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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."
Improvised Explosive Device :)
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.
This was mildly interesting when it was reported about the SAS ages ago.
Marcelle Shriver said that since the string comes in an aerosol can, it is considered a hazardous material, meaning the Postal Service will not ship it by air. But a private pilot who heard about her campaign has agreed to fly the cans to Kuwait _ most likely in January _ where they will then be taken to Iraq.
Que Deus te de em dobro o que me desejas
[May God give you double that which you wish for me]
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.
Most of the item prices that people go off about are limited production items, and often the costs figure in R&D to bring it upto military specs, and the lowered productivity of the production line because of military auditors and paperwork. GE for example charges 25% more for the same engine if it's going to the military because the auditors slow the line down, and they have to store all the additional paperwork for years longer then would be required for it's civil product. Lockheed Martin for example is still charging the DOD for warehouse full of paperwork just for the F-16.