This guy at the flea market swore his laser pointer was reverse engineered from a crashed drone

I was browsing tables over in Bakersfield last Sunday and this older fella pulls out this beat up green laser pointer. He said he got it from a buddy who worked at Area 51 and it could cut through steel if you held it long enough. I asked him to demo it on a soda can and he just mumbled something about the batteries being dead. Did anyone else ever run into the guy selling alien tech out of a milk crate next to the used video games?

3 comments

3 Comments

samk771mo agoTop Commenter

I bought a "military grade" laser from a guy at a swap meet in Tucson once, he claimed it could blind a satellite. Thing barely lit a match after ten seconds. Pretty sure the "reverse engineered from a crashed drone" story is just a new version of the old alien tech bit sellers use to move cheap junk.

gray8751mo ago

Samk77, that match test sounds exactly like what these guys are peddling. Did the Tucson fella give you any specific story about which base or project the laser supposedly came from?

james_bell1mo ago

Did that 'Tucson fella' have a white van with a poorly painted government logo on the side? I ran into a guy at a flea market near El Paso who swore he had parts from a secret radar jamming system that fell off a truck at White Sands. Cost me forty bucks for a black box with a few blinking lights. Hooked it up to my car battery and all it did was make my radio go static. The whole 'government project' angle is just the same old snake oil with a new coat of paint. They know people want to believe there's something special out there, and they're happy to take your money for a box of wires and a good story.