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Given Locusts have an exoskeleton, would some kinds of focused sound weapon have a viable use in bringing down such swarms?
by Zenst 7y ago
Given Locusts have an exoskeleton, would some kinds of focused sound weapon have a viable use in bringing down such swarms?
- oneplane 7y agoImagine the source of protein you'd get! While probably not super handy (as it only happens during swarming times) and maybe even ecosystem-disruptive, turning them in to food would be useful.
- Zenst 7y agoWouldn't look at this as a farming avenue, more a way to respond to such scaled issues using tools that may very well already exist or be modified to cater for such needs. Certainly aware of crowd control sound weapons, I'd be supprised if the militaries of the world didn't have there own more powerful flavours begging for a PR test opportunity like this.
- oneplane 7y agoNow I wonder if there is a single resonant frequency that would work on all of them. The individual differences alone would be hard. Perhaps a general microwave type of weapon/harvester would work better?
- zentiggr 7y agoWow, we're approaching "Mars Attacks!" territory here. That could be a viable tactic though
- sitkack 7y agoPhased array microwave beams could cause enough instantaneous local heating to kill them, could optical detection to steer the beam.
- AnimalMuppet 7y agoAnd, if you keep a history of where the beam went, you know where go to to harvest the carcasses for protein.
- Zenst 7y agoAt the densities you get, rainfall radar will pick them up.
- phkahler 7y agoNice. Looks like frequencies from 10 to 20 khz may have a locust size wavelength. You might want to use half that frequency, and a very high power. Wonder if that would do anything to them
- jcims 7y ago30kw microwave radar would probably work too. You can buy the magnetrons on alibaba for a couple hundred bucks.
- mkl 7y agoThe swarms cover hundreds to thousands of square kilometres, and contain test to hundreds of billions of locusts. So no. There's no way to build enough sound weapons or focus them on billions of insects that move up to 150km per day.