Silly String goes to war

In 2006, a soldier serving in Iraq named Todd Shriver contacted his parents in New Jersey, asking that mom and dad send him some Silly String. The request wasn’t a sophomoric one, though; Shriver wasn’t going to use the Silly String to play a practical joke on the other members of his detail or for revelry at all. Rather, he planned using it for something which could one day save his life or the lives of others: bomb detection.

It is not uncommon for buildings in Iraqi war zones to be booby trapped, with bombs rigged to explode when someone enters the room. The bombs are triggered when an entrant stumbles into a thin, nearly invisible tripwire, leaving almost no time for escape. For soldiers, entering an unoccupied room is therefore a gamble -- unless you can somehow detect the tripwire before crossing it. Enter Silly String. It travels far enough where a soldier can shoot it across most rooms, and it’s light enough such that if some Silly String lands on the tripwire, it won’t cause bomb to explode. Fire the Silly String and if it hangs in the air, it’s snagged on something -- and therefore, the room is best avoided. Pretty clever, right?