Former NASA Engineer Exacts Sweet Revenge On Package Thieves With Epic Glitter Fart Bomb
But there are always the brazen few that want to ruin it for all of us. Of course, we're talking about porch pirates -- the selfless individuals that canvas neighborhoods looking for exposed and vulnerable packages to pilfer for their own use. One former NASA engineer, Mark Rober, had enough after one of his packages was stolen from his porch.
Even though Rober's package thief was captured with his security camera footage, the local police told him that they had bigger fish to fry than petty crime involving stolen packages. This is when Rober took things into his own hands and devised an epically awesome "bomb" to humiliate and harass porch pirates.
Over the course of six months, Rober and a friend devised a contraption that involved a custom circuit board, a 3D printed mechanism to shoot an immense amount of glitter in a 360-degree wave, and four LG smartphones with their cameras pointing outward to capture the reaction of the thieves from every angle. But that's not all, the since the phones have GPS enabled, Rober could track the position of the phones at all times and have video footage uploaded to the cloud even if the package wasn't returned.
Oh, and our personal favorite is this added touch: a can of fart spray that shoots out a foul stench at timed intervals to further "bring the pain" to the thieves. All of mechanized goodness was disguised inside a package that was meant to look like an Apple HomePod.
We won't give it away what happened in the video (which runs about 13 minutes long), but we suggest that you set the time aside to watch it in full. In fact, you might not want to watch it at work, as the laughter that will erupt from your mouth will likely arouse inquiries from your boss and your coworkers.
And after you watch the above video, be sure to check out this companion video from Sean Hodgins, which goes into more detail on the glitter-fart bomb.