Crowd Control? Who You Gonna Call?

Why use tear gas or rubber bullets to control a riotous crowd when you can use goo? Yes – you read that right: goo as in slime.

A portable device worn like a Ghostbuster backpack allows the wearer to cover the ground in goo so slippery it’s almost impossible for a person to maintain their footing.

"It’s like walking on ice," said Errol Brigance, a senior research engineer at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas.

The technology, developed in partnership with the U.S. Marine Corps, offers another non-lethal weapon to the military’s crowd control arsenal.

Not everyone agrees this is such a good idea though:

Researcher Neil Davison, who coordinates the Bradford Non-Lethal Weapons Research Project at the University of Bradford in the U.K., cautions such a system could cause more chaos and harm than initially intended.

"If everyone is falling over in a crowd situation, that might make it more hazardous," he said.

Link – via Starspirit