THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, November 19, 1994 TAG: 9411180035
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A17 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: George Hebert
LENGTH: Medium: 64 lines
In a piece captioned ``Sticker Shock,'' Nebraska's Roger Welsch did his monthly homespun thing in Natural History magazine a little while ago. This time he took up the idea of slippery stuff and sticky stuff as weapons.
He had fun with the notion of using slathers of superslick material to make roads, bridges and railroads impassable to vehicles and people. Presumably, whole tank armies could be stopped in their treads. (To extend the possibilities: Infantry would all fall down. Warplanes couldn't brake to a stop when returning to slithery runways and carrier decks.)
Exploring the opposite of slick - in somewhat the same puckish style he uses in his Sunday morning TV spots about life in the Midwest - Welsch cited a Newsweek report. This was about the possible spreading of some very tacky stuff to immobilize enemy forces or whatever. A RAND Corp. spokesman had de-scribed a sprayable foam that turns into a clinging goo upon exposure to air. It's ``a polymer adhesive that you drop from the air or spray on a road and things just stick.''
Gluing down the Serbs' artillery was mentioned as one possible constructive use.
The Welsch article went on to visualize the additional potential of slip-slide concoctions and stop-action stickum in police work. But while he noted the advantages of spraying hoodlums into gloppy slow-motion, or greasing their way to capture, he worried about stick-and-skid technology falling into the wrong hands and being used against lawmen or crime victims.
There may even be, he speculated, some future Bill of Rights disputations in this country over the right to keep and bear spray weapons.
On reading all this, a couple of things occurred to me. I have some suggestions about materials, for one thing.
I realize there has been a lot of research into the molecular clasping qualities of various substances, resulting in such wondrous adhesives as Crazy Glue, epoxy cement and the like. I don't know about the lab work on slipperies, but I presume this has been going on, too.
At any rate, in the slick sphere I should think it worthwile for the developers of new no-kill battle methods to examine - if somebody hasn't already thought of it - whatever it is that lubricates the surface of a freshly dislodged watermelon seed. Something along that line ought to be the ultimate in preventing an adversary from getting a grip on things.
And to go back to the adhesives, I think the cement chemists may have already produced the ultimate in the way of a glue that could be incorporated into the weaponry of the future.
What I have in mind is that stubborn stuff, so steel-like in its resistance to removal, that they use to affix those small price labels to glass, ceramic and other products we buy. Now there's a tough binder no foe could wriggle free of for a long, long time.
My one other thought: The next big police-military crash program will have to be the development of supersprays to wash away the gook - fast.
You've heard that off-the-wall saying: ``Whoever winds up with the most toys wins.''
Well, with a little editing, we might have something. For ``most toys,'' substitute ``best solvents.'' MEMO: Mr. Hebert is a former editor of The Ledger-Star. by CNB