19-07-2025
Fight or flight? Here's how I feel about plans to fly burgers over my house
They are the answers to the questions nobody asked.
The great ideas to cater to the needs no one knew existed.
And the history of invention is littered with them.
There is the USB portal shaped like a fake rock.
Diet Water, a creation of the Sapporo beer company in 2004.
A sleeping bag you can walk around in, umbrellas for shoes and the 'Goldfish Walker' – basically a bowl on wheels.
They all share one thing in common, an absurd pretence that they are here to make life somehow easier and better. When life was getting along just fine without them.
Now into this hall of infamy steps Dublin's newest must have service – take away delivery by drone.
Full transparency. My house may be in the catchment area where 'tech start up' firm Manna has lodged a planning application to open a new drone-port.
Manna has already been fulfilling a need no one knew existed in the Dublin 15 area for over a year.
The service employs a squadron of drones to parachute cups of flat white coffee, kebabs and burgers into the seemingly besieged gardens of suburbia where residents are deemed incapable of making it out as far as the chipper.
It has sparked complaints from some homeowners that it is like living under the flight path of a fleet of airborne lawnmowers.
The creepy invasion of privacy has also been likened in the Dail to a new kind of dystopia.
And now they are coming to a patch of sky near you – or at least near me.
Manna wants to open close to Dundrum shopping centre to extend the reach of its flying burgers.
Now I'm happy to admit I've never been a fan of drones. Dublin ranks as Ireland's noisiest city in brand new poll
I dread each St Stephen's Day when a new horde of middle-aged men emerge on the beaches and in the parks proudly controlling their new buzzing surveillance toys over the heads of helpless citizens.
And it seems I'm not alone.
A NASA study found people under the regular flight paths of drones believe they are more irritating than loud traffic.
Noise pollution in cities is also a proven killer.
That's because humans have an emotional response to sound.
It is detected by the ear and passed onto the amygdala area of the brain for assessment.
This becomes part of the body's 'fight-or-flight' response that has evolved to help us react quickly to sounds such as a predator crashing through the bushes. Or a drone delivering curry chips to your next-door neighbour.
It causes your heart rate to go up. Your nervous system starts to kick in and you release stress hormones, like cortisol and adrenaline.
Over time the risk of heart attack, stroke and death increases.
When the source of the noise is a machine delivering the contents of a deep-fried Spice Bag those risks rise dramatically again.
Across Europe excessive noise is linked to 12,000 premature deaths a year
It also contributes to a condition that 22 million Europeans suffer from - 'Chronic High Annoyance.' (A figure that grew to 22 million and one as soon as I discovered this is a thing). Drones flying fast food around Dublin City
Noise can lead to breeding problems in wildlife – and I dare say some human life too.
In California, a drone crash-landed at the Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve causing 2,500 terns to abandon their nests and around 1,500 of their unborn young.
There are even records of a crow attacking a delivery drone in Canberra.
Now it would be one thing to accept all that in the name of technological progress that is improving lives. Drones can be used to fly medicines, monitor disasters, do scientific research…
But as a nation, we have survived a famine, bankruptcy and a global pandemic without anyone needing a single of chips airdropped into their back garden.
To listen to the Manna planning application it sounds like a merger between the Red Cross and Greenpeace. It is supplying a service that is both a giant leap for mankind and good for the environment.
They are hoping we will all just get used to it. Much like Elwood's response to Jake in the Blues Brothers when he asked how often the bone-shaking train goes by the apartment window: 'So often you won't notice.' Dublin to become first European city to offer fast food delivery by drone
But I grew up under the flight path to Dublin Airport. Both my parents are now buried under it. I know incessant noise pollution is enough to disturb the sleep of the dead.
It's one reason Michael O'Leary hasn't spent some of the millions he made from charging families to bring clothes on holidays to move from his country ranch to a house on the approach path to Dublin airport's terminal one.
So if there are any tech upstarts out there looking to develop a surface-to-air, anti-burger missile system, let's just say I'm interested.
Years of underage hurling and camogie activity in the household have even given me a prototype built from abandoned hurls and around 150 used sliotars.
Fight or Flight? You have my answer.
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