The post below, on personal helicopters, got me thinking: There must be a zillion technological wonders out there that are beyond hazardous to use. What are they? Let's hear from you... Share your lethal gizmos (with links, if possible) below.
Reader Steve Weintz starts us off with a fine, fine suggestion: the steampunk jetpack.
Resembling a cast-iron uterus with whirring, razor-sharp dentata more than a jetpack proper, Andreas Petzoldt has spent the last decade perfecting every rocket lad's dream on his own dime...
It hasn't been tested yet, but... it's hard not to imagine the test flight. With great ebullience, Andreas soars into the heavens. He sneers at gravity with contempt, a spurned mistress, a whore who embraces all but him. But suddenly he hears a horrifying choke and shudder and a sickening vertigo creeping up from his genitalia and into his bowels as he plummets back down to the ground, strapped to over 200 pounds of highly-explosive rocket fuel and whirring metal blades.
So what could give the steampunk jetpack and the personal copters a run for their suicidal money? Vote now, and vote often. Think of it as a cross between Popular Mechanics' Breakthroughs (or Wired's Raves or Pop Sci's BOWNs) and the Darwin Awards.
Call it... "The Deadlies."
