Toddler Guided Missile

[Metryq]

I've talked with engineers who've worked on missiles. There are all sorts of guidance systems that have been tried: inertial, radar, heat-seeking, etc. We can also aim with GPS, but no system is perfect; there's always some margin of error.

Toddlers have the unerring ability to intercept the legs of any adult, especially if the adult is walking. (At that point, they even speed up during final approach—BAM!) Their accuracy strains credibility, and evasive maneuvers are useless. Now, if there were some way to figure out their system and "bottle" it...

 

[Melakon]

I was once strolling through a mall, and some small toddler ran over and hugged my legs. His mom was embarrassed for some reason. He probably mistook me for someone else. If he'd been a missile, I'd be dead now.

 

[Metryq]

Close one, Melakon. Good thing his warhead wasn't armed. Or maybe he was a test shot, and you were taken for a target drone.

 

[Melakon]

It must have been 20 or 30 years ago. Drones weren't that common then, so he might have been a suicide bomber in training.

 

[Gov Kodos]

Walking home today with shopping bags up to my apartment, a fortunately-for-me small kid and equally small bike tried to take off but plowed into me as I was walking past. Like a sidewinder missile.

 

[Metryq]

Oh! A bike added to the equation. Twenty years from now, this kid will be one of those people on the news who plows through the front of a convenience store with a 900 horsepower HUV (house-UV) and then explains he got "confused" between the gas and brake (even though he routinely drives with both feet on the pedals).

 

[Melakon]

Here at the apartment complex the biggest danger is toddlers and kids between 5 and 9. They're either on Big Wheels, tricycles, or bicycles with training wheels. One has some battery powered kiddy car. I walk with a cane, so they're always faster than me and insist on having the right of way. One little brat, about 4, intentionally rammed me with a shopping cart several times. If I'd done stuff like that as a kid, any adult in the neighborhood could give me a spanking. Can't do that anymore.

 

[Metryq]

Of course not, that would be child abuse. Then the kid would be so traumatized they'd have to hop him up on all kinds of drugs. /s

 

[publiusr]

use birds, not toddlers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pigeon

 

[Drone]

Aside from any other issue, for that to have been a going concern there couldn't be any questions about the loyalty of these deadly avians. It wouldn't have done at all to have them recognize the image on the screen, perhaps an old haunt or other, and have even a moment's hesitation about their course of action. I suppose that operant conditioning program would have covered it, but for me it would have still been a worry.