Geek Syndicate
The “Bond, James Bond” Award: Scaramanga’s Golden
Gun
Bond had a gazillion hand-held weapons and gadgets, including
the nerve-impulse activated wrist pistol (with armour-piercing
darts), but in this instance, we’re going to limit the choice to guns.
So which was the best? No, not the Walther PPK – way too ordinary. The title actually goes to one of his enemies: Scaramanga,
The Man With The Golden Gun. Scaramanga’s gun fired golden dumdum bullets (banned by the Geneva Convention, they flatten upon
impact to maximise the size of the entry wound), but it was the
weapon’s assembly that clinched it: a cigarette lighter provided
the firing mechanism, a cigarette case created the butt, a pen
made the barrel, and a cufflink was added to make the trigger – his
bullets were hidden in his belt buckle, but the one scene the buckle
featured in was cut. Each item was plated in 24-carat gold, giving
the gun its name. In real-life the assembly was built for the film by
Colibri, and a work of art it was too. You can still pick a replica up
on eBay occasionally for about £700.
An honourable mention must go to both the breakdown rifle Bond
in From Russia With Love, and the shark-pellet gun in Live and Let Die.
The “Seriously, I Think We Could Make That Rifle” Award:
Batman’s EMP Gun – The Dark Knight Rises
After a seven year absence (in film years) The Batman returned on
the Bat-Pod with an EMP gun that took out the lights, engine control and pretty much anything that ran on electricity in a vehicle.
So it was interesting to read late last year that a new gadget built
by German company, Diehl Defence, looking much like a portable
Electro-Magnetic Pulse gun, could disable a vehicles electronic
circuitry rendering it useless in battlefield or pursuit conditions.
It was tested on the battlefields of Afghanistan, and now police
departments and militaries around the world are queuing up to
test the technology. In the words of Diehl themselves, “The new
HPEM (High-Power-Electro-Magnetics) technology protects convoys against improvised explosive devices (IEDs), can stop getaway vehicles and prevent unauthorized access to limited access
areas.” Watch this space...
The “Best Law Enforcement” Award: The LawGiver –
Judge Dredd
Stallone’s Judge Dredd film is rightly lambasted for any number
of reasons, but the one feature the film nailed was the Judges’
trademark handgun – the LawGiver. The weapon was suitably
showcased in the film’s opening Block Wars sequence – Dredd
demonstrated the voice-control to change the type of round the
gun fired: incendiary, armour piercing, and the dual fire “Double
Whammy”… we even got a display of the palm recognition unit
which electrified anyone (except the owner) who tried to fire it.
The ultimate hand-gun!
An honourable mention must also go to The Grammaton Gun
from Equilibrium, which comes with its own mystical kata training!
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