I read yesterday about the tragic case of a girl who was killed when hit by a box of leaflets airdropped over Afghanistan.
The boxes containing leaflets are supposed to break open in midair, when dumped from the back of a plane and shower the paperwork across the countryside. The messages are intended to demoralise attackers or warn civilians of forthcoming bombardments, etc.
Well, personally I think this kind of practice is ok if it helps stop fighting, but there has to be a better way.
Today’s invention is a glorified printer which is installed in an aircraft and ‘clocked’ to pump out paper sheets at a faster-than-normal rate. This might even be placed in a UAV, with paper in the form of a roll filling the fuselage.
As each printed page emerges, it is pressed lightly by a small piston into a cylindrical mould, several times -crumpling the sheet into a 3-D object without tearing it. The resulting pellets can then be jettisoned, falling separately from a safer, increased height in a predictable way onto a targeted area -without posing any danger to those below.
Ok, so these might need to be coloured with fluorescent dye, especially in urban environments -in order to stand out against the usual volume of detritus. I’d also suggest putting a dollar bill in every hundred or so.