I've been entertaining a fantasy about these abductions that isn't very practical, but it did suggest something to me that just might have some utility. I'm dealing with some depression, so I've chosen not to view the videos of these beheadings... but just the description is enough to enrage me. Hell, I've actually considered meditating in an effort to see if I can cultivate some sort of remote vision, to get a clue as to where these guys might be and what they're doing. Silly I know, but the fantasy led me in what could be a more fruitful direction:
It occurred to me that a strategy involving some rather exotic technology might work, but since I'm not an engineer I don't know whether it's feasible. Surely some version of it must be, though. Basically the idea involves the development of some sort of identity chip with a transmitter on low and high frequencies (perhaps that can be satellite tracked?), but undetectable to a scanning device that might be available to the terrorists. (Low and high frequencies in order to deal with different kinds of material barriers that might interfere with a signal.) Make the unit as inexpensive as possible so that you can produce them in the thousands, capable of being implanted somewhere under the skin of contractors assigned to Iraq (on a purely voluntary basis as a security measure), along with enough battery capacity to transmit for several days once activated. Figure out a way that the user can activate it, say by a sharp blow to a certain part of the anatomy.
With a number of these things around we'll eventually get lucky and someone with a device will be kidnapped... and once that happens we'll have the phuquers. Better and more practical than remote vision, I think.
Posted by Demosophist at September 23, 2004 07:45 PM | TrackBackHeya!
I done wrote an article about this notion. Long and short is that it's not doable exactly like you seem to envision, but something really close to it is quite possible.
Good call, ace.
Posted by: Bravo Romeo Delta at September 23, 2004 10:38 PMAnother "hear, hear" for the idea if tracking chips. We regularly do it to "man's best friend" when we adopt at the shelter. We can find our animals if they are rescued and scanned. It seems entirely feasible we should be able to introduce a tracking chip that would allow for the identification of terrorist hold-up sites and potential rescue of our own people, and the deserved slaughter of the deranged butchers.
Posted by: stacey at September 25, 2004 08:57 AMAnother brief note, and you might want to start collecting links and trackbacks to this sort of thing to see if it can get stuck together enough to actually start developing some momentum, but there was a recent post in Asymmetrical Information about this at http://www.janegalt.net/blog/archives/004912.html
Posted by: Bravo Romeo Delta at September 25, 2004 07:44 PMHow about this, all contractors have suicide belts on that contain 1 pound of C4 plastic explosive and about 4 pounds of ball bearings and marbles. That way, if the terrorists break in the kidnap the person could trip a switch and kill the attackers or trip a count down till the bomb would go off to better maximize the kill of scum. Hell, if I knew I would more than likely die, i'd rather take some scum with me. After awhile these retards would figure out fuck with one of us and YOUR DEAD!
Posted by: Andre at September 25, 2004 11:12 PMRRD:
Thanks for the tip. Here's one of the more useful posts at that site:
Actually for those of you who are not engineers there is a technology, UWB (Ultra Wide-Band), that when combined with spread-spectrum and other encoding technologies renders the signal virtually immune to ecm (electronic counter measures).As for detectability, UWB is indistinguishable from random noise.
This technology is already being deployed for "high value" equipment. Although I can't say for certain if Dick Cheney has one implanted in him.
Probably not. The odds that the device is smaller than a cell phone are, at the moment, pretty slim. But at this stage any implementation is better than non. All directions are up.
Posted by: Demosophist (to BRD) at September 26, 2004 03:01 PM