an "uncivilized" community.)
Iraq is about Oil Dollars and finally Americans are figuring that out (well, just the oil part.) Its a complete failure because we are not getting the oil and we are losing oil dollars. We are keeping the large war machine employed; however, its at the gamble of destroying the economy. Four large military bases in Iraq will probably not secure economic interests either (remember, the same people wrote the plan in the 90s-- the few experts I've met said they knew this underlying stuff was wrong decades ago. Wrong for long term empire and wrong ethically.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
the reason they don't use it is because it can block the breathing passages, and thereby kill
so it's a great idea, and the technology exists, and has already been tested... except for that one catch
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Ok, which one of you jokers modded the parent post as Informative!
For some reason, I just pictured a girl with gigantic tits jumping up and down on a trampoline followed immediately by Admiral Akbar yelling "it's a trap!"
I find your ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
... optical bomb triggers. If the silly string doesn't break the beam and detonate the bomb, the soldier walking into the "safe" room will.
Oh, and "itsatrap."
good on em! its the sole reason i dont join any military, because while balisitcs are cool, killing people isnt :/ so much pain, anguish, and suffering from it. I dont want to ever be put in a position where I would have to bring that upon someone.
Bravo Zulu (Good Job) for the Troops to figure this one out.
Since Sec. Baker and his Posse are claiming that the War is going so bad for us, I think it's time the Military break out SNL's HAPPY FUN BALL...
Die, Bart, Die.
Although I admire the philanthropic efforts of this proud mother, it's a pretty futile effort. Currently the general lifespan of a particular device's techniques is about 2-6 months. About a year ago, the IEDs were remote detonated, so the Army/Air Force used radio scramblers to stop them. Then the enemy changed to where the device was tripped when a certain frequency was scrambled. Same goes with a lot of other techniques. By the time she collects enough and sends them, the majority of the trip-wire devices will probably be replaced. The enemy is great at adapting and keeping up with the detection tactics used by the coalition troops. The problem with keeping a good public image for the military is we have to let the public know about what we're doing, but it tends to hurt us on the front lines.
-Bob
Bear with me here, this is my first post to slashdot ever, even though I've been reading it for the past 8 years.
Mmmkay, so here goes: IEDs are detonated either by remote control or by having it rigged to detonate when pressure is applied or a string is tripped. This being the case, it seems like all you'd need to do are 2 things to get around this:
1. Create a miniature radio signal jammer that prevents any signals (other than pre-approved military signals) from reaching anywhere around an APC or hummer. It would only need to be good for 100 feet or so fowards and backwards. This would eliminate the possibility of anyone remotely detonating a bomb underneath a hummer or APC.
2. For the manually tripped sort of IEDs, can't you just hook up something to the front of the vehicle that is pushed by the front of a hummer or APC? Kind of like how a towball would attatch to the back of your truck, but this would go on the front of an APC or Hummer. It wouldn't need to be all that big, and if it were made out of high quality material that didn't turn into shrapnel very easily, it would detonate the IED when this disposable IED-detonator doohickey was ontop of it, and not the front of an APC/Hummer. It seems like it would be very easy to make one of these with a blowtorch and spare boat trailers or something.
Please correct me if I'm wrong or something, but if both these solutions were implimented, I don't see how IEDs would affect any military vehicle any longer.
Granted this does not help when it comes to the realm of IEDs desgiend to kill individual soldiers on the ground, but it seems like most IED explosions I hear about are all directly related to a vehicle of sorts.
Ok, well thats it for another 8 years I guess.
Lurking with love,
Anonymoose Coward
Some traps are quite innovative, with no strings attached. Cell phone activation, infrared (TV remote), even proximity sensor circuits are available in electronic handbooks. Silly Strings are no cure against these types of danger.
Patriotism is sentimental; strategy isn't.
We were freed by the hessians? Or were they on a different team, I can't quite recall.
Please. Colonists were not professionals, they were angry people who had guns. Professional soldiers lined up to fight (like the Brits), which unfortunately for them did not prove advantageous.
And as long as we're talking... it would be "too" you're looking for, not "to."
Heil mein Fuehrer!
Relax I just want some peanuts.
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Yes! Let's pull out immediately and leave all those worthless brown people to step on mines and be brutalized by terrorists!
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Yes! Let's keep charging blindly on without any idea of what we're doing, so that we can get this out of the way and find more worthless brown people to step on our mines and be brutalized by our soldiers!
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You guys know that most IED on the road are trigger by radio or cell signal. It might be useful in an indoor area, however most traps are trigger when the door is open or by remote control from a spotter outside the house.
The might story might give you a warm and fuzzy feeling but it is much more complicated then it sound. Realities is different from the movies.
How appropriate.
.. this poor fellow:n i.jpg
http://kecy.roumen.cz/roumingShow.php?file=naseda