The Grim Reaper ... A Robot?

What do you think of when you think of the Grim Reaper, assuming you've entertained the thought. Just in case you've been cryogenically frozen for your whole life, the Grim Reaper (in Western societies such as ours) is the personification of the coming of death to an individual. The image I think of is the classic skeleton like figure, cloaked in black and wielding his sharp, rusty scythe as pictured to the right.

What if I told you that a robot was created to do exactly what this creation of the human imagination allegedly does. Also it can fly very far, very fast and could possible use nuclear weapons. It looks like the morbid machine to the left. Okay so maybe it doesn't wait around for orders to go harvest souls or even look human like in any form (the robot to the left was created to give presentations on vinegar). However, General Atomics has in fact created the Reaper which is a upgraded version of the Predator unmanned robotic aerial seek and destroy aircraft . You may remember hearing on the news about the Predator vehicles that relentlessly hunted down Al-Qaeda members in Summer 06' in Afghanistan.

Who cares you might sarcastically mumble to yourself, right? Maybe you should know that the Reaper can reportedly fly three times as fast as the Predator, carry eight times more weaponry, and stay aloft eight times as long as a manned F-16! All this WITHOUT ANY human interaction if necessary. If that doesn't concern you. maybe it would concern you to know the the U.S. Air Force plans to begin deploying the bots as early as THIS fall. Still not concerned, I suggest your read about the aircraft on Air Force site. One things for sure, this robot ain't for vacuuming. In fact it appears that governments around the world are investing more and more in robots to be used as weapons. From the U.S. investing billions in unmanned attack bots, to the Israelis investing billion in Bionic Hornets that essentially seek and destroy. Maybe no one is concerned about death from above via the Reaper bot yet, especially no one on U.S. soil. But make not mistake, plenty of blood will be shed abroad on count of these mechanic murderers.