Electromagnetic Pulse Gun To Help In Police Chases 471
adeelarshad82 writes "In an attempt to put an end to dangerous, high-speed police chases, scientists at Eureka Aerospace have developed an electromagnetic pulse gun called the High Power Electromagnetic System, or HPEMS. It develops a high-intensity directed pulse of electricity designed to disable a car's microprocessor system, shutting down all of its systems. Right now the prototype seen in a video fills an entire lab, but they have plans to shrink its size to hand-held proportions. Some form of this is already featured in OnStar-equipped vehicles though the electromagnetic signal used to disable the vehicle is beamed via satellite, and doesn't cripple the in-car computer, but rather puts it into a mode that allows police to easily catch and then stop the fleeing criminal."
help in police chases? (Score:5, Funny)
You bet - I'll be able to disable cop cars chasing me.
I mean, _criminals_ will. Ahem.
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One three rear mounted 4" black powder cannon, electrically fire, filled with chain, glass, dirty needles and crack vials will work nicely. You can use an Arduino to run the trunk opening and canon lift.
Front mounted? 6" X 3
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Re:help in police chases? (Score:5, Interesting)
Speaking as the owner of a 1983 Mercedes 300D turbo diesel, I would love to see the cop's face if they were to ever use such a thing on my car. You see, it has mechanical fuel injection and diesel doesn't rely on a spark so EMP will be useless in killing anything except my stereo. If the car is already running, you can remove the battery and have a completely dead alternator and it'll still run. I figured out a while back that in the event of a nuclear holocaust, I will be one of a handful of people with a running car... If I can get a manual transmission in it then I could even start it. Oh, and it weighs more than the cars today so the odds of running me off the road drop considerably as well...and it's built like a tank(I've been hit by 2 SUVs and have 1 spot of paint rubbed off and a dent shallower than a fingernail).
Is this the new preferred car for gangstas?
Re:help in police chases? (Score:5, Funny)
Speaking as the owner of a 1983 Mercedes 300D turbo diesel [...]
Maybe you missed the part where this is there to prevent _high speed_ chases ? ;)
Re:help in police chases? (Score:4, Informative)
It's been a while, but IIRC the top speed of that particular model is around 145mph ;-)
Mercedes are not known for being wimpy vehicles in the power department.
SB
Re:help in police chases? (Score:5, Informative)
You will never reach that speed anywhere but the salt flats. I have a 1982 300SD which is better in every way. They realistically top out just over 100. You can upgrade them with an intercooler and then you can turn up the turbo, but you're only going to make about 200 horses at best on MY engine (which is a more highly-tuned version of yours.) I don't know who told you that you could do 145 in that car, but they lied to you.
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I've driven quite a few vehicles that had engine failures at speed. Steering works normally until you're down to single digit speeds. Brakes work while there's a vacuum, but even still you can stop without the vacuum assist.
You obviously haven't driven a vehicle where the belt broke (no power steering) or it ran out of gas (no power steering or brakes).
The last time this happened, the car overheated at 75mph (road debris blocked the radiator), so I drove most
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I can second that, while it may not be the most pleasant driving experience, it is still possible to drive a vehicle after engine, power steering or computer failures. I luckily haven't had brakes fail, so I can't comment on that.
My last car kept getting problems with the computer after the dealer screwed it up while working on my car. I had to have it replaced 3 times before they finally got it right. The first failure I was doing probably 70mph on the interstate when it went. I don't think it complete
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Reminds me of my uncle, who was inside a large car crash with at least a dozen cars bumping in each other because of ice on the road.
Most cars had huge destruction of the crumple zones. You know what he had to do to fix his car? As old Mercedes SL.
Re-paint the bumpers.
You know, I can only take cars seriously, that I can scratch along walls, run into fire hydrants with, etc, without having any trouble.
I hate, that nearly every car has paint, that falls off as soon as you stare at it. And that the crumple zon
Re:help in police chases? (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't really understand crumple zones then....
Either you take the hit, or the car does.
I prefer a broken car over a broken spine personally.
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Hint, trains don't have "crumple zones" but somehow the train engineers survive and easily walk away when they hit cars. Perhaps you don't understand the concepts in physics called "momentum" and "energy"?
You're using the analogy of a several-ton train hitting a 1-2 ton car, and talking to someone else about not understanding momentum?
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Its really the deceleration. If you watch that you will notice that the smart has basically almost no crumple zones and just stops nearly immediately while the S-class is at that point still moving forward, basically pushing the smart car backwards. Mass is certainly one part of the equation as well as velocity, but also deceleration and keeping the cabin from crumpling are much bigger factors. I would say that the s-class is probably very survivable and the smart occupants would be pretty hurt, but alive.
Re:help in police chases? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:help in police chases? (Score:5, Funny)
Dear Police, when you see a smarmy guy driving an 1980s Mercedes, please note your EMP weapon wont work so you'll need a sniper from SWAT to shoot him in the face. Thanks in advance.
Sincerely,
The Internet
blues brothers ref. (Score:4, Funny)
"use of lethal force has been approved."
Re:help in police chases? (Score:5, Insightful)
"wow shut up" to a decent post modded +5 Insightful. Idiocracy has come to Slashdot.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Outlaw electromagnetic radiation and then only criminals will have EMR?
Yep. These things will be especially popular with rapists, chasing female drivers down highways late at night.
Re:help in police chases? (Score:5, Insightful)
Good, that'll put an end to assholes taking cell phones into the movies and on airplanes.
And assholes with pacemakers.
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Unless their pacemakers are powered by nanomotors, that is!
Re:help in police chases? (Score:5, Funny)
Good, that'll put an end to assholes taking cell phones into the movies and on airplanes.
And assholes with pacemakers.
Pacemakers are usually inserted into the chest cavity.
Re:help in police chases? (Score:4, Funny)
This is not the place to brag about your fetish.
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Metal car body?
What is this, the 1960's?
Re:help in police chases? (Score:5, Informative)
As far as I know, most car bodies are still metal, because there is nothing else as good for protecting occupants in a crash. Yes, most body panels of cars nowadays are fibreglass, etc... but I assure you, the firewall, base body and engine compartment is most likely still metal.
If the EMP Gun is a worry for you, you could always layer an extra grounded wire mesh around your engine to reduce it's effect, or as an old school solution, have a mechanical ignition setup for redundancy. It wouldn't give you the same performance etc... from the engine, but it's better than not having a functioning engine at that point in time.
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Having said that, I have 2 comments to make: (1) Any microwave energy that can generate 15kV per meter in a piece o
Re:help in police chases? (Score:5, Insightful)
Kinda. Ever use a handheld cell phone in a car? Chances are you have, and that it worked fine -- the signal goes right through the windows.
Same with this concept. Sure, the car's fidgety electronic bits are wrapped securely inside of grounded aluminum boxes, gasketed and/or taped to keep out all manner of pollutants and/or RFI. But connected to these boxes are hundreds of feet of unshielded, untwisted wire, all of which will act as an antenna. Meanwhile, the car's body will tend to reflect any RF that makes it inside, so with all of the weird angles in use it's just an eventuality before some of it finds its way into a bundle of wires somewhere.
So, it's obvious and foregone that it's possible to get some amount of RF into a car's electronics.
The question is: How much does it take to make the car stop working? Since the current system apparently uses a room full of gear, I'd say the answer is "lots."
Re:help in police chases? (Score:5, Interesting)
I would hope, from the perspective of safety-conscious design, that any complex electronic systems would have a watchdog system built in, so that any sneaky software bug or cosmic-rays-corrupting-the-ram incidents would only kick the system into a pathological state for a few moments before it was rebooted from ROM and back up and running. If that is in fact the case, you would pretty much need to kill the circuitry in order to stop the vehicle(I'm sure that, for particular designs, there would be clever voltage excursion attacks that could hang the system, watchdog and all, without killing it; but that is the sort of thing you do in your hacker lab, not with an EMP pulse). If you need to kill the circuitry then we are talking about some serious power and, very likely, substantial damage to any other electronics in the car, or in the vicinity. It'll probably be very popular to "accidentally" hit those annoying civilians who insist on videotaping police misconduct with such a device.
If car engines can be taken offline with a pulse that simply glitches, rather than destroying, the electronics, that raises the unpleasant possibility that a software or hardware bug could do the same thing, or that a driver, once hit, could just toggle the ignition, assuming that there is still a physical switch somewhere in the loop, to bring the car back into a good state.
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Hmmm. Turning the engine off is one thing, but let's imagine a high speed chase, with instant loss of electrical power which disables the:
This could end very badly with modern automobiles, and I don't think they've thought their cunning plan all the way through.
Re:help in police chases? (Score:5, Insightful)
Really... the solution to most high-speed chases has been known for a long time, and that is: tell the police to fucking stop doing it.
The vast majority of crimes that lead to these high-speed chases did not endanger lives in the first place... until, of course, the police started the chase. THEN they did. But it is usually just not necessary: the police have access to radios, helicopters, etc. to radio ahead and run these people down. It just takes longer.
Re:help in police chases? (Score:5, Interesting)
I've dealt with automobile RF from the other side, getting rid of the car's emissions. Anyone that has ever tried to deal with a HF ham radio in a car knows that getting rid of EMI (Electro Magnetic Interference) can be a bitch and a half. For reference on the steps that may be needed see http://k0bg.com/ [k0bg.com]
Oh, and if you have an old Ranger pick'em'up you just as well better plan to park it if you want to hear anything besides alternator whine and spark plug noise.
73 de w7com
Re:help in police chases? (Score:5, Interesting)
SB
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A Faraday cage isn't perfect protection against EM, just static electric fields. The car is also not grounded, which doesn't help. Plus there are likely to be a good number of holes in the metal big enough to allow damaging frequencies to pass through.
Before deployment (Score:3, Insightful)
I wonder if they'll test it on Pacemakers.
Re:Before deployment (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps the deaths will even get a pseudo diagnosis along the same lines as "excited delirium"...
"I wonder if they'll test it on Pacemakers." (Score:5, Informative)
Sure, but not intentionally. They'll also "test" it on parked vehicles, tv sets, computers, iPods, traffic light controllers, and anything else that happens to get into the "beam" as the cops treat it as a precise magic car-killer that affects only cars and only the ones they aim at.
Eventually there will be an "underground" business in installing filters and shielding. It will become illegal to possess ferrite beads without a license.
Re:Before deployment (Score:5, Insightful)
Good point. The electrical leads used in a typical pacemaker may very well be vulnerable to such a pulse. If the EMP is powerful enough to fry the microprocessor in a car I'd bet that it is also powerful enough to at least temporarily disrupt the function of someone's pacemaker.
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I wonder what it looks like on the display if a pacemaker crashes?
blue screen of death?
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What kind of pacemaker has a display? Are you some sort of Teletubby or something?
Re:Before deployment (Score:4, Informative)
Its called an ECG or EKG and it involves 3 to 4 stickers placed on the limbs, attached to wires that lead to a monitor, that measure the positive electical potential of the heart as it depolarizes to cause myocardial contraction. Pacemakers have a very distrinct "rhythm" on a heart monitor that is recognizable compared to any other heart rhythm. What it would look like in the case of an EMP disruption of pacemaker activity will depend on the reason for the insertion of the pacemaker.Most likely you would get a junctional or ventricular rhythm (bradycardic QRS with disassociated P waves at 20-60 QRS per minute). Except in the case of extremely fit athletes, a ventricular rate of less than 60 is very bad news for circulatory perfusion.
I can't wait... (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder if it works on helicopters also?
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The criminals have had almost seven years to try: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/05/07/1559238 [slashdot.org]
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The domain that article links to is dead. Squatter site now.
Oudin coil (Score:5, Informative)
build one of these [wikipedia.org]
Use a mile of copper wire for the inside windings, and several turns of flexible copper pipe for the outer ones. Not directional, but it WILL disable a lot of the nearby electronics while in operation.
Re:Oudin coil (Score:5, Informative)
Too expensive though; The price for that much copper would be astronomical.
Nonsense. 1.5mi of high grade copper is as close as the nearest 1kft box of bulk CAT5.
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...until the criminals get hold of this. And they will. It would be too useful not to.
I wonder if it works on helicopters also?
Maybe.
Since a lot of police helicopters are (Vietnam era) Army surplus, there isn't much in the way of electronics to kill. You'd undoubtedly be able to knock out their fancy doo-dads, but the actual helo itself is mostly mechanical and hydralic systems.
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If you kill the helicopter's radios, that is almost as good. No radios = no communications. No communications = no flying in some types of airspace. No communications = no ability to tell ground units where you are. They might have a spotlight, unless the pulse kills that too. But if you kill communications, you seriously degrade the mission capability of a police helicopter.
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Regardless, This is a garanteed FCC violation for civilians to try. :D
Right, because that is my primary concern as I attempt to disable a police helicopter.
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Criminals have no qualms about using force, why would they resort to a weapon like this? There's already effective car stoppers out there like .50 caliber rifles and medium machineguns, both of which would be easier to acquire than a weapon like this.
Or they could just do a PIT manoeuvre or block them off to stop the target car.
Onstar? (Score:5, Insightful)
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How the heck is this similar to the Onstar system? This uses a directed EMP to disrupt electronic engine control, Onstar uses a built-in remote kill switch. That's like saying shooting a lightbulb is the same as turning off the switch.
And you would be correct if your intent is to make the room dark. This system is like onstar in that both stop a vehicle remotely.
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This system is like onstar in that both stop a vehicle remotely.
So Onstar is like .50 BMG?
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How the heck is this similar to the Onstar system? This uses a directed EMP to disrupt electronic engine control, Onstar uses a built-in remote kill switch. That's like saying shooting a lightbulb is the same as turning off the switch.
And you would be correct if your intent is to make the room dark. This system is like onstar in that both stop a vehicle remotely.
Except that this is Slashdot, "news for nerds", not "news for people who only want the high level concepts". I agree with the gp.
HOLY CRAP! (Score:5, Funny)
OnStar not EMP (Score:5, Insightful)
Um. The electromagnetic signal that can be sent from a satellite to an OnStar-equipped vehicle is certainly not any form of an electromagnetic pulse. It's a radio signal encoded with a command telling a microprocessor to disable power to the ignition.
Who writes this mess?
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It's still dangerous, though. I'm surprised it's tolerated in a country where so many refuse to give up their guns, for fear the government will go mad with power.
Can't give up your guns, but giving up mobility is fine?
I wonder what'll happen when someone cracks it and starts broadcasting a signal to shut down all the GM cars?
I'll stick with my 20 year old Toyota. As long as I stick gas in it, it continues to pur.
Re:OnStar not EMP (Score:5, Funny)
Can't give up your guns, but giving up mobility is fine?
That suggests the obvious compromise solution.... install OnStar (tm) on all guns. That way anyone can have a gun, but the government can shut down any guns that are being misused. Plus your gun can ask you if you are okay.
There, I solved that problem, on to the next one :^)
Re:OnStar not EMP (Score:5, Interesting)
First, of course, is the fact that public understanding of technology and new developments is pretty weak. "DRM", is just barely creeping into popular consciousness, now that it is ubiquitous(every joe user has an ipod, uses DVDs, has an HDMI connection somewhere, or whatever). It isn't a huge surprise that public understanding of exactly what Onstar is capable of is pretty low. As far as I know, none of them are exactly secret(and, even if they were, doing a simple "worst case inference" from what is known would not be difficult. Cellular modem + connection to ECU = guilty of being a remote kill switch until conclusively proven innocent).
Second, and somewhat related, is the fact that very many people, even people who concern themselves with weapons and resisting the state and so forth, don't do much thinking about things that fall outside of the scope of traditional "weapons". For instance, back in the Clinton administration, when strong crypto was considered a munition, and "Clipper" was being actively advanced, the NRA (as best I've been able to determine from publicly available stuff) didn't so much as issue a press release about the matter. That is pretty myopic. Recognisably modern crypto/cryptoanalysis has been a weapon of war since WWII, and practically contemporary digital crypto was at least filtering out by the time Vietnam rolled around. The fact that encrypted communications were a valuable weapon should have been abundantly obvious to anybody by the 90's. And it isn't like Clinton and the NRA were best buddies in any case, and yet, when the Clinton administration rolled out Clipper, the crypto equivalent of a gun that refuses to fire if any state agent is within 50 yards, they didn't even put out a quick "We support the EFF on this one" note.
Third is the fact that potentially dangerous private-sector actions often get a pass, even if they clearly make the population more vulnerable to government power. If the feds came out and said "All vehicles from this day forth shall have remote kill switches and tracking devices, under penalty of law" a fair few people would flip their shit. Since, however, GM voluntarily installed them and there are (for the moment) cars that don't include them, any criticism will reliably be met with the slashdot-libertarian 101 "Well, you voluntarily purchased the vehicle, what could the problem possibly be?" no matter what attempts are made to make the "Yes, I realize that each individual transaction is theoretically voluntary. However, the percentage of vehicles that can be remotely tracked and shut down by the state has gone from 0 to X in just a few years, and that increase shows no sign of slowing. Doesn't that concern you?" argument.
Fourth is the fact that Onstar is one of those things that can easily fall into the unpleasant blind spot of both stereotypical liberals and stereotypical conservatives. Stereotypically, "liberals" tend to suspect and fear the potential malfeasance of government and its agents(concern about police brutality, war crimes, state torture, due process, etc.); but they also want certain services and protections from the state(public education, gun control, etc.). "Conservatives", on the other hand, tend to suspect and fear the state(small government, anti-gun control, anti tax, etc.); but they are often very supportive of and deferential toward agents and symbols of state power("law and order", support of police, support of armed forces, see "due process" as a technicality that lets scum go free, "constitution is not a suicide pact", etc.). For the stereotypical liberal, Onstar's remote kill easily slots into a safety narrative "Prevents dangerous police chases and tragic accidents. Perhaps, in the future, it can prevent speeding!". For the stereotypical conservative, it slots into the tough on crime narrative "Track and recover stolen property, allows police to capture thieves and carjackers."
If it's safer than hot pursuit, go for it (Score:3, Insightful)
From realpolice.net:
In this 9 year period (1994-2002), the data showed that there were 2654 fatal crashes involving 3965 vehicles of which there were 3146 fatalities. Of these, 1088 were to people not in the fleeing vehicle.
If frying someone's car results in a better outcome than the above, I'm all for it.
Sounds like a great replacement for caltrops.
Re:If it's safer than hot pursuit, go for it (Score:4, Insightful)
Now that engineers have successfully made technology invisible, all technology is equivalent. Notice that no one in the health care debate suggested controlling costs at the technology level, only at the "insurance/payout" stage. Technology is no longer suggested as an answer, only until a solution is available on the market (e.g., video conference in lieu of commuting is not a government or business priority).
There are now two classes of people: those that don't get it, and the minority that do.
Interesting choice of wording (Score:2)
That might prevent the technology from widespread use - it would be a field day for attorneys as police destroyed people's cars (and other property) while they were chasing a criminal. I'm sure that the vendor also says they can target one car specifically while they disable it - b
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EM radius *can* be aimed, you know. Like, say, a flashlight. Or a directional antenna. This isn't an EM spectrum from a nuclear airburst. It's directed radiation, probably in the microwave spectrum (the goal is to use frequencies at which circuit traces, or even better, conductive paths within ICs become antennas, causing current to flow in unintended ways)
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EM radius *can* be aimed, you know. Like, say, a flashlight. Or a directional antenna.
I can see it now... the chase begins. Officer McNalley, who's three days away from retirement, bellows to his young partner Turk Bannon "Hold the car steady! I'm gonna try to slow them down using the giant EM flashlight!" He leans out the window, aiming the eight-foot device at the suspect's car. Just at that moment, though, a young mother pushing a stroller steps into a crosswalk - right in front of the police car. Bannon jerks the wheel, hard to the left, and McNalley is thrown out the window. He hits the
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> EM radius *can* be aimed, you know. Like, say, a flashlight. Or a
> directional antenna.
A directional antenna of dimensions several times the wavelength of the lowest frequency component of the pulse. As EMP contains substantial energy at wavelengths of many meters your "flashlight" will have be the size of a house to produce anything resembling a beam.
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You don't need a wide spectrum for a EM pulse weapon to be effective. The microwave band is actually quite effective at destroying electronics, in addition to working as a pain-inducing less than lethal weapon, if you choose the right frequencies. And making a directional microwave gun is reasonably easy, Create a large scaled magnetron, and use say a parabolic reflecting dish. Voila. Having a portable power source for the gun is a bit tricker, but still quite possible.
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You're going to zap a car from behind with microwaves and fry the engine electronics. Sure. Might work on some rear-engine cars.
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- it would be a field day for attorneys as police destroyed people's cars (and other property) while they were chasing a criminal.
The standard answer used by many municipalities (and accepted by many courts) is that they are not liable. There won't be a field day -- it'll be something covered by insurance, and sucks to be you if you don't have any.
Probably won't kill anything (Score:2)
Automotive electronics are fairly tough, because of the noisy environment they operate in. I would bet that in the typical case, the voltage pulse just confuses the computer, and/or latches a few inputs, causing it to shut down. You could likely start it right back up afterward.
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> Automotive electronics are fairly tough, because of the noisy environment
> they operate in.
And the importance of reliability and fail-safe operation.
> I would bet that in the typical case, the voltage pulse just confuses the
> computer, and/or latches a few inputs, causing it to shut down.
No, causing the computer to "reboot" itself. The engine might miss a couple of times, but that's all. They'll have to do permanent damage to reliably stop cars.
Questions (Score:2)
What happens when a person going 70mph suddenly loses control of their vehicle?
How accurate can that sort of gun be? Over what sort of angle and distance is it will effective?
Is there a way to shield the car with a faraday cage to prevent this sort of thing from happening? And if not, wouldn't this just mess up the police cars? What's going to stop the police (or **AA) from "accidentally" frying your computer with one of these?
This is certainly
Re:Questions (Score:5, Interesting)
> What happens when a person going 70mph suddenly loses control of their
> vehicle?
The run into somebody and kill them. Just like they do when being chased at high speed.
> How accurate can that sort of gun be?
It cannot be accurate at all, but the cops will become convinced that it is laser-like.
> Over what sort of angle and distance is it will effective?
The field will be blob-shaped, with slightly more range forward than back. It will only wreck cars at a fairly short range but will destroy unshielded electronic equipment (cellphones, 'Pods, laptops...) at a much greater range.
> Is there a way to shield the car with a faraday cage to prevent this sort
> of thing from happening? And if not, wouldn't this just mess up the police
> cars?
A bit of filtering and shielding will suffice, and the cop cars will get it. So will the vehicles of some criminals.
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Time to start a business selling tinfoil hats for use on cars ^^
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Same thing that happens now if your engine quits suddenly at 70mph, you slow don fairly quickly while at the same time lose power sterring. However if your going 70mph your going in a mostly straight line anyways. Unless your dumb enough to go 70 down city streets. worst case is you crash going a lot slower than70 mph.
Distance unknown however it will probably be like a spot light in it's target area a spot probably about 10 meters wide at most.
nope, only if it hits them too, we shall find out.
Answers (Score:2)
What happens when a person going 70mph suddenly loses control of their vehicle?
They won't "lose control", exactly. It'll just get a lot harder to steer, and the car will slow down rapidly
How accurate can that sort of gun be? Over what sort of angle and distance is it will effective?
Not terribly accurate. The spread of the beam is determined by the antenna geometry and the frequency of the radiation. The range, of course, is subject to the power level. With a big antenna, and enough power, you could disable a car from miles away. Practically speaking, it'll probably need to be effective from 100 yards or so in order to be useful. I expect that the effective width of the "beam" wo
Uh-oh... (Score:5, Interesting)
This may sound like a good idea, but I suspect the cops will be using this a lot more liberally than intended.
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Doubt it. Destroying somebody's property without just cause invites a 1983 suit.
Does make a good point though. The legislature should make it so that the device used must have built-in data collection that details when (and maybe where) the device was employed. That way, there be some splaining to do if the device gets discharged without a report detailing the incident that caused the discharge.
Loss of potential acronymic irony (Score:2)
If only they called it the:
High ElectroMagnetic Power System
the headlines could read:
"Cops Use HEMPS to Catch Criminals"
Hemp - is there anything it _can't_ do?
This is an anti-robot weapon, not anti-car (Score:5, Interesting)
1. It will kill the car, not merely create a carefully programmed disabling like the Onstar system. Most likely this leads to a car crash and quite likely require complete replacement of all electronics.
2. As others stated, pacemakers, watches, cellphones, laptops, etc. will also be affected.
3. This will get into the hands of criminals. I am quite frankly they don't already have it. Here are some of the things I think people might use it on:
ATM's If there is a 1 in 100 chance of it malfunctioning and spitting out the money, then ATM's will be hit 100 times.
Toll machines - obvious
Red lights (and the cameras aimed at them).
cop cars
Re:This is an anti-robot weapon, not anti-car (Score:5, Insightful)
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Have you ever driven a car where the engine failed at speed? I have -- all that happens is the steering goes stiff and the car starts to slow down. You've got plenty of time to make your way out of the traffic lanes.
What a great tool for robbery! (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds great, until... (Score:2)
Re:Sounds great, until... (Score:4, Interesting)
Good luck with that ... and when it happens, I bid you welcome to the infamous blue wall of silence [wikipedia.org]. After NYPD cops illegally confiscated and damaged a camcorder of mine, it took nearly six months for them to acknowledge that the incident even took place! Despite having excellent video evidence, from other videographers.
"designed to disable a cars microprocessor system" (Score:2)
One more reason to never let go of my supercharged '68 Oldsmobile 442 getaw^H^H^H^H^H ride... no integrated circuits. Except the sound system, of course - which, to keep up the stereotype, plays only 8-track tapes, preferably from the mid-Jurrasic rock period.
C'mon coppers, let's see your puny little raygun take on some Detroit Iron!
extortion (Score:2)
Let me inspect your computer without a warrant or this EMP gun might just accidentally discharge in an inconvenient direction.
Eureka (Score:2)
The bigger news is that the town of Eureka is real. I always thought it was fictional.
This isn't new a new idea at all. (Score:5, Informative)
This is a High Energy Radio Frequency (HERF) gun not an EMP weapon, although the two are very similar in their final effects. EMP devices are omnidirectional and create a blanket pulse across a far larger portion of the EM spectrum. HERF affects a much smaller part of the spectrum, which allows the generating electronics to be tuned for higher efficiency and allowing the antennas to be directional. EMP devices are usually much higher power that fry the electronics, whereas HERF devices typically only cause disruption (requiring pulses to be sustained to prevent the normal function from restarting).
It will shut down the engine computers of most modern cars, but cars with carburetors and mechanical based ignition systems (ie. distributors) and diesel engines without electronic injection will be unnafected. While this may affect most cars and trucks made since 1970, it does not include them all.
To get to the power output that will stop a vehicle from distances usually seen in car chases would require a massive arrangement, capacitor bank, and a dedicated power supply to keep the HERF pulses sustained. This certainly will not be the kind of device that will be mounted on police cars any time soon.
I have to also wonder how effective it would be in an actual car chase (assuming they could find as way of making it mobile). They would typically be shooting it at the rear of the car where the bodywork would act as shielding for the engine computer, and there is nothing to stop portions of the RF pulses reflecting off the metal bodywork and disabling chasing police cars.
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Strap it to a police helicopter (or a police UAV, in 10 years).
Sure, but this makes the distance much greater, requiring a yet larger arrangement (with larger capacitor bank and power supply). Police helicopters and UAVs really can't handle much of a payload. Also, even if you could get over the problem of the inverse square law with a pinpoint beam, there will still be the issue of RF bounce off the metal bodywork potentially affecting surrounding vehicles
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I think this article really refers to cars with engine management computers, as opposed to "points" substitutes.
The simple transistor ignitions are pretty robust units with high current BJT components in metal cans. By their very nature you still need quite a large base current to switch them, and I doubt a HERF gun would do this.
Bu comparison it would take much less energy to disrupt an engine management computer.
They can't kill momentum. (Score:3, Insightful)
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Who does this myth keep popping up? Have people honestly never tried turning a car with the engine off?
The difficulty of turning depends on how fast the car is moving. Stopped, and without power steering, sure it's a bitch. On the other hand, you're stopped, so who cares? Rolling even a little makes turning (with no power assists at all) much easier. By the time you hat 15 MPH or so, it honestly is just as easy as with the power steering still active. At freeway or police-chase speeds, you're completely fin
Summary sucks ala On-Star (Score:3, Informative)
Actually READ the linked article on On-Star before trying to summarize it please! On-Star doesn't "beam" a signal down from a satellite - it uses CELL PHONE technology. The only satellite involved in that scenario is the ones in the sky enabling the GPS. Unlike in some crap movies GPS is actually ONE-WAY and you're not beaming your location or anything else back UP. They're simply querying the GPS to find out the current location of the vehicle via cell phone - nothing else. CSI TV technology this ain't.
Also - if you READ the article the signal sent to the On-Star simply tells it to not START the next time the thief tries to use it. It does NOT cripple the computer, it does not degrade the performance, it simply tells the computer not to restart. "Block the ignition on the next restart" is that NOT clear enough? REstart as in the NEXT time someone turns the key for a start. So if it's running this article doesn't say squat about turning it off remotely.
On-Star has plenty of things going for it that I don't like and wouldn't want in my car - to include at one point the ability for law enforcement to remotely eavesdrop on you - so you really don't have to make up crazy things and lose credibility.
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> Would build a faraday cage around the sensitive electronics
Shielding and filtering should suffice.
> I guess it's good for your ho-hum car-jacker though
Of course, the jacked car will suffer $5,000 damage...
Real life is not like the movies (Score:3, Insightful)
Your average high-speed chase participant is not a criminal mastermind. They're somebody who got caught doing something stupid, and panicked.
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the VTR 250 (still being made) only uses a single chip for ignition timing, replace that with an old school timing belt and the entire vehicle is mechanical.
I for one am prepared for when the robot overlords rise with their EMP guns :)
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Why not just route them all to a switch, so you can still use it when you want to? Or, simpler: Find the brick the antennas plug into, and switch the 12V lines going to it.
I'm a privacy nut, myself, at times. When my boss installed tracking software on my company-owned phone, I bought a nice vinyl-covered Faraday cage for it made out of conductive fabric to use in those times when he needn't know where I'm at.
Yanking antennas and destroying electronics seems far-fetched and brutal. It's easier to keep t
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Why didn't you just leave the phone on your desk at work or were you a travelling salesman?