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Author Sam Harris writes about the possibility of violence and how one should respond to it. Real-world crime is different from what we are used to seeing on TV dramas. The article lines out three principles of self-defense, with the overreaching goal being to avoid violence if at all possible.
If someone puts a gun to your head and demands your purse or wallet, hand it over immediately and run. Don’t worry about being shot in the back: If your attacker is going to shoot you for running, he was going to shoot you if you stayed in place, and at point-blank range. By running, you make yourself harder to kill. Any attempt to move you, even by a few feet—backing you off a sidewalk and into an alley, forcing you behind a row of bushes—is unacceptable and should mobilize all your physical and emotional resources.?[8]
If you find yourself in a situation where a predator is trying to control you, the time for listening to instructions and attempting to remain calm has passed. It will get no easier to resist and escape after these first moments. The presence of weapons, the size or number of your attackers—these details are irrelevant. However bad the situation looks, it will only get worse. To hesitate is to put yourself at the mercy of a sociopath. You have no alternative but to explode into action, whatever the risk. Recognizing when this line has been crossed, and committing to escape at any cost, is more important than mastering physical techniques.
Of course, there’s a lot more to consider, but you won’t have time to think these things through if the situation arises, so read the whole thing and think about it ahead of time. Link -via Metafilter
(Image credit: Flickr user Pensiero)
Hey, you would have done the same thing in that situation -if you were prepared! The good news is that the system worked as it was designed to. The bad news is that the neighbors probably didn’t make it. -via the Presurfer
The NeatoShop’s Inflatable Bear Head we saw a couple of days ago may have more than one use. Sure, it’s a nice decoration, but also…
When a big bear approaches, some people choose to quietly stroll away. To give them an extra measure of safety, Anthony Victor Saunders and Adam Warwick Bell invented what they call a “pop-up device for deterring an attacking animal”.
Saunders, a London-based mountain climber, and Bell, a California patent attorney, applied for a patent in 2002, but later abandoned it. They would equip hikers with, essentially, an inflatable doll “meant to scare away an attacking or aggressive animal such as a bear”. The frightful balloon could also be used against “elk, moose, mountain lions, buffalo, hippopotamus, rhino, elephant, boar”. They explain that it “works on the principle of maximising the apparent size and ferocity of the human, intimidating the bear”.
However, for obvious reasons the device must be inflated very fast -the faster, the better. The NeatoShop bear head might not be adequate for such a purpose. Read more about Saunder’s and Bell’s device at The Guardian. Link -via Improbable Research
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Craig Turner has a problem with neighborhood cats peeing on his property. They spray the house, doors, car, and worst of all, the air conditioning vents. I would just get a dog (which I did), but Turner constructed a homemade defense that involves cameras, motions sensors, and lots of planning. How successful was it? You’ll have to watch the entire video to find out. Warning: urination. -via Metafilter
What if you could train plants for national security? A biologist at Colorado State University working with the Department of Defense is doing just that. Genetic engineering is making plants react to threats they never encountered in nature -for human benefit.
Picture this at an airport, perhaps in as soon as four years: A terrorist rolls through the sliding doors of a terminal with a bomb packed into his luggage (or his underwear). All of a sudden, the leafy, verdant gardenscape ringing the gates goes white as a sheet. That’s the proteins inside the plants telling authorities that they’ve picked up the chemical trace of the guy’s arsenal.
It only took a small engineering nudge to deputize a plant’s natural, evolutionary self-defense mechanisms for threat detection. “Plants can’t run and hide,” says June Medford, the biologist who’s spent the last seven years figuring out how to deputize plants for counterterrorism. “If a bug comes by, it has to respond to it. And it already has the infrastructure to respond.”
That would be the “receptor” proteins in its DNA, which respond naturally to threatening stimuli. If a bug chews on a leaf, for instance, the plant releases a series of chemical signals called terpenoids — “a cavalry call,” Medford says, that thickens the leaf cuticle in defense.
So far, plants have been produced that react to the presence of TNT, but other factors, such as light and movement, interfere with the process. Medford thinks a working plant is still three or four years away. Link -via Fortean Times
Charles Jenkins of Indianapolis, Indiana was awakened from sleep Tuesday morning by a loud crash. He found an intruder climbing through the living room window.
Jenkins said he grabbed his cane and hit the intruder in the head. That seemed to stun the would-be burglar, who quickly jumped back outside through the window.
Jenkins said the suspect ran to a truck out back behind the house, where he believes another suspect was waiting to drive them away.
Jenkins is 70 years old. Police are looking through recordings on his security cameras for evidence against the burglar. Link (with video)
A military fort, out in the ocean, with a moat! Fort Jefferson is a part of Dry Tortugas National Park in the waters off of Key West, Florida. Construction on the “fort in the middle of nowhere” was started in 1846. It was originally meant for the defense of the US, but during the 30 years of construction, some design features became obsolete for that purpose.
During and after the Civil War the fort began to be used as a prison for deserters and other criminals. In 1874 the army completely abandoned the fort after several hurricanes and a yellow fever epidemic, and it wasn’t until 1898 that the military returned in the form of the navy, which used the facilities during the Spanish-American War. The fort was also used from 1888 through 1900 as a quarantine station, and was garrisoned again briefly during World War I.
(Image credit: National Park Service)
Caterpillars of the Great Peacock Moth (Saturnia pyri) are making quite a buzz. A recent study has shown that these giant silkmoth caterpillars are advertising acoustically that they are unpallatable and warn of an upcoming defense strategy.
When disturbed by a would be attacker the caterpillars stridulate by rubbing their mouth parts together, creating broadband chirps spanning from 3.7-55.1 kHz. While it is still unclear who exactly they are advertising to, a predator would be well advised to stay away from their sharp, chemical exuding bristles.
Though is not the first example of sound production in caterpillars it is a novel mechanism, paving the way for future research. (Photo: V. Bura)
Saturnia pyri chirp before or while they ooze foul-smelling droplets from their bristles. So the chirps might be a warning to attackers that there’s some serious resistance on the way, Yack and her colleagues propose online and in an upcoming Naturwissenschaften.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by afleming.
