EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEKKKKKKK

[were_gopher]

Gonna need one hell of a big rolled up newspaper for this one.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/merseyside/7595486.stm

Comments

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

You can apparently build a weapons-grade solid-state laser now. None of the messy chemicals, but at about 20% efficiency you need a lot of cooling and a big generator.

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

Yeah I saw that.. by weapons grade, they mean a 1cm 100watt solid-state infra-red laser capable of being mounted on a truck. Of course, that's continuous wave... if you want a pulsed version, it's more BFG rifle sized. [with back-pack batteries!]

There's a company a short walk from where I am that builds electro-magnetic coil guns, aka gauss guns, with a muzzle velocity of around 3500 ft/s, at 6000 rounds/s with a 2" inch diameter tungsten steel bullet. [they're supposed to be used in some sort of industrial process really.]

You could lift one of their guns... but you'd need one heck of an extension cable!

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

Right.

Agricultural machinery.

There's a guy down in Frithville--I bought a tractor from him once--who has a Sherman tank rigged for ploughing.

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

*snerk*

Yup, Agricultural machinery parts... getting around import laws since 1776. [guns were forbidden to be imported to the american colonies, so the revolutionaries listed them as 'agricultural implements'].

Mind you, still not as impressive as Operation Ploughshare (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Plowshare). One heck of excuse to build more nukes!