Protect_Our_Future [Thread Creator]
Fresh Face
Attached is a PDF of designs for a device which will disable all metahuman abilities in an area whose size depends on the power input and physical size of the device. The principles under which this device operates are unknown, however it is easily replicable in lab tests.
WantsToBelieve099
Active Member
Holy s***! Is this real?
Aawrong
Published Researcher
No. I can pretty much guarantee that this won’t work. There’s no evidence to back up this claim, and the designs are complex enough to convince amateurs, but there’s no actual functional components.
BombasticDynamo
Moderator
Please refrain from commenting on the validity of the claims made in this post until one of our trusted members has build one and confirmed that it does or does not work. Most of these kinds of things turn out to be hoaxes, but this one seems interesting: those PDFs are marked with a LazTech watermark, and there was a terrorist attack at their R&D building yesterday. Does anyone think they could build one and set up an objective experiment?
ARGONAUTSUPREME
Prolific Poster
I could build one of these, easy. Give me a week or so. I’ve been wanting an engineering puzzle to sink my teeth into. Now I just need to find a volunteer…
[edit]
Looked closer at the schematics. This has to be a hoax. There’s nothing in here that should do anything close to what’s described.
WantsToBelieve099
Active Member
That’s what I figured. *Sigh*
Aawrong
Published Researcher
That’s what I was saying. Shouldn’t have gotten your hopes up.
ARGONAUTSUPREME
Prolific Poster
Decided to build one anyway. I figure I might as well. It’ll look cool, if nothing else. This schematic is seriously dense.
Aawrong
Published Researcher
Don’t waste your time.
BombasticDynamo
Moderator
I can’t deny that I’m disappointed; this kind of tech would be interesting to experiment with. Go ahead, though, and let us know if you get any interesting results.
ARGONAUTSUPREME
Prolific Poster
Holy crap, it actually works. I had to spend way too much money on parts, and it’s apparently really finicky about the shape of the resistor grid (which makes no sense I know) I had to bend them into this weird pattern because the holes in my prototype board didn’t line up with the ones on the schematic, but it totally works.
BombasticDynamo
Moderator
Let’s hold off judgement please- this could still be a fluke. I know Argonaut does good work- I’ve collaborated with him on a few DIY projects, but with something like this, I want to see independent verification. Argonaut, could you give us some more details.
Periapsis
Fresh Face
I can back up Argonaut. It works.
Aawrong
Published Researcher
No offense to Periapsis, but I’d like verification from someone established- for all we know, you could just be Argonaut in a different account.
ARGONAUTSUPREME
Prolific Poster
I called up a cousin of mine who can move heat around to a limited degree and drove up to his apartment with it. It didn’t work at first, which was no surprise to me. I was going to pack it up and leave, when he, not knowing anything about electrical engineering, pointed out that the resistors didn’t have the weird squiggle in them that they did in the design. I told him that that was just the symbol that represented resistors, but I bent the wires a bit to humor him and suddenly it started working.
BombasticDynamo
Moderator
Sounds like you just had a bad connection that you fixed when you moved the resistor leads around.
ARGONAUTSUPREME
Prolific Poster
That’s what I thought too, but I checked all 20 of them, and straightening out any of them made it stop working.
Aarwong
Published Researcher
This is ridiculous. Anyone with basic circuitry knowledge could see that those would have no effect on the actual functioning of the device. They practically go straight to ground! There’s an inductor in the circuit that connects to nothing except itself and a pair of diodes with instructions to thread a wire through the middle of the induction coil. It’s just meaningless, complicated-looking shapes.
Plus, I’d bet good money that Periapsis is this cousin of yours. Hardly an independent source.
Davide_LaRouche
DIY Deity
Saw this; was curious. Built myself one. Don’t know if it works, but will keep around in case.
BombasticDynamo
Moderator
Well, we got a visit from Davide. Bow, all, and prepare to be awed.
Davide_LaRouche
DIY Deity
It works.
WantToBelieve099
Active Member
Gah, getting whiplash here? Does it work or does it not?
Davide_LaRouche
Diy Deity
It works.
[possible double-post detected]
The_Blacksmith
Moderator
Can confirm. Took a video for proof.
Aawrong
Published Researcher
Decided to settle this and built my own with a few friends. We thought about making it a drinking game, even-> drink every time you solder a component to itself, drink every time you connect a seemingly functional piece of circuitry directly to the ground.
Much to my chagrin, however, I can confirm that it works, despite all logic. Insert foot into mouth. Argonaut was right, too. I tried bending the resistors into the zig-zagged shape they are in on the schematic, and that made it work.
ARGONAUTSUPREME
Prolific Poster
See! Told you!
krokodildundee
Fresh Face
Heard about this on the news and wanted to add my two cents to the original conversation. I’m really interested to see how this changes society- Are superheroes really necessary anymore, since we can just install these in banks and stuff?
DaNtHeMaNtHeCaNnOn
Fresh Face
Hey f*** you anarchist c***. Heroes are the only thing stopping us from getting killed by mexican drug lords to use our land to grow crack.
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BombasticDynamo
Moderator
I really hate having to do this, but I’m locking this thread. If Krokodil Dundee and Dan the Man are any indication, this is about to become ground zero of a serious flame war, and I don’t want that here. Take discussion of the social implications elsewhere please- this is a scientific/technical /engineering forum first and foremost.
[This thread has been locked by moderators]
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Orc
Moderator
After our servers got hacked the other day, I’ve taken the liberty of removing the schematics from the original post. If you need a copy, it should be really easy to find from any search engine. While we support open source hardware in all its form, this is a highly controversial issue that puts the whole site at risk.
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401
Active Member
WTF Orc? That got us so many more members?
Aawrong
Published Researcher
And how many of them are members we want? We have to have a whole section for “metahuman talk” now.
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Orc
Moderator
just letting people know that Dynamo and I will be monitoring this thread for off-topic or offensive posts. Keep it salient.
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Periapsis
Fresh Face
So does anyone know if the Protech “Null-Zone Home Safety Field Generator” is legit? I saw it advertised yesterday and was curious. It seems really expensive.
WantToBelieve099
Prolific Poster
Dang, that’s pricey. I built mine for <1/10 that price.
[post deleted]
ARGONAUTSUPREME
Prolific Poster
@Aawrong:
we have a section for metahuman talk because we have so many tinkers on the forum. Getting an official section was long overdue.
@Peraipsis:
It is real, yes. I had a hand in the design as a freelancer when Protech couldn’t get it to work. (This thread got me a pretty sweet gig! Thanks, y’all!)
@Wants_To_Believe:
They use some pretty heavy-duty components in there, and put a lot more power through it than I did, and have a good deal of redundancy in the design, so some of the price is justified. Plus, the demand for these components is going to skyrocket soon as the demand goes up, so that accounts for another bit, but I still agree that they are overcharging. That’s the way corporations work, alas.
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BombasticDynamo
Moderator
Argonaut, Aawrong, let’s not have you two fighting again. We get that you don’t get along.
401
Active Member
Seems like the mods are curating the conversation a bit. Am I the only one seeing all these deleted posts?
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Orc
Moderator
I suppose we could be more transparent. We decided that we wouldn’t condone our forum as a medium for death threats from metahuman supremacists. Needless to say, those users have been banned from the forum, but they are quite persistent. We’ve had to start permanently blocking people by IP and e-mail instead of just deleting accounts, which has helped a bit.
401
Active Member
Death threats? S***, you should’a left the thread locked.
BombasticDynamo
Moderator
That’s what we’re thinking now. If there’s nothing left to say, we’re going to re-lock it.
krokodildundee
Active Member
I keep realizing just how profound a change this is going to have. There’s talk about installing null-field generators in airplanes, government buildings, schools, and (my personal favorite) sports fields/arenas. I bet the rate of bank robberies is going to drop pretty dramatically.
ARGONAUTSUPREME
Prolific Poster
Yeah. Boston was talking about trying to get full coverage for some neighborhoods to test out the long-term effects. Talk about property value! Plus, I bet supervillain insurance is gonna be obsolete pretty soon.
Aawrong
Published Researcher
Supervillain insurance is a scam anyway. Metahuman crime gets so much more press than other stuff because it’s so much flashier, but you’re more likely to get mugged while getting struck by lightning than get roughed up by a supervillain.
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BombasticDynamo
Moderator
Okay, screw this. I’m locking the thread. I really, really hate doing this ’cause there is a good discussion going on, but this thread attracts way too much attention. Feel free to talk elsewhere- most of us regulars know each other anyway.
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Sins of the Fathers 
Trying out this format of interlude. I’ve seen it done before and work, so I wanted to see if I could pull it off.
Let me know if there’s anything wrong with the formatting- this one was a pain to keep consistent.
I don’t see how the superhero/vigilante part of this can continue it’d be dumb of the government to do anything other than blanket cities with these power nullifiers leaving only certain areas where the tinkers could work uncovered unless there is a way to get around it like Nightmares are immune or you could create an anti nullifier field or hiring henchmen to sabotage the nullifiers but you’d obviously have multiple back ups with back up power and guards or atleast tight tinker created security and the nullifiers would probably overlap unless for some reason that wouldn’t work for some contrived reason to allow heroes to still function
Lets not forget that the guy who made these things was a Nightmare himself although he was never classified as such until he got a gender change and took over Japan. This leans heavily in favor of Nightmares being immune.
I just re-read Shadow of a Doubt 8.7 and it certainly seems like Temple himself is responsible for the open sourcing of the Nullifier. Another point for Nightmares being immune because Temple’s insane not stupid.
Didn’t Metatron/Dr Destructo only really use his power to power his machines. He wouldn’t really be affected by it since he was mostly focused on the machines he created similar to what he did in Japan he took over after providing people with tech.
That is correct!
One thing that hasn’t come up is that since nullifiers are so much more common it’s only a matter of time before someone,(Hopefully a Hero but probably a villain) comes up with a way to block or nullify the nullifier.
exactly, there are tinkers all over the place, but as bad or worse would be if the hero’s take a huge hit in numbers, funding, organization, and effectiveness then Randwulf’s systems for enhancing powers go public.
huh, I had no idea that comments made using this username linked to that school project/blog. I’m going to have to change that.
Legion’s screwed.
I’d put a bet that people start dieing due to the nullifiers.
Imagine someone who has a very minor power, but that power is the only thing keeping them alive?
Now imagine the world starts getting blanketed in these nullifiers.
Also, isn’t this very much like a one-armed man inventing a method to prevent two handed people using one of their hands and the proliferating that method so that EVERYONE is subject to this method? (meta)human rights violations much?