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Mariners Develop High Tech Pirate Repellents
Hugh Pickens writes "NPR reports that owners of ships that ply the dangerous waters near Somalia are looking at options to repel pirates including slippery foam, lasers, electric fences, water cannons and high-intensity sound — almost anything except guns. One defense is the Force 80 squirt gun with a 3-inch nozzle that can send 1,400 gallons a minute 100 yards in any direction. 'It is a tremendous force of water that will knock over anything in its path and will also flood a pirate's ship very quickly,' says Roger Barrett James of the the Swedish company Unifire. Next is the Mobility Denial System, a slippery nontoxic foam that can be sprayed on just about any surface making it impossible to walk or climb even with the aid of a harness. The idea would be to spray the pirate's vessel as it approached, or to coat ropes, ladders, steps and the hull of the ship that's under attack. The Long Range Acoustic Device, or LRAD, a high-powered directional loudspeaker allows a ship to hail an approaching vessel more than a mile away. 'Knowing that they've lost the element of surprise is half the battle,' says Robert Putnam of American Technology Corp. The LRAD has another feature — a piercing "deterrent tone" that sounds a bit like a smoke detector alarm with enough intensity to cause extreme pain and even permanent hearing loss for anyone directly in the beam that comes from the device. But Capt. John Konrad, who blogs for the Web site Gcaptain.com, says no anti-pirate device is perfect. 'The best case scenario is that you find these vessels early enough that you can get a Navy ship detached to your location and let them handle the situation.'"
All the testosterone and gung-ho aside, how about not giving them a reason to pirate? It seems that nobody here realizes that the Somali pirates are doing what they do because other nations illegal fishing (worth an estimated 300 million) in the region have depleted their fish stocks while the UN turned a blind eye. To add insult to injury, there's been some toxic waste dumping off the coast.
So while the media distraction du jour clearly has many of you foaming at the mouth, try to realize that Somali pirates, much like our own domestic media pirates, are doing what they do because they system has failed them and they see piracy as the most feasible method to force change. The only difference between us and them is that they do it to put food on their table.
You're not likely to be home when they break in, because the burglars get to choose the time (broad daylight on a weekday is best). The gun then just serves two functions:
If you want to protect your home against burglary, the most effective thing is to fortify the entry points into your house so you slow down the burglar enough to make him choose a different target. Second most effective thing is an effective home alarm system that automatically notifies responders.
Are you adequate?
Maybe they're trying to prevent what happened when the US applied the "Put a bullet in it" methodology to end the standoff with pirates? When we shot the pirates, the pirates vowed to start targeting and killing Americans to strike back (as a side note, it seems the US needs to work on our overseas negotiation skills as that seems to be the solution/outcome pairing that happens the most)
Hosing them down might piss them off, but it prevents an intentional loss of life. Using less than lethal methods also makes it harder for them to drum up local support if they start killing people for shooting them with slipper foam.
I traded all my mod points for these magic beans.
How many countries apart from the USA do you think are stupid enough to allow civilians to carry weapons? :)
I'm pretty sure you'd have a hard time finding a harbor in Europe that will take you in and not put you in jail for a few years
Seriously, guns in the hands of civilians is not a solution. I know it's a subject for discussion in USA, but in most civilized nations there's no pro-gun lobby organizations, nor any desire for guns within the population.
(Guns for hunting and sports excepted, however, still strongly restricted. Also all automatic stuff like M-16 is strictly banned).
Brand new? I say the same thing every time and you don't get it each time. Fuck it, I'm tired of trying to get you to pull your head out of your ass. Go ahead and think they do this for some idealistic view of the world. Hell, go get a ship and help them. After all, the navy could use more target practice.
No. It doesn't. It does, however, explain why it happens. A person grows up in abject poverty, and thanks to mass media's portrayal of the western world, he realizes just how much poverty he's got to deal with. He sees that there's not really anything that separates him from people in wealthier parts of the world other than what's effectively birth right. He begins to resent that relative wealth, and he begins to develop a sense of entitlement. Why shouldn't he have the same wealth that the rich have?
That sense of entitlement is what, he feels, gives him the right to hold a person hostage demanding ransom.
I believe the phenomenon you refer to is more commonly know as 'liberalism'.
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