Copping Patents from the Ghostbusters?

They even got the three-cylinders part right...

Today, New Scientist’s crack patent watcher picked up an interesting non-lethal riot-control weapon that sounds suspiciously similar to something Egon, Ray and the boys cooked up some years back. Here’s a quote—and if you’ve seen Ghostbusters II, this should all ring a bell:

“Riot police or troops would wear a back pack with three cylinders – one containing compressed air, another filled with plain water and a third containing a supply of very dry, finely ground, polyacrylamide powder. A nozzle, resembling a shower head, would blasts two separate jets, containing the water and the polymer powder, in the general direction of an ugly crowd.”

The resulting substance would be slippery enough to cause rioters (but do they have to be ugly?) to stumble and fall, hopefully quelling their rage. But if you were part of a rioting crowd, wouldn’t getting sprayed with slippery slime make you even more crazed? It also remains to be seen whether said slime can make the Statue of Liberty walk through the streets of New York. —John Mahoney