How to Fight Modern-Day Pirates

Pirates are so hot right now. Even without any more Pirates of the Caribbean movies on the horizon, pirates have been one of the most talked about subjects in the media of late (and not in a good way). In the great debate about pirates versus ninjas, pirates are pulling away fast and no amount of Jean Claude Van Damme is going to help.

Seriously though, pirates have evolved greatly since the stories of Captain Hook and Jack Sparrow, and are causing quite the ruckus around Somalia as I type this. I didn't know just how bad things were till a few days ago when I saw a map of reported Somali pirate attacks in the newspaper. It wasn't this exact map, but it looked something like this:



This isn't the exact map that I saw, and I know it's kind of hard to read, but all those dots in the water indicate that there's a lot of things going down with pirates in that area. It's a bit disconcerting to think that pirates actually exist in modern times and are holding boats for ransom for millions of dollars.

So what do we do? Thanks to Digg, I found an NPR article about the latest in pirate-fighting technology. I admit, I giggled to myself typing, "pirate-fighting technology." Isn't it crazy that pirate-fighting technology is relevant in 2009? Most ships aren't ready to stock guns just yet, so they have a few non-life-threatening alternatives available.

This one looks like it came out of the Home Alone playbook. It's a foam that makes any surface it's sprayed on extremely slippery. Apparently, it's a product developed by the Marine Corps for crowd control purposes that is being repositioned as a way to fight pirates.





And this here is a really powerful hose. The Force 80 Water Cannon can spray 1400 gallons a minute a distance of upwards of 100 yards in any direction. Here's a picture of it in action:




Neat stuff. However, after listening to the episode of the Stuff You Should Know podcast, where they talked about a recently captured pirate vessel that contained assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, are a giant hose and slippery stairs the answer? Until I come up with any better ideas, I can't be one to judge. In any case, this war on pirates is probably going to be a hot-button topic in the coming weeks and months, and I'll be sure to stay tuned on all the pirate shenanigans.