Open Bar: Fake News, Fake Bar

[Cain]

Something that small...it'd be hard to counter, no way about it.  Preventative measures would be the best, but they'd be extreme and out of the range of most ordinary people - securing food supplies and preparation, air filtration, wearing gloves in uncontrolled enrivonments, avoiding crowds of people, undertaking basic counter-surveillance methods such as shopping at different stores, going at odd hours, never taking the same routes twice, using multiple dropoffs for deliveries etc.  It'd be arduous and costly, and not guaranteed to work, just to raise the opportunity cost of infection. 

And anyone important enough to do this to will have a ton of people who aren't so important but still in close contact near them, so if the aim is surveillance then it's still not surefire.  Not to mention you can use these as blackmail on people close to those people in order to have them do what you want, from surveillance to assassination.  Not as easy, more risk of discovery, but the opportunity cost is still lower than traditional methods.  Thinking on it, a Faraday Cage would, in theory, block surveillance attempts, and potentially activation (depending on type), but you can't live your life in a Faraday Cage.  Still, for circumventing attempts to listen in, it could be handy.

From what I can see, once they're in, it's game over.  Without some technological fix, some form of screening and way to ensure the damn thing stays off without EMPing it, you have to prevent that state from occuring in the first place. 

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Something that small...it'd be hard to counter, no way about it.  Preventative measures would be the best, but they'd be extreme and out of the range of most ordinary people - securing food supplies and preparation, air filtration, wearing gloves in uncontrolled enrivonments, avoiding crowds of people, undertaking basic counter-surveillance methods such as shopping at different stores, going at odd hours, never taking the same routes twice, using multiple dropoffs for deliveries etc.  It'd be arduous and costly, and not guaranteed to work, just to raise the opportunity cost of infection. 

And anyone important enough to do this to will have a ton of people who aren't so important but still in close contact near them, so if the aim is surveillance then it's still not surefire.  Not to mention you can use these as blackmail on people close to those people in order to have them do what you want, from surveillance to assassination.  Not as easy, more risk of discovery, but the opportunity cost is still lower than traditional methods.  Thinking on it, a Faraday Cage would, in theory, block surveillance attempts, and potentially activation (depending on type), but you can't live your life in a Faraday Cage.  Still, for circumventing attempts to listen in, it could be handy.

From what I can see, once they're in, it's game over.  Without some technological fix, some form of screening and way to ensure the damn thing stays off without EMPing it, you have to prevent that state from occuring in the first place.

Um.  Well.

No sense crying over spilled milk.  (No idea if they're doing anything with it, but I was paid for the basic idea and the bare bones methodology, ie, the KERS coupled with the dielectric membrane.)

And a Faraday cage wouldn't prevent activation (unless it also had some sound baffling around it), but it would prevent any broadcasts.

[Cain]

Yeah, there's a certain point you get to with technology where there's simply nothing you can do about it without better technology to counteract it.  Maybe some form of nanobot that aggresively hunts down inert, non-bodily matter and breaks it down for excretion...I don't know, not my field of expertise.

It's literally like trying to avoid a virus - only this is an inert virus, being spread delibrately by human actors, which increases the difficulty factor several-fold.  It's the nightmare biological terrorism/warfare scenario, only without the advantages of obvious symptoms, an adaptive virus and equally adaptive human immune system.

I would hope they have the sense to keep this kind of technology theoretical, but if anyone had thought 5 minutes about the nuclear bomb they would've kept that secret too.  There's some things you just don't want to unleash until you can adequately defend yourself against it - but by the time you can do that, the absolute advantage you had was lost.  And if humans are anything, we're short-term thinkers.

[LMNO]

Should I be scared?

I'm scared. 

[The Wizard Joseph]

How well do they handle thermal exposure? It's not really a great option, and if they're internal or carrying neurotoxin it's not a realistic option, but having a minor scalding once a day might beat living by "Moscow rules" all of the time hoping to avoid exposure.

I find myself wondering if a laser detector like they use for checking pulse and blood O2 levels might be capable of finding the things in the blood stream. If so it might be possible to use a wide angle scanner of similar concept over food or beverage before consumption. Keeping them outside of the body as much as possible would be the priority... once in the gut or resting in the sinuses and lungs there's no amount of flushing that could get them out unless you had a solvent that will wreck them and somehow not also damage tissue too badly... and again if they're carrying a bit of death inside destroying the housing is just a premature trigger.

So... I guess we're living in a low-magic version of Shadowrun going forward. Great.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

How well do they handle thermal exposure? It's not really a great option, and if they're internal or carrying neurotoxin it's not a realistic option, but having a minor scalding once a day might beat living by "Moscow rules" all of the time hoping to avoid exposure.

I find myself wondering if a laser detector like they use for checking pulse and blood O2 levels might be capable of finding the things in the blood stream. If so it might be possible to use a wide angle scanner of similar concept over food or beverage before consumption. Keeping them outside of the body as much as possible would be the priority... once in the gut or resting in the sinuses and lungs there's no amount of flushing that could get them out unless you had a solvent that will wreck them and somehow not also damage tissue too badly... and again if they're carrying a bit of death inside destroying the housing is just a premature trigger.

So... I guess we're living in a low-magic version of Shadowrun going forward. Great.

AFAIK, these would be too large for the blood system.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Should I be scared?

I'm scared.

Are you scared of being run over by a driverless Uber?
Are you scared of the police being able to listen to your cell phone?
Do you still cling to the idea that a burner phone is anonymous?
Do optical license readers bug you?
Number 5 is alive.  He's been alive since the turn of the century.  Learn to love him.

[LMNO]

OK, so I answered "no" to the above questions.

I feel better.  Thanks.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

OK, so I answered "no" to the above questions.

I feel better.  Thanks.

It's why Starfleet™ is here, Citizen.  Just doin' my job.

[Cain]

Just wrote about the terrorist group with the most ridiculous name - the Conspiracy of the Cells of Fire.

Fortunately there is an abbreviation, or I would've hit my word limit much quicker than planned.

[LMNO]

Did they declare jihad against the Chicago Manual of Style?

[Cain]

Well they're Greek, and individualist anarchists, so it wouldn't surprise me either way.

Of course, that would just mean them sending a badly made firebomb in the post to where the Chicago Manual of Style lives.

[The Wizard Joseph]

How well do they handle thermal exposure? It's not really a great option, and if they're internal or carrying neurotoxin it's not a realistic option, but having a minor scalding once a day might beat living by "Moscow rules" all of the time hoping to avoid exposure.

I find myself wondering if a laser detector like they use for checking pulse and blood O2 levels might be capable of finding the things in the blood stream. If so it might be possible to use a wide angle scanner of similar concept over food or beverage before consumption. Keeping them outside of the body as much as possible would be the priority... once in the gut or resting in the sinuses and lungs there's no amount of flushing that could get them out unless you had a solvent that will wreck them and somehow not also damage tissue too badly... and again if they're carrying a bit of death inside destroying the housing is just a premature trigger.

So... I guess we're living in a low-magic version of Shadowrun going forward. Great.

AFAIK, these would be too large for the blood system.

For now...

Still that's conceptually easier to deal with. If they're about the size of a grain of black pepper they could still ride almost anywhere else. The idea of (I assume) infrasonic activation of a nanomachine is still upsetting and like you said almost impossible to detect short of literally going over someone with a fine tooth comb.

It could even be a sort of defense mechanism maybe. If they can be activated that way they might be able to set them for a sort of "double click" switch. Click 1 when in the sonic area, click 2 activating the tag when you leave the sonic area.

Your guards and authorized persons know not to go in THAT ROOM and the access code for authorized persons temporarily disables the sonic.

Everyone incidentally gets a dusting if they're in certain locations, even if only on clothes or shoes. Mostly this is harmless. If the sonics are still engaged the 1st "click" activates. Once the intruder leaves the area they light up like 4th of July for tracking and you get your audio feed straight to security as well... or possibly deploy a paralytic or worse so you can just go scoop them up.

[minuspace]

Re: Lazarus Bug.  Yea, they could cluster and form networks around sense organs.  Activation could occur in proximity to any microwave signal that also serves to power them, given small-size/distribution.  Otherwise, power kinetically via flexible piezo-electric diodes round joints...


And then...  Seems like nothing to do about getting this particular computer to interface with forum correctly.  Not catastrophic, just html'd php with no formatting.  I figure that since Googlee images stopped working last month, this is probably permanent.
Nothing more to report, will try to find my way back to the last thread, white sails and all.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Re: Lazarus Bug.  Yea, they could cluster and form networks around sense organs.  Activation could occur in proximity to any microwave signal that also serves to power them, given small-size/distribution.  Otherwise, power kinetically via flexible piezo-electric diodes round joints...

That's the idea.  Like turning the shaft of an electric motor to get power out of the leads.