Fog Machines Against Terror

from the from-the-dance-floor-to-nuclear-power-plants dept

Whoever would have thought of the old "fog machine" as a useful tool in the fight against terror? Over in Germany they're looking at using much more advanced fog machines as a way to hide power plants from airborne attacks. While I first pictured the plants being coated in a permanent cloud of artificial fog, the plans seem to focus on launching the fog when under attack, and expecting the site to be covered "within seconds". There seem to be any number of problems with such a plan. First, if they're already under attack - then, it's probably too late. Second, as the article points out, weather is a huge problem. If the wind is blowing strongly, the fog won't do much other than create a dissolving field of white heading away from the power plant. The fog based system also won't do much against radar guided attacks. Thus, it's a solution that works only under very limited conditions, and has defense experts asking "why not just build a system designed to shoot down airborne attacks" rather than try to hide from them?

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