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The Vortex Gun Coming Soon To a Protest Near You
An anonymous reader writes "Vortex technology has been used in everything from rocket-powered fire extinguishers to Nerf guns, but neither of those things are capable of giving the beat-down to hapless protesters. By giving spinning vortices an electric charge, though, pepper spray can be sent over 150 feet at between 60 and 90 mph. A vortex gun uses a pressure wave and a carefully designed barrel to fire donut-shaped rings of air that can hold themselves together over long distances. The military (starting with the German military during World War II) has been running experiments with using vortex canons to knock things over, but it's not a particularly efficient or effective way to go. What the gas rings can be used for is transporting other gasses (like pepper spray or tear gas or pesticide) long distances with a decent amount of accuracy, holding their cargo inside the calm center spinning vortex."
there, fixed that for ya.
Another gun that lowers the inhibition of police to shoot at protesters.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
They're coming up with ever-more creative ways to hurt peaceful protesters -- and let's be honest: Most of the time, they provoke, prod, cajoule, and taunt these people until one of them out of the dozen, hundred, or thousand there snaps, then they point and say "See! See! We're justified" and open up unholy horror on everyone nearby, including journalists, children, and anyone else, then seize or destroy the evidence of what went down, counting on their purchases media contacts to portray their victims as all manner of bad. But whether it's rubber bullets or real ones, the fact is this is a business of causing pain and misery... and it is because the people its being inflicted upon had the audacity to say "I think we can do better than this."
... Well, it happened because you stupid bastards didn't do your job and report the truth. It happened because people don't like being silenced.
I am the last person to suggest violence as a response to improper government action: I live in a democracy, and one of our main pressure valves to prevent violence is peaceful protest. They're busy stuffing that up now, and just like every other country that has tried it in the past, eventually public sentiment is going to shift. It'll be fine one day, and the next shit will be on fire and they'll be declaring martial law, and the bought-off press will be busy with headlines like "How did this happen?"
It happened... because human nature isn't all that different from an animal: Keep poking it with a stick and eventually it will stop hiding in the corner and come sink its claws and teeth into you. And why? Because it didn't have a choice.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
I've got a 14 month old boy. I need to warm up my fart joke capacity, so it'll be ready when I need it. I wonder if a positively-charged fart would be different from a negatively-charged fart.
Typical of a certain mindset that sufficient force will stop a demonstration.
And it will, of course. ONE demonstration. But if you don't want another twice as big, you can't stop it with force.
Ghaddafi used anti-aircraft ammunition on human bodies. That tidied up the whole street in jig time. But where is he now?
It worked for him for about 40 years. And it seems to work for Bashar al-Assad right now.
Use a big fan and blow it back at police will tbey get charged with assaulting a police officer?
Spoken like a true bootlicker.
Someone will get him eventually. Check back in a year or two. It's more likely to come from one of his own than a protestor, but it only takes one bullet.
Police are supposed to be trained officers. They are being provoked by taunts? Throw those goddamn police out of their jobs, with a black mark on their records. What you say is (trolling?) bullshit. I have seen numerous videos of peaceful people blindsided by police with pepper spray and bludgeons. Overwhelming force, yet the police are provoked by taunts? You live in a world of hypocrisy and denial, previous poster.
Don't kid yourself. Daffy would still be in power if the Europeans (with American support) hadn't pushed him out. His response to protests and then later outright civil war was working very well.
It's like the wildebeest and the lions. The lions normally can pick off the weak ones at will. But once in a while a lion pisses off too many wildebeest at a time and then it dies.
Getting people to disperse in a matter that will piss them off will only work if they wake up in the morning and think "Gosh, I'm kind of embarrassed I was there at all.". Otherwise, it will just make them angrier. And it may not even get them to disperse and go home like you want them to in the first place.
The people who work at firms who make stuff like this should be ashamed of themselves for the world they help create.
But, of course, there are enough people on Slashdot who think that might makes right, and that authority is always correct (most of whome paradoxically are against 'big government') that I suspect these people feel not a glimmer of guilt.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Good luck expecting France will bomb the US to let you carry on your protest.
Geeks are so full of shit that "beating the crap out of them" takes a whole new meaning.
American scientist Robert W. Wood experimented with vortex machines to stun his students long before WWII.
High concentrations, great non-lethal suppression force for people to pop in and lay some phat beats on those turrurists.
But really, it would be highly useful for that. They wouldn't know what hit them.
Sitting there discussing the next plan to attack town X, suddenly they inhale a volcano of gasses and choke their lungs out their nostrils, then in pops the military.
Better than explosive rounds or the like since that would require you to actually go up next to things, or fire a launcher of sorts that would be more noticeable.
This would be a directed blast-wave that would be pretty much invisible against most landscapes until it hits a target.
"What the gas rings can be used for is transporting other gasses (like pepper spray or tear gas or pesticide) long distances with a decent amount of accuracy, holding their cargo inside the calm center spinning vortex" We already have an old school "vortex" gun that spins a piece of lead to delivery it with extremely high amounts of accuracy over much greater distances. It works on criminals, looters, politicians (what happens when the first two marry and have kids), and protesters equally well.
Now wondering if you spray an aerosol into the chamber *thinks*
"Vortex gun: coming soon to a free speech zone near you".
Nuff said.
Using weapons with a spread of 150 feet on protestors seems like a horrible idea. Why? Because protests take place in cities. Cities have homes. Homes sometimes have open windows(or windows smashed by bricks). Not only would you probably get sued by anyone who was gassed because his home was next to the protest, it could cause permanent damage to people with lung deficiencies, newborns or easily-damaged eyes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyAyd4WnvhU
I want one.....
It sounds perfect for a small variation on an ARM device. A very simple sensor could continuously detect the vortexes and their centers, a simple circuit programmed into an FPGA could adjust fins to keep it on course. An easily constructed device would fly straight down the concentric rings and at target radiate spherical pattern of jagged shrapnel, eliminating the device and killing or otherwise neutralizing anyone within about 10 meters. One could acquire the components off the shelf in a city of any size. If you spend a great deal of money developing this you would need to tell the operator to be sure there was no one with an engineering degree at the other end.
I'm perfectly willing to take a 90 MPH torus of pepper spray to the face while sitting down for the cameras because I understand the greater effect that the pictures will have.
Police snipers pepper spraying protestors from the inside of a building hidden and unseen. Oh yeah, Thats EXACTLY what this country needs......................
The article is basically a press release from a company in Ohio that filed a patent application for delivering electrically charged bubbles of gas with a vortex gun. Somehow Slashdot turned it into a rallying cry for Occupy Someplace for Some Reason protesters.
You have a right to peaceful protest. You don't have a right to trespass and disrupt businesses or political gatherings. Respect others' rights and yours will be respected too.
and a couple thousand other 'wehrmacht' people who suffered under the German High Command's alliance with hitler and the SS.
and the nazi scientific community was controlled and/or infiltrated by the SS, as were most other parts of society, universities, corporations, research labs, radio societies, the youth groups, the judiciary, the hospitals, the churches, etc etc etc
It'll be interesting about the time they use one on some one wearing a pacemaker or defibrillator. You can't even go through the X-Ray machine or let them use a wand on you in airports. A lot of younger people do have these devices now days.
Seems like it would make a good fireball thrower.
Or paint aerosol to mark individual protestors.
Deleted
There was a time, perhaps, when only the government had the shiny, new. Super secret facilities in Nevada or Los Alamos chock full of stolen nazi scientists with equipment only defense budgets could afford.
But now I'm seeing massive computing power at the fingertips of most Americans, and amazing technologies like additive manufacturing on the brink of hitting the mainstream, and I wonder how long it will be before the people, getting hit with LRADs and vortex cannons for voicing their opinions, will turn all of it on the police and the elites they serve, whom they outnumber 10,000 to one.
These "non-violent" weapons are not based on some crypto science Uncle Sam learned from aliens from the Kla'arg galaxy. They are not made out of solid platinum or unobtainium. The software needed to run them? Crap, there are probably open source packages out there to do so already (soon, also on BSD!).
Why do they think that people, highly incensed at the injuries to their freedom, won't put all that together and employ it?
I suspect someone among the elites is clear-eyed enough to see it, but clueless how to prevent it, and they're scared shitless and panicking.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
the intelligentsia who were truly intelligent understood what was happening in the 1930s, and they left. or were kicked out. the people doing research on vortex cannons during wwii would not have been 'innocent bystanders', they were more like von braun , scientists who did not care about the social implications of their work or their relationship with mass murderers.
of which there are several tons at the US holocaust museum. the situation is not as simple as you make it sound.
IBM, actually, but lets not nitpick ... this is slashdot after all
In the spirit of the all things capable of playing Crysis, I ask this. Just think of the short range lighting gun, or core dumps of a fictitious fusion reactor build as a chamber of a weapon.
The only reason it didn't work for Ghaddafi this time was the fact that Europe wanted to shop it's fighter planes for export markets against the US F-35. A lot of countries will be replacing F-16's in the next 15 years and this was the perfect place to showcase the Typhoon and Rafael so they could earn their "proven in combat" badge to potential buyers. Now they can go to countries and say their planes are "combat proven now" while the F-35 is still in testing.
It worked for Iran in 2008. It's going to work now for Syria unless there is a similar international movement to arm the Syrian resistance and provide air support.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Just wait until they challenge Gandalf. He cheats with magic.
those who oppose the Party line get what they deserve.
Here's video of a similar device: SRL: Weird Weapons of WWII from History Channel's Weird Weapons of WWII featuring Survival Research Laboratories' (SRL's) demonstrating the "shockwave cannon.' "
Wow! The Catholic church is getting very high-tech!
Ecclesiastical rules coming straight at you in a vortex.
Duck, sinners, duck!!
Ghaddafi used anti-aircraft ammunition on human bodies. That tidied up the whole street in jig time. But where is he now?
The catch it, it took a considerable radical resistance movement - not peaceful protesters, but determined Islamists - to bring him down. And even then they were being steadily pushed back until UN intervened and started bombing Gaddafi's armor and shooting down his plains.
It will be an invitation to retaliate with modern DIY weapons like EMP cannons, sneezing and itching powder mortars and good old fashioned stink bombs, R/C battlebots and superglue in aerosol cans.
Gotta love riots.
"Occupy This!"...KAPOW! Gotta love it!
... the warp drive recently mentioned.
ourpla.net is your planet
If you look at the demographics of the OWS crowd, what you'll find is most are students, employed or retired. Only a very small percentage lack employment.
Anybody who thinks that all this represents a new wave of police brutality that will lead to the coming downfall of democracy is white and has never read the history of the civil rights movement. Or of the labor movement for that matter.
If anything, the modern use of pepper spray and tasers is something of an improvement over releasing the dogs and wading in with truncheons. People used to die for their peaceful protests. It's still wrong, but democracy has survived worse. No need for chicken little.
Pffft. I had one of those when I was a kid.
You live in a country that gives you the right to vote for the person/party whose lobbyists will write the laws. Senators and Representatives no longer write laws. Their staff takes what is handed to them by lobbyists and cleans the wording up to make it acceptable. Your freedom has been replaced by an illusion of freedom.
Does the federal government not regulate local PD's measures in crowd control?
I'm afraid we're about to turn some bad corners in development of such measures, nationally, and I don't know if we'll be able to turn back from those.
The assaults on the Occupy protesters in Oakland - to speak only of one recent incident in Police abuse - it sets a bad precedent. The development of even more aggressive crowd control measures, if it would not be regulated, may lead to even further abuses - not a thing we should allow, as a democratic people, though I'm certainly not one to propose any rash responses to which.
I can respect that there's a distinction between the Nazi Party as a political movement and the German Military as a governmentally operated military body. Speculatively, though - and this could only be in speculation, I suppose, so, speaking only hypothetically - I wonder how easy it may be for a nation's military to not become wholly engrossed with an authoritarian agenda of the nation the military serves? ..speaking only hypothetically, as it were ;} I mean, cough nothing about Neocon ideology cough cough...
Do you even know what a scab is?
Words have meanings, DUMBASS.
Words have meanings, DUMBASS
For example, a dumbass is a bass with a particularly carefree attitude towards being fished. It's humming can sometimes be heard through the bottoms of fishing boats.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxZu_Y_m8i4 I have, actually still have, one of these. Worked with a tight vortex at least over room distances. Didn't put pepper spray in mine though. In college worked on a larger version. Larger volume blast of air and more air over greater distances. Not too hard to scale up and optimize for pepper spray use. Probably not too bad a non-lethal weapon. All things considered maybe safer than tear gas grenades normally used. Less chance of injury, no fire hazard etc.
Einstein was Jewish and therefore had more reason than most to be aware of the Nazis and to get out. Even then I don't think that the Jewish intelligentsia in general took the Nazi party seriously enough or left in time, for various reasons.
Sorry, but free speech and right of assembly does not give you the right to stage peaceful protests wherever you want. You do not have a right to protest on my private property, and you do not have a right to protest in a way that gets in the way of other people, like blocking public roads or places. If you do, police can remove you, if necessary by force.
Why not contact the company developing this device with comments and concerns? Their website is www.battelle.org. Their phone numbers are listed on the home page as 1-800-201-2011 and 1-614-424-5853.
Anti-first amendment weapon.
I'm surprised there was no reference to the movie "Minority Report" in the original post.
"Amusingly, if you're American you probably also think you have no accent. "
Now why y'all think I don't know I have an accent? I once had a theater teacher from up North have me read from Tom Sawyer. She said, "No need to put on so much accent." I replied, "Pardon me ma'am but I grew up on the Mississippi River. That is not a put on accent."
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling