WASH, RINSE, and REPEAT

With the recent rash of pirate attacks off the coast of Somalia, hi-tech entrepreneurs are coming to the rescue.  Most people figure pirates probably don’t bathe often, at least often enough, so here’s one solution that kills two birds with one stone:  The instant wash, but with no rinse cycle: This solution (no pun intended) allows crews of ships under attack to coat the side of the ship, ropes, ladders, etc. with a slimy liquid that makes it almost impossible to walk/climb/hold-on-to.

Ron Mathis, senior program manager of Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, says the foam was developed for the Marine Corps to control unruly crowds. But, he says, he’s optimistic about selling some for “the pirate application.”

The idea would be to spray the pirate’s vessel as it approached, or to coat ropes, ladders, steps and the hull of the ship that’s under attack.  Mathis says walking on a surface that has been sprayed is like walking on ice. Climbing steps becomes nearly impossible. And ladders are out of the question.

Next, we have the super-sized “sound blaster”.  Think that pirates won’t take orders?  Think again, but this time the order to “get the H__ off of my ship” command can be heard loud and clear.  It’s a high-powered directional loudspeaker that allows a ship to hail an approaching vessel more than a mile away. And it comes with recordings of useful phrases, like “You must leave the area immediately,” in Somali and dozens of other languages.

For pirates who keep coming anyway, the LRAD has another feature. It’s a piercing “deterrent tone” that sounds a bit like a smoke detector alarm.

The tone can be transmitted with enough intensity to cause extreme pain and even permanent hearing loss for anyone directly in the beam of sound that comes from the device.
And finally, we have the high-powered squirt gun (at last, the “rinse cycle” after being slimed per the goo they got sprayed with earlier).  “The Force 80 Water Cannon is a stainless steel, remote-controlled squirt gun,” says Roger Barrett James, director of international sales and marketing for the Swedish company Unifire.

The Force 80 is no ordinary squirt gun, he says. It has a 3-inch nozzle that can send1,400 gallons a minute 100 yards in any direction. It is a tremendous force of water that will knock over anything in its path and will also flood a pirate’s ship very quickly,” James says.

And since the Force 80 can be controlled from inside the ship, using video cameras and a joystick, pirates can’t easily shoot the person operating it.

Yar, armed with these beauties, acommercial ship can kick some serious pirate booty!