Spec Tech

Ordinary_Guy · Jul 27, 2006

For many thrillers, cutting edge tech can add just a touch of "cool." For the "technothriller" subgenre, it can be absolutely necessary. The challenge, though, is getting "cutting edge" into your story before it's old hat (and hopefully staying true to what the tech can do by the time it reaches the field). This means we writers have to reach past "cutting edge" and dig into the bleeding edge. We have to get speculative.

So... this thread is meant as a writer's heads-up, a little place to drop notes on developing R&D that you can use in your novel.

I'll lead it off with:

An Ultrasonic Tourniquet to Stop Battlefield Bleeding

This looks pretty cool. According to an article on Technology Review, DARPA has begun developing an ultrasonic tourniquet in an effort to stop life-threatening bleeding during combat.

From their article:

Called the Deep Bleeder Acoustic Coagulation (DBAC) program, it aims to create a cuff-like device that wraps around a wounded limb. Rather than applying pressure to the wound to stem the flow of blood, the device would use focused beams of ultrasound (sound waves above the audible frequencies) to non-invasively clot vessels no matter how deep they are.

If this sounds like something that could be useful in your story, read the rest of theirs on MIT's Technology Review.

Kate Thornton · Jul 27, 2006

Wow - what a cool thing to carry on an ambulance, too. It almost sounds like science fiction. I love the DARPA site, too.

Ordinary_Guy · Jul 29, 2006

A "chip" off the old block

Okay, here's another one: how many stories have we seen that have centered around some techno-goal? Usually along the lines of: they have it, we need to steal it. Whether it's a MacGuffin or a real plot point, "the chip" is still a draw for audiences – and therefore a legitimate plot point for writers.

To get a glimpse of the real future, check out what a team of Princeton scientists are putting together: magnetic chips that can both calculate and store data – and they're building these chips one atom at a time.

Read more about it on the Princeton news release. Maybe it'll give a little inspiration for your take on the angle...

Ordinary_Guy · Jul 31, 2006

Modern Body Armor...

Saw a bit on liquid armor, so here's a blurb to fire the imagination for your thriller or action novel:

U.S. Army Research Development and Engineering Command said:
ARL scientists and engineers develop liquid armor based on nanotechnology
By Tonya Johnson, Army Research Labortory Public Affairs Office

ADELPHI, Md. -- Liquid armor for Kevlar vests is one of the newest technologies being developed at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory to save Soldiers' lives.

This type of body armor is light and flexible, which allows Soldiers to be more mobile and won't hinder an individual from running or aiming his or her weapon.

The key component of liquid armor is a shear thickening fluid. STF is composed of hard particles suspended in a liquid. The liquid, polyethylene glycol, is non-toxic, and can withstand a wide range of temperatures. Hard, nano-particles of silica are the other components of STF. This combination of flowable and hard components results in a material with unusual properties...

The article goes and it's got some pretty cool concepts in it.

On a related note, they've blurbed on that idea and a few others over at Technovelgy.com. It's worth a minute to check out their links...

Ordinary_Guy · Aug 2, 2006

From Cardinal of the Kremlin to Eagle of Redondo Beach

Okay, who remembers Clancy's "Cardinal of the Kremlin"? It was a story about a Soviet-era DEW answer to ballistic missile defense. While there has been US R&D on the subject for a while, recent steps have taken it to a whole new level.

From UPI:

U.S. laser center now under construction

REDONDO BEACH, Calif., Aug. 2 (UPI) -- Construction has started on a new U.S. research center dedicated to high-powered military lasers.

The first order of business for the Directed Energy Production Facility at Northrop Grumman's Space Park campus in Southern California will be Phase 3 of the Joint High-Power Solid-State Laser (JHPSSL) program.

The JHPSSL is being developed as a defense against incoming cruise missiles. Engineers are in the process of ratcheting up the weapon's power to 100 kilowatts (kW), a level at which lasers could be used against a variety of rockets and artillery shells. Current power levels in the project are running around 25 kW.

Northrop received more than $58 million in funding for Phase 3 late last year after demonstrating a laser with a power level above 27 kW and a run time of 350 seconds as part of Phase 2.

"Northrop Grumman is on track to be the first ever to build and demonstrate a 100 kW electric laser,'' Alexis Livanos, president of Northrop Grumman Space Technology, said Tuesday. "This facility demonstrates our tremendous confidence in the potential for laser weapons."

The new Redondo Beach center, which will also produce lasers above 100 kW, includes a primary Class 10,000 clean room along with solid-state sub-labs for work on system components.

A portion of the workload will include integration of laser systems and military platforms such as armored vehicles.

The time could be ripe for a new take on the tech and the politics that springs up around it.

Ordinary_Guy · Aug 2, 2006

A little larceny in the heart...

Here's another bit for thriller/mystery writers. If you're a big fan of Felonious Monk, you've probably had a character or two pick a lock. Turns out that this might be a bit easier than some locksmiths would have you believe – so if your character is, um, ethically challenged, they can do the B&E dance with the best of them...

From Newsweek:

Beware the 'Bump' Key
By Brian Braiker
Updated: 3:11 p.m. PT Aug 2, 2006

Aug. 2, 2006 - How many locks figure prominently in your daily routine? Maybe one or two to get you into your house or apartment? One for your office, your car and your mailbox? Once you turn the key, chances are you feel pretty secure. That's what locks do, after all, they keep things shut; they keep you protected. How naive.

A large majority of locks that open with a key, called pin tumbler locks, have structural weaknesses built into them that can be exploited with picks and practice. But a relatively new lockpicking technique known as "bumping" takes advantage of that weakness and requires no real understanding of how locks work. "You don't need expensive tools or anything," says encryption expert Barry Wels. "Any 15-year-old who's motivated can learn how to do it in 15 minutes on the Internet."

Wels ought to know. He heads The Open Organization of Lockpickers (TOOOL), which bills itself "the most well-behaved sporting association in the Netherlands." He picks locks, he says, not with criminal intent, but more in the spirit of puzzle-solving. One man's pin tumbler, it seems, is another's Rubik's Cube. In fact, lockpicking as a hobby has developed a substantial worldwide following in recent years, thanks mostly to the unprecedented availability of information online and geek charisma of polymaths like Wels (whose nickname is The Key, natch). Enthusiasts share tips and engage in flamewars at lockpicking101.com; they attend Locksport International meetings and post videos on YouTube...

For more on the article, follow the link above...

Liam Jackson · Aug 2, 2006

Ordinary_Guy said:
Saw a bit on liquid armor, so here's a blurb to fire the imagination for your thriller or action novel:

The article goes and it's got some pretty cool concepts in it.

On a related note, they've blurbed on that idea and a few others over at Technovelgy.com. It's worth a minute to check out their links...

The technology for liquid (gel) armor has been around for a few years, but it's extremely expensive when compared to ceramic plate, or Kevlar with standard metal trauma plates. Improvements in the manufacturing process should help drive costs down in the near future. I sure as hell hope so, anyway. I'm for anything that gives tactical operators an extra inch or two of upper body mobility.

There's also been some research in combining cooling vest technolgy (cooling gear worn by PPE Level One operators) with the gel armor to provide tactical operators an advantage in desert climates. Interesting stuff going on with this issue and it bears watching.

Author James Rollins outfits his protag in a type of liquid body armor in "Map of Bones." Nice techo-thriller.

Nice links, OG, and much appreciated!

nevada · Aug 2, 2006

Oh what have you done? I went to the tech guy website and I found all sorts of cool ideas, most of which i cant use in the novel im working on, but the liquid body armour is great, and i love, love the idea of the magnetic body armour and turning it on with a switch. aaarrgghh mind exploding from too many ideas. Curses!!!!

Kate Thornton · Aug 3, 2006

OG, you rock! I love your posts!

Kate

Ordinary_Guy · Aug 3, 2006

Kate Thornton said:
OG, you rock! I love your posts!

Kate

Thank you Kate!

These posts are a lot of fun – the more I can point folk to interesting material, the more I get inspired by it myself. When it comes to inspiration, it's hard to have too much of a good thing. :Thumbs:

jst5150 · Aug 3, 2006

One of my Air Force combat controller/pararescue friends knows a thing or two about these:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=389357&in_page_id=1770

Snip:

Elite special forces troops being dropped behind enemy lines on covert missions are to ditch their traditional parachutes in favour of strap-on stealth wings.

The lightweight carbon fibre mono-wings will allow them to jump from high altitudes and then glide 120 miles or more before landing - making them almost impossible to spot, as their aircraft can avoid flying anywhere near the target.

Great idea for a thread.

v/r, Jason

Kate Thornton · Aug 3, 2006

Jeeze, it looks like Batman!

Ordinary_Guy · Aug 7, 2006

Not all tech is good tech...

Don't know if they'll change policy before you could write a story about it... but I doubt it (at least not before we've lost a few people as a result).

"What policy is that..." you ask? RFID chips in passports. From Wired.com (and just about everywhere else, too).

In a demonstration for Wired News, Grunwald placed his passport on top of an official passport-inspection RFID reader used for border control. He obtained the reader by ordering it from the maker -- Walluf, Germany-based ACG Identification Technologies -- but says someone could easily make their own for about $200 just by adding an antenna to a standard RFID reader.

He then launched a program that border patrol stations use to read the passports -- called Golden Reader Tool and made by secunet Security Networks -- and within four seconds, the data from the passport chip appeared on screen in the Golden Reader template.

Grunwald then prepared a sample blank passport page embedded with an RFID tag by placing it on the reader -- which can also act as a writer -- and burning in the ICAO layout, so that the basic structure of the chip matched that of an official passport.

As the final step, he used a program that he and a partner designed two years ago, called RFDump, to program the new chip with the copied information.

The result was a blank document that looks, to electronic passport readers, like the original passport.

Further on, in addition to the spy suspense, we get the potential for action:

...In theory, with metal fibers in the front cover, nobody can sniff out the presence of an e-passport that's closed. But Mahaffey and Hering demonstrated in their video how even if a passport opens only half an inch -- such as it might if placed in a purse or backpack -- it can reveal itself to a reader at least two feet away.

Using a mockup e-passport modeled on the U.S. design, they showed how an attacker could connect a hidden, improvised bomb to a reader such that it triggers an explosion when a passport-holder comes within range.

Just more grist for imagination...

Soccer Mom · Aug 8, 2006

What an awesome thread. I don't do techno because the science is waaaay over my petite little head, but I enjoy reading this stuff. You've done a lot to liven up the MST forum.

Shadow_Ferret · Aug 9, 2006

Yeah, I'm not much into techno-thrillers, both the writing end of it and even the reading end of it. I guess the few I've read seemed to get so bogged down in the minutia of describing how the cool toy worked that it took away from whatever interest I might have had in the plot.

Seems the technology always takes a front seat to the story.

Soccer Mom · Aug 9, 2006

There are a few out there that transcend that, but I hear you, SF. I can no longer read Clancy. My brain goes somewhere far away and much happier after, oh, say the first paragraph.

Ordinary_Guy · Aug 9, 2006

In honor of the technically declined...

Shadow_Ferret said:
Yeah, I'm not much into techno-thrillers, both the writing end of it and even the reading end of it. I guess the few I've read seemed to get so bogged down in the minutia of describing how the cool toy worked that it took away from whatever interest I might have had in the plot.

Seems the technology always takes a front seat to the story.

Don't feel bad. Personally, I love the tech angle – when it's done right. When a writer chews on it, it loses the magic – but that's true for just about anything. Heck, love scenes get tedious if an author gets florid about it.

Okay... for equal opportunity and in honor of the technically declined also making good story material [ :tongue

], here's a bit from today's Reuters:

How not to open a grenade...
Wed Aug 9, 2006 07:36 AM ET

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (Reuters) - A Brazilian man died Tuesday when he tried to open what police believe was a rocket-propelled grenade with a sledgehammer in a mechanical workshop on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro.
Another man who was in the workshop at the time of the explosion was rushed to a hospital with severe burns, a police officer told Reuters. The workshop was destroyed and several cars parked outside caught fire.

Police found several unexploded army issue rocket-propelled grenades in the workshop. They believe the ammunition had been brought there by scavengers wanting to sell them as scrap metal, but they also are investigating a possible link to Rio's heavily armed drug gangs who often raid military bases.

Shadow_Ferret · Aug 9, 2006

Sheesh. That reminds me of the Bugs Bunny cartoon where he's testing WWII bombs with a hammer and if it doesn't explode he writes "Dud" on it.

Ordinary_Guy · Aug 9, 2006

Shadow_Ferret said:
Sheesh. That reminds me of the Bugs Bunny cartoon where he's testing WWII bombs with a hammer and if it doesn't explode he writes "Dud" on it.

I can't say I've confirmed it, but I remember hearing about some guys in the Philippines in the 90's installing a septic tank. In the process, they dug up a WWII-vintage bomb and thought tinkering could be fun. The 1,000-pound exploded, of course...

Ordinary_Guy · Aug 14, 2006

Trying not to go "boom"

In light of the recent of terrorist attempt, explosives are in the news again. From our friends at MIT's Technology Review, here's a little bit of the science that's trying to protect us:

A New Way to Make Ultrasensitive Explosives Detectors
HP researchers have developed a cheap way to make nanoparticle arrays that could lead to precise chemical sensors.
By Kevin Bullis

Ultrasensitive chemical sensors based on nanoparticles have the potential to detect a single molecule of an explosive or other hazardous chemical. But deploying such ultrasensitive detectors outside the lab will require manufacturing methods that are both highly precise and inexpensive. Now researchers at Hewlett-Packard and the University of California at Irvine say they have a process that uses basic semiconductor manufacturing to fabricate arrays of nanoparticles in minutes...

Click the link for the rest of the article and an interesting nano-scale picture of the technology.

The tech itself seems kinda cool and will definitely help cut down on weekend sociopaths. Could be something your bomb disposal character use...

But you know the inevitable flip-side: somebody, somewhere, will start researching chemicals that don't give off detectable traces (at least not detectable by these means).

Ordinary_Guy · Sep 4, 2006

Shocking news!

In the ever-noble efforts to increase the effectiveness of non-lethal force (versus lethal force), stun guns may have just gotten an upgrade. From New Scientist Magazine comes another tool your M/T/S character might have handy...

Long-range stunner
By BARRY FOX

The range of Taser stun guns could be dramatically increased by allowing them to generate the voltage they need to disable victims in mid-flight, say inventors in the US.

The range of conventional Tasers is limited by the wires that carry the voltage - typically between 20 and 150 kilovolts - from the gun to the dart’s electrodes.

One option is to fit the dart with a piezoelectric material which produces a voltage dependent on the strength of impact. But since darts slow significantly in-flight due to air resistance, this sort of wire-free device only lands with enough impact to generate a significant voltage over short ranges.

Three inventors in the US have now devised a long range stun gun which delivers a shock of 40 kilovolts, over a distance of about 150 metres, even if the dart hits with a low impact.

The new dart contains a small explosive charge which detonates when it hits the target. The explosion squeezes piezoelectric materials and this generates a powerful voltage delivered to the victim via needle-like electrodes that pierce the skin.

The whole non-lethal weapons subject is fairly contentious, surprising since its main goal is to save lives – but most of that controversy is over methods of crowd control. The understandable big concern is potential misuse and abuse of technologies, from 'sound lasers' (focused acoustics), microwaves (...that actually and uncomfortable heat the skin), water cannons (putting firemen in the unenviable line of crowd control), rubber bullets, stink bombs, "goo shooters," etc.

Anthony Ravenscroft · Sep 4, 2006

OG, great topic. A few thoughts.

As William Gibson said, "The street finds its own uses." The coagulator could be readily used for torture, or murder with little overt symptomatology.

I'm a fan of Kevlar, especially for rescue teams, for industrial gloves & aprons, & for layers in cycle gear (like chaps). Few writers have the slightest idea what the stuff it. Few know that seven-layer Kevlar can stop the rounds from big handguns & even many rifles, but has been known to be vulnerable to .22 LR, particularly waxed copper-coated. (Or that, if a guy's wearing 10-layer unstructured Kevlar & takes five round of .44 Mag in the chest at close range, he's toast -- or, rather, pudding.) There's something to be said for frangible plate, eh?

I researched gel-underlayer armor years ago, for a science-fiction story I never wrote. Look into the dynamics of Silly Putty -- no, seriously. (Hint: the point's not to soak up the force, but to disperse it 90 degrees in all directions.)

The technology is usually far ahead of what people know, even authors. around 1978, I read a piece from a former Cold War spy. He described an ordinary playing card, standard thickness, & demonstrated that it was in fact a wireless transmitter, & scavenged broadcast power by regenerating commercial AM radio waves that permeate the air practically everywhere. Its output could be picked up on a very narrow band up to a quarter-mile away.

It all still sounds remarkably high-tech.

The hook to the guy's story? "I don't know when they came into the field, but we had them in 1965."

I've also been assured by a Special Forces friend that the "ghost suit" that does a perfect chameleon impression "has been around for years." "Problem is," he said, "until the 1990s, they were only good in dim light -- if it got a stray burst of moonlight or something, the whole thing would fry, & you'd be standing there in a heavy black suit that was smoking." His impression was that it was more a liability than asset. (My guess is they've worked a few of the bugs out since then.)

Ordinary_Guy · Sep 25, 2006

For the hero that has guts (and wants to keep them)

In my undying effort to keep M/T/S writers up-to-date on what their characters may be using, here's a body armor blurb scooped from Gizmodo:

Dragon Skin Bulletproof Vest Repels AK-47 Rounds

These bulletproof vests are the first to stop armor piercing rounds without using some bulky plate. They work better than traditional **** beat cops use because the fibers are woven tighter; and they're woven in a way that actually tightens up the weave upon impact by bullet or blade. They're soft enough to roll up into a ball, and are certified for dives, so they're appropriate for amphibious missions. It's what all the fashionable mercenaries are going to be wearing in 2007, trust us. Geek uses: Probably does not have a pocket for your gameboy, but will most likely stop shrapnel from exploding laptop batteries.
–Brian Lam

SOV 3000 Dragon Skin Bulletproof Vest [Defense Tech]

A lot of interesting developments on armor lately...

Looks like the defense is starting to catch up. Thank goodness.

rtilryarms · Sep 25, 2006

Great posts, very informative.

jpserra · Oct 26, 2006

Bump on an empty door only...

Ordinary_Guy said:
Here's another bit for thriller/mystery writers. If you're a big fan of Felonious Monk, you've probably had a character or two pick a lock. Turns out that this might be a bit easier than some locksmiths would have you believe – so if your character is, um, ethically challenged, they can do the B&E dance with the best of them...

Hope there are no 15 year olds reading these posts! Yeah, heard of it. Used it when I did bounty work in the southwest. Nice for gaining access, but kinda let's em know your coming.

JPS

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