I'll Be Back. And I'll Bring Help.

Disaster has struck.

You're still alive, but trapped within an unstable pile of rubble, and time is not on your side. All of a sudden, you find that you're not alone: an army of cyborg crickets appears from the dark recesses of the debris and begins to crawl all over you.

And you think: could my day possibly get any worse?

In fact, it actually just got much better, although perhaps weirder, with the help of these futuristic insects.

Opening up the whole Pandora's Box of robotic insects may seem pretty creepy, but there's actually a very high potential for helpful, life-saving civilian uses for this currently developing military technology.

By wiring the cricket with both miniature chemical sensors as well as electronic impulse devices to stimulate movement, scientists hope that the part-insect, part-machine will be predictably able to chirp in the presence of an earthquake survivor trapped inside a fallen building or to alert to the presence of airborne chemical hazards.

Fortunately, there's no indication of any current work underway in the fields of cyborg tarantulas, cyborg mimes, or cyborg zombies.

(Photo credit: Grilo Galicia by Luis Miguel Bugallo Sánchez, via Wikimedia Commons)