Oct 19 2009 BOOM!: Massive Underwater Mine Detonation
This is an old-ass video of somebody's (the French's?) Navy detonating an underwater mine. The picture quality is pretty poor but the explosion is amazing and I'm not afraid to admit I got aroused. Twice. Plus I love how at the very end they realize their boat's gonna be capsized by the resulting wave and start going apeshit. Talk about poor planning -- that's something I would do! But it's cool because I'm a blogger and not a Navy.
Thanks to Trogdolorian, who plans on traveling back in time to seize and burninate a castle.
Nov 10 2008 What Could Possibly Go Wrong? (Everything): World's Largest Truck Going Robotic
A group of sickos at Carnegie Mellon have decided to automate the world's largest truck, a 3,550-horsepower, 700-ton behemoth designed to haul 240-ton loads.
Autonomous vehicle technology is pretty much in its infancy," said Tony Stentz, a professor at CMU involved in the project. Stentz expects that over the next five to 10 years, the technology will expand to areas beyond mining, eventually finding its way into consumer cars and trucks.
Autonomous vehicle technology. Really has a ring to it, doesn't it? No, it doesn't -- and anybody that answered yes is a robot sympathizer and officially on the FU-BOTS shit list. Seriously, this is bad news. You know what happens when a 700-ton robot truck gets road rage?
A: Everybody dies.
World's Largest Truck Goes Robotic [discovery]
Thanks to Hayden, who gets a free membership to FU-BOTS for finding this as scary as I do.
Jul 10 2008 New Spider Landmine Safer Than Old Ones
Ah yes, a safer landmine. And all along I've thought landmines were supposed to be the opposite of safe. I'm about as stupid as my little sister. The Spider has six legs set at 60ยบ intervals and drops six separate mines once in position. The mines are detonated by an operator, so you can jump on the trip-wires all you want as long as the guy at the controls likes you. But if you ate the last of his rations, look out. The unit can be packed with fragmentation charges or non-lethal gases, and I'm definitely a fan of any option that doesn't include "frag". Of course, being the nation that we are, the Spider does feature a "battle override mode" which allows the mine to detonate on its own without an operator. Which violates the Mine Ban Treaty -- but we didn't sign that shit (along with China, India and Russia)! So, yeah, we've got an asshole club thing going on. Also, apparently we still use bayonets.
Innovative Spider landmine has six deadly legs, offers non-lethal options [dvice]
Sep 17 2007 Army Testing Balsa And Foam Humvees
In an attempt to cut weight on Humvees, the Army is testing models made with "fiberglass, balsa wood, foam and carbon reinforcements all held together with resin. The body of the tan composite prototype has a sandpaper feel. The fenders are pliable and can be easily bent by hand, flipping back into place when released." The 900 pounds cut from the vehicle are going to be added back in the form of extra armor and mine-blast protection. Now I'm not too familiar with the strength of mine blasts or explosions or anything, but I do know that the last time I built a vehicle out of balsa wood the wings broke off in an hour and then the whole thing disintegrated when it rained.
Army Testing Balsa And Foam Humvees [therawfeed]
Aug 7 2007 Minesweeper The Movie
Sadly, this would still probably be better than 90% of the video game movies out there. Although it can't compare to the film I made about Solitaire. I basically filmed myself having sex with two women at once. In retrospect, it wasn't really anything like Solitaire at all.
