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Home » Bizarro » Sticky Foam Gets Serious

Sticky Foam Gets Serious

Sticky foam is the cus­tard pie of the non­lethals world, often seen more as a prac­ti­cal joke than a weapon. In fact, it worked well enough at stop­ping peo­ple, but suf­fers from some crit­i­cal dis­ad­van­tages, as Noah pointed out a while back.

sticky.jpgOne of the big prob­lems is that hav­ing slimed a rioter, you cant arrest them or take them away. And if the sticky foam cov­ers their mouth and nose, it can be any­thing but non-​​lethal.

After some ini­tial enthu­si­asm for the idea dur­ing the Marine deploy­ment to Somalia in 1995, the idea faded and has been in limbo ever since. Now sticky foam is back, defend­ing nuclear weapon stock­piles, accord­ing to this report from Government Security.

The report explains that some facil­i­ties stor­ing ura­nium and plu­to­nium now boast steel doors with con­tain­ers of hydro­car­bon solu­tion built into them. Breach the door, and the liq­uid comes foam­ing out under high pres­sure, expand­ing in bulk by a fac­tor of forty and seal­ing the breach with an impass­able obstacle.

The idea is that sticky foam will delay any attack­ers for long enough for the defend­ers to call in rein­force­ments. Experiments with explo­sives found it was impos­si­ble to break through the doors with­out the foam bar­rier deploy­ing. Another test showed how a defender could release the foam by shoot­ing it with an M-​​16. According to Ronald Timm, pres­i­dent of RETA Security:

If you’re on the high secu­rity side of a door and attack­ers are attempt­ing to break through, you can use your weapon to shoot the doorThe sticky foam will deploy, delay the attack­ers, and give you time to call for help.

The doors are already installed at undis­closed sites. In the new role, the foam’s draw­backs become advan­tages. Keeping attack­ers stuck in place for as long as pos­si­ble is help­fu­land there are unlikely to be protests if any of them tries to force a way through and comes to a sticky end.
– David Hambling

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March 7th, 2006 | Bizarro, Less-lethal | 3048101 Comments »http://defensetech.org/2006/03/07/sticky-foam-gets-serious/Sticky+Foam+Gets+Serious2006-03-07+12%3A20%3A41jason You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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  1. pedestrian says:
    March 7, 2006 at 10:58 am

    >Does any one remem­ber 234 Riot Control Launcher?
    Oops, I meant M234 Riot Control Launcher

    Reply
  2. Allen says:
    March 8, 2006 at 9:33 am

    Seemed to work well on Mr. Incredible!

    Reply
  3. Albert Mond says:
    March 8, 2006 at 12:32 pm

    What a ter­ri­ble weapon!

    Reply
  4. Dave Smith says:
    March 8, 2006 at 4:43 pm

    There is also a microwave weapon, that fires a beam of ultra high fre­quency waves, these make the attacker feel as if his skin is on fire should they approach the wave, although no burns appear, its just the unbear­able sensation.

    Reply
  5. guest says:
    March 9, 2006 at 5:58 am

    they dont deploy m16(a1 or a2)‘s any­more to my knowl­edge. they have too large a foot­print, acces­sories are basi­cally nil, it was very heavy, and it only employs a sin­gle, 3 round burst and safety group­ing, not to men­tion the huge solid butt­stock. the us troops in iraq and afghanistan weild Colt M4A1’s as well as var­i­ous other rifles, but as far as I know the m16(a2) was yanked not too long ago. i think the m234 was the non-​​lethal brother to the m203 (another m16(a2) 20mm grenade launcher attach­ment), and if so, then it can be fit­ted onto the m4a1…as far as i know…oh, and FINALLY! A USE FOR STICKY FOAM! looks like there’s frost in the under­world now.

    Reply
  6. James says:
    March 9, 2006 at 2:15 pm

    Being a screen­writer myself, in a movie I would have the attack­ers arrive equiped with a large tank of spray sol­vent or just plain com­pressed air to deflect the foam to the sides until it solid­i­fied. Might not work in real life, but it would get the bad guys inside in a James Bond film.

    Reply
  7. zzzzzzzzzzzzrp says:
    March 9, 2006 at 2:46 pm

    If I was a screen­writer, I would have the bad guys show up with truck loaded with 1000 goats to eat the foam

    Reply
  8. Terrain says:
    March 9, 2006 at 5:11 pm

    How would you get it off?

    Reply
  9. wesley hansen says:
    March 10, 2006 at 2:13 am

    baby oil or min­eral oil takes sticky foam right off, it
    works quite well.

    Reply
  10. Ron says:
    March 10, 2006 at 3:24 am

    You know how the sound of fin­ger­nails on a black­board makes you feel? Or the sound of a fork dragged, tines down, across a stain­less steel pan?
    Couldn’t those par­tic­u­lar sound fre­quen­cies be amped up and used for crowd con­trol? Wearing pro­tec­tive ear cov­er­ings wouldn’t work for the bad guys, ‘cuz they wouldn’t be able to hear what their lead­ers were say­ing.
    And while I’m here, I have a cou­ple more thoughts along this gen­eral line of dis­cus­sion:
    1. I’ve heard that touch­ing pig blood, or any part of a pig for that mat­ter, is like a deadly sin to those mad­men killing our GIs. Why isn’t that fact, if it is a fact, used as a weapon? An explo­sive device that sprays pig blood instead of shrap­nel, for exam­ple.
    How about using squirt guns filled with pig blood for inter­ro­ga­tions of ter­ror­ists?
    2. “Humanitarian de-​​mining” is a big deal in many coun­tries around the world. All the research I’ve seen focusses on mechan­i­cal, elec­tri­cal and chem­i­cal devices and meth­ods for find­ing buried anti-​​personnel mines. One method even tries to exploit the chem­i­cal sen­si­tiv­ity of bees to locate mines.
    By all the accounts I’ve read, clear­ing an area of mines, once they’re located, is a slow, dan­ger­ous and costly process. Extracting the mines seems to rely on vari­a­tions of mechan­i­cal robots and a-​​brave-​​guy-​​with-​​a-​​bayonet pok­ing around in the dirt.
    My ques­tion: Once a mine­field is located, why don’t they just loft sand­bags, old water-​​filled inner tubes, tires, sec­tions of tree trunks or other round, heavy objects into the field and det­o­nate the mines? There seems to be a def­i­nite rea­son for extract­ing the mines intact, but it’s never stated.
    Can any­one here shed some light on this?

    Reply
  11. Wembley says:
    March 10, 2006 at 6:38 am

    Setting off land­mines — or any device likely to throw out shrap­nel — is not a good idea if you’re within 100 feet of them. You could get away with it a few times, but it’s risky.
    As for the pig blood idea, it sounds like a great way to boost al-​​Qaeda recruit­ing and turn every­one in the world against the US.

    Reply
  12. EE says:
    August 20, 2006 at 2:18 am

    Where can we get sticky foam?

    Reply
  13. Stephen Furlani says:
    November 14, 2006 at 12:30 pm

    Mine fields aren’t cleared by “sand­bags” mainly because most of the devices are more sophis­ti­cated than that.
    Second, because det­o­nat­ing them pol­lutes the land­scape. Want your kids eat­ing shrap­nel? Howabout plant­ing a gar­den in an area pol­luted by the reac­tants inside a mine? mmm poison

    Reply
  14. Matt says:
    June 29, 2008 at 12:21 pm

    This stuff looks to work out just great!
    Puts a whole new spin on “Getting stuck in”!

    Reply
  15. intentsly says:
    August 5, 2008 at 12:37 pm

    If its sticky and expands I guess that would work, just so long as it isn’t too easy to remove. If it’s flam­ma­ble that would make for quite an > (napalm any­one?).
    Lets just hope these devices remain in the hands of the forces of good and not twisted some how by the bad ones.
    I didn’t see the mine­field ref­er­ence, but any­way.. The armed forces do have anti-​​mine field devices that are shot over a field and then remotely det­o­nated. They’re quite effective.

    Reply
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