The kind of military technology only imagined in sci-fi movies like Iron Man and Star Wars could be coming to an international conflict near you sometime in the very near future. As if missiles and nuclear bombs weren’t enough, militaries around the world are currently developing a terrifying range of deadly weapons as well as aircraft that could take warfare into space. Some of it is unconfirmed – like Russia’s supposed mind control guns, which impair the higher cognitive functions of crowds – while some is already in early stages of deployment, like the puke-inducing ‘thunder generators’ now in use against protesters by local police.

Hypersonic Projectiles

Hypersonic weapons fly over five times the speed of sound to not only make them a hell of a lot more powerful, but also evade detection, tracking and attempts to destroy them. Among them is the Electromagnetic Railgun under development by the Office of Naval Research – essentially a flying hypersonic strike that whizzes through the air at around 5,600 miles per hour. It’s capable of traveling up to 100 miles, arrives with virtually zero warning and tears things up about as much as you’d expect. Oh, and it’s also guided. It uses magnetic fields generated by huge amounts of energy to travel.

Though it has cost the Pentagon about $500 million since they first began working on it in 2005, there’s some question as to whether it will ever be implemented due to the sheer expense of it. The military now appears to be more interested in the spiked projectiles than the weapon that fires them, investigating their use in available powder weapons before moving forward on testing the railgun.

Thunder Generators

Thunder generators were first tested as a way to ‘humanely’ scatter birds away from crop fields and other areas, like the landfill seen in the video above. But of course, if it’s capable of generating shock waves that scare birds, it could also be leveled up for crowd control usage on humans. While stunning people from a range of 30 to 100 meters will only create the kind of sonic blast that either makes people run in panic or knocks them off their feet, get closer and it kills. It looks pretty nondescript – just a single barrel that can be mounted on a mobile base – but you can put several of them together for a more powerful effect, and a curved barrel will allow the sonic waves to turn 90-degree corners. The similar LRAD Sound Cannon (Long Range Acoustical Device) looks a like a speaker.

Developed in Israel, it’s now being marketed for military and security applications, and it’s equipped with enough gas to produce around five thousand blasts. It’s just one of many acoustic weapons in use and development by military and police forces, often deployed against protesters like those at the Dakota Access Pipeline in South Dakota. Just a short blast from a typical sonic weapon can make everyone in a crowd spontaneously puke. Unsurprisingly, their use can also lead to health problems like hearing loss and traumatic brain injuries.

‘Smart’ Tracking Bullets

The phrase ‘dodging a bullet’ may seem quaint very soon thanks to tracking technologies that make sure bullets don’t miss their targets. So-called ‘smart bullets’ contain optical sensors to hit moving and evading targets, and even a novice shooter using the system for the first time will almost certainly hit the mark. This DARPA project achieves extreme accuracy at sniper ranges that can’t be achieved with traditional rounds, and the .50 caliber bullets travel at hundreds of miles per hour.

Powered Exoskeletons

Iron Man-style powered exoskeleton suits have plenty of possibilities that aren’t nefarious, like helping medical professionals lift and carry patients more easily, or allowing paralyzed people to walk. But in addition to mobility, they bestow the wearer with an uncanny strength, and several different models are being developed for use by soldiers. One is Lockheed Martin’s FORTIS knee-stress-release device, which uses independent actuators and motors along with a lithium ion battery to let soldiers carry 180 pounds up five flights of stairs without tiring while also preventing knee injuries. DARPA is testing a battery-powered exoskeleton as well, and China and Russia have their own versions, “turning soldiers into Stormtroopers.”

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Why scrap a decommissioned tank or self-propelled gun when it can easily be re-purposed as playground equipment, asked nobody ever. ALMOST nobody, that is.

This pair of colorful ex-Soviet Army tanks are permanently caught in the crossfire, so to speak, in front of the Great Patriotic War Museum in Kiev, capital of the Ukraine. The orange tank is a T-55, produced in the tens of thousands between the end of World War II and approximately 1980 while the blue tank appears to be a T-72, first produced in 1973. Flickr members Colin Bourgeois (Colin Edmond) and Paul Honig snapped the popular (with kids, especially) display in 2010.

Can you “spot” these former war machines? Somebody sure did – these images from Flickr members Jason Risley and plutogno date from July and November of 2013, respectively, shortly after the tanks received a cosmetic makeover.

Spit & Polish

You’d think Poland, where tanks battled time and time again during the Second World War, would be awash in disused tracked vehicles. Then again, rebuilding a nation’s economy requires plenty of scrap metal. Evidently the small village of Holubla in eastern Poland’s Masovian voivodship didn’t rate an actual tank so local playground builders had to fashion one of their own. Flickr member porrectus caught this sharp-looking playground fixture in June of 2012.

Tanks for the Memories

There’s no shortage of tanks in Israel after fighting major wars in 1948, 1956 and 1967. The multicolored tank at top is a T-34-85, likely captured from invading Egyptian Army forces during the Six Day War in 1967. The colorfully painted tank at top, snapped in 2005 by Flickr member Loupiote, has open hatches that allow children to enter the turret and even swivel the gun using a hand crank – Soviet engineering at its finest. The second image of two pastel-tinted self-propelled guns was taken in 2008 by Flickr member matull. One for the girls and one for the boys?

Ominous in Omsk

This smartly painted T-34 tank dominates a playground in the village of Chernoluchye, near the city of Omsk in southwestern Siberia. I triple-dog-dare anyone to touch their tongue to this old warrior’s skin on a wintery day. Flickr member Bron Pancerna captured the retired war machine in May of 2016.

Omsk became a major tank-producing center after Nazi Germany invaded the USSR in 1941. The city’s location straddling the Trans-Siberian Railroad was ideal for the distribution of new tanks to the front lines hundreds of miles to the west.

Not all tanks left Omsk, however – or perhaps, a few returned to their birthplace after being retired (re-tracked?). These hulking playground fixtures were snapped by Flickr member Stephen Powell (The Axarquian) in 2008 and by the website English Russia in 2012.

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If your business involves getting fired, going off half cocked or triggering bankruptcy, you just might be one of these 10 closed and/or abandoned gun shops.

“Chet” sold guns (and gun accessories) in Highland Park, Michigan for a very long time – his weatherbeaten but still-legible store sign appears to predate the neon era. Eventually, economic conditions and crime got so bad in Detroit that even a gun shop couldn’t make ends meet. Remarkably, Chet’s Gun Shop has been reborn into the world of online gaming – you can find it (or a representation thereof) at Second Life, for instance.

Guns & Butches

Someone better buy Butch’s Gun Shop (just $499,000!) before the rest of the letters decay. One has to wonder why Butch’s couldn’t cut the mustard… maybe it was just too wild & woolly for today’s Seattle. Then again, who wouldn’t want to get a haircut at a combo gun shop / pawn shop?

House Of Gunja?

When Washington state’s started taking applications for retail marijuana stores, prospective operators found they had to clear a number of regulatory hurdles. One of these was a requirement that such stores had to be more than 1,000 feet from day care centers and similarly classed facilities. As the Trike Stop Infant Care Center was just 381 feet (as the crow flies) from the former House Of Guns, an application to open a “pot shop” in the abandoned gun shop was rejected. Selling guns less than 400 feet from a day care center was perfectly OK, though.

Last Meal

Was the “Hollywood” in Grants, New Mexico a gun shop or a diner… OR BOTH?? Flickr user Robby Virus came across the tattered remnants of the odd old establishment’s sign while traveling through Cross County in December of 2010. What would it have been like to enjoy a meal at the Hollywood? It seems we’ll never know but one thing’s for certain: it was probably the WORST place to try a dine & dash.

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There is almost no industry left untouched by 3D printing, from cars to houses, but now things are really heating up with everything from stunning outfits and home-printable arsenals. These two extreme examples show just how diverse the adopting user groups have become – the technology has become untethered from hobbyists and is now found everywhere from the realms of high-fashion fans to anonymous freedom fighters.

Francis Bitonti & Michael Schmidt (images by Albert Sanchez and Jeff Meltz) have collaborated on a stunning dress for dancer Dita Von Teese, fully 3D-printed nylon from laser-fused plastic polymers. Stiff components are strung together in a flexible mesh making the resulting outfit fully wearable and definitely breathable. The entire creation was modeled on the body of the wearer, making for a perfect fit.

More on the concept: “Mr. Schmidt, in conjunction with Mr. Bitonti, applied the spiral formula to the computer rendering of the dress, in a mesh that would undulate around the body in the most feminine way possible. For this reason, Mr. Schmidt tapped longtime friend and muse Dita Von Teese, whom he deems as the consummate classical beauty. While the shape was built over a nude silk corset, most of the architecture of the silhouette, from the voluminous shoulders to the cinched waist, is the result of the hardened nylon powder. The floor-length gown moves and expands according to Ms. Von Teese’s body contours because of the netting pattern.”

Meanwhile, in the limelight for very different reasons, Cody Wilson is launching Defcad, a search engine for 3D-printable designs including  medical devices, guns and other objects sites like Google and MakerBot can’t or won’t tackle.

From the site: “With 3D printed firearms, pharmaceuticals, automobiles, drones, and medical devices, the stakes will suddenly get much higher. Because 3DP is not about reviving manufacturing jobs or competing with assembly lines on cost. It is not about disrupting manufacturing. It is about disrupting copyright, IP, and regulation. It is about printing items whose prices have been set to infinity. It is about disrupting man-made forms of artificial scarcity. It is about DEFCAD.”

Implements of war and destruction are often seen as fascinating objects in themselves, for a variety of reasons. British designer and artist Kyle Bean created a series of harmless weapons that celebrate the beauty of their form without promoting the violence with which their real-world counterparts are associated.

(images via: Kyle Bean)

The suite of “soft guerrilla” weapons was created for a magazine article all about guerrilla gardening and other “soft” forms of rebellion.

By keeping the forms but changing the materials, the weapons lose all of their perceived power. Dynamite made of ice cream bars, bullets made of birthday candles and a machine gun made of clay simply don’t have the intimidation power of the real articles.

These non-weapons are equal parts serious statement and tongue-in-cheek fun. They are, of course, entirely harmless – and so any guilt that one might feel at admiring their graceful forms is handily dispatched.

(image via: Bryan Ku)

In a similar vein is this group of pillow fight weapons from Bryan Ku. Modeled after some wickedly dangerous objects like a double-sided Viking axe and a pair of nunchucks, the fluffy pillows could make pillow fights way more interesting. In fact, your opponents might simply surrender when they see you coming at them with a ninja throwing star.