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IPFS News Link • Energy

Military-Designed "Bat Hook" Lets You Charge Your Phone from Overhead Power Lines

• Paul Adams via PopSci
 

When you think about it, it's ridiculous to spend the effort lugging around spare batteries, hand-cranked chargers, piezoelectric gadgets, and all the other half-baked solutions we depend on to resuscitate a dead phone. There's a potent supply of free power just waiting to be tapped, right above our heads. No, not the sun -- overhead power lines.

The Bat Hook is as simple as any plug-in charger, but it's great for on-the-go. It's just a weighted hook with a razor blade in it, strung on the end of a cord: you toss it over the nearest power line. Its blade pierces the live wire, neatly and safely conducting electric current down to you, for convenient charging of gadgets, jumpstarting cars, or powering your roadside business. It even works in the rain!

The explanatory video from the Department of Defense says something about how it's only for trained Special Operations soldiers, and "you should never throw something over power lines," but that is clearly just marketing hype, calculated to give the Bat Hook an air of exclusivity. The video says it's for use in jungles too, and everyone knows there aren't power lines overhead in jungles.

10 Comments in Response to

Comment by Anne Hiro
Entered on:

Die: It's called a counter-example, dipshit. The fact that someone got away with it for 20 years obviously means it isn't that EXTRAORDINARILY EASY to detect. The electric company didn't show up within minutes.

But just in case you can't figure out Google for more...

http://www.walletpop.com/blog/2009/02/20/stealing-electricity-is-on-the-rise/

http://www.winknews.com/Home/2010-07-06/Man-arrested-for-stealing-electricity-from-neighbor

http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=news/special_reports&id=6695425

 

These are a few more cases in the news. Just to spell my point out for you and your brain and sense organs here: Apparently the power company doesn't share your notion that this is such a trivial thing to detect.

 

"By your logic, this means that all other humans are ineducable too."

What logic? My post was an article link accompanied the words "uh-huh. sure." WTF are you smoking?

 

 News links brought to you by:

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Comment by Concerned Patriot
Entered on:

Meant to say die but the message is the same

Comment by Concerned Patriot
Entered on:

Look Due the internet tough boy thing is getting old you need to come to terms with your molestation and stop ragging on other people to cover the pain its ok to cry, That said I wasnt any of those other posters so dont mention me when addressing them

Comment by Die Daily
Entered on:

I'm not saying that every person will avail themselves of the super-duper simple methods needed to detect the theft. Nor does a single example mean very much. I hate to point out the obvious (again) but take you for example. You were given a powerful brain, and organic neural net of absolutely unparalleled capacity, and yet the simplest inferences elude you and the most simplistic of canards enchant you. By your logic, this means that all other humans are ineducable too. Yet here we are, luuuuuuvin' the constipatriot. Untarnished. Unvarnished.

Comment by Anne Hiro
Entered on:

"It's also EXTRAORDINARILY easy to detect"

uh-huh, sure

Hills man charged with stealing electricity for 20 years

http://www.candgnews.com/Homepage-Articles/2008/10-22-08/KC-ELECTRICITY.asp 

 

Recent news brought to you by http://www.thepounder.com 

Comment by Die Daily
Entered on:

It is certainly stealing. AC power is not an indivisible resource such as radio waves. Every Joule of work you extract from the power line is lost to the line. It's also EXTRAORDINARILY easy to detect if you siphon off anything at all significant. (Bury a wide coil, or even a single loop, in the ground beneath any power-line. If you survive, and you may well not unless you know exactly what to do, then stick around and see how long it takes for them to show up and dig it out!)

Comment by Opie Saffag
Entered on:

@Chris

It's not so much stealing as making a public utility a little more public. Besides, due to the nature of alternating current, nothing is really being stolen. All the electrons that were in those power lines to begin with are still there.

Unwind the spin in the liberal media!

http://www.meatspin.com

Comment by Dracula Tepish
Entered on:

something seems fishy about that why its not ethical or intelligent todo something like that

what keeps it from not electrocuting you is there some type of bias device in that keeps it from doing it no wrong it doesnt work like that try to get some power off something like that there are safety factors from what i know its joke a fraud to get people zapped by emf from a high frequency source like that no get this out of my face its a scam

Comment by Chris Wagner
Entered on:

can you say  'stealing'

Comment by Justen Robertson
Entered on:

This is a squatter dream tool - cheap, simple, easy to use "free" electricity. Can't believe nobody thought of this before.



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