h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

In our office, the protagonists in a bout of elastic band warfare use the elastic bands themselves as the missiles.

The best ones for this are the long thin variety. With these, prodigious distances and extreme accuracy can be achieved to the astonishment of those who have never seen this kind of warfare.

In order for the distance/accuracy to be obtained, the firer should stretch the band over the index finger of one hand and the thumb of the other. The key to distance and accuracy is the tension on either side of the elastic band, which should be unequal. I'm sorry if the above seems hard to understand.

I've found that the long thin rubber bands are, by contrast, rather wimpy. It's the short thick rubber bands that make the boldest and more painful statement.

KK

I tend to agree with KK. We receive about 50-75 of the short thick ones a week and they can be shot very accuratly. The thing to watch out for is the jokker that decides to shoot paperclips with them. You can get some great distance that way.

Using paperclips for distance is cheating, like spinning the shafts in table football. Using the unequal tension method, I can get distances of about 30-35 feet with accuracy. If you're intent on causing pain, you need to be within about 10-15 feet.

Our entire engineering department was once put on report for engaging in a rubber band war in our offices.

This sort of martinet behavior is probably one of the reasons why that company (Wang Labs) is no longer in business.

No campaign can be successfully emabarked upon in the office, without coming to work with the following :

Rubber Bands.
Paper Clips.
Staplers.
and the all essential, multipurpose tool, the empty biro tube. When combined with chewed up bits of paper and used as a blowpipe, this can be one of the stealthiest weapons available, as it is easily concealed about the person.

In extreme cases, when hiding among empty boxes (for cover), it can be turned into a periscope, or handy method of breathing silently while still retaining your camouflage, waiting for unwary suspects to walk by straight into your cunning ambush.

Nearly forgot :

For hand to hand combat, a ruler come lightsaber.

A bunch of us got into a rubber band fight one day in high school and got a couple of privileges taken away when the teacher returned since, despite our clean-up efforts, he discovered the ONE rubber band we'd overlooked--_under the microwave_. Teachers really do have some sort of X-ray vision, I think.

The satisfying splat you get when it hits someone in the face is better than sex. So I'm told.

No X-ray vision, just pure bloodymindedness.

I guess so....

Teachers have major psychological problems which mean that they cannot here any cries of pain caused by terminal boredom. Last week in Geography we spent an hour and a half writing five pages A4 of notes that were summarised on one sheet in a booklet we had been given a month ago. So much for 'Education, education, education'...

Either that or they're sadistic bastards.

Definitely true. I had a Physics teacher last year who used to correct the one mistake on my 9/10 homework (this was a true/false thing) by writing WRONG in large, red capital letters, adding SIX exclamation marks and underlining four times. His idea of motivation was to scream at you until bits of you fell off.

He was six foot five, Geordie and had body odour that could stun a badger from twenty paces.

i don't believe i've come across this teacher/sadist

Mr. Ball? If you have never found him, then you are most fortunate.

Yes - and when the kids get really bored they use elastic bands to fire spit-soaked bits of paper at the ceiling where they stick. After a time they become an integral part of the decor. The kids in Culloden Academy (Inverness) were experts at this moronic activity. Antidote is try to occupy their hands with 10 sides of handwritten notes leaving teacher (geography or otherwise) free to keep an eagle eye out

I recommend a course of hallucinogenic drugs, slowly introduces into the water supply. It won't help discipline, but it will be a good laugh.

Of course if you made it contraceptive drugs in the water supply it would, in time, solve the discipline problem. Well perhaps only in schools. I suppose some of us "adults" can be pretty indisciplined

Hmm. For 'indisciplined', read 'stupid'....