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The US Military Orders Up a Side of Lasers with Their Airplanes

This kind of technology probably isn’t coming to the Boeing 787 anytime soon, because after all they kind of have plenty of issues to work out with their current technology. All kidding aside, this stuff is more geared toward the military, but who knows if it could eventually land aboard commercial aircraft in the future. We’re talking about lasers—the ones that go "pew pew"—and they could be attached to military planes before too long.

It might be straight out of your favorite science fiction movie, but it looks like lasers on planes are chugging along to becoming a reality. We know virtually nothing about lasers, but we’ll fill you in with what the news knows. It’s the Navy and Air Force behind the new venture, as they’re going to test out some liquid-cooled, solid-state lasers in airplanes. They won’t be blasting bad guys back on the ground, but they will be used to intercept stuff shooting up into the air from bad guys on the ground. Think surface-to-air missiles and other not-so-friendly stuff like that.

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Dangerous Travel / Britain Travel / Active Travel / War Travel / → All Tags

Riot Training Tourism? Okay Then.

As has been well-documented by scientists and statisticians, travel has never been less dangerous. In both broad and specific senses that's a very good thing, since more people can travel to more places, but for dangerous travel aficionados it's becoming a problem.

As has also been well-documented by scientists and statisticians, British tourists are among the world's worst people. They throw stag parties that are by turns crude and destructive, and their outrward behavior is sometimes indistinguishable from low-level rioting. Where do you think this post is going?

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Boeing / Dangerous Travel / Military Travel / → All Tags

Boeing's Making a Laser, but It's Not Dr. Evil-Ready Just Yet

From winglets to entire 787s, we’re all about what Boeing engineers and designers are cooking up over at their headquarters. Usually the stuff that comes out of the design room and assembly line is primarily focused on things that head into the skies, but this latest Boeing innovation is intended to remain firmly on the ground—at least for now.

Boeing has been working on some new laser technology, and if all goes according to plan it just might be zapping bad guys before too long. What they’ve been working on is a ten-kilowatt—we’ll assume that’s a decent amount of power—solid state laser, and they’re calling it the High Energy Laser Mobile Demonstrator, or "HEL MD" to its friends. The plan is to slap the thing on top of one of those Oshkosh Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Trucks, and then you can kind of figure out what the thing will do next.

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Rental Cars / Cars / Dangerous Travel / Road Trip Travel / Avis / Dollar / Thrifty / Hertz / Budget / Alamo / National / Enterprise / → All Tags

Rental Car Companies Finally Forced to Do Right Thing about Recalled Cars

There’s been an on-and-off battle over recalled rental cars for quite some time, one which has been in and out of the new for at least the last few years. Basically, car rental companies haven’t been doing their best when it comes to pulling recalled cars off the lot or sending them in for the necessary repairs. Obviously this isn’t a good idea, and that’s especially the case when it results in injuries, accidents, or other bad stuff.

Obviously there’s certain rules and regulations that have to be followed, but the basic premise is that rental car companies need to yank recalled cars off their lots as soon as possible. The new legislation requires the companies to stop renting out vehicles no later than 24 hours after getting the official recall notice, but the time period stretches up to 48 hours if the recall affects more than 5,000 cars within their garage.

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How's About Alcatraz for a Private Island Experience?

Ain't no party like a private island party...and that's even truer when we're talking about a special private island with a dark history. Like, say, Alcatraz.

Believe it or not, the entire island of Alcatraz is available for nightly private stays through the "experience service," Vayable. It's $600 for up to 20 people or $5,500 for up to 350 people and though the cost may be high, that money goes to the park service, not to ensure you're having a 5-star stay:

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Five of the Best Banned Items You Absolutely Can't Bring Back Home

If you’re not happy with the souvenir options from the airport, there’s always thinking outside the box. Just be sure to watch where you shop, because some stuff that’s cool abroad isn’t as cool once you arrive at US Customs and Border Patrol. Here’s a list of some of the best stuff you just have to leave behind. Oh, and skip the bootleg purse or watch—those are banned too.

Kinder Eggs

A couple from Seattle learned this the hard way recently, as they were detained at the border over their chocolate contraband. Kinder Eggs—popular pretty much everywhere but the US—aren’t allowed to be brought into the nifty fifty. Basically the issue is that the little toys inside the chocolate eggs are a choking hazard, and the FDA isn’t too cool with them because food with non-nutritive objects in it is a big fat nope. So for now keep your candy separate from your toys, and you’ll be okay.

Absinthe

Wander through an overseas liquor store and you might come across the green fairy, but just be sure that you consume what you need aboard—the real good stuff isn't looked kindly upon in the United States. Even though most absinthe isn’t the stuff of literary legend, anything with just the word "absinthe" on the label is questionable. According to Uncle Sam it’s also against the law to import any absinthe beverage especially if the label shows artwork or pictures hinting at hallucinogenic or mind-altering effects—bummer.

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Travel Has Never Been Safer, Complains Top Danger Traveler

Jaunted writers have been blogging about dangerous travel guru Robert Young Pelton almost as long as there's been a Jaunted. We first linked to his Come Back Alive site in 2006 after it was listed by the Times as one of their Top 100 Travel sites.

Then he popped up a few years later when he brushed off the CDC's swine flu bulletin about Mexico travel and told CNN that "people can and should travel wherever they want to, regardless of warnings."

Now, via Tim Leffel, we discover this wonderful interview with Pelton, where he half-reassuringly half-plaintively muses that the world is running out of places where travelers can get made dead. "It's putting me out of business," he says, complaining that "there aren’t wars anymore." This is all in the context of producing the new edition of his book The World's Most Dangerous Places, which originally had 26 countries and now is barely going to get up to a dozen.

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Surviving a Trip to Mount Everest's Super Dangerous Lukla Airport

You've heard of Tenzing-Hillary/Lukla Airport (LUA) before. Everyone has. As the airport for Mount Everest, it's not only top of our list of World's Most Dangerous Airports, but it's one that's proved killer in the past. Landing here and taking off from here, if the weather allows for it, means braving an uneven runway and old, tiny airplanes. Needless to say, it scares the bejeezus out of us.

That said, day in and day out, Lukla Airport flies tourists and trekkers to the remote location. One such recent visitor (who survived her ordeal) is friend of Jaunted Farryn Weiner. Farryn, formerly of Jetsetter.com and presently at Michael Kors, just returned from a few weeks of going native around India and Nepal. She cobbled together her photos and video shot on the trip into the inspiring mini-film above, which kind of reminds us of a series of GIFs.

The first few seconds of the video feature her view from the plane on the way to Lukla Airport, but we've also got some words from her on the experience:

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Right Now is Not the Best Time to Day Trip to the DMZ

So, North Korea's "Dear Leader" Kim Jong Il died this weekend—at 8:30am local time on Saturday, to be specific. According to NK state media and CNN, the cause of death is heart attack. The sudden news will start this week with uncertainty, as North Korea enters a period of mourning (until December 29) and South Korea holds emergency government meetings.

Naturally we're thinking about how all this will impact travel, and while weekending in Pyongyang isn't exactly around the corner, the tense situation between North and South Korea will almost certainly end visits to the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), at least temporarily.

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The Three Most Dangerous Shark Attack Beaches of Summer 2011

Remember the summer of 2008? It's okay, we don't either. Regardless, some are finding that summer hard to forget as it was Shark Attack Fest '08 or something; climate change and swimmer naivete meant record numbers of shark attacks were reported, and we even mapped all the most dangerous beaches for you.

Then 2009's jellyfish invasion happened, and 2010 had that whole Gulf Coast oil issue...but the sharks are back with a vengeance in 2011. Make no doubt about it. Here are the three latest shark attack hotspots:

· Zheltukhina Island, Russia
Who the heck goes swimming off Russia's east cost, near North Korea? Well, Russian vacationers...and sharks. In the last few days, two men have been attacked in separate incidents, the first losing his arms after doing hand-to-fin combat with the maneater, and the second suffering series bites all over his legs. Both survived, but that hasn't stopped Russian authorities from posting signs at the beach with tips for fighting back (like you can fight back with a determined shark).

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Travel TV Shows / Travel Channel / Dangerous Travel / Landmarks / → All Tags

Travel Channel's New Show 'Off Limits' Promises Visits to 'Secret' America

It's almost the beginning of summer and you know what that means? Some TV shows will end and others will begin; in the case of the latter, we can hope for some one-off series and experimental new concepts, like a few coming soon to The Travel Channel. Premiering this upcoming Monday, May 16th at 9pm, is "Off Limits," an hour-long show that follows "explorer and history buff" Don Wildman into "forbiden, hidden and unseen spaces across America."

The first episode's destinations? Oh, just a secret Nazi compound in Los Angeles as well as clandestine oil rigs. He's also due to feature some abandoned hospitals, POW camps and steamboats in Seattle and San Fran; the show's premise kinda sounds like "Ghost Adventures" in the daylight with a bit of History Channel documentary mixed in.

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Haiti Field Trip / Haiti Travel / Volunteer Travel / Voluntourism / Soo Ah M Lee / Earthquakes / Dangerous Travel / → All Tags

Don't Be Fooled in Haiti: Unlikely Tourist Sites for Unlikely Tourists

The National Palace, collapsed and abandoned after the quake

In the wake of Japan's tragic events, the world has been quick to forget Haiti's 7.0 earthquake, which ruled the headlines through 2010. As the country continues to rebuild, the tourists slowly trickle back. Jaunted special correspondent Soo Ah M. Lee recently returned from a medical volunteering mission in Port-au-Prince, and will share her Haiti travel stories and voluntourism tips all this week. This is her story:

As I've said in this series before, I traveled around Haiti in a small group, and this is how most foreigners will also experience it. Occasionally, between volunteering, we'd drive to experience some leisure. Since the earthquake, Haiti hasn't exactly been a tourist destination but when I finally opened up my eyes a bit, I saw that it can be a hidden gem.

Here are few conventional and non-conventional places to visit in and around Port-au-Prince, places that I didn't truly discover until I experienced them myself:

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