Most people think that pirates died out with clipper ships, and things of that ilk. But they are alive and… well. Okay, maybe well isn’t the right word here. Active. If you didn’t hear about it, some pirates recently attacked a cruise ship owned by a subsidiary of Carnival Cruise Lines off the coast of Somalia. I’m sure this is a brand-image nightmare for them, but for the rest of us, it offers a glimpse into a bizarre world we may not even have known existed.

I just happened across another article on this event which had some interesting information about the defensive mechanisms onboard the cruise ship, the Seabourn Spirit. It seems that they employed what’s called an LRAD - a Long Range Acoustic Device, which is a classy way of saying they blinded them with science.

The sonic weapons are designed for crowd control and combat deterrent. They were invented (supposedly - you can never trust what the military says about weapons development, in my opinion) after the bombing of the USS Cole as a technique of keeping small boats away from warships - and apparently cruise liners.

LRAD’s are manufactured by a typically anonymous-sounding defense contractor out of San Diego called “American Technology Corp.” According to that Yahoo article, ATC when talking about their LRAD’s “compares its shrill tone to that of smoke detectors, only much louder.” So much louder that targets of the device can potentially lose their hearing for good, while operators and those nearby remain unaffected.

Getting back to pirates though, I found a few different online sources that might be worth checking out if you find yourself needing to defend against (or simply learn about) modern piracy:

1. More on modern pirates
2. Research on modern piracy
3. Modern Pirates Thrive on Global Trade
4. Modern piracy resources
5. Wikipedia’s entry on pirates also includes a modern section

And here’s a sampling of other sites talking about this event:

1. From the Piracy Times
2. Timbers Shivered by Shivering Timbres
3. Sonic Weapons Ward off Pirate Attack
4. From bloganovel