In my research there is truth to this. I’ve found a couple large cities - I really need to find more - that have more detail homicide stats and good ol’ fashioned ARGUMENTS were the #1 cause of murders. Furthermore, most people knew their murders, and both murderers and victims were most likely to be poor and have an arrest record. Now this is dense city crime so it doesn’t cover all murders every where, but it is a good glimpse of where it is the worse.
Actually, that is another thing to ask why is that? Why is large city crime so much more severe? Case in point Wichita, which is largish city with 386 million people has had between 16 and 30 murder per year in the last 5 years. The town were my parents live in a small town of ~9000 just 15 min east of Wichita and yet have had 1 murder in 10 years (probably longer than that). Is it just averages, that you need X amount of people in one area to increase the likely hood of murder? Is there a tipping point when you have too many poor in one location the likelihood goes up? Does murder beget murder? Does the attitude change to “I better get him before he gets me?”
Half-credit to an amazing friend who really nailed the ‘ineffective weapons’ concept watching nature documentaries with me.
It’s worth a bit of research, right? And they can get away with being VERY clumsy.
Plus the feature set actually goes way beyond basic policing with some predictable tech advances…though some are more future-tech. (My favorite is the self-assembling BSL-4 positive pressure suit! I even incorporated it into a mostly complete Dr. Who script!)
This sounds like some sort of a night mare. I can imagine it now… their cold glassy eyes… outstretched arms… stilted waddle… Something… something is wrong with their voice box - maybe the battery is low… the sounds are distorted… you can only make part of it out as they surround you and converge… “Pooooliicce** ****errrrrrciiizzzssskkk. Reemaainnn ***aaaalmmm. Youuu wiill beeee ****taaaainnned…”
I like how you think. One of my earliest recurring nightmares was being surrounded by cylons chanting something. So just some sort of vocoder effect. Gibberish might be as effective or even better than speech.
From how can we excuse law enforcement’s use of deadly force to protect its own vulnerability.
When you can say… What… You brought a gun to a teddy bear hugger fight? Then that will be awesome.
As far as practically… Cheap nonlethal autonomous robots make quite a bit of sense.
And… I’d give them vortex cannons (because fucking a… So great) and very very bright strobes. And a 130 + decibel screaming siren.
If a ‘Teddy bear hugger’ could control their range to an assailant… Say… Know when they were within 30ft of them, then many of the less lethal weapons we already have become effective.
Those soft robots… Hmm… Hahahhaha.
Oobleck.
If you use Kevlar and mixture of silica and propylene glycol as a liquid, you could make the ski. Of these things bullet and knife proof. Explosion proof if they’re simple enough.
They’re also probably the only robots we’ll be able to get right anytime soon, since the strategy is just ‘pile on more disposable ones’ rather than making them super-refined.
Ooh, there are lots of fun psychological options, aren’t there? And that’s before we pull out the spider-bots! (technically more effective from a biomimicry standpoint)
I like to think we’d also make ‘Teddy Bear Herder’ the coolest job on the police force! I could see some of them training their bots to do weird things though, because…humans.
Still, better than making random holes in people and things, right? It’s not a perfect idea, but it’s worth inserting in the conversation to shift the paradigm to fundamentally ineffective weapons.
Policing should be about defusing bad moments, not making more of them.
Agreed on the cheap and many possibilities of robots.
Swarms of cheap ones are far more effective than a large expensive one.
They just have to get there too… literally close the range with a would be assailant.
And tackling is a great idea. But… when you talk about taking people down you run into a bunch of evolutionary adaptions that people have to prevent it. Its the same way creatures eat each other.
Also… if you’re tackling they have to be fast.
The good part about tackling things is… its a very effective strategy. Everything from white blood cells to ants to cheetahs tackle stuff.
And less-lethal drone warden (the macho version of Teddy Bear Handler) does sound like the coolest job on the police force
Yes, but I have a theory that anything you imagine can possibly become reality. I mean how much of our technology do we use everyday that would have been magic just a few hundred years ago?
It wouldn’t be a true oobleck - certainly not the traditional kind with corn starch. But something that expands when exposed to air via a chemical reaction and is sticky? Get on it.
Though not sure how good it would be if used like in the film. Suffocation would be a real fear.
And as for robots, eventually we will have robot police, they will be like Tetra Val or Chappie - only less shooty. Those were 3rd world war zones. In the US they could easily detain and arrest people with out lethal means.
I do hope you’ll be making these widely available, because surely the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a robot teddy swarm has to be a good guy with a robot teddy swarm …
Oddly enough when I research non-lethal weaponry I find the methods are too effective.
It’s so much easier to kill a person then to disable them safely… That in general the less lethal weapons simply overshoot or are too severe.
Additionally tasing someone drops them uncontrollably.
So… Ooblecks and expansion… It’s a problem! If you ‘expand’ a substance the only thing you’re doing is increasing volume. Gas pressure would do it. So… Basically imagine the function of yeast or baking powder in baking… Creating a foam.
A non Newtonian foam.
As far as what we can imagine being real… Yes. I think it’s true. The realm of what’s possible is seriously underestimated!
Reverse engineering fictional ideas is such a great exercise. If I could, I’d make a movie prop, describe the features I was looking for, and grab the top minds in many multidisciplinary fields to try and get them to reverse engineer how something amazing and fantastic and not at all real works. If they believe there is a solution, they will be more likely to find it.
