MDI 73: Microwave-safe suit

The US has a new "less lethal" weapon at its disposal for dispersing crowds. It's a microwave on a truck. Swept slowly over a crowd, "the sheriff," as it's affectionately called, gently roasts demonstrators, causing their contact lenses to adhere to their corneas, causing their eyeglasses to severely burn the temples and bridge of the nose, causing 3rd degree burns wherever jewelry is found, and best of all, causing a stampede -- basically all without killing anybody, although the stampede, well, you can always blame that on the crowd. They're told to disperse, not run away. So the trampled are plausible collateral. Originally developed for Iraqi crowd control, the sheriff, it occurs to us, would be equally effective for American crowd control, or for simple day-to-day control of its citizenry, should the need arise -- although the threat alone would likely be sufficient. And now, because the US is also working on a portable model which can be carried by one man, effectively making him a super persona non grata wherever he goes, it begins to occur to us that these weapons could be a very very bad thing in the wrong hands, and the wrong hands are the only hands that would use such a weapon. The question is how can we protect ourselves? We'd like to go to the demonstrations but the sheriff will be there. We'd like to go to the ball game, but what about the rogue wavers? Should we stay home? My grandmother used to carry in her purse a rain bonnet that folded up to the size of a pack of gum. She opened it once and it sprang out like an accordion. Something like that is what is needed, only bigger than a bonnet -- it's a bonnet for the whole body -- and of course it's made out of some space-age material that protects against microwaves. Don't look at me like that. I'm not a scientist. I'm just an idea man. Obviously microwave safe materials exist, we use them all the time. All I'm saying is one that's flexible. Then they can wave us all they want. We'll just wave back. Until they start shooting us. I don't know what the defense is against the sheriff, but if you look at the truck, it appears that the beam is bouncing off a metal plate. If that's true, and microwaves can be deflected, that could mean a shield could bounce the microwaves right back at the sheriff, and of course anybody in between who happened to have not had the foresight to bring a microwave bonnet in their purse or back pocket. Ray guns. Can you fight ray guns with ray guns? I wonder if it's wise. Here's to a less lethal future. Also published in The Million Dollar Ideation Project.