pic nicked from here
The Pentagon is looking to harness the power of cricket communications to warn of impending chemical attacks. They’ll turn the bugs into cyborgs and program their wing beats, which they communicate through, to alter when the insects detect certain chemicals. So cricket smells something, cricket changes its call tone. Cricket hears a certain call tone, it adjusts its call-tone. It’s a vast active living talking system. Insect twitter.
Aside from detecting chemical attack, this can also be used to rescue people in rubble as the cricket-cyborgs smell human and alter their call. More likely, they’ll use these insects to detect drug shipments. (Just like bees and wasps.)
Because I just don’t buy the whole people trapped in rubble thing. Almost every time that the military starts talking about mind-controlling creatures or turning land-animals into cyborgs for intelligence purposes they quickly start talking about the civilian applications. These usually involve helping people trapped in rubble.
But is this really such a problem? Is being trapped in rubble enough of a threat that the whole animal kingdom should be turned into a government surveillance device? I’m 31 and I don’t think I know anyone who has been trapped in rubble. As I write this none of my friends are –to the best of my knowledge– trapped in rubble. My Nan was trapped in rubble during the war. She crawled out without any help Jiminy Cricket. And it was an army that put her there.
Perhaps I’m old fashioned but, if I’m ever trapped in rubble, I hope you leave the cyborg crickets at home and bring the shovels. It’s annoying enough when one of these noisy little beasts is stuck in your kitchen. I hardly want to spend my last minutes trying to find the cricket who is stuck in my little air pocket. I might be wanting to concentrate and try to come to terms with a few things. Like, you know, my death.
And as for roborat — Just keep that fucker away from me. Let a man die in peace for a change. In the rubble.
