Real life Spider-Man webbing a reality?

For years of my childhood I would run around pretending I was Spider-Man shooting imaginary webbing at my enemies, or my parents if they annoyed me too much. Little did I know that I could’ve upgraded to the Spider-Man web-shooter toys that were essentially silly string in a Spider-Man branded can. I would’ve made far too much of a mess and my parents would’ve gotten mad, so naturally I would’ve ended up shooting them.

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I guess that just goes to show that one of the things that makes Spider-Man such an enduring character is the webbing at his disposal, he can make shields, shoot it like bullets, make a web (obviously), tie villains up etc etc. It’s super strong and it allows people to swing from building to building. What’s not to love about Spider-web.

In real-life spider silk has already caught the attention of many. Pound for pound spider silk is five times stronger than steel and three times more resilient than Kevlar. It is also thermally and electrically conductive, and has antimicrobial properties as well (which as gmanetwork points out means that the scene in 2012’s “The Amazing Spider-Man” where Spidey seals up his bullet wound with his webbing does make sense, sort of).

With this in mind there’s a lot of potential for spider silk in terms of armor, bandages, and even artificial tendons or ligaments. However the issue is getting enough of it to actually make any of these things. Artificially producing tons of spider silk isn’t exactly the easiest task in the world – it would take 400 spiders to produce a square yard of cloth, and 1,500 strands of silk to make a usable thread. Farming is also out of the question because spiders are territorial and cannibalistic (not like our friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man).

However, if the German-based company AMSilk is to be believed, they may have finally found success in developing spider silk for commercial use. “If someone ordered 1 ton, we could make it. We have already made a half a ton,” said Axel H. Leimer, the managing director of AMSilk. “This is scalable technology.”

What does this mean? Well it means we’re one radioactive spider-bite from Spider-Man being an actual reality. Although currently the silk is being used in cosmetics and hair products, which is a farcry from superhero vigilantism, have faith though Spider-Fans we’ll get there!

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