In fact, they went so far as to call in the same crowd control experts that help to keep things under control at major events like the Super Bowl and the Olympics. Each store will have it's own gameplan, but the vast majority of locations (not just SuperCenters) will be open for 24-hours staring on Thanksgiving morning and ending on Friday evening. That way, Walmart hopes to prevent mammoth crowds from gathering outside the store waiting for the doors to open. They are also putting many of the most popular items behind displays, where employees will supervise lines and hand out the products to customers in an orderly fashion. Additional workers will be stationed outside the store to help direct foot traffic.

Because of incidents like the one at Walmart, the National Retail Federation has, for the first time, put together a list of guidelines aimed at crowd control in stores. Of course, even with all these precautions, I fear that this year will bring more horror stories about deadly violence erupting between crazed bargain hunters. [NYT]

A long time ago we heard about the UK considering testing out some non lethal directed energy gear. Basically a beam-based weapon which would cause a burning sensation to discourage a victim (or attacker), but not actually damage skin or leave burn marks. This is what the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate, JNLWD, has been exploring since 2005. But according to project engineer Wesley Burgei, they've still got a few bugs left to work out:

"We have established the minimum irradiance to cause a sensation and have characterised where thermal injury begins," he says. "But the exact operating irradiance which balances a useful military effect with a conservative margin of safety has not been nailed down yet."

In plain words? There are some itty bitty safety issues. Thankfully those will be ironed out before the weapons ever hit the streets due to some UN protocol on blinding laser weapons. It turns out that they forbid weapons which would penetrate the retina and cause blindness. It seems odd that a beam-based weapon could affect skin without damaging eyesight, but, according to Burgei, it's entirely possible to use a "retina safe" wavelength.

It's great that safety is a priority in the design and creation of these beam-based weapons, but Steve Wright, a non lethal weapons analyst at Leeds Metropolitan University, raises an interesting point about them:

"Persuading by pain rather than brain - through conversation - has led to push-button torture in the past. If it leaves no mark on the skin how will anyone prove it's been abused?"

Tasers and the like leave evidence, marks and traces of use, but once they're within proper safety limitations, beam-based weapons like the one being built by the JNLWD won't. Not to start the "Oh, no! They'll be abused!" train, but how will we regulate them? [New Scientist]

The liquid is doctor-approved, too, with Israeli "medical and legal authorities approving the use of the foul-smelling liquid." That's probably because the Israeli scientists who created it drew their inspiration from nature.

The foul-smelling liquid squirted by angry or frightened skunks at their victims was analyzed by Israeli defence scientists and a synthetic version created for use in a weapon they call the "skunk bomb". Fired with great care, and from a respectable range, it is designed to force civilian protesters to disperse. Security forces would not be keen to arrest the victims, and they would be equally unwelcome at home.

Unless, of coure, they already lived in a sewer.

But anyway, if you're still curious about the smell, the Palestinian demonstrators described it as "similar to that of sewage." [News VOA via Danger Room]

“Any kind of exposure you could give to someone that wouldn’t burn them to a crisp would produce a sound too weak to have any effect,” said Kenneth Foster, a bioengineering professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Foster knows what he's talking about, too. In 1974 he published the first research on the microwave auditory effect.

Fellow scientist and microwave research author Bill Guy agrees, citing some hard facts to support his conclusions:

Guy says that experiments have demonstrated that radiation at 40 microjoules per pulse per square centimeter produces sound at zero decibels, which is just barely in hearing range. To produce sound at 60 decibels, or the sound of normal conversation, requires 40 watts per square centimeter of radiation. “That would kill you pretty fast,” Guy says. Producing an unpleasant sound, at about 120 decibels, would take 40 million W/cm2 of energy. One milliwatt per square centimeter is considered to be the safety threshold.

Both scientists were in agreement about one other thing too: the MEDUSA just morphed from a crowd-control device into a monstrous weapon. We need more of those, right? [IEEE Spectrum Online]

"An eyepiece shows a red target dot, and then transmits an image of the target to a monitor, which relays the information to the gun." According to creator Barry Lamperd, if the holographic sight is on target, you can't miss. Let's hope so—because the company plans to sell the scooter to the US Army to use in crowd control situations (presumably in Iraq), and it will probably make its way down to local law enforcement somewhere down the line. [Lamperd Less Lethal via Sarnia Observer via Danger Room]

Believe it or not, the idea came from skin-administered drugs, such as nicotine patches. A first attempt using a felt pad soaked in "calmative" (their word not mine) fired from a rifle was ditched when it was discovered that thick clothing acted as a shield. Then some Pentagon clown (who'd probably just come back from a bachelor weekend) came up with the whole paintball idea.

The report doesn't just stop at drug administration via modified leisure activities—oh, no. Perhaps taking a leaf out of Saddam Hussein's book, one of the proposals involves a drone aircraft spraying clouds of non-lethal substances (laughing gas? itching powder? sexy laydee pheromones?) at crowds in order to disperse them. I've got a better idea. Legalize weed, guys, it'll be cheaper. [Wired via Sci-Fi Tech]

Although Amazon is obviously no longer delivering, the Toro Company is located in Minnesota, which is still listed as a code yellow zone of infection according to the Homeland Security website. Better take the drive and grab one of these bad boys now, while you still can. That weed whacker just isn't going to do the same job when it counts.

Why not a bigger mower, you ask? Because when the shit really hits the fan, you'll have to reach your dainty digits inside either edge of the spinning blades and loft the Lawn Boy like a righteous, ichor-gobbling shield. Flexibility counts.

Catalog Page [Amazon]

Some would suggest the ubiquitous chainsaw—we like the Stihl MS460 Rescue Saw with handy gore-proof muffler shield—and those are certainly going to be easier to find. But if fortune smiles, liberate yourself the Stihl HT 100 Pole Pruner. Its nearly six-foot reach keeps the gnashing teeth of the walking dead away from your person, a welcome trade-off for its relatively short blade length. (And we prefer the HT 100 over the HT 101, as the 101's telescoping pole makes it less structurally suitable for bludgeoning.)

Readers in Virginia Beach may find it useful to head towards the almost-certainly-zombie-free Stihl plant at 536 Viking Drive.

Product Page [StihlUSA.com]