The Mongu S-2 Water Gun
An Electric Wasp Obliterator
The Mongu S-2 is a weapon of mass hydration.
When I was a kid, we lived next door to a family with a particularly unlikable dog. The ghastly hound’s name was Fatso. I disliked Fatso, and Fatso cared little for me.
Fatso was not an attractive animal. Sporting a multihued coat of yellow, white and whatever else God had handy, Fatso earned his ignoble moniker. In addition to being legit obese, Fatso had been tragically born with the most pathetic little legs. His ears pointed in random directions and he had a reliably craptastic attitude.
In the 1970s in the Deep South, nobody’s dogs lived indoors. Nowadays, dogs get their own palatial digs, concierge medical care, powerful anxiety medicine for those times when it is drizzling out and expensive designer cuisine. Back then, canines lived outside, chased cars, killed anything slow enough to catch and tormented the occasional little boy. Fatso, for his part, had laid claim to a particular spot in the neighbor’s flower bed. Like some kind of furry legless sausage, he lurked back in the bushes and growled whenever I walked by.
The Mongu S-2 water blaster isn’t your granddad’s water gun.
Electrically powered and with selective fire, the S2 had some
surprising utility around my rural home.
Enemy Contact
One day I was just wandering around doing what little boys do when I happened by Fatso’s nefarious lair. By odd coincidence, I was also carrying a cheap dime store water pistol. At six, I was technically too young for a real concealed carry piece so my water gun had to suffice. In a moment of simply breathtaking stupidity, I leveled my plastic hydro gat and shot Fatso squarely in the face.
Fatso responded poorly to this. In fact, he moved with shocking rapidity for such a profoundly fat dog. Before I could do much about it, Fatso had bitten me vigorously in the calf, leaving me nicely bloodied.
I ran home sobbing in a most unmanly manner. Mom cleaned and dressed my wounds, predictably making everything better in short order. I figured I would rat out Fatso and get him euthanized. When finally I admitted to having started the sordid affair, Mom simply turned the whole thing into an object lesson. Fatso eventually succumbed to diabetes or heart disease or fatness or some such.
The point to this ignoble tale is the real problem was not the psychopathic canine or the innate stupidity of youth. My mistake was in selecting the wrong weapon. My pathetic little water pistol just made Fatso angry. Had I access to the state-of-the-art, Information Age Mongu S-2 water blaster, the exchange would have had a very different outcome. This electrically powered, selective-fire hydro howitzer would have blown the stupid dog into next week.
The shot counter counts down as did the M41
Pulse Rifles in the movie Aliens.
The manual of arms differs somewhat from that of your favorite AR. To charge the 650ml tank with water, you simply stick the snout in a bucket or pool and it sucks itself full automatically. Alternatively, you can dunk the muzzle and activate the fill system manually by pushing the trigger forward. Sequential lights on the side of the gun track the fill status of the reservoir.
There are indeed three selectable modes of fire. Single shot is self-explanatory. “Running Fire” is Mongu-speak for full auto. Then there is the “Charged Energy” option if ever you are walking through the woods with your Mongu water rifle and stumble across an enraged grizzly bear or rabid Sasquatch.
The Mongu S-2, shown here alongside a U.S. Colonial Marine
M41 Pulse Rifle (bottom, from the movie Startship Troopers),
definitely exudes a sci-fi vibe.
Practical Tactical
To charge the Mongu S-2, you plug the included USB-C charger into the butt and go do something else for a while. The charging light changes from red to green when it is topped off. The S-2 is pleasantly heavy, even without water. The chassis is plastic, but the muzzle is brass.
There is an electronic control button on the right side of the receiver. A single press activates the gun along with the LED display. This display tracks power status, firing mode and number of shots remaining. Yeah, in case you were wondering, it does count down like the Pulse Rifles in the movie Aliens.
In semiauto mode, the gun obviously fires one bolus of water with each trigger pull. The firing sequence is accented by LED lights that race along the side of the gun with each shot fired — pretty cool!
Tap the power button once for full auto. On rock-and-roll, the gun cycles at a fairly sedate rate. Think 25mm Bushmaster cannon on a Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle, maybe 400 rounds per minute. A mag dump takes perhaps 15 seconds.
Vigorously exercising your trigger finger actually yields a markedly higher practical rate of fire than does full auto, but machineguns are just cool. Once you start to run dry, the gun becomes less spunky. Dip the muzzle into your water source for maybe 5 to 10 seconds to recharge the reservoir. Repeat as necessary.
For extra special threatening threats, you can fire the gun but continue to hold the trigger back. This allows the firing chamber to supercharge for that “Charged Energy” extra-powerful mega blast. Yes, I made up the term, “Extra-powerful mega blast.”
Downrange effects are … intriguing. The S-2 will dent an empty Coke can at close ranges. It will also bounce that same can around your shooting space like a blind rat on a hot stovetop.
The Mongu S-2 confused my chronograph terribly. It also got the device quite wet. Readings vacillated between 53 and 2,075 fps. I have no idea how fast it shoots.
Beyond about 10′ the integrity of the water bolus starts to degrade due to atmospheric effects, but it will indeed reach out about 30′ if the mission is just to make stuff wet. However, pop your frat brother on the back of the neck at contact range while he’s watching Love Island with his hot girlfriend and expect to precipitate World War IX.
Loading the gun is as simple as dunking the snout in a water source.
A built-in sensor activates the fill pump automatically.
So, What’s It Good For?
I’m trying not to oversell this thing. Go watch some videos and draw your own conclusions. You won’t trade out your favorite home defense rifle for the Mongu S-2 any time soon, but it is undeniably fun. There are indeed warnings against shooting people in the eyes, but it is still cleared for use by ages five and up.
Tragically, the S-2 won’t actually blow your skin off. I shot myself in the foot with it (because that’s how much I love you guys). That was attention-getting but not particularly painful.
The real practical application for my Mongu S-2 was ridding my rural home of wasp and dirt dauber nests, most of which were otherwise inaccessible. A couple or three blasts from this thing will rip a dirt dauber nest clean off the wall. It will similarly shred the paper wasp sort.
I killed half an hour blowing the holy bejeebers out of stinging insect domiciles around the outside of my house. I suppose you could load it with bug spray, but I see no point in that. The kinetic effects alone were plenty adequate to do the deed. I don’t know when I’ve had such fun.
Will is on patrol, engaging venomous insects on the back porch.
After-Action Review
I finally came back inside and my long-suffering bride asked, without looking up from her moldy old Victorian tome, “Did you have a fun time with your new water gun?”
I replied, “Yep, blasted a bunch of dirt daubers.”
She then gave me a cursory once-over and said, “You are absolutely covered in mud. Go get in the shower.”
At $139, the Mongu S-2 isn’t cheap. However, neither are transferable machineguns, and we all lust after those ridiculous things. Anything worth doing is worth doing excessively. If you want to be the most dangerous Dad at your First Grader’s pool party, that’s going to set you back $139.
The S-2 is available by searching Amazon. The company website has more color options and also offers free shipping. Had this thing been available half a century ago, my sordid encounter with Fatso would have ended quite differently. The Mongu S-2 is clearly a weapon of mass hydration.
