7 Weapons You Can (But Probably Shouldn't) Build

Colin Furze

Real talk: Fire is one of the least accurate weapons a world dominator can employ, one that relies on a jetpack worth of fuel to last any length of time. This combination of unpredictable plus explosive fuel source means insane amounts of danger. So it would be a terrible idea to make something like, for instance, a firesword.

GreekGadgetGuru

Wrist-mounted flamethrowers may be more technically impressive, but having a weapon that simultaneously chops and sears your enemies can save you hours in both the kitchen and your makeshift basement dungeon. This flaming machete comes from GreekGadgetGuru, a man with a love of fire and a very low life expectancy. He based it on the shishkebab weapon from Fallout 3, and it's not much more complicated than covering a blade in butane and igniting it. He's not the only one to think of it, either. There are so many irresponsibly homemade fireswords and flamethrowers on YouTube, the internet will soon have more burn victims than cats.

J&M Special Effects

You might be thinking, "That barely looks more deadly than chasing someone with a cleaver while on stilts!" One might argue that's lethal enough, but if you're looking for more super strength from your robosuit, take a look at the one developed by Canadian James Hobson, aka The Hacksmith.

The Hacksmith

That's him curling 170 pounds of cinder blocks. No responsible robo-lifter would skip leg day, so James also created a lower body for his exoskeleton. And it's strong enough to lift a Mini Cooper.

The Hacksmith

When it's all put together, it's powerful enough to lift an entire truck, though there are still some physics problems that go along with this much strength in such a small frame. Assuming you don't tear your own spine in half, whatever you're lifting just might. As you can see here, when he picked up this truck, the structural steel bars underneath it gave up before gravity did.

The Hacksmith

So his plan to throw cars around might still have a few kinks, but one thing The Hacksmith made that works perfectly is this mecha fist. It was designed for karate, and karate only.

The Hacksmith

Then, after a few awkward silent moments, you might insist, "Right?!"

Not to sound like a local news commercial, but thermite is something you already have in your home. If you've got an Etch A Sketch and something rusty, you own thermite. It's a chemical that can burn through almost anything, even underwater, and any maniac can whip some up. But it takes a special kind of maniac to put it into a handheld catapult. Meet Colin Furze, a special kind of maniac, and his thermite launcher.

Colin Furze

Colin is a British plumber, builder, and YouTube personality who looked at the destructive power of an exothermic reaction that burns at more than 4,000 degrees and thought it'd be fun to clumsily fling it out of a tube. Spoiler alert: It totally is.

Colin Furze

Colin Furze

The device works by lighting a thermite grenade inside the cannon and then punching it forward with a mechanical arm, all of which Colin makes look disturbingly easy.

Their radioactive death-ray gun works on more than just cellphones. Most humans will be able to escape before it bakes them or gives them leukemia, but it has a tendency to quickly detonate gadgets. They've tested it on a number of electronics, no doubt left by their neighbors as they fled from a series of unexplainable explosions.

kreosan

Microwave weapons, also known as high energy radio frequency weapons, are not as uncommon as one might think and desperately hope. Besides entertaining mad Ukrainians in their backyard, they're used to disrupt or destroy digital equipment. It's as simple as aiming a beam at the thing you want to fry. It's also important to remember that energy like this doesn't necessarily need a clear line of sight. It can, for example, work through a wall or even a floor with enough power. So, if you've got 10 minutes and know exactly where your annoying neighbor's stereo is ...

Everyone who's played Assassin's Creed wants two things: one, an unbroken video game with a less convoluted storyline, and two, a spring-loaded wrist blade of their very own. After all, what could go wrong with attaching a robotic sword machine to a major artery?

Indy Mogul

The device above was built by Zack Finfrock from the YouTube group Indy Mogul, using some springs and a sliding drawer bit. But they are not the only ones to re-create this weapon. The internet is filled with amateur assassins, some no doubt in jail now for first-degree handshakes, who were able to pull off this impressive device with surprisingly few tools -- like, say, a screen door.

Angelegend

Another weapon at your disposal in Assassin's Creed is the rope dart. It's mostly what it sounds like -- a dart with a rope on it that acts as both a grappling hook and a corpse-yanking hook. And, of course, internet inventors found a way to make it work using household objects. Remember Colin from the thermite launchers and flame gloves? He survived, and he tried to fix that error by making this fully functional rope launcher:

Colin Furze

Colin Furze

Hogwit

Someone also went ahead and made a Taser drone, for the rare times you merely want to incapacitate a target, instead of sawing them into gazpacho or roasting them into charcoal. A company called Chaotic Moon Studios designed this (theoretically) non-lethal quadcopter named CUPID (Chaotic Unmanned Personal Intercept Drone). It pumps 80,000 volts into an enemy combatant, a criminal suspect, or in this case: an intern with the worst job in the world.

Chaotic Moon Studios

But the truly terrifying bit is what mad scientists are currently doing with the maneuverability and intelligence of these quadcopters. Many of them can be designed from scratch, and thanks to a branch of science called "swarm robotics" they can fly after their victims in creepily perfect formation.

GRASP Lab

GRASP Lab

The two GIFs above were taken at the University of Pennsylvania. These quadcopters are already smart enough to break formation to spill through obstacles, and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich has made drones capable of learning how to play catch with themselves. It's so weirdly unnatural, like toys that came to life while you were still watching them. In a weird way, these catch-playing robots are somehow just as terrifying as the ones that drop out of the sky with chainsaws.

IDSC

Americans already have almost stupidly easy access to the best and most effective supervillain weapons of all time -- guns. But we're not talking about the cute little guns you might use to shoot up tin cans or kill a celebrity lion. We're talking about guns that blow a hole in time and space.

Dale Allen

What you see above is a 2007 video shot by Dale Allen, whose brother and crew took a two-inch-diameter steel cylinder, bored a half-inch hole in it, welded handles on, and blasted forth a shockwave of impossible terror and joy. Safety-wise, this is not OK. They should be dead. They basically invented a pipe bomb you can hold in your hand while it goes off. It probably doesn't shoot very straight, you need to light a fuse to trigger it, and it seems to kick like, well ... like a pipe bomb with handles. The only explanation for how they're still alive is that Death thinks it's way too unsafe to go anywhere near that thing.

Dale Allen

Really, any motivated person can combine 15th century technology with a Google search and put together a hand-held cannon. Hopefully this is illegal, but these guys created something they called a 3-Barrel Rapid-Fire Pole Cannon that launches projectiles when you bang it against something.

Springfield Arsenal

Industrious murder enthusiasts have even come up with ways to create super ammunition at home. Take, for example, the exploits of Taofledermaus, a YouTube channel seemingly based on the premise that shotgun shells are the Choose Your Own Adventure of ballistics. They have fired everything from meat and glass to darts and lithium batteries. And then there's the Juicer, which separates and twirls through the air before it obliterates its targets -- notice we said "its" and not "yours," as it mostly murders things nowhere near what you're aiming at.

TAOFLEDERMAUS

Then there's the Dragon's Breath, an incendiary round this Federal Law Enforcement Training Center video describes as able to "torch all organic matter in its path."

Joey Eitel

Dragon's Breath rounds have a tendency to start wildfires, mainly because firing wildly is their entire purpose. For that reason alone, they are outlawed in certain states. Americans may love guns, but they love not burning to death at least a tiny bit more.

YouTube

Don't Google this or you'll wind up on a list -- and not one of those fun "humorous trivia" ones -- but murderous chemists have detailed how to create your own Dragon's Breath ammunition at home with magnesium. Though if you have access to zirconium, you can burn your enemies at a far more terrifying 1,600 degrees Celsius, which is 3,000 Freedom America degrees.

Tyler Roney is a writer and editor probably kicking about Asia somewhere. You can contact him through his magazine or @TylerRoney on Twitter.

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For more articles you totally shouldn't read, check out 7 Hacks That Turn Everyday Objects Into Deadly Weapons and 5 Deadly Sci-Fi Gadgets You Can Build At Home.

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