Troy Hurtubise

Project Grizzly - VHS Cover

Troy James Hurtubise (born November 23, 1963 - Hamilton, Ontario) is an inventor and conservationist from North Bay, Ontario, Canada noted for his often bizarre creations that he tests on himself in spectacular and usually dangerous ways. Some of these inventions include the Ursus personal armor suit, "firepaste", an ablative heatproofing material, and various "ray" generators.

Background

After completing a grade 12 equivalent at Mohawk College in Hamilton, Ontario Hurtubise enrolled in Natural Sciences at Sir Sandford Fleming College in 1987. He is married, and has one son. He previously ran a scrap metal business in North Bay, until he lost it due to financial difficulties.

History

Hurtubise's obsession with bears began on August 4, 1984, when he was 20 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 to 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 questions 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 to 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.

Parody

Hurtubise's bear-suit was parodied in The Simpsons episode The Fat and the Furriest.

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.

Some of the testing the 145-pound (65 kg) 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 biggest safety concern with the Ursus Mark VI is that a bear is able to rip the helmet off of the suit.

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. It was initially created using a large amount of titanium. While the titanium suit was strong yet not overly heavy, it still did not provide the amount of protection Troy desired. The suit was then entirely rebuilt to replace the titanium with stainless steel (so the same version of the suit has been built twice, but the titanium version no longer exists). The resulting suit is extremely strong, much stronger than the Mark VI, but due to its materials it now weighs a total of 84 kg (186 pounds)(the upper and lower halves are each 93 pounds). To solve the helmet issues found in the Mark VI, the Mark VII makes the helmet part of the upper portion of the suit instead of a separate item, splitting it in half down the middle as the top half of the suit is opened (the upper half of the suit is hinged in the back). Like the Mark VI, the Mark VII is internally padded with a type of cushion Troy developed which is soft enough to cushion serious blows, yet stiff and strong enough to handle extensive use.

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, and weigh less to allow better mobility (with a goal to weigh equal or less than the heaviest equipment a firefighter might wear, 130 pounds). When/if it happens, its main protective materials will include Troy's 1313 paste (discussed below), as well as his firepaste, instead of titanium or steel.

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 resistant. It has a consistency and texture similar to clay when wet, and dries to become like a gray ceramic that looks like concrete. 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 on himself. For a dramatic demonstration for the media and the military in summer 2004, he made a thin mask of the material, put it over his face, and aimed a specialized blowtorch at thousands of degrees directly at the mask. The temperature was intentionally much hotter than the temperatures reached by the Space Shuttle on reentry. A thermometer located between his face and the mask measured no appreciable temperature change below the mask after nearly ten minutes, and the integrity of the material stood strong.

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. Images from electron microscopes show that the particles in the paste are very porous, which makes it a good insulator. Other tests showed the paste contained lithium and bromine, bound into compounds in the paste. Microscopically, it looks like a diatom absorbent, such as kitty-litter or any common industrial oil absorbent.

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 kevlar fiber pad and then subjected to high pressure for the period of a day in a press. The result is a board or tile-like panel. The panel is placed in layers with other materials such as tiles. The resulting composite material can withstand a direct assault by shotgun slugs, rifle fire, and enough high explosive to demolish a car, yet is quite inexpensive to manufacture.

At an enthusiastic demonstration taped by Daily Planet, Troy displayed its capability to a Canadian military observer. In one of Troy's demonstrations, the composite material was placed in cushions meant to be placed over the outside of a Humvee. In the tests, the material successfully blocked explosive charges greater than those of a rocket propelled grenade, although they were not shaped charges, and was able to block shot after shot on exactly the same point of impact by a sniper rifle (which is a feat no material in use by the U.S. nor any other military has matched in public demonstrations).

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 Canadian military, inspired the creation of 1313.

Angel Light

References:

Most recently, Hurtubise said he designed what he calls the Angel Light, a large device that he claims can see through objects, detect stealth aircraft, see into flesh, and disable electronic devices. Hurtubise says that the design for the Angel Light came to him in a series of three dreams, and that he was able to build a working device from memory, without the aid of schematics.

See Active noise control for similar cancelling effects for audio waves.

The Angel Light is tubular in shape, several feet long, and is constructed in three units. The light-"centrifuge" unit contains logic devices, black, white, red and fluorescent light sources, as well as seven industrial lasers. The "deflector grid" unit is made up of a large 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.

According to Hurtubise, the device functions by making walls, hands, stealth shielding, and other objects transparent. He also claims that beams from the device have the side-effects of frying electronic devices and killing goldfish. After testing the device on his own hand, Hurtubise claims he could see his own blood vessels and muscle tissue as clearly as if the skin had been pulled back, but the beam caused numbness and he began to feel ill. He also claims to be able to read the license-plate on a car in his garage from his workshop, and can see the roadsalt on it.

Hurtubise also claims to have tested the device covertly with the help of scientists at the famed Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Gary Dryfoos, a consultant and former long-time instructor at MIT, said "there's a Nobel Prize" for Hurtubise if the Angel Light really performs as described. "There are laws of physics waiting to be written for what he's talking about," Dryfoos said.

After he discovered that it was harmful, he dismantled it. However, Hurtubise said the French government sent agents to North Bay to witness a demonstration of the Angel Light. He said the reps were so impressed with the device they gave him $40,000 in cash to finish it. The French, Hurtubise adds, have also agreed to pay him a “substantial” amount of money to use the technology if it passes rigorous tests in France.

He claims to have acquired a sample of the stealth radar-resistant paneling used on the U.S. Comanche helicopter from someone at MIT. He was directed to install it on a radio-controlled electric car and race it down a simple track out in a field. He pointed the beam down the track, and claims when it drove through the beam it stopped working. He also said he was able to then detect the car on a hand-held radar gun. He also claims to have flown a radio-controlled airplane through the beam, the effects of which caused it to fall out of the sky.

Recent activities

To fund demonstrations of his Firepaste and 1313 paste in summer 2004, Troy sold the Ursus Mark VII on eBay. It was purchased by an American who works in consulting for military projects (whose long-term goal to use it to create a suit to protect the military or police in extreme situations). This same American took a filmmaker to Canada to document all of Troy's current projects and demonstrations. Eventually these two hope to release another video similar to Project Grizzly, showing what Troy has done since 1996.

Trojan Suit

In early 2007, Hurtubise made public his new protective suit which was designed to be worn by soldiers. Calling it the "Trojan", Hurtubise describes it as the "first ballistic, full exoskeleton body suit of armour." Weighing in at 50 lbs, he claims that the suit can withstand bullets from high powered weapons (including an elephant gun). The suit has many features including a solar powered air system, recording device, compartments for emergency morphine and salt, and a knife and gun holster. He estimates that the cost of each suit to be roughly $2,000 if mass produced. It has been called the Halo suit, after the fictional MJOLNIR battle armor the Master Chief character wears in the Xbox game.

In early February, after failing to receive any offers to buy the Trojan, Hurtubise - now bankrupt from the expense of creating the suit - was forced to put the prototype up for auction on eBay in the hopes that it would bring in enough money to sustain his family. Unfortunately for Hurtubise, the auction's reserve bid was not met.

External links

IMDB

• Troy Hurtubise's IMDB Page

Bear Suit

• Project Grizzly
• NewScientist: Bear-proof suit scares off grizzly
• Ig Nobel follow-up
• YouTube video of bear suit taking various beatings

Fire Paste

• Ig Nobel Update - Flameproof Troy
• Daily Planet: Ferocious fire-paste
• Daily Planet: Fighting fire with fact
• BayToday.ca: Inventor spurns burns with red-hot invention

1313 Paste

• Daily Planet: Fire jeep
• Ig Nobel Update - Troy's Blast Cushion Stands Proud

Angel Light

• Hurtubise says invention sees through walls - BayToday.ca exclusive
• Angel Light Photos + Audio Interviews on AAG
• Angel light sees through walls
• Angel Light ascends to God Light. BayToday.ca exclusive Part One and Part Two

Trojan

• The Hamilton Spectator: From Bears to Bullets
• YouTube video
• The Hamilton Spectator: Inventor broke after Trojan fails to catch fire
• eBay auction for Hurtubise's Trojan