NEWS: Terrorists Armed With Lasers

CULTURE: Terrorists Armed With Lasers

No, they're not Star Wars blaster lasers, but rather the kind used in a "Laser Floyd" show.

Now that's just plain fucked up.

I hear they're going to attach them to their freakin' heads.

EDIT: This will be about as effective as throwing Marshmallows on to the landing strip to make their tires so sticky they can't take off. This sounds like a joke to me.

[Edited on Dec 10, 2004 by Idjiit]

shouldn't it be relatively easy to keep loons of a airport landing strip for those huge planes?
it kind of sounds like america is describing every destructive scenario they can come up with as something the terrorists are actually planning rather than something america thought up they could do.

[Edited on Dec 10, 2004 3:03PM]

are they ill-tempered?

the more i think about it the more stupid it sounds, you'd have to have insanely good aim and luck to hit the pilot in the eyes and even then i doubt a pilot would just yank the controll stick carreening the whole plane of the runway.

they could attach them to the heads of sharks off the coast of california and when the planes come in the "lasers" will blind the pilots. muuuhaaaaa


something sounds familiar about this.

Apparently, CNN has been reading Tom Clancy books....

A while ago on /. something like this was posted, and a bunch of scientists posted why this wasn't technicaly feasible. Mainly it was issues with the wavelength of the laser used, power output, and the laser dissipating as it traveled.

However, one guy estimated it could be done with a laser/powersupply small enough to be transported in the bed of a small truck. So realistically, this wont happen

[Edited on Dec 10, 2004 6:33AM]

Don't US soldiers have "laser goggles" now to protect against this sort of thing? Or it that just sniper sights? Or tank commanders?

I agree that the risk sounds minute; you need a strong enough laser, and the right angle, to do any damage.

They could do a lot more damage by just destroying a runway or two. They wouldn't even need to destroy any planes; one plane a minute leaves Heathrow so the disruption caused by having a runway closed would be pretty huge.

If they managed to get some radioactive gunk in there they could call it a dirty bomb and scare people. It wouldn't have to be that much gunk, just enough to make the gieger counters click.

Heh, you might think it's a joke, but there is a $2.8 billion project for "laser defense goggles".
Rockwell Scientific Eyes Big Contract

Spy satellites and fighter pilot goggles feature a substance that will block all light when it detects a laser, IIRC.

Hey, in case anyone missed it - you no longer need to actually see the runway to land a plane. kthxbye

They are also going to sit right behind the pilot and shout reeeallly loud when the plane is about to land. They also do this when the opposing team is shooting free throws (with limited success, i might add).

somehow I find it hard to belive that laser show lasers that your local plane-arium use are enough to blind pilots.

Don't you have to see the controls?

This is so stupid, who the hell even gave this attention in the national media?

The second a pilot had trouble seeing the runway, he'd just pull up and try again. If he went blind, for some reason, he'd still just pull up and pass off to the co-pilot, who'd likely figure out what happened and go to a different landing strip and/or airport.

There's really no way for this to work. Landing an airplane isn't like parking a car; there is no critical moment where the suddenly lose of sight will cause an accident. Once the plane is lined up with the runway and the descent speed is set, and the gear is down, any fucking idiot could land a plane. And consider that it takes about ten or fifteen minutes to get the plane ready for a landing, and once it's done, that it's. Now aborting a landing is a very easy thing to do, as well, taking all the effort of pulling back on the yoke and gunning the engines.

Now if they used how powered laser beams to blow out the tires or cut off a wing, then I'd be worried. But blinding a pilot? Jeez, come on!

somewhere some arab is waving his little laser pointer pen at jet fighters passing in the stratosphere after reading this and realising "holy shit that could work!"

unless there are, say, 30 terrorists shining 30 lasers at the cockpit of an aircraft, what is the likelihood of this ever working. take a laser pointer and shine it at a wall 20 feet from you. notice how the slightest movement of your wrist makes the dot bounce and jerk erratically. now imagine being hundreds and hundreds of feet away from a moving target and trying to get a bead on it.

Don't worry, they'll never hit the pilot, just the dirt around him. Cobr... I mean, "the terrorists"have always had bad aim.

Go Joe!

Yellow Light!

Orange Light!

Blue Light Special!

From the morons who brought you the traffic light of terror comes another terrific idea. For so many reasons it is moronic to speculate what terrorists might do because there are so many possibilities. We might try some intelligence gathering to actually find out what their muses are whispering to them, but just speculating is almost pointless.

Having worked a lot with lasers, I can also say that this is almost impossible to accomplish.

well at least they can throw a good party after they fail to do exactly anything with their fancy schmancy lasers.

what next, sharks with frikkin lasers on their heads?

They're only going to succeed in attracting every cat within ten square miles.

Or overzealous consumers hoping it's a new Best Buy location.

The terrorists have clearly stolen the Wile E. Coyote playbook.

Whats next, painting fake train tunnels on the sides of mountains?

Acme=terrorists.

In a related story, terrorists have been using their index finger and thumb to "crush the heads" of pilots as they approach for landing.


When that fails, they gather in a row, and begin "mooning" the pilots.