- Watch out, traffic lights are out to get you!
Every day, you pass dangerous military-grade death machines. They monitor your every step and, should they activate, could kill you at any given moment.
They’re traffic lights.
At least that’s true if you ask certain British weirdoes. According to a strange group of conspiracy theorists dubbed “Blade Runners,” everyday red, yellow, and green traffic lights are lethal tools of government oppression.
According to the group’s beliefs, traffic lights contain advanced military technology that can kill a person in various ways, from making you drop dead where you stand to causing slow and agonizing deaths. And the lights do it by …
Well, the group hasn’t been exactly on the “how” part of the theory. But the lights are evil, I tells you!
A recent spate of vandalism has put the public spotlight on the group. For instance, two retirees recently got arrested for causing thousands of dollars of damage to public infrastructure.
Wonder if a tinfoil hat will repel traffic lights’ awesome killing power?
Filmed in the Act
Let’s start with the most recent news about this bizarre group of traffic light-destroying vigilantes. On September 4, the police department of the southwestern English town of Ilfracombe released a statement announcing the arrest of two serial vandals.
The hoodlums in question, however, are not a couple of no-good kids. Instead, the dastardly duo consists of a woman in her 60s and a man in his 70s.
The two are suspected of damaging multiple traffic lights, causing several thousand dollars’ worth of damage. And how did the police get on their trail?
It wasn’t particularly hard, as the two posted a video of the act on Facebook. On August 28, they were spotted and filmed disabling a traffic light on Ilfracombe’s main street.
In the video, the man holds a ladder steady as the woman climbs up to pry the traffic light open. She’s then seen cutting multiple wires as the man instructs her from below.
“Yeah, that’s how you do it. Just cut the wires,” an unidentified person, seemingly holding the camera, says.
The man and woman have been released after posting bail. According to Ilfracombe Police, the investigation is ongoing.
‘Phased Array Electronic Assault Weapons’
The man and woman appear to be members of a group calling itself the Blade Runners. Whether the name has anything to do with the Harrison Ford movie is up in the air.
The Blade Runners are a group of conspiracy theorists convinced that traffic lights, along with the cameras and sensors attached to them, are lethally dangerous military devices. They claim that the traffic control devices are actually death machines.
According to the group, traffic lights are in reality “phased array electronic assault weapons.” They’re supposedly military-grade devices containing “illegal battlefield-derived technology.”
These insidious machines can cause a variety of health issues and diseases. The Blade Runners claim that traffic lights are capable of inflicting on passersby anything from anxiety to heart attacks, dementia, and brain cancer.
And if they really want you dead? By “focusing on a target,” traffic can cause instant death on the spot.
The Blade Runners state that traffic light manufacturers and public officials are fully aware of the dangerous technology being installed on British streets. Naturally, it’s all part of some kind of vaguely defined nefarious master plan.
The group also doesn’t go into too much detail about how traffic lights commit these horrible deeds. But that’s probably not too important – what matters is that you can say they do it.
Elderly Suspects
The Blade Runners aren’t local to Ilfracombe, either. On their social media pages, they claim to be active throughout Great Britain.
According to the police, that certainly seems to be the case. Vandalism cases targeting traffic lights around the country have been either directly tied to the group or the police strongly suspect the Blade Runners of being behind the attacks.
For example, police in Cambridge in May asked the public to share information about possible suspects after almost 200 traffic lights were tampered with. That same month, 10 traffic lights were broken within one week in Lincolnshire. Meanwhile, in the northeastern county of Durham, a senior man is facing charges after he confessed to causing more than $6,500 in damages to eight sets of traffic lights.
Curiously, the group claims that its members don’t have to worry about the police because law enforcement has been “instructed to stand down and leave the Blade Runners to carry out the legal, lawful, lifesaving work.”
Considering all the arrests and open investigations, that claim is obviously bogus.
Another fascinating detail is that most of the arrested vandals are retirees and elderly people. I suppose they have enough time on their hands to read horror stories about traffic lights on social media.