Home Made Star Wars Movie Injury 734
SaleNowOn writes "Rather than use expensive cgi techniques to make the light sabres glow for their home movie. This couple instead used fluorescent tubes filled with petrol.
Which they then set alight.
If they don't survive they must be Future Darwin Award winners. It makes me proud to be British." And me embarassed to be a Star Wars geek.
Glow Sticks (Score:5, Interesting)
Talk about doing it the hard way! (Score:5, Interesting)
And if you work it right, it also gives you the ability to do the ever popular Jedi trick of throwing someone across the room with the open palm of your hand.
High voltage beats high temperature any day of the week.
Re:Talk about doing it the hard way! (Score:3, Interesting)
Copy Cat'ing (Score:2, Interesting)
Flourescent Tubes (Score:5, Interesting)
Flourescent tubes will also glow if you hold them while standing under high-tension power lines.
Reminds me... (Score:3, Interesting)
He was one of those guys who was incredibly intelligent with absolutely NO common sense. Or maybe better put as, smart enough to be dangerous.
Re:Slightly more information (Score:1, Interesting)
Master Replica (Score:3, Interesting)
This would be a realistic and safe alternative to playing with gas.
(Whenever he would hold up the lightsaber the crowd would fall silent, waiting to hear the ignition sound - each time followed by a round of applause.)
Re:my home town - finally made famous. Yay! (Score:3, Interesting)
Nonsense - Hemel is already famous for its 'oh my god! oh my god! we're all going to die!' 'magic roundabout' [bbc.co.uk].
But then I live in Milton Keynes - spiritual home of the roundabout - and we're secretly jealous.
Mike.
Re:Glow Sticks (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, I've seen this done, but I don't remember the details.... It may have involved a Vandegraaff generator....
Re:Obsession with All Things "Star Wars" (Score:5, Interesting)
Star Wars != support democracy, you dweeb. What, did you attend the George W. Bush school of political science? Where democracy = feel good, with no actual considerations for what defines a democratic society?
The whole point of the saga is that democratic institutions are weak, and we need princely heros (who have the blood of Anakin coursing through their veins) to protect us from despotism. Queen, Princess, Knight...those are the heroes. Who voted for Luke Skywalker? Who exercises civilian control over the Jedi?
The Star Wars story *might* correspond to a desire for a constitutional monarchy, respectful of basic human rights, but with a quasi-religious independent military. No democracy there, bub.
Re:Glow Sticks (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a friend who is machinist who made a number of beautiful plastic broadswords that were designed to be filled with something like twenty glow stiks worth of juice. The effect was spectacular, even in moderate lighting. They were exquisitely beautiful creations with several different colored plastic, finely shaped, finished and furnished. His best one he took to an Boskone years ago, where Larry Niven, who was staggering drunk at the time, asked to see it. Naturally Niven waved it around and smashed it against an elevator door, putting an ugly chimp and spiderweb cracks in it. My friend was pissed -- it took forever to make one that nice.
Personally I would have got a Sharpie and had Niven autograph the sword for me. Something like this: "To Dave -- Sorry about the sword, but I was being a drunk asshole at the time. All the best, Larry"
Re:Glow Sticks (Score:5, Interesting)
Not that I'd recommend using fluorescent light tubes filled with anything - that's a shatter risk. And while tritium isn't dangerous in most situations, that much tritium in a fragile container is asking for trouble - getting that much on your skin (where some may soak in) and in the air (which you'll breathe), you'll probably get a couple years to a couple decades of background radiation equivalent (based on the fact that drinking an entire tritium rifle sight is a two years dose).
Re:Slightly more information (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's make a list here: Fire, Gasoline, Flying glass
You forgot the best one: soap.
They mixed the gasoline with soap. The resulting mixture is a sticky, highly flammable sludge often called poor man's napalm. I'm guessing they did it so they could coat the insides of the tubes with a mixture that would stay in place while being swung around. Obviously, gasoline alone would tend to slosh and pour out.
But when the "saber" shattered, and the stuff splashed on them, it stuck to them, just like napalm does. Gasoline alone would have been much less dangerous since except where it soaked into clothes it would have mostly slid off the people and onto the ground. What little actually did stick would have burned away fairly quickly. This stuff, on the other hand, can stick to skin, hair and clothes in thick globs and continue burning for a very long time. Worse, it's very hard to smother effectively. If you drop to the ground to smother it, the lack of oxygen will stop combustion, but the mixture will probably retain enough heat to reignite as soon as you roll over. It also retains enough heat to continue burning you for quite a while if you wrap up in a blanket or something.
Very, very nasty stuff to be playing with. It's no surprise that these two may not survive.
Real napalm, by the way, is also a mixture of gasoline plus other stuff to stabilize it and slow the rate at which it burns.
Re:Glow Sticks (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Flourescent Tubes (Score:2, Interesting)
He did eventually recover.
Re:Slightly more information (Score:3, Interesting)
You believe that they are there because of lies. Some of them, presumably, are there because they believe those statements to be true. Some are even there because even though they believe the statements to be of questionable validity, they feel that Iraqis can benefit from reconstruction despite that.
Finally, whether Bush "lied" or not is academic only. The fact now is that the people in that country need help of some sort.
Did Bush lie? I am not certain, and I doubt anyone save himself and a few of his closest advisors will ever have enough of the story to be able to say with a reasonable certainty if there were lies or statements that those individuals believed to be true at the time they were spoken.
Certainly you believe that Bush lied, but that doesn't make it so.
I am NOT saying he is perfect or that he never colored the truth. I am merely saying that the world is much more complicated that you want to paint it with your "lied and lied an lied and lied" comment.
Re:Slightly more information (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Slightly more information (Score:2, Interesting)
So if there were WMDs you'd be OK with the invasion and subsequent liberation?
If your answer is yes, then your talk of nobility means squat, since there is nothing noble in letting people continue to live in an oppressive regime had we known there were no weapons. In other words, you come from a selfish and shortsighted point of view where WMDs to you mean the difference between doing the right thing or turning a blind eye to brutality and oppression.
If you answer no, then your argument that Bush lied is meaningless since either way you'd be against the war. Again, there is no nobility in that.
There is nothing noble about fighting for lies.
You seem to confuse objectives with reasons. Our reason for action at the time was in part, the mistaken view that Saddam has weapons. Our objective now is a free and democratic Iraq, and there is plenty of nobility in that. We are there, and rebuilding. That my friend is nobility, but I seriously doubt that someone so hung up on hate for the president will be able to see past the hate.
Re:Talk about doing it the hard way! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Glow Sticks (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Glow Sticks (Score:3, Interesting)
The heavy water passes through your system relatively quickly (I've read that about half of it is gone within three days), but even still, that's a significant exposure to something whose half life is only a little over 12 years, even with its weak beta. As I mentioned, ingesting 100% of the contents of a laser sight is estimated to be about two years of background radiation equivalent (I can dig up the paper again if you would like).