OK. So we got this idea for a feature on what people do to secure their sheds and garage to prevent their bikes getting nicked.
I went to an ex-con mate of mine (reformed) who a) rides bikes and b) used to rely on shotguns rather than insurance poilcies. Then when that farmer got banged up for shooting an intruder he thought that (what with his previous and all) he'd better give guns up and get a little more creative.
So he rigged this up in his shed
[img]http://i19.tinypic.com/6cylv83.jpg[/img]
As you can plainly see its a battery operated, trip-wire operated system which sets off a 130db combination of siren and buzzer, not good in a confined space full of metal like a garage or bike shed - next up he's wired in 2 maroon thunder-flashes which are what the army use to simulate battlefields in war-zone training. To finish up he's got a smoke canister which releases tear gas over a 40 second duration.
Now I was interested in how we were going to get a picture of this device in operation so he said he’d try it out to see what happens when you set it off.
Here's what he said...
"I set it up in my shed, trailed the wire out of the door, stood 3 feet from the shed and it STILL scared the crap out of me when it went off. LOUD and violent, you can feel the pressure-wave on your chest as they go off. And I was outside the shed. I think being in the same room as one, would cause disorientation, temporary blindness and deafness as well as an organo-extrusion/farbric interface (You'd s**t your kecks). And that was just using one of the maroons. Now I've got two of those bad-boys wired in there..."
He lives in North London but offered to bring it down to my place to demonstrate – “You live in South Croydon, I can rig one of these babys into your hallway?†he offered, “That’s South Croydon, not South f***ing Central†I reminded this lunatic - I didn't like the idea of him carrying it (a bomb essentially) through London. I was also trying not to imagine Salem walking in and setting the ****er off. It'd be like a Kiss doing a gig in my livingroom and I'd be picking cat bits out of the woodwork for weeks.