Comments

Clive Robinson • March 5, 2012 8:06 AM

Anybody else spot the “via laughing squid” tag on the page?

Bruce is “laughing squid” one of your confidential sources 😉

Clive Robinson • March 5, 2012 9:37 AM

Is it me or do those three rapidly extending legs look like the outcome of an antenna deployment system for a satellite?

Perhaps the only spin off from the British Space Race 😉

@ Joakim,

Could these guys please do a bike version

Somebody in the US developed a device you might like a few years ago, it was a modified shark bang stick that fires the equivalent of a shotgun cartridge upwards. You either mount it in or just behind the saddle post.

AC • March 5, 2012 11:47 AM

But I wonder how much space is left in the case after accounting for the antitheft mechanism?

Doesn’t do me much good if I can’t fit my laptop in there!

ChristianO • March 5, 2012 12:26 PM

I think I have seen the sci fi version of this in Stargate Season 2 Episode 7.

There the thing was also able to impale a person with the outgoing spikes and communicate.

David Larsson • March 5, 2012 1:54 PM

I’m wondering about the efficacy of taking that sucker through a TSA line.

fan • March 5, 2012 3:40 PM

The briefcase in Michael Swanwick’s sci-fi novel “Stations of the Tide” has an even better anti-theft mechanism… It waits until the person who stole it is not paying attention, and then it grows little nanomechanical legs and leaps out a car window and runs back to its owner.

ObiJan • March 5, 2012 7:19 PM

@fan : It still gets beat by “the luggage” from the Discworld series, which has actual legs and will eat any assailant dumb enough to come close.

Nick Wells • March 5, 2012 9:39 PM

I don’t think that the extending arms are meant to impale the thief, but rather to limit the mobility of the thief.

How is this thing armed?
I suppose something like a a break-away chain around the owners wrist that pulls a pin to arm/activate if the case is snatched.

Figureitout • March 6, 2012 12:59 AM

@ Clive

Yeah, Bruce definitely had something to do with that lol

I share the same curiosity as David L…imagine the reality of the TSA agent searching for explosive cupcakes and grabbing little girls genitalia (“what pretty hair you have”) whilst letting actual radioactive dirty bomb materials through…the mind-blowing stupidity of it all…and while rummaging through people’s luggage, in violation of so called 4th amendment constitutional rights…the tragic and forgotten joke the Constitution has become…one of the ever competent agents pushes the wrong button…

Dom De Vitto • March 6, 2012 5:59 AM

It’s a bag version of a pufferfish.

Nice idea – awkward is usually enough to mean unstealable, and locking the thief to the bag also means they don’t have a hand/arm to attack the owner to get the key.

me • March 7, 2012 6:02 AM

If I had one of those, I would name it Yul Brynner just in case it went all ‘West World’ on everyone.

A slashing, impaling briefcase really should have a name like Brynner or Bronson. Just don’t put a lower case ‘i’ in front of their names, or you’ll be the engineer in the movie that gets slashed first.

Davi Ottenheimer • March 13, 2012 2:40 AM

Hmmm, I like the idea of permanently attaching a thief to the object but it looks like you would have to steal the bag exactly as intended for it to have the desired effect:

“Hello there old chap, would you mind terribly if I inserted my hand beneath yours in your handle and wait for it to be crushed as I attempt make a quick get away?

Why no my good man, of course not, please do so. I say, insert your hand just like this…”

@Natanael L
Flash is supported in fennec on the N9. Default browser will stay clean but Firefox will play.

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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.