SAN MATEO, California — A celebration of do-it-yourself inventiveness and mild mechanical anarchy, Maker Faire is now in its sixth year.
Organizers estimate that 95,000 to 100,000 people flooded the San Mateo County fairgrounds here on the edge of Silicon Valley, halfway between San Francisco and San Jose.
It’s impossible to capture the essence of the fair, but here are a few highlights, in photos and video.
Above:
In Case of Zombie Attack, Break Glass
“The central nervous system of your average zombie is, because of the reanimation process, extra susceptible to electronic weapons,” explains first-time Maker Faire presenter Benjamin Hermes.
His duo of “Zombie Bats” garnered a lot of Wow!s and Cool!s from the under-12 set … and a lot of Why?s from some of the adults.
One bat is composed of a stun gun, baseball bat and axe, while the other is built with a samurai sword in lieu of the axe. Everything is held together with liberal amounts of electrical tape and hose clamps.
Hermes’ creation is designed in case of the zombie apocalypse. They’re a way to “incapacitate a zombie to get a kinetic kill with a bludgeon weapon or an edge weapon.”
His project was originally rejected by Make Magazine for not being kid-friendly, but luckily Hermes’ dad Robert is a five-time Maker Faire veteran, and vouched that the zombie bats would be presented in a tasteful and family-appropriate way.
These “post-apocalyptic zombie art pieces” each deliver a 60,000-to-90,000-volt charge. That capability is displayed by this year’s new entrant, the samurai-sword zombie bat. Safely housed in a wood and mesh cage, visitors can flip a switch to watch the blue bolt of electrical energy zap between the stun gun’s metal prongs at the tip of the bat. The electrical discharge is supposedly “painful more than dangerous.”
Hermes says he always liked making and collecting weapons growing up, which his dad would have to confiscate — nunchakus, knives other baseball-bat-based creations. And now that his dad is into the maker scene, he’s enjoyed getting to spend time with him.
“I love making stuff, and I love doing stuff with my pops,” Hermes says.
Zombie-apocalypse protection: Bringing families together one project at a time. –Christina Bonnington
Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com.
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