back to article DHS working on pocket puke-ray

The US Department of Homeland Security is working on a torch-like "light-sabre" weapon, designed to leave aliens (illegal ones, that is) stumbling and puking helplessly. S&T Snapshots, an inhouse journal of the DHS Science and Technology arm, reports that the S&T Directorate's Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) office …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The natural progression from this is...

    A weapon that emits the "Brown Note"... a wavelength that makes you crap your pants a la Southpark.

    I bet people wouldn't be too keen on running anywhere after being zapped with that. Mounted on a flying robot,naturally.

  2. Paul

    Flying robots

    Is there anything the US army wont mount on a flying robot?

  3. Godwin Stewart

    Sick sticks?

    Looks like Philip K. Dick had some real insight in Minority Report!

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Is this a multimillion pound white elephant

    I thought these were usually sound waves, but light?

    I imagine the scene:

    US Agent One: Quick, get the super duper, Hi tech, mega expensive light gun. And aim....Fire.

    Agent two: It's having no effect Sir.

    Agent One. God Damn, the guys wearing sun glasses, Noooooooo.

    of course it wouldn't be that simple would it, I mean, they spent millions are DRM on CD's and that wasn't defated by Sticky tape or marker pens was it?

  5. Sam

    All a question of style..

    Time to dig out the rose-tinted specs then?

  6. Greg

    What...

    ...not a single Minority Report reference?

    Phhht.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @Paul

    Erm... I guess they wouldn't mount flying robots on flying robots... but that goes without saying.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @Paul

    "Is there anything the US army wont mount on a flying robot?"

    Thinking of the number of things military that are either bloody heavy, extremely large or both, I'd have to say yes.

    Doorman? My coat please.

    TeeCee

  9. Matt Siddall

    @Paul

    "Erm... I guess they wouldn't mount flying robots on flying robots... but that goes without saying."

    Next step: Robots capable of reproduction... Then we might find some robots mounting others...

  10. Oz

    Re: The natural progression from this is...

    The "brown ray" can be achieved by other means - a loud tone of 20Hz is supposedly enough to "activate" the bowels, with expected results.

    Presumably it could be used as a pre-cursor to, or instead of, a full cavity search?

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Mugging

    How long after they start distributing it till someone gets mugged with one...

    That would be very humiliating

  12. Damian Gabriel Moran

    many years ago

    in a comic called Crisis, they envisioned a "light-gun" used by riot police that induced epilepsy in anyone caught within its field of fire.

  13. Master Baker

    disabling robots

    I know what's, erm, coming next...

    A giant flying 'crowd control' robot that fires smaller dildo-robots to saturate a target area. The dildo robots go about pleasuring the target/s into submission, whilst being filmed by 'camera-crew' robots (which are also dispatched from the mothership).

    Good news if you're a lass, not so good if you're a blokey... or a dog.

    The dildo robots are of course linked by wi-fi so they don't all 'attack' the same target. That could be messy.

  14. Dabooka

    Sounds very similar to...

    "Sput Sticks" in 2000AD. Halo Jones had 'em.

  15. Lee Staniforth

    Brain fart

    Why did I read that as "NHS working on pocket puke-ray"? Every nurse could do with one for unruly patients!

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    20Hz???

    Will NOT make anything happen (bowel wise) to a human being. Mobile audio shows and big home entertainment shows regularly have displays where a wave from 2Hz to 20Hz is played through super big setups, just so you can see it move your hair and lift the skirts of women nearby. You don't really hear a noise, you "hear" the pressure from the soundwave and it's sort of like being deaf, but there's no real noise.

    20Hz will not make you shit yourself. The aforementioned skirt lifting trick would be no where as cool if it did.

  17. Ross Fleming

    Robot-mounted robots

    They'll have that eventually ala Transformers/Power Rangers style.

    Also, bear in mind with the SR-71 Blackbird, they had a "mini" Blackbird attached to one as a development. Obviously a high mach speeds it detached and promptly nose-dived into the mother-plane, destroying them both. Guarantee they won't have learnt from that...

  18. Jim Cosser

    NHS Puke ray?

    No they have that already its called a hospital infection, no research required just outsource the cleaning!

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Nothing to see here

    I mean it. This is a stupid idea, and I won't believe it until I've seen it in action, personally. Looks like another nice deep hole to pour money down.

  20. Bill Fresher

    Puke projector

    Does it project an image of Dr Gillian Mckeith?

  21. Graham Marsden

    Mythical "Brown Note"?

    Mythbusters tried this one one with Adam Savage standing in a ring of speakers blasting out frequencies below 20Hz.

    Result? Myth Busted.

  22. Pete "oranges" B.

    Prepare for a Banning...

    Yes, now the Federal Government has two new things to keep of out the hands of the citizenry:

    1. Any weapon designed to induce physiological effects in the target by use of electromagnetic radiation.

    2. Any lens designed to be placed in front of the eyes that negates the effectiveness of electromagnetic riot control devices while allowing visual perception.

  23. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The "Brown Note"

    technology has existed for a number of years in the form of a chamber which can be tuned to vibrate at the natural resonant frequency of a (human) occupant, in the 5 - 10Hz range. Think opera divas and champagne glasses. But there's also the story of New York cops looking for a reported earthquake and finding Tesla reading the newspaper while a little mechanical hammer tapped the building every few seconds...

    I understand the UK sold at least one to Saudi Arabia. Reputed time to destruct is about 10 seconds - probably too quick to be useful as an instrument of torture.

  24. James Cleveland

    ooh

    Are we a step close to the "brown note"? I hope so.

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Why the brown note is no good....

    Neither the "brown" (resonates the bowel, which loosens) nor the "white" note (resonates the stomach causing vomiting) is particularly useful in riot control as they are not directable: sound bends round obstacles. OK, so these frequencies are low enough that they won't bend quickly, so the man with the weapon might be in the dead spot, but what about his colleagues? What about hostages and bystanders?

    Yeuch -- not nice.

  26. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I call bullshit

    "technology has existed for a number of years in the form of a chamber which can be tuned to vibrate at the natural resonant frequency of a (human) occupant, in the 5 - 10Hz range. [ ... ] I understand the UK sold at least one to Saudi Arabia. Reputed time to destruct is about 10 seconds "

    I call bullshit on this entire post. The "brown note" doesn't exist or work, and the whole idea's bloody stupid. If you're just going to kill someone, shoot them. Bullets are trivially cheap. Loading them into a chamber and blasting them with soundwaves? What could possibly be the advantage that would make it worth the trouble and expense? Not to mention the far messier and timeconsuming clean-up job afterward.

    If this isn't complete bullshit, you would have been able to name the manufacturer and model of this supposed techno-iron-maiden. You can't, because it doesn't exist. You made the whole thing up. You "understand" that one was sold to Saudi? How do you "understand" it? Read it somewhere, someone told you? Or did you just make it up in your delusional imagination?

    PPOSTFU.

  27. Andy Davies

    am I alone?

    am I the only one who just doesn't believe there is a colo[u]r that makes you puke?

    AndyD 8-)#

  28. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Puke ray

    They shoot me with the puke ray, I shoot back with a .45.

  29. Trevor

    Puke Box, no it didn't

    At BR Advanced Projects in the 70's there was a pressure chamber in which volunteers were subjected to a variety of pressure pulses to simulate the effects of high speed trains passing bridges and through tunnels. It was a plexiglass two seat box with a diaphagm on top driven by an electro hydraulic actuator. To my knowledge noboby puked or crapped despite the low and medium frequencies of the pulses.

    Urban legend tells of an MTS sales rep. who was injured by sitting in a chair driven at 8Hz which caused resonance of his innards.

    Every border crossing kit will now contain Gravol.

  30. Chris Goodchild

    Yawn

    Just reading all this crap about our governments possible hi-tech efforts to control us all , is enough to make me puke!

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