Troy Hurtubise
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Project_Grizzly_(film).jpg
Troy James Hurtubise (b. November 23, 1963 - Scarborough, Ontario) is an inventor and conservationist from North Bay, Ontario noted for his bizarre, yet functional, protective creations that he tests on himself in incredible and at times dangerous ways.
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Background
After completing a grade 12 equivalent at Mohawk College Hurtubise enrolled in Natural Sciences at Sir Sanford Fleming College in 1987. He is married with one son and runs a scrap metal business in North Bay. He has also suffered multiple mental breakdowns and has been hospitalized at least twice for severe manic episodes brought on by exessive abuse of LSD and DXM.
History
Hurtubise's obsession with bears began on August 4, 1984, when he was 19 years old and survived a skirmish with a grizzly bear he refers to as "the Old Man", while hiking near Humidity Creek in central British Columbia.
The encounter had a profound effect on Hurtubise. Returning to his home province of Ontario, he decided to learn as much about grizzlies as he could. However, he realized that due to the bear's fierce nature, it is very difficult get close enough to study them without physical danger, and he believed that drugging the animal would have its own undesirable consequences.
One day after enrolling in a college program (November 1987), Hurtubise experienced an epiphany while watching Robocop in his college dorm, one which led to the Ursus series of protective suits. He decided to build a research suit that would be strong enough to survive a close encounter without harming the occupant.
Such a robo-bear suit would allow him to search for bears, and answer important questioned such as: would pepper spray work in the field? What is bear behaviour in the den like? What are the signs of agitation, such as jaw popping, the dance on the front feet, slobbering, roaring? It is possible to study these signs at a distance, but Hurtubise wanted to see them from the bear's perspective.
Seven years and $150,000 later, Hurtubise had worked his way up the Mark VI, the suit he believed could protect him from a grizzly. In order to test it, Hurtubise consulted with professors of physics and asked them how to simulate a bear attack. The entire experience was recorded as a National Film Board documentary and called Project Grizzly, with many memorable scenes in which Hurtubise tested the capabilities of the suit using himself as the guinea pig.
Hurtubise approached a tall, heavy biker and his colleagues, and paid them to attack him while wearing the suit, with baseball bats, splitting mauls, and wooden two by fours. The suit survived, as did Hurtubise, while the weapons were reduced to splinters. Other tests included an impact by a swinging 300-pound log, a feat that the Ripley’s Believe It or Not television program later attempted with a BMW, as well as tossing him down the side of an escarpment.
Project Troy
Project Troy is the moniker given to the current stage of a 15-plus year effort undertaken by Hurtubise to develop protection suit technology. It began as a desire to create a suit capable of withstanding the viciousness of an enraged bear attack, but the process has developed ideas and technologies whose purposes go beyond simple bear attack protection and could benefit the world.
Some of the testing the 145-kilogram (320-pound) Ursus Mark VI underwent included live bear tests in British Columbia, Canada. After initial fear of the strange looking suit the 545-kg (1200-lb) male Kodiak bear began tearing apart the chainmail. This clarified to Hurtubise that going with less expensive butcher's chainmail from France instead of shark chainmail was not the best decision.
The current iteration of the suit, the Ursus Mark VII, is the 6th prototype that uses a few of the concepts and technologies developed by Hurtubise. The ultimate goal is the creation of a suit that would encompass all the concepts in their final form. This form would have the ability to protect against injury from riot, explosions, fire, and high velocity projectiles.
Part of the journey was documented as Project Grizzly, which was based on his book White Tape - An Authentic Behind The Scenes Look At Project Grizzly. He has appeared on numerous television programs; performed guest lecturing at schools of all levels including Harvard; has been interviewed on hundreds of radio programs from around the world; and has been written about in countless magazines and newspapers throughout the world. In 1998 Hurtubise won an Ig Nobel in Safety Engineering for his suit development.
Without any support from outside sources such as government, or private investment, and with previous business partners faltering, the journey has bankrupted him once and almost cost him his marriage. But with the support of family and friends, and with the backing of an investor, the Ursus Mark VII was completed and Project Troy was launched.
Firepaste
Firepaste is a white paste that, when dry, is flame and heat proof to the degree that it has caught the widespread attention of fire professionals. The impetus for firepaste came from a failed fire test with the Ursus Mark VII where the metal exoskeleton heated up, popped the air bags and left Hurtubise with numerous burns. Like Project Grizzly, Hurtubise has tested the material himself, including putting a block of dried firepaste on his head and having a blowtorch apply flame to the topside. A thermometer located between his hair and the block measured no appreciable temperature change on the bottomside of the block, and the integrity of the material stood strong for a good length of time. Hurtubise is protective of ingredients for his concoction, but during a segment aired on Discovery Channel's daily news show Daily Planet, he revealed one secret to be Diet Coke.
1313 Paste
One of Hurtubise's latest projects has been the creation of a new paste that he's called 1313 and believes could be put to good military use. It is a mixture of all his previous concoctions applied to a fiber pad and then subjected to high pressure for the period of a day in a press. The result is a bag-like object in similar size and shape to a baseball base. The bag can withstand a direct assault by shotgun slugs, rifle fire, and enough high explosive to demolish a car. At an enthusiastic demonstration taped by the Daily Planet, Troy displayed its capability to a Canadian military observer who walked away very impressed. (Note that metal armor of equivalent thickness to the 1313 bags are just as effective, but may have prohibitive cost and weight.) It is Troy's desire to see military vehicles, currently in service in Afghanistan, equipped with such protection in order to stand up to a landmine explosion, which has already claimed the lives of Canadian soldiers serving there. That along with his younger brother serving in the military inspired the creation of 1313.
Angel Light
Most recently, Hurtubise has designed the Angel Light, a large device that he claims can see through walls, see into flesh, detect radar-resistant aircraft, and disable electronic devices. While such claims may seem incredible or outlandish, it is worth noting that Motorola as well as a number of other companies and research labs are known to be currently working on ultra-wideband scanning technology that can see through walls. Hurtubise claims that the design for the Angel Light came to him in a series of three dreams, and that he was able to build it from memory, with no schematic.
The Angel Light is tubular in shape, several feet long, and is constructed in three units. The "centrifuge" unit, contains logic devices, black, white, red and fluorescent light sources, as well as seven industrial lasers. It is unknown whether the centrifuge unit includes an actual centrifuge. The "deflector grid" unit is made up of a circular piece of optical glass, a microwave unit, and plasma combined with carbon dioxide. The third, unnamed unit contains eight plasma light rods, CO2 charges, industrial magnets, 108 mirrors, eight ionization cells, industrial lights, and a variety of other electronics.
Hurtubise is allegedly receiving assistance, both financial and technical, from MIT, the French government, and the former head of Saudi counter-intelligence to construct and explore the device's properties. Through these channels, he has apparently acquired a sample of the stealth radar-resistant panelling used on the US Comanche helicopter.
External links
Bear Suit
- Project Troy (http://projecttroy.com.nexx.com/website/)
- Project Grizzly (http://www.nfb.ca/grizzly/troy.html)
- NewScientist: Bear-proof suit scares off grizzly (http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn1668)
- Ig Nobel follow-up (http://www.improb.com/news/2001/nov/troy-bear2.html)
Fire Paste
- Ig Nobel Update - Flameproof Troy (http://www.improb.com/news/2003/oct/troy-flamerproof.html)
- Daily Planet: Ferocious fire-paste (http://www.exn.ca/dailyplanet/view.asp?date=9/2/2003)
- Daily Planet: Fighting fire with fact (http://www.exn.ca/dailyplanet/view.asp?date=4/23/2004)
- BayToday.ca: Inventor spurns burns with red-hot invention (http://www.baytoday.ca/content/news/details.asp?c=63)
1313 Paste
- Daily Planet: Fire jeep (http://www.exn.ca/dailyplanet/view.asp?date=9/15/2004)
- Ig Nobel Update - Troy's Blast Cushion Stands Proud (http://www.improbable.com/news/2004/troy-cushion-2004-06.html)
Angel Light
- Hurtubise says invention sees through walls - BayToday.ca exclusive (http://www.baytoday.ca/content/news/details.asp?c=6657)
- Angel light sees through walls (http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/weblog/comments/2296/)
- Angel Light ascends to God Light. BayToday.ca exclusive Part One (http://www.baytoday.ca/content/news/details.asp?c=8267) and Part Two (http://www.baytoday.ca/content/news/details.asp?c=8271)