How to Disable a Cyborg

[Aggie]

Thought exercise time!  

Need some help in brainstorming DIY methods of disabling the cybernetic components of an augmented-human type cyborg, preferably without actually killing the human platform.  For the sake of argument, anything to take out a pure robot is also fair game.  The cyborg aspect is slightly more interesting in that one would be trying to scramble the extra-human abilities from a person without flat-out killing them.   Anything that works over a broad range or along a perimeter is especially desired.

Essentially I'm trying to figure out how a natorg community can respond when the cyborg Stormtroopers come to dig us out of the forest and get us properly civilized and wired into the collective.  

EMP generators perhaps?  What else would fry a computer without sizzling grey matter?

[Darlica]

EMP

Electromagnetic fields perhaps.

Water in the wrong place that is.


I guess it depends on how the cyborg is constructed. Are we talking a human essentially wired to a exoskeleton well cut the "tendons" in the exo. Are we talking implants I suppose things gets a whole lot messier.

Pure robot: freeze until tender (Dry ice freeze) then blast. 

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

I imagine that military bots, be cyborgs or robots will have some sort of EMP protection (housing most of their components in a Faraday cage for instance), yet high power electromagnetic fields are sure to cause some effect on them, if not just attracting/repulsing them from the source. Be prepared to have a substantial amount of power at hand and/or some very large and heavy duty capacitors to drive your defenses.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

I was gonna go with EMP, too.

I know that you can generate a very large EMP pulse without actually needing to detonate an atom bomb... the key, is utilization of the inverse-square equation with regards to radiation-- your EMP will be a form of radiation just as radio waves from TV stations are.  And, for that matter, light from the sun is also radiation..

... anywho  EMP generators are basically massive radio signal generators over a very large frequency bandwidth.    Coupled with a magnetic surge, but that's even more difficult to project.  The radio frequency pulse is easy to project downstream in the direction you want-- directional RF antennas are dirt simple-- heck, you can repurpose an old used satellite dish-- the old giant ones are better for this task than the new mini dishes.

You can even use old tube-type final amps, which will be much-much cheaper than their transistorized cousins.  High power tubes are relatively cheap, in direct contrast to multi-mega-amp transistors which cost many thousands of dollars.

Of course, if you are only interested in a pulse, and not a sustained output?  I.e. a "blast" and not a stream?

Then you can use sacrificial components and very-very high current/voltages.   Again, the dish will help direct your pulse.

You use a sacrificial wire which carries the mega-volt, super-high amp pulse for a millisecond, then flashes into metal-gas.   This has the effect of generating a huge RF and magnetic pulse, radiating 360 from the now-vaporized wire.  The dish will re-direct the RF energy down-stream, but the magnetic pulse is what it is-- I know of no way to direct that (hence the problematic nature of mag fields).

If you have several of these setups, then you can multiple-fire each in turn, before "reloading" by replacing the sacrificial wire, and allowing the capacitor bank to recharge-- that will likely take more time than replacing the wire.

To get an idea of what I'm talking about?  Google "quarter shrinking machines"   Okay, I still have the link, and it still works http://teslamania.delete.org/frames/shrinkergallery.html

Another tack, if you can force their path down the trail of your making?

Is a corridor lined with electromagnetic coils-- you want opposing fields, so that they will interfere with each other-- AC would be better, I'd guess, than DC.  DC would just make a really strong static magnetic field, which they could probably compensate for-- it'd pull in one direction continuously.

But a series of AC magnets, the magnetic fields are flipping back and forth-- this constant reversal induces massive current surges in anything metal within it's range-- massive.  So massive, that an ordinary screwdriver will quickly glow red-hot (for example).

This alternating magnetic field would be all but impossible to shield against, and would likely trip all the overload circuits in their bionics.   If not outright blow the circuits themselves--

-- because once they were in the clutches of this corridor of rapidly fluctuating magnetic fields?  The tinest bit of metal will begin to generate either current or heat, depending on if it can flow (current) or not (heat).   In short?  Each tiny wire... each small straight-line trace on their circuit boards becomes a secondary to your massive "transformer" and will begin to either heat up or conduct. 

A few seconds of this, regardless if they are "shielded" or not, will likely destroy any silicon wafers (CPUs, processing chips, RAM, regulator chips, etc) in short order.   Magnetic fields are super-difficult to shield from -- you basically need boatloads of soft iron, completely surrounding the object you are trying to shield.   No way that's going to be portable enough to fit within a cyborg or robot's body...

I love mad science!

[pieces o nine]

wait! . . . my pacemaker . . . wait! . . .
WHOMP!!! 

* keels over *   





siblings: how do we distinguish between teh Ebul cyborgs, and the medically enhanced homeslices?   

[Griffin NoName]

Surely the ultimate cyborg will be indistinguishable as such. Are we all doomed?

[Aggie]

siblings: how do we distinguish between teh Ebul cyborgs, and the medically enhanced homeslices?  

It's like differentiating between zombies and heavily-medicated senior citizens.  The latter are generally not trying to eat your brains.


I'm not concerned about cyborgs in general, just want to figure out how to level the playing field when Google gets the rest of the world wire(less)ed into the Cloud.  



Bob, if you could force 'em through a tunnel that was itself a coil...  say, coiled copper pipe?  Would that work?  Unlikely that a tunnel would be the only entrance, but maybe an escape tunnel.    Probably a one-shot deal, presuming one is off the grid. Hard to charge a massive capacitor bank with solar.

[Swatopluk]

A Microwave projector should work on both humans and cyborgs. It's alrready in use for 'crowd control' (and it's just a matter of time before it becomes the favorite tool of torturers with enough cash). If we have cyborgs with significant metal parts, that should not just cause pain but real damage. Again, this could not differentiate between evil cyborgs and persons with prosthetics (who are under some definitions of the term already low-level cyborgs).

All methods relying on the presence of metal in the target will of course fail, if the cyborgs use only non-metallic materials.

[Sibling DavidH]

Creep up on them from behind and whang them with a 14lb hammer. 

[Griffin NoName]

Yes! Sometimes it takes a low tech solution to resolve a hi-tech problem.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

Bob, if you could force 'em through a tunnel that was itself a coil...  say, coiled copper pipe?  Would that work?  Unlikely that a tunnel would be the only entrance, but maybe an escape tunnel.    Probably a one-shot deal, presuming one is off the grid. Hard to charge a massive capacitor bank with solar.

I was imagining a single-file concrete corridor, funneling them to your main entrance.

On either side of the ordinary-seeming concrete walls, you have embedded A/C coils-- it would look like a series of circles, or ovals, as tall as the corridor (say 8 feet) in diameter, one right after the next, and on opposite sides.

Each coil would be similar to those lovely salvage yard magnetic grapples-- (which is what inspired me).   You could use the magnetic interference too (by measuring the current draw on each coil, you can tell if something magnetic is within it's range or not).

In other words, a low level current is maintained in each coil, and when something metal is within it, it'll spike the current draw (up or down, depending on the orientation, etc).  You have an electronic trigger, that when spiked, it dumps the capacitor bank into the coil, making a >>huge<< magnetic pulse, disabling the cyborg.

Or warping the man on the steel bicycle.... well, the bicycle at least.  Likely he'll suffer severe burns as the steel frame heats up to incandescence...

... meh.

Perhaps some fiber optic feeds along the corridor would be a good idea -- the fiber optic is immune to magnetic fields (it's plastic or glass), and you'd feed them back to cameras or even directly to frosted glass vision plates....


---------

Edit:

Creep up on them from behind and whang them with a 14lb hammer. 

Or a Monty Python-esque 1000 pound weight dropped from the ceiling....

[Aggie]

I have taken the presumption that the cyborgs are going to have better sensory systems then a natural-organism human, so creeping up is not likely an option (works good for zombies, though).  The whole intent is to knock them back to their non-augmented human status, at which point they'll probably be less capable than a well-trained nonaug-natorg, since the cyborgs would not be used to running without their add-ons.


Swato, any details / links on microwave projectors?  Presumably a focused radio beam?


EDIT:  Steel (mountain) bicycles are rare these days; since full-suspension caught on, most factories work strictly in aluminum.  I'm keeping my old chro-moly steel hardtail forever.  There's a few companies that make them but they are rare and expensive beasts considering that they used to be the cheap standard.  Steel's a nice ride. 

[Swatopluk]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Denial_System

[Sibling DavidH]

Yah, microwave the beggars.  Or just hand me my 12-bore, I'll fire skeet shot at their tin skin till the noise drives 'em loony.  Psychological warfare, you see.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

Google the history of the LASER.

As it turns out?  The some of the first ones were in the microwave frequencies.  Only they called them MASERS.   Microwave Amplification from Stimulated Emission of Radiation...

.. I'd bet a high-powered MASER would play havoc to a cyborg's augments.