Man-made tornado sucks by design, may save lives

[Sledgstone 8,672]

http://blog.scifi.com/tech/archives/2007/10/18/manmade_tornado.html

It seems engineers are still trying to think up new ways to put tornadoes to work. This time, a twister 34.43 meters high inside the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Germany is designed to combat fire and dust. So how does one create a tornado?

Well, 144 individual air jets get things moving. It takes about seven minutes for the jets to move 28 tons of air into a concentrated spiral, made visible by carbon dioxide vapor fed into the swirling plume. The tornado harmlessly sucks in small particles like dust and carries it toward vents in the roof and, in the event of a fire, harmful smoke would also be evacuated.

The Guinness Book Of World Records officially marked the Mercedes-Benz man-made tornado down as the world's tallest on Monday. — Kevin Hall

Imagine that thing as a weapon on a battleship. If its range was decent you could shoot it at an enemy vessel as a tractor beem to prevent its escape or just blast the hell out of ship with tornado force. and you wouldn't even see the attack coming until the votex either hit something or sucked water or smoke into. I joked with chelle that some whaling boat might buy one just to kill off green peace rioters. they'd be sitting in their boat one second shouting on a bullhorn and the next they'd get smacked with a tornado and get launched from a distance.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

Crazy.

[Mathias 426]

That would be a hurricane at sea. We could make pigs fly or see flying whales like in Fantasia. Of course, we'd need to use the machine to clean up the mess afterwards. Oh, so many uses.

[Myk JL 1,731]

The last time I saw a tornado machine I took it out in Crimson Skies: High Road To Revenge.